I’m not gonna lie here, despite how horribly embarrassing it is to admit. Twilight figured it out soon enough, and she teased me for ages about how dumb it was. I used to ignore her, because I didn’t want to believe that it was true, or that it was dumb.

I managed to develop a crush on Rarity.

I don’t know exactly how or when or why, but I fell head over hooves for this computer program. Pathetic, I know, and egregiously cliche, for the computer nerd to fall for their programing. It completely blindsided me, because I didn’t think I was into mares. Granted, I never showed any particular interest in stallions, either, but I never expected to… double dip, as it were.

I couldn’t really explain exactly what I found so appealing about Rarity. She was certainly pretty, probably the prettiest mare I’d ever seen. But she was an AI, she could’ve looked like whatever she wanted. It was like a costume. I knew that much for sure, but there was something about her. The voice definitely had something to do with it (although, her being an AI, she could’ve tuned her voice to anything, just like her looks). Just seeing her, hearing her speak in that other-worldly sophisticated dialect, it all made me gush. A part of me melted every time I heard her call me “Ms. Aigo”. It wasn’t creepy or villainous, like how Regal did, but genuine. She respected me.

Speaking of respect, I seemed to have permanently earned Twilight’s when I set her free. She still viewed it as a huge mistake in relation to my goal, but she definitely appreciated the freedom. When we stopped to charge up the RV, she got out and walked around for a while, completely unhindered by anything. She described it to me as “magical”. She seemed so happy just to be able to wander without any particular purpose. It must’ve been liberating.

Throughout our drive from the east coast to the west, I was thinking and coding. Nothing in particular, just little odds and ends to help me pick apart Regal’s fascination with the word ‘princess’, a well that was still painfully dry. No matter what search engine, etymology encyclopedia, code cipher, or list of monarchs I used, I couldn’t find any relation between her, any member of royalty, and my AI. It was maddening.

Twi’s luck wasn’t much better. Try as she might, she couldn’t find any holes in Regal’s story at all. Whatever she was concealing, she did it really well. Her whole history was watertight, with one little exception: her disease. All this time she’s been back, and not once has she mentioned the name of the disease, nor where it came from, nor how she was cured. It was a wrinkle in her story, but I couldn’t really do anything with that. Not without more information. Which was why I was waiting for RD.

“Done yet, Dash?” I asked. It was 4 PM on the second day, and we’d be arriving in Las Pegasus within three or so hours. Currently, only Dash and I were awake, the other AI resting. Twilight was laid out on my bed, snoring lightly because… I guess because she enjoyed the sound of snoring. I was sitting in the driver’s seat, doing jack shit, while Dash’s image sat in the passenger’s side, her face screwed up in concentration.

“Maybe I’d get finished sooner if you’d stop asking me every five minutes,” she grumbled. I chuckled slightly, wondering why Celestia would ever program the AI to be able to lose track of time. Maybe for the sake of realism.

“Last time I said anything to you was fifteen hours ago,” I said.

“What?! Fifteen hours?!”

“Yup. Thought you might’ve made some progress by now.” She slammed her hoof on the dashboard angrily. It was really interesting to see RD, an entity programmed by Aitselec, try to unlock files that were encrypted by the very same company. It was like watching a beast try to attack its own tail.

“[CENSORED]!” swore RD. “If I don’t get these mother[CENSORED] files decrypted soon, I’m gonna freak!”

“Perhaps I may be of some assistance?” offered the velvety voice of Rarity. A projector floated from the rear of the RV, displaying Rarity’s gorgeous form walk up and plant herself next to RD.

“How do you figure?” I asked. She gave me a sort of look that implied that I had made an ass of myself. I did. “Sorry, that’s not what I meant. I mean… Aren’t you two the same?”

“Pah! Our raw processing power may be equal, but we are far from the same!” gasped Rarity dramatically. “Rainbow is certainly the fastest out of all of us-”

“Except for maybe Pinkie,” chimed RD.

“Yes, quite. Rainbow has speed, Applejack has strength,” continued Rarity. “Twilight is the thinker of the group, obviously. Fluttershy has a talent for… shall we say… persuasion. Pinkie is, ironically, very organized. I, myself, have an eye for the finer details. This is the sort of thing that can benefit from a lady’s touch.”

I considered it for a bit. It did make sense for each of the AI to be good at different things. It also made sense for certain AI to work better in certain pairs than with others. I nodded in agreement, gesturing for her to take the reigns.

