In the morning, as I sat very tiredly at the dining table in my suite, forehead resting in my palm, I looked over a letter that had just come in. Not the one I immediately expected, either. It was a letter from Lyra Heartstrings.

Dear Pascal,

Sorry for not replying quickly after that last letter. I'm sure you're very busy in Canterlot and I don't want you to think I forgot about you. I've been doing some soul-searching the last couple of days.

This is hard to write. By the time you get this, I'll have donated all my human materials (Remember all those papers I showed you in my study room?) to the public library. Not Twilight's library, but a smaller one nearby. I was thinking maybe it'll help spread the truth around a little faster, but she would probably just bury it until the 'right time' on Mommy Celestia's orders.

That got an audible chuckle out of me.

The reason I'm doing this is because I've decided I don't care about the humans of the past anymore. I don't fully trust the Princesses' version of events, but the fact is that I finally got an answer at all. But I already have you. You managed to survive all this anti-human hate, and I hope that my studies, my obsession (let's face it), helped a bit with that. But now a real live human is living among us, and I've realized that you're way better than any mythical historical figure could ever be, even if they weren't total dicks. So I'm letting go. Moving on. I did my part. It's kind of sad, honestly, but it also feels good. It feels right.

So when you come back to Ponyville, you'll still be my favorite human, but I won't be "that human-obsessed mare" anymore. I'll just be Lyra Heartstrings, your friend. And I think your future is going to be way more interesting than the past.

Thanks,
Lyra

P.S. This whole mood has resulted in some sweet soulful music on my lyre. I guess this is what they call a "blue period?" I've got a recording lined up, so thanks for helping my business, I guess!

Trixie appeared behind my shoulder – dressed only in a royal bathrobe. Her heavy breasts smothered my back and right arm. She gave it a quick speed-read and said, "Look at that, a mare who can move on. Rare trait these days." She levitated a hot mug of coffee to her lips and sipped loudly.

I let out a tired, quiet laugh, but then there was a knocking at the door. There was a telltale urgency to it that gave me a feeling I knew who it was...

"What. Happened."

Twilight Sparkle had confirmed my suspicions: The Cutie/Friendship Map had gone off for both myself and Twilight the previous evening. I wasn't surprised the alicorn was barely in control of herself.

I sat at the edge of my bed with a sigh and looked up at Twilight. The Princess was wearing her usual business-casual button-up blouse and long skirt, with a messenger bag slung over her shoulder and resting at her hip. I hung my head and told her, "Celestia wants to have an all-day marathon session tomorrow. The moment those plans became final, my hands started blinking."

Twilight's eyes slowly widened. A part of her suspected the implications, but they weren't all quite making it to her conscious awareness. "All... day...?"

"Oh, and by then she'll have been going cold turkey for three whole days."

The purple Princess had trouble finding her words. She leaned in with an incredulous look. "You and her haven't... er... had a 'session' since...?"

I pointed at the table in the other half of the suite, where the communication orb rested. "Last night's session was remote. She was understandably upset with both me and herself, and–"

"What did you DO??"

I was getting tired of digging my own grave. "The point is, she's been backsliding since that first session. She's still disgusted with herself that she even 'needs' me, and tomorrow's 'session' is just going to make that worse if..." I threw up my hands. "...if I don't come up with some kind of miracle plan to turn things around."

Twilight covered her eyes with her hands and groaned loudly.

The Great and Powerful Trixie, now dressed in one of her spare leotards, leaned against the frame of the curtains separating the two halves of my suite, absolutely relishing the sight of Twilight so frustrated. "So, that must be why the Map called you two here. Celestia is the friendship problem."

Privately, I wasn't so sure. We were still in the first act of this, and it felt too early to make such a definitive call. Even though Celestia was a serious problem that needed solving.

Twilight reached into her messenger bag and pulled out a rolled-up scroll with a royal seal – a crescent moon, to be specific. "Maybe," Twilight said carefully, "but the map didn't call us to the Royal Palace of Canterlot. Our symbols were above one of the sides of the mountain itself. I wrote to Luna for answers immediately." Twilight levitated the scroll and started to unroll it with her magic, but paused and looked to Trixie.

I jumped in before Twilight could ask. "I trust her with this."

But Trixie put up her hands and pushed off the wall. "No no. Don't worry. If you and Twilight" – she couldn't help the hint of venom in that word – "are going off on a mission, I already know it's going to be thoroughly unsexy. I'll see what kind of trouble I can get into with Moondancer and her... experiments." Trixie bounced her eyebrows at me.

