The night before the dreaded twenty-sixth, Celestia spent its entirety laying wide awake and after passing out from shock following a phone conversation, the younger Princess Luna simply would not allow her sister to go another moment without sleep. Once she lowered the moon and began to bring the sun up to begin the day, the night princess would be having a serious conversation with her elder sister. Something was very wrong and after allowing Celestia to get her much needed rest, Luna intended on finding out what it was.

While Princess Luna stood outside her sister's room on a balcony and focused her magic on bringing the sun up into the sky, she kept her ears perked up towards Celestia to listen for any signs of her waking up. just as the sun poked up over the horizon and gained enough momentum for Luna to release it from her magic, her ear twitched at the sound of her elder sister stirring in her bed. It would not be much longer before Princess Luna could find out what Celestia's problem was and why she behaved in such a manner that greatly concerned their guard squadron.

"Are you feeling well rested?" Luna asked as Celestia sat up and rubbed her eyes. "If all that wine you had hadn't put you to sleep, nothing would have."

"Yes, Luna, I'm feeling fine." Celestia replied. "No hang over to speak of either."

"Good. So look, you and I need to talk. What happened to you last night?"

"I already told you, Lulu. You didn't believe me."

"That's because you were speaking as if you were on whatever the element of laughter uses and you weren't yourself. Now that your drunkenness has subsided and we have a moment, you can calmly tell me what's gotten into you and we can get to the bottom of it."

Celestia then bagen nervously fidgeting by and rubbing her hooves together as she took a moment to think, avoiding eye contact with her sister like a plague. The concerned night Princess responded by gently placing a hoof under her elder sister's chin and turned the latter's face towards her own so they were looking each other directly in the eyes.

"Tia, I love you so much and I'm really worried about you." Luna continued. "I mean, that foul language you used last night and in front of nearly a dozen of our guards...it's just not like you to curse and even less for you to drink yourself stupid. I know you only do it when things go wrong...and I know for a fact that things have most certainly gone very, very wrong. So tell me...what happened when you talked on the phone last night?"

"Okay, I'll start from when I started listening to that tape." Celestia began, after a defeated sigh.

"Alright then."

"I had to have heard it nearly a hundred times. I was able to put a lot of the words together."

"Okay, go on."

"Somepony has been trapped in Eastern Europe and they said they were holed up in a power plant."

"That's...huh."

"Strange, I know. Anyway, I was able to hear him say that Ukraine is where he was. I also was able to figure out that he was a pony too. That's where I got stuck for a while. I decided to take a break and that's when I got the phone call."

"From whom?"

"The prime minister of Ukraine was on the other line and he told me that he knew about that strange radio broadcast, where it came from and why we were able to hear it. See, they have small wormholes between Equestria and Earth that are right next to radio towers. That's so Equestria can pick up an Earth broadcast and vice versa."

"Wow, that must make for a confusing night. What did he have to say about it?"

"Luna, sister, you know I love you more than anything, right?"

"That feeling is one hundred percent mutual."

"But if I tell you, there is no way, you'll believe me."

"Try me."

For the first time in over a millennium, Celestia simply could not be sure weather her sister would take her word for it or think she was losing her mind. For many thousands of years, the two sisters have endured it all through thick and thin but nothing was about to prepare Luna for what Celestia was about to tell her and Celestia herself was nearly in shock at the words that were about to come out of her mouth.

"Lulu, they think my coltfriend Radius somehow survived and has been living in Pripyat for the last thirty years."

Luna did not answer and instead just cocked her eyebrow and gave her sister a perplexed stare. She was always willing to give Celestia the benefit of the doubt and help her through anything she could but she first needed to know what she herself thought of the strange phone conversation. So far Celestia had only told Luna what was said by the other party but she needed to know exactly what she thought of it.

"Okay." Luna began. "So what is your take on it?"

"I don't know, Lulu." Celestia replied as she rubbed her temples. "Like, if there was some way Radius somehow survived a huge explosion and tons of radiation, i mean, I guess I'd be glad he was still alive. On the other hoof, the idea of him living and suffering in some abandoned wasteland for this long makes me sick."

Luna then opened her mouth for a moment to interject but Celestia cut her off before she could speak.

"And this Pripyat is nothing like the moon, luna." Celestia said. "Try to imagine being trapped in a place with toxic substances that cook your entire body from the inside out. I've seen what radiation does to people. Not a day goes by without me regretting sending you away but the moon is a luxury resort compared to a nuclear fallout zone."

"Alright, alright sorry." Luna said. "But what I'm asking you is do you believe what the Prime Minister said? Do you really think that there is some chance that your coltfriend is actually still out there alive somewhere? I mean, how is that possible? Wasn't he caught right in the explosion?"