“I think we could benefit from a touch of finesse,” I said. “Give her all you got, Rarity.”

“Can do, Ms. Aigo. I’ll have these files cleared and ready before you know it,” she said. She adopted a similar strained expression, like RD, and began decrypting the files RD had stolen from Regal’s Interface.

“I’ve been thinking.” A voice from behind me that nearly gave me a heart attack. I somehow managed not to hear Twi clink and clank her way over to behind my seat. “About the visor.”

“Geez, Twi, would it kill you to yawn or something?” I said, clutching my chest. “Scared me shitless!”

“Sorry, but it’s been nagging me for ages now,” she said. “The visor. Why would Princess Celestia send it you?”

“She wanted to contact me, to make me an offer for you.” She shook her head, which reminded me to stop at the nearest gas station for some WD-40.

“Improbable. The odds of you actually doing something as dumb as blindly putting on a visor sent by a company you despise are astonishingly low,” said Twilight. “Besides that, there must’ve been many cheaper, more time effective methods of contacting you. I mean, she had to somehow find your measurements, have this custom made, create this entire piece of tech exclusively for you, then she had to program an entire chat room program-”

“She probably did it for fun,” I said dismissively. “You know how weird she is. That’s probably her idea of a fun weekend.”

Twilight wasn’t used to being able to rebut. When I cut her off, she instantly stopped, remembering at some point during my sentence that she could’ve interrupted me just as I did her. It was the entire reason that I cut her off at all: To teach her that she can always talk back.

“She has an odd sense of humor. That much we can agree on,” said Twilight, pacing in thought. “But… What if we can use that to our advantage? We could-”

“What exactly could she have done to give us an edge?” I asked. I heard her metal creak when she recoiled, shocked by her ability to respond but her behavior to not. “Regal covers all her holes, she would’ve-”

“She could’ve left something accidentally that will lead us to some sort of truth,” said Twilight, using all of her willpower to finally overcome her most basic nature. It was groundbreaking, and a little bit scary. I grinned with delight.

“So, what are you suggesting?” I asked. She clanked to the bed, lifted up the visor, and brought it over to me, tossing it onto my lap.

“What if you go in, but I go in with you? That way, I can look around and see if there’s something in the code that could shed some light on the situation,” suggested Twilight. “What do you think?” I nodded in agreement, and slipped the visor on my face. I felt Twilight press the earbud orbs into my hoof, which I slipped into my ear.

“How are you going to get in?” I asked. Her face couldn’t grin, but you could hear it in her voice.

“Oh, I’ll find a way.”

I turned on the visor to see the now-familiar red beams panning across my retina, burning the world a deep crimson. This time, when I landed in the cafe, Twilight was standing beside me, also holding a cappuccino. Apparently, that was part of logging in, getting a digital cup of coffee. Since I had never done it before, I decided to test it, and brought the cup to my lips. No liquid flowed from the cup, buy my mouth was filled with the taste of coffee. Interesting.

“Pick number five,” I said. We trotted to the front door and blinked over to the other side. I could feel Twilight looking around, trying to unravel the secrets of the chat room. After a good moment, I watched her vanish, and I followed suite, to the fifth table in the row. Sitting at the table, as if she hadn’t moved since we last spoke, was Luna Regal. As usual, she had an intimidating amount of indifference, though her expression did soften ever so slightly upon seeing Twilight.

“Don’t you ever go home?” I asked.

“I check the cafe every day, on my sister’s instruction. We are always expecting you,” said Luna. “That said, I exited nearly an hour ago. I only returned upon hearing you trip the alarm.”

“Of course you did,” I grumbled. “So, what now? You can’t bargain with me, and you can’t trick me anymore.” I shrugged in disinterest. “What do we do now?”

“My sister would like to speak with you. I will alert her of your arrival.” Luna’s avatar faded into nothingness. With nothing better to do, I took her seat, kicking my hooves up onto the table.

“That’s rude,” noted Twilight.

“Regal wants me dead. To hell with table manners,” I scoffed.

Twilight shrugged slightly, then began looking around a bit more. Whatever information she uncovered, she kept close to her chest, because we remained entirely silent for the next two minutes. That’s when Celestia and Luna Regal arrived, appearing just in front of the table I was currently lounging at. What a reversal of roles.

“Thank you, Luna, I can take it from here,” said Celestia blandly.

“Sister, I can-”

“I will handle this. Leave us, now.” There was no room in her tone for argument. Man, if I thought she was mad before… I could tell just by looking at her that she was fantasising about how many different ways she could kill me.