I had to admit, that sounded like fun. It also sounded like Moondancer was in for a crazy day. "You sure?"

Trixie scowled at Twilight. "This is the mare who turned tasting your delicious human cum into a very serious scientific experiment. I'll pass on the second round of boringness, thank you."

Twilight scowled back. "I have no intention of..." But before the Princess could finish the beginning of her retort, Trixie had already marched toward the door, levitating her hat and cape after her before she firmly closed it behind her. Twilight let out an aggravated sigh, then glared down at me. "What was that about Moondancer? My friend Moondancer?"

"Hey, she's my friend too," I said automatically, regretting it a nanosecond later. It wasn't right to get territorial about this.

Thankfully, Twilight let the matter drop with only a disdainful shake of her head. The day had only begun and we were starting out rough. I had hoped we could be better off after our big argument and some time apart, but... apparently we still needed more. Of what, I couldn't say for certain.

The Princess unrolled the scroll and showed it to me. I took it out of her levitation and glanced through it quickly, muttering, "'Dearest Twilight'... 'coordinates'... 'can only be'..." The next sentence made my eyes widen. "...'hidden location'? 'Since the founding of Equestria'...?!"

Twilight nodded and took the scroll back from me, rolling it back up and then offering her hand. "The Map called us to a hidden place inside the mountain that only Celestia and Luna know about. She wouldn't tell me exactly what it was, but she's given us permission to visit and find out."

I took her purple hand and stood up. "We're... going on a quest of discovery, then?" I asked a little hopefully.

The look in Twilight's eyes wasn't encouraging. "Just to be clear, for something like this, I'd rather have my fellow Elements of Harmony along with me. But the Map called the two of us and no one else, which suggests there's something at this hidden location that can help us with... with the Princess. That's the only reason you're coming along."

Somewhat understandable, but something about her very explicit insistence struck me as a little off. I couldn't quite put my finger on it at that moment. "...Okay. Makes sense, I guess."

Twilight nodded. "Alright. Let's go."

Her horn built up a current of magic, which then burst and covered us in light. I felt a current run through my entire body as our surroundings whipped away.

When the light faded, we were in some kind of dimly lit cave. It was cold and damp. I released my hand from Twilight's and flexed my fingers over and over, trying to shake out the weird buzzing feeling. "Yeesh. Teleportation, huh...?"

But Twilight didn't respond to my antics. Her gaze was fixated towards the lit side of the cave. And once I turned my head, I could see why.

A great circular door of dark stone and metal, easily 25 feet tall, was set into the rock wall, flanked by torches. The door itself was criss-crossed with a pattern of ancient-looking carvings, cracked apart in places, but there was a definite seam down the middle and hinges on either side, suggesting that it opened outward. But there were no visible handles or locks.

While I was still taking it all in, Twilight had leaped forward with her wings outspread to get right up close to the ancient vault door. "Oh my goodness...! This is incredible!" She ran her hand along the surface of the door. Dirt and dust clouded up in the trail of her fingers. "It looks like something out of Daring Do! And it was right under Canterlot this whole time!!"

It was really nice to hear Twilight sound dorky and happy for once.

I walked up to the vault door, looking up at the faded carvings in the stone, then at the deep cracks to see what seemed like a weird kind of metal underneath. "Was it renovated over the last thousand years? But then why not replace the whole thing...?"

"Leave the archaeological questions to me, please," Twilight requested in a polite but subtly infuriating way. She had already taken out a notebook and started horn-writing furiously as she hovered above. "And don't look up my skirt."

I silently put my hands up and kept my gaze forward. She was wearing pants underneath, anyway. After waiting for her to get back to busying herself with studies, I put one finger on the door and traced it along the cracks.

A bright teal glow shone out from behind the stonework of the door, shining through the cracks and momentarily blinding me. The light was coming from the entire vault door, as was some kind of ominous hum.

"Pascal! What did you do?!" Twilight yelled.

"Barely touched it!" I called back, taking a few quick self-preserving steps away.

Tremors shook the cave. Pieces of the stone facade shook off and clattered to the floor, revealing more of that odd metal beneath it. The teal light seemed to be coming from a lattice of lines in the metal. The hum from the door got louder and louder... before it reached a plateau and stayed there. The shaking stopped and the light remained constant.

Twilight's had trouble picking up her jaw. "What... IS this...?"

Something in my subconscious was screaming at me to do something, to put the pieces together. Incongruous materials, outer layer carved a thousand years ago, known only to the Princesses today, reacting to a human's touch and not a pony's...