"Some of the signs actually make sense, Luna. And all these things that just fall together like that like the fact that it's a missing pony, he's in a power plant in Ukraine, and it sounded an awful lot like he was trying to say 'Chernobyl' when he got cut off by the static."

"That's...an awful lot of coincidences."

"Right, and that's why I intend on looking into it. I can't just let this whole thing go without at least discussing it further with Ukrainian authorities."

"I understand, Tia. If it will put you at ease and this matter to rest once and for all, then I say go for it."

"Thank you, Luna. If we look into this together, we'll soon find the trut-"

The royal sisters' conversation was suddenly interrupted by nine firm, and urgent sounding knocks on the door of Celestia's personal room. After briefly glancing at each other, Celestia gave Luna a small nod before the former spoke up to the visitor.

"Enter." Luna said before the door swung open revealing a guard holding a package.

"A thousand pardons, your majestys..." The guard began with a bow. "But this parcel I have here was delivered via overnight express on urgent circumstances from the Prime Minister of Ukraine on Earth. I was told that it regards a matter of utmost importance and it cannot wait."

"Ukraine, you say?" Celestia asked. "Yes, hoof it over please."

"Thank you for bringing it to us, cadet." Luna said. "You are dismissed."

With another bow, the guard then exited the room, closed the door behind him and left the two sisters with the mysterious package. It was a small, rectangular object wrapped in brown paper with a tag attached that read "Urgent! Open immediately!" Wasting no time, Celestia used her aura to tear through the paper and packing tape until shortly she pulled out what all the fuss was about. A VHS tape with a small, folded note taped to the front. Celestia then pulled the note off revealing a label on the front of the tape that read "Reactor room surveillance footage-4/86".

"That's odd." Luna said. "Why would he send us this? We already know what happened."

"Well, we're about to find out why." Celestia replied as she prepared to read the note aloud."

Dear Princess Celestia:

First off, I would like to sincerely apologize for the stress you have been going through due to the recent circumstances that have arisen. I understand that what I told you on the phone last night must have been difficult to hear but after our conversation was cut off, I decided to take another look at the footage enclosed in this package. Your Majesty, you would not believe what I found unless you saw it with your own eyes. When you play this tape, fast forward to 1:23:36. Once you have done that, slowly move forward just a few frames with your eyes on Radius. I must warn you however, some of what you will see may strike a nerve with you and I apologize in advance for that. I await your response.

Sincerely, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman

p.s.- Be sure to use a high definition tv to get a clear picture and see what we couldn't before.

"Luna, meet me in my study." Celestia said as she trotted out of the room with the tape in her aura. "I need to go dig something up."

Luna obliged and soon found herself in her sister's private study. It felt somewhat odd to her as this time she was granted permission by her elder sister to be there unlike most other times that she would prefer were kept secret. While she waited for Celestia to return with the necessary equipment, Luna prepared the the large flat screen television by unplugging the accompanying gaming console and moving any unneeded wires out of the way.

"Okay, Luna, let's hook this thing up." Celestia said as she entered the room. In her aura, she held a strange gray device with a rectangular slot on one side with a wall plug and what appeared to be a coax cable.

"And what, pray tell, is that?" Luna asked as Celestia began to attach the device to the television.

"This, my dear baby sister, is a VCR. As ancient as this technology is and as long as it's been all but obsolete, it has yet to be replaced when it comes to recording surveillance footage."

"Fascinating. How long ago were these decommissioned?"

"Uh, I think around like 2003 or something. I wasn't really paying attention, I think it was sometime around the early two thousands when DVDs phased these out."

"I thought you said it was ancient!"

"Look, I got it all set up now, okay? We've got bigger things to worry about so let's just play this tape."

Celestia was getting anxious about what the Prime Minister of Ukraine so badly needed her to see so with much haste, she inserted the cassette tape into the VCR and after several clicks, the device began blowing out clouds of dust. After several more seconds, the outdated electronic device began emitting a strange whining sound but soon started playing the recorded footage.

The footage that played before the two princesses who carefully observed every inch of the screen was apparently shot from a camera approximately fifteen yards from none other than reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Facility. The time displayed on the screen was just past midnight and the date was the one that had always made Celestia shudder; April twenty-sixth, 1986. All operations taking place seemed to be going normally as all the workers who walked past the view of the camera acted as if it was just another day at the office. It all seemed as if nothing was going wrong until Celestia saw a certain somepony come into view on the bottom level closest to the reactor.

"Oh my God!" Celestia gasped.

"What? What's wrong, Tia?" Luna asked.

"That's him...that's my Radius..."