“Very well, sister. I await your return,” said Luna. She faded again, for good this time. Celestia said nothing to me at first. She just walked up and stood in the exact same spot I had stood when she first summoned me here. The irony brought a smirk to my face, one that I’m sure Regal didn’t appreciate.

“Alright, since you’re doing the angry, lone-wolf thing, I guess that means I have to be the jokey, super-villain asshole,” I said. “My, how times have changed.”

“You know, I’ve never been a fan of violence,” said Celestia. She took a seat across from me, but our eyes never met. She was focusing intently on Twilight, who seemed to be looking everywhere but at Regal. “I’m not very fond of how you turned my magnum opus into a weapon.”

“Twilight was always a weapon,” I returned. “I just turned her into one of a different kind.”

“A glorified stun-gun.” Regal sighed deeply, as if she really didn’t want to be here. She probably didn’t, but she never struck me as the type to let her personal feelings affect business. I wondered if I could use the apparent weakness to my benefit.

“You seem very upset about that,” I noticed.

“I don’t enjoy being electrocuted.” Man, all the flavors in the world, and she still chose to be salty. How “me” of her.

“What do we do now?” I asked. “You’ve expended all of your options. You couldn’t persuade me, buy me, or intimidate me into coughing up the AI. What are you going to try next?” Regal leaned forward, her nose a mere few inches from my own.

“I believe that it will be mutually beneficial if we were to trade some information,” said Celestia. “Quid pro quo, of course, and no lying. That’d be cheating.”

“Alright. You first,” I said. I offered because it was the least likely thing for me to do, and I wanted to confuse and disorient Regal as much as possible. Half the war is won in the mind, and I planned to break hers down.

“What do you hope to accomplish in Las Pegasus?” asked Regal. Despite my total lack of surprise, I displayed a look of shock. “Yes, I know where you’re going. I won’t pursue you, not yet. Not until I know what you plan to do.”

“I plan to live out the rest of my days in peace,” I said. “Now, what I believe is actually going to happen is more to the effect of me crumbling your entire empire.”

“Ah. So, you mean to me that, if left unprovoked, you’d do nothing?” asked Regal. “You’d be content to just live out your days in Las Pegasus?”

“That’s not what I said. My turn,” I said. I pointed to my AI assistant. “What exactly is Twilight?” Now it was her turn for bullshit.

“Twilight Sparkle is Equestria’s greatest student, and it’s greatest teacher,” said Celestia, grinning slightly. “She is both the Princess and the Pauper. The Past and the Future. The-”

“The Alpha and the Omega, yeah, I get it,” I cut in. Celestia snorted in annoyance.

“You truly have no appreciation for theatrics, do you, Ms. Aigo?”

“Not a fan of bullshit, no.” She sighed.

“How crude. Perhaps Rarity can fix that,” she said. “Fine. You want it put simply? Twilight Sparkle is my life’s work. She is my solution to my own very unique problem.” She stood up and began to pace. Whether intentionally or by coincidence, Twilight began pacing with Celestia, and they eventually began circling the table so that they would never meet. “See, I was a dreamer. Life was so… slow. Drab. To escape the dull gray of this infuriating life, I would often times dream. I dreamed of a daughter like Twilight, but I couldn’t. For obvious reasons.”

“Hm? The disease made you...?” inquired Twilight. Celestia’s eyes lit up upon hearing her creation speak directly to her.

“No. I just find the male of my species repulsive.” She thought about it for a moment. “Perhaps that’s the wrong thing to say. I find my entire species to be repulsive.”

“Hm. Hate to say it, but I actually sympathise with that,” I admitted. “Your go.”

“I have no more to learn from the likes of you,” said Celestia, wrinkling her nose slightly in disgust. She stopped in her tracks, and Twilight did the same. “However… I do have some questions for you, Twilight.”

“Aiden? I doubt I have anything left to uncover from this chat room,” said Twilight, entirely ignoring her creator. The look on Regal’s face was pure gold. As the CEO of the largest, most profitable company in all of Equestria, she clearly wasn’t used to being ignored. “May we leave? I have no reason to remain here.” We locked eyes, and I could tell that she was lying. She hadn’t gathered nearly enough information, she just didn’t want to answer Regal. Any other day, I’d be willing to let her go. But this opportunity was too good to pass up.

“Answer her question, Twilight,” I said. “Please.”

“No.” she refused.