I walked towards the vault door again. Twilight yelped, "What are you doing?" But I didn't really have an answer for her.

I reached for the center of the door at shoulder-height, feeling along the glowing seam that ran up the vertical. On a whim, I grabbed as much purchase as I could along the middle, and pulled.

With a great metal shriek, the vault door started to open outward. Faster than I was pulling, in fact, so I got out of there. I rejoined Twilight and watched in equal slack-jawed awe as this giant glowing alien-metal door thunderously swung open, making the cave vibrate with its sheer shifting of weight. The door was deep, too; nearly five feet thick from the looks of it.

The vault swung open to reveal a dark chamber that didn't stay dark for long. Above, candles magically came to life from nearest to farthest, revealing what looked like part of an ancient library - shelves of dusty tomes, cluttered tables of artifacts and scattered papers, and great stained-glass murals propped up against the back wall.

Twilight and I carefully walked across the threshold, our enmity forgotten as we became spellbound together. The final realization hit me. "Oh my god. This must be..."

The Princess looked up at the tallest stained-glass window fragment, depicting a nude human male of herculean build. Its head was nowhere to be seen; the circle where the face should be had been violently broken in. "...The proof that the Masters ever existed in Equestria," Twilight said in a low, serious voice. "They hid it all here."

The gravity settled on our shoulders.

Once my wits returned, I glanced back at the open vault door, which had stopped glowing teal, then down at my fingers. Pieces of information started to click together in my head. "They banished the Masters..." I murmured, clenching my hand into a fist, "but their stuff remained. Their buildings, their items, their records, their... technology." That was the only explanation I could think of.

The Masters hadn't just been wizards... They'd been techno-wizards. Future space wizards! FUCK!

Twilight finally stepped forward and glanced down each row of dusty bookshelves. "Celestia and Luna... All the ponies of the past must have gathered up everything that wasn't destroyed and hidden it here... so their children wouldn't have to know their parents were slaves..."

I kept my focus on the door. I moved towards it with my hand outstretched, and the glowing teal lines returned as I got within about a foot of it, only to fade out when I retreated. "Some kinda space-metal that responds to human DNA...?"

"This is PERFECT!!!"

I winced and turned towards Twilight, who had taken to the air with her arms outstretched victoriously. I chuckled wryly and muttered, "Yeah, great, an ancient library for you to catalog."

"YES- Well, not JUST that!" The Princess flew down and landed in front of me. "Don't you see? This is why the Map called us here! Somewhere in this vault is a secret of the past that can help us fix Celestia!!"

I opened my mouth, but I didn't have any words prepared. That... didn't sound right. That extremely didn't sound right. And again, I couldn't place a specific reason on it right away, but I felt it very strongly. First of all, Twilight's word choice on 'fixing' her mentor... Second of all... "Celestia was there. What could we find that she wouldn't already know?"

Twilight faltered for a second, but still looked very enthusiastic. "Who knows?! Maybe there's some kind of insight that only you and I can put together!" She flew over to a wide stone table that took up the center of the room, in the reflection of the stained glass human-murals.

I rubbed my temple. This was becoming too much; I was getting a headache. One, how could we put an insight together when we kinda made each other mad all the time... Two: "But, I mean, this is their vault, right? Celestia's and Luna's? They had to get inside somehow, make sure no one had looted it from time to time, right? So if that door only opens for humans, how did they do it?"

"Maybe they came up with a secret trick!" Twilight called back to me as her horn lit up. The papers and dusty books all around her took to the air in the glow of her magic, forming rows of concentric circles above her and then forming a queue to pass in front of her eyes. "But Luna knew you were coming with me, so we didn't need it!"

"...Which means they've gone over all the contents already," I insisted. "They were very worried about the Masters possibly coming back, especially when I showed up, so they must've gone over all this with a fine-toothed comb, right?"

Twilight pondered that for a moment. "Well... they haven't done what I can do. What I specialize in."

I was so afraid to ask, but it would've been rude not to ask the begged question. "...And what's that?"

"ORGANIZING!!" More and more books and parchments flew into the air.

"Of course..." In a flash of pink light, an inked quill and a loooooong roll of parchment appeared in my hands. "Hey!"

"Since Spike's not here – and thank goodness for that – I'll need you to help me prepare a full inventory and catalog of all the vault's items. That way, not only will we have a full picture of what remains of the Masters' civilization in Equestria, any future research will go that much faster! Now, give me a few minutes to organize these items by type, quantity, condition, and... language?" She gasped. "Some of these books are written in a language I've never seen before! Do you think it might be the language of the Masters?! Do you think the Princesses still know it?!?"