Doctor Radius Hoofenshtov was on the screen trotting alongside two men wearing white lab coats and hardhats. Celestia remembered Radius describing the two men he worked with so she was able to identify them as his two favorite co-workers Vladimir Shashenok and Valeriy Khodemchuk. Since the time was just moments past the displayed time striking midnight, the three friends must have been heading to the employee locker room to clock in for their shifts. The two men and the pony who walked and trotted down the steel deck together appeared to be laughing and joking among themselves which wrenched at the hearts of the two sisters who watched as these poor souls were oblivious to their impending doom.

After watching for a few more minutes, Radius and his colleagues walked and trotted off camera, their time cards in hand and hoof ready to be punched. Moments later, none other than Anatoly Dyatlov walked into view holding a clipboard with two of his subordinates in tow. There was no audio in the footage but the three appeared to be discussing the test that would begin momentarily and in just over an hour from then end up rendering a large area uninhabitable. Celestia had long forgiven Dyatlov and the more she thought about it before, the more she sympathized with him as his involvement in the meltdown weighed on him heavily until the day he died.

"Are you alright, Tia?" Luna asked, noticing that her sister was stifling tears.

"Yes, I'm fine, Luna." The watery eyed Celestia replied as she gently laid a hoof of the tv monitor. "It's just that...it's been so long since I've seen Radius actually...trotting around. And that poor man. He didn't mean to cause it and I know he hated himself for it."

"I know, sister, I know. Just remember why we're reviewing this though. There is something that happened later in the video that we need to see. Let's skip forward, okay?"

"Yes, of course."

Knowing that for whatever reason it had to be done, Celestia then used her aura to activate fast forward mode on the VCR and watched as the footage reeled up towards 1:23 in the morning just as the letter from the Prime Minister had instructed. To avoid skipping past it, Celestia decided to stop one minute before that time. The letter did warn that what the tape showed would be hard to watch but there was nothing in the entire world that could have prepared her for what was about to unfold.

"He was right on top of the reactor?!" Celestia cried out as she saw her coltfriend crippled and helpless after his twenty foot fall. "They never told me that!"

"Stay strong, Tia." Luna calmly said as she placed a comforting hoof on her sister's shoulder.

Celestia did not answer and began to shed tears as she continued to watch the video. On the particular part of the recording that the two sisters were watching, the camera began to briefly cut in and out as that was the time when the magnitude of the floor shaking reached its peak. Just as the specified time where the video was to be paused approached, Celestia prepared her aura to press the pause button on the VCR. Just before she could press it however, the lid of the reactor shot up through the ceiling of the building, ending the footage as the impact from the blast had destroyed the camera that was recording it. To see the actual alleged death of Radius unfold before their eyes was painful for both Princesses but for Celestia it was as if old wounds were being torn open to bleed again as she went into a hysterical sobbing fit.

The warning in the Prime Minister's letter appeared to be a drastic understatement. Celestia had just witnessed her coltfriend that she lost three decades ago getting killed in a nuclear explosion all over again and it would take a half hour of her sister holding her close to make her hyperventilating to cease. Still, the regal sisters had a task at hoof that they badly needed to complete and a hidden detail in the video that they had to investigate.

Finally, Celestia and Luna rewound the tape back to the point just before the explosion and promptly paused it. Ever so slowly, they skipped forward frame by frame with their eyes on Radius the entire time. Each frame that skipped by felt like another bullet in Celestia's heart but the sisters bravely continued. Each passing second was another frame skipped over and just when Celestia nor Luna could take the agony of waiting another second, they found the clue that would change everything known about the death of Radius Hoofenschtov. What the princesses were looking at was Radius embracing two men on top of the reactor a fraction of a second before it exploded. Even the deadly gasses could be seen seeping out of the gap between the reactor and its lid.

The only difference between this particular frame and the rest was that Radius' horn was glowing brightly with his unmistakable green magical aura that matched his eyes. Along with his glowing horn, there was a bubble of the same color surrounding the pony and both men. This would turn out to be the biggest breakthrough since the tragedy all those years ago.

"He used a shield spell!" Celestia gasped as she began to sob again. "A fucking shield spell! Oh my God!"

"Sister, I..." Luna stuttered. "I can't even...I don't know what to say! "

"Luna, do you know what this means?! He could still be alive! There's a chance that he's still out there! This right here is proof!"

"Tia, I think you actually may be right this time!"

"This is just incredible...okay, okay, okay, just keep it together...keep it together."

"Yes, I couldn't agree more. Calm yourself sister. You can't make proper decisions when you lose your mind. That's it, deep breaths, Tia. Oh, and do cease the cursing, it's rather unbecoming."

"Okay...let me think...I believe my next course of action is obvious, Lulu."

"And that is?..."

"I'm going to start recruiting some help. I'm getting Radius out of there!"