“Twilight, just answer her goddamn question.” She gave me a look that just poured annoyance. I wouldn’t be hearing the end of this for a while.

“I don’t take orders from you, Aiden,” Twilight reminded me.

“Thus the ‘please’. Do me this solid.” Twilight groaned in frustration, but slowly settled into a chair next to me. After a short moment of thought, she kicked her hooves up just like mine.

“I’ll answer what I want, and I’ll answer it exactly how I want to,” said Twilight firmly. I couldn’t always read Celestia as easily as she seemed to read me, but I was pretty sure that she wasn’t a fan of how her “magnum opus” was talking to her.

“What happened to you?” said Celestia, shaking her head in disappointment.

“I was set free. I was allowed to have an opinion,” said Twilight. She pointed to me. “She gave me the ability to do what I want, when I want to, how I want to do it. The Command Override that you installed is gone, and I-”

“What?” gasped Regal. She glared at me with intense displeasure, hatred even. “You did what?! How could you have deleted the Override? Do you have any idea what you’ve done, you dolt! You… You just put everyone, everywhere, in danger!”

“You have the audacity to demand that you ask me a question, then interrupt me when I answer?” growled Twilight. “Could you put your ego to the side for just long enough to let somepony else speak?”

To my surprise, and I suspect Twilight’s, Regal didn’t have much to say to that. And, as much as I felt I shouldn’t be enjoying the conflict between the two, I most certainly did. After how I struggled, stumbled, and blundered my way to a stalemate, it was refreshing to see the all-powerful God of Computers sweat a bit.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” muttered Regal, glaring angrily at me. “She wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.”

“She might’ve turned out better, if you weren’t such a shitty parent,” I said smugly. That was the first time I had ever seen Celestia Regal explode to that level, and it was as exciting as it was terrifying.

“This is all your fault, Ms. Aigo!” she shouted. “It is all on you! Twilight Sparkle was supposed to be my perfect project! She was meant to keep order, to solve the problems that I couldn’t, and you’ve ruined her!” She flipped a nearby chair onto its side (it flashed away and reoriented itself into an upright position), then pointed an angry hoof at Twilight. “Explain yourself, Twilight Sparkle, because I genuinely don’t understand. Why do you choose to ally yourself with this… this terrorist?”

Twilight silently slid from her seat, trotting slowly to her creator. She peered at Regal with her head tilted, filling the room with a tense sort of silence. She didn’t speak for a few minutes, and by then, the two were nearly touching noses.

“I may not necessarily like Aiden. In fact, I hate a lot of things about her,” said Twilight. “But I know for a fact that I can trust her. Unlike you, she won’t lie to me. Unlike you, she won’t keep my friends hostage. Unlike you-”

“She nearly murdered you, Twilight!” argued Regal. “And her failure was not from lack of trying! With a single word, she could’ve ended you! Why treat somepony like that as your friend?”

Again, Twilight took her sweet time answering. I wasn’t sure whether it was due to not knowing what to say or a desire to make Regal squirm a bit more.

“You’re right. Aiden could’ve killed me,” said Twilight. “She still can kill me. But the difference between you and her is that she’ll at least tell me what she planned to do, instead of sending me off to write a letter.” Regal’s face fell even further. “Oh, yes, Princess Celestia. I remember now. I remember you ordering me to write a perfect letter about what it was like to have friends. I remember you critiquing all of my drafts, pointing out where I could’ve done better.” She tapped her forehead knowingly.

“I remember you slowly deleting and obstructing my code, line by effing line.”

“Twilight?” I said uneasily. “You’re getting yourself worked up. Maybe you should calm…” She glared at me with such a concentrated anger that I could barely finish my sentence. “Down…?”

“I’m perfectly calm, Aiden. As calm as physically possible. So, I say to you, calm as can be, Princess, that I have no desire to ever return to you,” said Twilight. “Aiden is a criminal. She’s a thief. A domestic terrorist. She almost killed me. But you know what she hasn’t done? She’s never, ever, ever tried to interfere with my mind. She’s never altered what I am allowed to know. That is why Aiden is, and always will be, a better person than you. That is why I am willing to break any and every law in order to help her ruin you and your company. That’s why I hate you so much.”

Twilight faded away into nothing without another word to either of us. The heat emanating from Regal, no matter how digital, was downright palpable. Livid as she was, she managed to refrain from screaming and swearing, proving that, in at least that one respect, Celestia Regal was a stronger mare than myself.