I pressed the parchment against my face to stifle my groans.

As you can imagine, this process was INCREDIBLY slow-going. Most of the items fell into the broad category of 'Book/Document Written in a New Ancient Language,' which Twilight spent long tangents trying to suss out. Said language was a weird collection of squarish, angular symbols that didn't really match to any kind of Indo-European-rooted dialect.

As I scribbled down item after item for nearly an hour, something about the whole language thing bothered me. If the Masters spoke a completely alien language, why was the ponies' Equestrian indistinguishable from my English? Sure, chalk up 70% of it to 'alternate universe shenanigans,' but there had to be at least some kind of logic or throughline, right? The more I thought about it, the more it distracted me.

Every so often, Twilight would fixate on one object before calling it out for me to record. On one such occasion, Twilight paused for a long time. "Hold on..." she muttered. "I think... This is in Old Equestrian, but... these look like minutes for a meeting between the Masters!"

I put down the quill and parchment on a nearby crate (flexing my hand to work out the cramp) and walked over to the slab to look over her shoulder. Sure enough, in almost unreadable Olde Schoole Equestriane cursive script, was a list of dates, times, and details.

Twilight flipped through it rapidly back and forth before I could take a close look at the text. But I could hear her mutter to herself. "'4th meeting about adjusting the distance between the sun and the planet. Concerns raised about effects on already established global ecosystems. No consensus reached.' 'Thousand-year-scale pony genome planning discussed. Deemed a low priority.' 'Concerns raised about Overseer'–" There was a word scratched out in black, probably a name. "–'potential dereliction of duties. Objections raised about bringing slaves and using them at official meetings. Overruled by Overseer's authority.'"

Wow. Planning meetings about... the development... of Equestria...?

Twilight looked straight ahead in thought, then glanced over at the pile of alien-language texts. "If this was in Equestrian... Perhaps a pony scribe taking minutes... But then why... They'd have to be speaking in... Were there two languages used back then?" Twilight levitated the two documents into the air, comparing them. "One common language between humans and ponies that became modern Equestrian, and then... maybe some kind of trade language that only the humans knew? So they could make records and share information that ponies couldn't understand?"

Something about all this clicked in my head, and I threw my head back and let out a tired laugh.

"What?" Twilight asked.

Giggling, I covered my eyes with my hand and sputtered, "They were still in alpha! Hahaha...! Oh my god..."

Naturally, Twilight looked rather confused. "And by that, you mean...?"

"They weren't done!" I exclaimed, stepping away from the slab and pacing about. "Equestria was... a work in progress. A fucking early-access resort planet! And this guy–" I turned and pointed up at the headless stained-glass mural. "–was too busy plowing ponies and enjoying their worship to actually do his job! Bahahahahaaa!"

Twilight looked up at the mural, then back at me with a concerned expression.

I, however, was fixated on the mural now. "I'd been wondering what kind of asshole would do all of this, react the way she said he did... and I think I have my answer." I pointed imperiously up at the broken decoration. "A fucking trust-fund Chad. Oh, I bet it took some begging and pleading, didn't it? To get dad to invest the money and influence to buy you your own little corner of the universe, and the rights to edit it however you wished. 'Oh, but we'll make it a pleasure planet! Those are easy to flip; they're a license to print money!' And then you FUCKED IT UP!!" I jumped on the table and flipped the mural the double-bird. "GET FUCKED, CHAD! Guess you had to work at your daddy's company after all! Don't break your neck falling into that goddamn safety net!"

As I caught my breath after my rant, Twilight just tilted her head up at me. "...What in the world are you doing?"

I sighed and sat down on the edge of the slab a couple feet away from Twilight's makeshift workstation. "Making shit up about a guy I've never met."

"Sounds like you were working through some issues there," the purple alicorn said flatly.

I folded my arms and grumbled. "Just... gah. I grew up poor. The way this asshole treated Celestia? Absolutely the reaction of a guy who's grown up with way too much money and power, who's never had a struggle or challenge his entire life."

Twilight was still narrowing her eyes in a questioning, confused manner. "Still... Why are you so upset?"

I stared back at her with an increasingly incredulous expression. "Wha... I..." I gestured back at the mural. "I can't have empathy for her?!"

"I mean," Twilight flustered, not sure how to react, "after everything she did to you..."

After a second of dumbfounded silence, I said, "I think that says a lot more about you than me, Twi. I forgave her, okay? I was ready to die for her. Has that not been made clear?" I gestured wildly at the mural again. "I'm not– I'm not THAT guy!"

Twilight made a bunch of awkward half-gestures with her hands and half-sounds with her mouth, but couldn't seem to come up with a quick answer.

"What kind of person do you think I am?" I asked exasperatedly.

A heavy silence fell between us, which was an answer in itself.

In a huff, I slid off the slab and walked back towards the roll of parchment and quill I had set down, but stopped halfway there. "You don't know me, Twi. I mean, what kind of person would I be after the three weeks I went through, as a total pariah? My best self?! Come on."

"Well," Twilight muttered, not facing me and sniffling, "right back at you. Right back at you..."

That annoyed me. I do know you, my brain rebelled. You're Twilight Sparkle, protagonist of Friendship is Magic! But that wouldn't be right to say. And it wasn't right, period. "Fair," I growled tersely. I picked up the quill. "Let's just finish this and hope we find something useful."

"Agreed," Twilight murmured, as her horn lit up to levitate the next item.

After almost a couple of hours of listing and re-listing and organizing all the items into categories, the vault was in a much different state than when we'd entered. It was much cleaner, less dusty, fewer cobwebs. Everything that had been haphazardly piled was now in neat stacks. At some point, Twilight had summoned some kind of label-maker and gone to town with it, marking each item and bookshelf with an alphanumerical code that factored into the final list.

More than half of it was still untranslated, a good portion of it was decayed or vandalized, and the rest was random information like those meeting minutes. We weren't any closer to assembling a complete picture of life before the banishment of the Masters, but the future work to do so would be a great deal easier with this catalog.

I put the final parchment down on the table and rubbed my sore writing hand, flexing it over and over. "Haven't handwritten so much since my frickin' AP tests..."

Twilight slumped back in her chair, a satisfied grin on her face. The girl really enjoyed organizing. After a moment of basking, she sat forward again and levitated a little box over in front of her. "Finally, now I can look into this!"

I sat on the slab again and watched. The item was a star-patterned puzzle box, hardly much bigger than a textbook, that Twilight had seemed to instantly recognize as belonging to Starswirl the Bearded. She'd put off investigating it more closely until the catalog was complete, but now she was ready to geek out. Me, I was wondering what such a thing was doing in the vault of human memories.

"Now, Starswirl made many puzzle contraptions over the years, and this seems to be a combination of a little bit of all of them...!" Her horn lit up and got to work fiddling with the tiny rotating pieces on each side of the box. I couldn't follow the solution – it was one of those puzzles where rotating one piece also moved four others, while another piece rotated those three over there... And that was just one side. There was a sliding-tile puzzle on the adjacent side of the box I could see, which was enough reason to not even care about the rest.

Thankfully, Twilight's magic could work on all of it at once as she rotated the box along every axis. It only took her a minute and a half to unlock every side.

"A crowbar would've been right out of the question, I take it?" I asked teasingly.

Twilight gave me an indignant but cute scowl and said, "No. This is a unique artifact from one of Equestria's greatest minds. ...And sometimes these old puzzle boxes have a trap that burns the contents if you try to smash your way in. Not saying that Starswirl was a fan of that, but you never know."

"Fair enough," I replied with a shrug.

The alicorn Princess placed her hands on the lid, took a breath to prepare herself, and lifted it up. Inside was a sealed scroll and... some kind of black cube thing. Only a little bigger than a Rubix cube, and eerily similar in material to the back of the vault door.

Twilight levitated and unrolled the scroll, while pushing the box a little bit further away. She read it for a moment, then gasped. "This is...!"

"What?"

She slowly turned her head to look up at me. "Remember that scrap of a scroll that Lyra had, that seemed to have Starswirl's hornwriting? ...This might be the original." Twilight floated the scroll towards me, and I skimmed through it.

My loyal apprentice Clover,

I have reason to believe my compatriots and I have no choice but to embark on our most desperate plan yet, from which we may not return. Thus, I have one last secret I must impart to you, one final lesson.

The knowledge of that which was known as a 'human.'

This was passed down to me by a hermit in the mountains, far away from any of our fledgling civilizations. This mare claimed to be a great-grandchild of one of the First Ponies, and over time, I have been given reason to have complete faith in the stories she eventually shared with me.