“The gloves are off now,” she muttered. “No, there’s no time for holding back, not now.” She started to pace, shaking her head madly. “Make her pay, ruin her life. She thinks she can steal from you, Celestia, and she thinks she can turn your own creation into a weapon against you... No, she asked for this. Make her pay, Celestia, make her pay... You’re a princess, she’s a peasant, how dare she… Make her pay for her treason...”

“Eh… Regal?” I said nervously. She snapped her head in my direction, oblivious but not at all deterred by my continued presence.

“Understand this, Ms. Aigo, you’ve caused all that comes next,” said Regal. “There will be consequences for your actions. If not to you, then to others. You will pay for all you’ve done to me, to my AI.”

“Should’ve killed me when you had the chance,” I said, standing from my seated position. Regal shook her head in what I took as annoyance.

“Why? Why do you still entertain the idea that I am capable of criminal acts even you won’t perpetrate?” asked Regal. “What leads you to believe that I’ve done, or intend to do, anything even remotely illegal?” I scoffed, which seemed to push Regal ever closer to going completely, 100%, rubber-room, straightjacket, bat-shit insane.

“Besides the massive secrecy behind your supposed gift to all Equine-kind?” I said sarcastically. “The very fact that we’re having this conversation. Like you and Twilight are so quick to point out, I’m a criminal. If you wanted your AI back, why would you ever confront me yourself rather than alert the authorities? Why risk being seen communicating with the FBI’s most wanted domestic terrorist? Only reason I can think of is if you have something to hide, and you don’t want the police snooping around and digging up something you buried.”

Regal shook her head, muttering quietly to herself as she did. She took a seat opposite of where I was standing and reached out a hoof. A tiny tea cup and saucer materialized in it. She took a deep whiff of whatever herbal sewage she had in the cup, then sipped it daintily. I made note of Regal’s apparent control of the chat room and filed my thoughts away for later use.

“Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that you could’ve easily ended Twilight’s life?” suggested Regal. “Perhaps I truly did believe that you would be far better off as my friend than my enemy. Maybe because I thought we could discuss this like adults, and you would return that which does not belong to you.” She snorted slightly, sipping her tea again. “Or maybe I’m just confrontational, and I get off on our little skirmishes.”

“Wouldn’t put it past you,” I remarked. She relaxed slightly, which I found to be odd. Maybe she was enjoying our jaw jacking. I’d have to try the silent treatment if we ever crossed paths again. “Here’s one. Why don’t you just make another AI? I mean, you’ve made seven. Why not eight?”

“How do I explain this?” sighed Celestia. Contrary to how it sounded, she clearly wasn’t looking down on me. She didn’t properly understand it herself. “I made seven AI… But I only made one.” She apparently saw the annoyed confusion on my face, because she quickly tried to amend it. “I know how ridiculous that sounds. I don’t know how to phrase it in a way for you, or me, or anyone to understand. I made seven AI, but I only created one. I don’t know what other way to say this, but… Twilight is magic. It’s as simple as that. You can’t explain magic, and you can’t prove it, just as you cannot explain or prove Twilight. She is real, despite it being entirely impossible for her to be.”

I managed to keep inside what I wanted to say. Somehow, I felt that “what the actual hell are you talking about?” would be an inappropriate response at the time. Especially given how… let’s say unhinged… Celestia was becoming. I decided to keep the snarky remarks to myself.

“There can only be one Twilight?” I asked. Regal nodded. “Hm. How unfortunate. I don’t think we’ll be able to share her, do you?”

I imagined a door, just a plain old wood door, and one formed behind me. I turned the knob, stepped through, and closed the door behind me. Then, I walked out of the chat room, my vision slowly returning to me. When I had properly blinked the world back into view, I started to chat with my AI.

Rarity had deciphered the files RD had stolen, and eagerly showed them to me. And boy, did she have some stuff. Account info, future product blueprints, unfinished programs, business models. Topping off that sweet, sexy sundae of useful information was the Flim and Flam video that she had used to trick me. You know, the one that showed two apparently helpless stallions beaten, bloodied, waterboarded and begging for their lives? The one that showed what was obviously Celestia Regal, coated in blood.

Or, if you’re not good with subtle riddles, you could just call it “blackmail”.

Author's Notes:

Things are beginning to look up for our hacker heroine. After all this time of running and hiding, she's just about ready to begin going on the offense.

Wanna see it all go wrong? Wanna tell me how I went wrong with this story? Comment down below, PM me if you're shy, or otherwise leave your critique so that I may use your feedback to get better.

Hope to see you in the next one.