You have never heard of a human, because the First Ponies made a solemn vow never to speak of them to their children. But some disagreed, vowing to keep an oral history, and they were banished. That lineage ended with this mountain mare, who was ready to pass away childless and alone and let the world "finally move on," in her words. It was my unending thirst for knowledge that finally drew the story out of her, and some nights I have wondered if I should have left well enough alone. But in what may be my last days, I am convinced that a seed of the truth must live on, even if it seen fit to comfort the majority with ignorance.

The mare had never seen a human herself, but her mother and father told her what their mothers and fathers told them. Humans were demons in disguise, she told me. Tailless, smooth-skinned in all the colors of autumn, universally sinful. And long ago, the First Ponies were enslaved to them. The humans were extremely powerful, and no creature in Equestria could resist their might or their charms. One touch from them could have you craving more the rest of your days, she said.

Celestia and Luna, she told me, were both their slaves and our leaders. First among the worthless, the disposable. Until they vanished, escaped their control. The humans flew into a rage, and the spell of love was broken for some of the First Ponies. Beginning with pointed questions and small acts of will, and ending with outright defiance... and widespread punishment that followed, meant to terrorize and extract obedience from the others.

She told me that it was only when Celestia and Luna returned, carrying a purified shard of the Masters' power, that they were able to finally banish every human once and for all, dooming them to never return. Giving ponies a chance to make their own fate.

Many were lost without the Masters' guidance, even then. There was conflict between the freed slaves and some remaining loyalists. That was perhaps the impetus for the vow to never speak of the humans again.

You may think this all a tall tale, Clover, and rightfully so. But I have seen enough evidence with my own eyes... of the scars it left on certain ponies. I shan't say more than that.

Before the mare passed away, she left me a single item, hidden away by her ancestors for hundreds of years. She told me it was a human-made "machine assistant" of some kind, made of a metal that does not form naturally on our planet. I have tested it with every modern tool at my disposal, and it has never so much as bent, let alone responded. It will be one more mystery I will have to leave behind.

This record, and this relic, I leave with you and only you, Clover. This burden is yours now. You may continue to keep it hidden until you find a suitable apprentice yourself. You may attempt to reveal it to the world, if you like. Or, you may give these to my students Celestia and Luna, who I suspect know how to hide these secrets away forever.

No matter what happens, I want you to know that I would not share this with simply anypony. I trust you to make a decision with your usual cleverness, taking into account what may be dark days ahead for ponykind.

As always, your teacher,
Starswirl, "the Bearded"

I put down the parchment and looked over at Twilight, who had pulled the box back towards her and was levitating the strange black box in the aura of her magic. I was a little speechless, to be honest. "There... There was a revolution... Other ponies resisted... and got hurt."

There was a 100% chance of Celestia blaming herself for that, too. All this because of her cutie mark, no less.

Twilight got quiet and still, just staring off into space while the strange black box floated in her magic. She inhaled deeply through her nostrils, then let it all out in a heavy sigh. She brought her hand up to her mouth and looked aside, just shaking her head in disbelief.

I couldn't blame her. Nothing we found was remotely 'helpful' to our common cause. Just records of humans being systemically callous beneath their benevolent facade. Records of ponies seeing no choice but to fight for their safety when all they had wanted was to serve dutifully in every way. There was no happy memory that wasn't undercut by lies and betrayal.

That was what killed me, honestly. It really did seem like the ponies were more or less content under the Masters, even as slaves for both sex and labor. Sure, they knew no other way of existing. Yes, becoming free and able to take on pursuits to advance ponykind's own destiny was a good thing that needed to happen. But at least outwardly, during the earliest days of Equestria, the ponies were... as happy as they could be. They were just helpful little magical creatures who just wanted to love and be loved and do whatever was needed of them.

Even Celestia taking control of the sun – that had just been her wanting to help with a complicated problem. And they fucking destroyed her for it. Out of fear.

And so, once the humans had been banished from Equestria forever, the First Ponies agreed never to speak of the humans again. And those that chose to remember could only see the betrayal, for good reason.

My dour mental recap was interrupted by Twilight letting go of the box, letting it clatter onto the slab, before putting her hands on her temples. "What are we doing here? Why did the Map send us here?"

"That's what I've been saying," I muttered, glancing down at the little box. Chances were good that it would respond if I touched it... but without a better clue of what it might do once activated, I opted not to go poking it randomly without everyone in the room being prepared.

"The Map's never let us down, even when it doesn't seem to make sense," Twi insisted. "But... I'm having so much trouble figuring out the logic here! If the point was to find something to help Celestia's friendship problem... why send us to a place filled with proof that she has every right to be angry and upset?!"

I shrugged. "To tell us that that isn't the 'solution?' That we can't magically make her happy with who she was and ignore all the pain that followed?"

"Then what is the solution?!" Twilight asked exasperatedly. She got up from her chair and stepped a few paces away in a huff. "You've... You've spent more time talking with her this week. What do YOU think it is?"

For a moment, I was concerned about keeping my analysis confidential. But if the Map had summoned Twilight here to help in response to Celestia's planned all-day 'session' tomorrow... then that was probably permission enough to fill her in. "The problem is, those memories aren't just hurtful. She's demonized her past self in every way. Convinced herself she's a... a race-traitor who would gladly go along with the Masters' abuses should they ever return. Even though that's not really..." I trailed off.

Twilight looked back at me with shock and pain in her eyes. "She... She really thinks that...?" she almost squeaked.

I shrugged and threw up my hands. "That's what I'm up against. So... I think that's the biggest obstacle to Celestia healing. She's put her past self in a concrete box and painted over it with a mental image of some kind of insane sex-demon. And we need to break through that if we're ever going to get present-Celestia and past-Celestia to have a dialogue."

The purple alicorn grimaced. "Which is why... having a long 'session' tomorrow without any other plan..."

"...would be extremely bad," I agreed. "It would just confirm her mental image of her past self." Which was why, even after that promising first session, she had immediately regretted it in the morning and had been backsliding ever since.

"So, do you have an idea?" Twilight asked somewhat desperately.

I closed my eyes and braced myself. "I'm thinking... regression... therapy...?"

"WWWHHHAAATTT?!"

"Yeah, saw that one comin'..."

"How are you– Can you even– On a mind like– HOW?!" Twilight looked about ready to tear out chunks of her mane.

With a bit of a smug smile, I glanced over at her and said, "I've been practicing hypnosis all week."

"You've been HYPNOTIZING PONIES?!?"

"Consenting. Ponies. Yes." I waved my hands a bit. "Turns out I'm real good at it!"

Twilight was in full freak-out mode. "You're going to take... our ruler's mind... and send it back 1300 years?! Through amateur hypnosis?!? On the first try?!?!"

I leaned back on the slab, my smile turning into an irritated frown. "Got a better idea? Y'know, I'm starting to appreciate the time pressure you must've felt with me. Just a little bit."

"That's not even remotely the same thing!"

"Oh, don't tell me you weren't ready to hypnotize me into being a 'model citizen' if that's what it came to. Tell me that wasn't on 'the list.'"

"I. Don't. Mind control. Anyone!!"

"No, just the one time."

Twilight was shocked. "How did you... rrRRAAAAHHHH!!"

Her horn charged up and fired a shockwave through the air. Mostly harmless, just rustling some papers and shoving against my chest. But it was enough to push me back a bit and make me fall on my back. My hand brushed against the black cube, which started to glow with teal light.

The Princess jumped as if startled, putting a hand at the base of her horn. "S-Sorry! I... I didn't mean to..."

I pushed myself up with a groan. "Eh, that's fair. Shouldn't have..." I was cut off by the hum of the device next to me, which began to float up off the slab.

The black cube was hovering a couple of feet off the surface of the table. It divided into a number of smaller black cubes, revolving robotically around a glowing 'eye' in the middle, shining a teal beam of light into the room.

"It's... It's a drone assistant..." I muttered in realization. At the sound of my voice, it turned towards me, shining its beam into my face, startling me. A brighter, wide beam shot out from the eyes and passed over my body, scanning me. The beam disappeared, and a negative-sounding chirp echoed out from the drone's core. Nothing else seemed to happen.

Twilight watched in awe. "Oh my goodness..."

The drone heard her and whipped around quickly, flying over until it was just a few feet away from her head. I got up now that it was out of my personal space, and watched as it scanned Twilight. The Princess stood still nervously, not sure what to make of this, but clearly hoping it was friendly.

There was an alarming chime from the core of the device, and its teal eye turned red. A chill spread through my veins.

"Aaah!" Twilight yelled as the alien drone flashed brightly, blasting her with some kind of magic beam. She was knocked back against the bookshelf, thankfully sturdy and empty, but with enough force to briefly disorient her.

The drone shot another, different beam into Twilight's midsection, encasing her body in a blue field that lifted her off the ground effortlessly. I saw her limbs strain to move, but she seemed frozen in place.

I got up off the slab. "Twi!" I approached behind the drone, but didn't know what to do.

The device started to hum at an oscillating frequency. Rings of energy that matched the waving tone flew through the stasis field towards Twilight. Her ears twitched and her movements started to slow. "No... Stop it...!" Her horn lit up. The drone beeped and shot an energy bolt at Twilight's horn, making her cry out and interrupting her spell.

I gasped and panicked. "Twilight!" I cried out again. I reached up to the floating mysterious machine and tried to wrap my hands around it. The edges of the little cubes floating around the core were smooth and almost sharp against my palms. I tried to put my fingers in the way of its beams, but somehow they just flowed around my fingers like water, no matter how much of my arm I tried to wave in front of it, bending like rubber. "Dammit!!"

"Pascal... I..." Twilight was starting to droop. Her mouth opened in a strangled yawn. Was this thing trying to put her to sleep?

Panic and rage filled me to the brim. I raised my hands, not sure what else to do, and prayed for a miracle. "You... listen to me!!" I thrust my hands forward.

Blue light glowed from my wrists to my fingertips, sending a blast of something splashing against the drone. The machine made a few almost confused-sounding chirps.

I couldn't believe it for a second. I nearly laughed in surprise. But I wasn't done yet.

Focusing as hard as I could, I shot my hands forward a second time, keeping my fingers clenched in a claw-like manner. "I said listen!!" Blue light shot forward again, this time in a constant beam that wrapped around the drone.

Twilight remained in its stasis field as the drone briefly looked towards me, scanning me once more and chirping in questioning tones.

I didn't understand a thing, but I didn't care. Keeping my glowing hands pointed at the thing, keeping it in the grip of my beam, I grit my teeth and said, "I'm human! So you're going to obey me! Even if we don't speak the same language!" I had a flash of inspiration. This was just a machine, right? Even if it was an advanced futuristic machine... After drawing my hands back for another blast, I shouted, "End process!!"

A fresh blast of blue light hit the drone, and it shook and shuddered where it hovered. The stasis beam keeping Twilight contained dissipated, just for a moment. The drone quickly turned around and reestablished it, catching the alicorn before she fell to the stone floor.

"No you don't!" I yelled. I drew my hands back again and thrust them forward with every command. "End process! Delete... all standing directives!!"

The stasis field disappeared again, and Twilight finally landed in a crumpled heap on the floor. The drone's glowing central eye blinked yellow and red rapidly, squawking a negative tone.

"No! I don't give a shit if I don't have the credentials! I'm the only human left in all of Equestria! There's no one else! So give... me... ADMIN!!"

My beam of light became a rushing gale, wrapping and squeezing around the drone and making it shudder rapidly. Its negative chirping quieted down, and its eye clicked between colors a few times before settling back on teal.

I hoped that was enough. "Good! Now..." I stepped towards the drone, keeping my glowing hands up. "Delete all standing directives! Delete all other user profiles! Full... factory... reset!" I was close enough to surround the drone with my hands. "Aaand... CONFIRM!" I clapped my hands hard around the drone, containing it entirely in my magic field for just a moment.

A second later, the drone sparked painfully against my hand and I dropped it. The black cube fell to the ground, now in one piece again, sparking in spurts. I kicked it away a little bit, and it seemed to stay where it was.

I fell to my hands and knees, breathing hard. A severe wave of exhaustion took all the energy out of my body. Whatever that was, I had just used a lot of mana to do it.

Across from me, Twilight was pushing herself up into a kneeling position, staring at me wide-eyed. "How... did you do that??" she asked incredulously, her eyes flicking between me and the disabled drone.

Man, hearing Twilight be genuinely amazed at me put such a fanboy smile on my face.

"Well," I grunted, "I figured it was a computer like back home. And even though it knew I wasn't a real Master, and I didn't speak its language... I figured it also spoke 'magic.' And 'magic' from a 'human'... might've been close enough."

Twilight shook her head. "Since when could you use magic like that?"

"Like that? Just now," I said with a chuckle. I slumped sideways and caught myself in a sitting position against the stone slab. "And boy did it take a lot outta me..."

Twilight rubbed her eyes and pulled herself towards me. "That thing tried to put me to sleep. Some kind of subdermal soundwave that mimicked sleeping brain activity..." She yawned as she pulled herself up beside me. "I don't know what it would've done next, but... nothing good." Twilight glanced over at the device, whose light had finally turned off entirely. In a sad voice, she said, "First thing it did when it saw a pony... was try to subdue it. I think that confirms your resistance theory."

I was too exhausted for more theorycrafting. "Wanna take like a... break? Like half an hour?"

Twilight nodded with an affirmative hum. "Sounds good...!"

I closed my eyes and let my body recover.