“Thank you all for coming,” Celestia said. “We have a lot to go over today. I believe everypony here already has Level White clearance?”

The ponies around the table nodded.

“Good, there are some sensitive subjects and it’s easier if we’re able to speak freely,” Celestia continued. “The war is poised to enter a new phase, and there are a number of connected events that have been intentionally kept quiet in the press.”

“Is this related to the... accident in the hospital recently?” Fancy Pants asked.

“The events there are related, but we need to go back further than that,” Celestia said. “As you know, the war started after the return of the Crystal Empire. There was a narrow window between the Empire reappearing and Sombra taking it over, and we were unable to take advantage of it.”

“If we were willing to use lethal force, we could have nipped it in the bud,” General Nickel muttered.

“That’s a topic for another time, General.”

“It’s too bad Princess Cadance couldn’t join is,” Jet Set said.

“Some of these events were too difficult for her on a personal level,” Celestia said. “Speaking of which, the first incident involves the loss of Captain Shining Armor.”

“A tragedy,” Fancy Pants said, shaking his head.

“Indeed. He was killed in an attack on his sister’s laboratory outside of Canterlot. While other events in her testimony are suspect, our own investigations support her version of events regarding his death.”

“She killed her own brother,” General Nickel growled.

“Autopsy of his body proved that he was under an invasive form of magical control,” Celestia said. “However, this does not explain the other pony on the scene, one Lightning Dust, formerly Lieutenant Lightning Dust.”

“She was court-martialed, wasn’t she?” Fancy Pants asked.

“Yes, but on the day in question she was in Doctor Sparkle’s lab, taking place in an ethically unsound magical enhancement experiment.”

“How do we know the experiment didn’t cause the attack?” Jet Set asked.

“We could spend all day going over what we don’t know.”

“Let’s leave speculation to the experts at the EIS.”

“Agreed. What’s next on the agenda?”

“The next incident was at the Cloudsdale games.”

“Hundreds of injuries. Multiple fatalities. Not to mention Lightning Dust made a mockery of the games.”

“The athletic committee already decided not to allow her records to stand. The destruction of the weather factory is a concern, but with a lack of pegasi to actually do weather work, it probably doesn’t matter. In the long run, they’ll have the machinery back up and running at the same time they have ponies to work it - when the war is over and not a minute sooner.”

“Overall given the public nature of the event we have to consider this a PR disaster but a successful military operation. Things would have been a lot worse without Sparkle there, which is something I can rarely say.”

“It seems suspicious that she showed up and there was an attack right away.”

“It’s not suspicious when you remember that the Games were a natural target. It's our own fault for thinking Sombra didn’t have enough air support to be a threat to Cloudsdale.”

“The same can’t be said for Manehattan.”

“No. That was resolved with considerably more grace. There were only a few casualties, in the actual attack.”

“What’s more concerning is the pony involved in Manehattan and the Iron Pegasus demonstration.”

“Sunset Shimmer.”

“She was supposed to be gone.”

“We can’t make her go away by wishing it and appealing to how things are ‘supposed’ to be. She’s here and allied with Doctor Sparkle.”

“She’s also spending a lot of time in the palace, by all reports.”

“I’d rather have her in the palace where I can keep eyes on her at all times than have her pursuing whatever goals Doctor Sparkle has in mind.”

“Goals like saving us from a monster attack sent up the river?”

“That was an unmitigated military disaster,” General Nickel said. “We weren’t given any information about the target and Doctor Sparkle didn’t even bother trying to step in until we’d lost a good number of ponies.”

“It’s a lot like the incident in the north. She sacrificed hundreds of ponies. As if our losses in the first stage of the battle weren’t bad enough, we had over fifty percent losses in her so-called joint operation, which is better described as Twilight Sparkle throwing lives away just to cast a few spells.”

“There were reports of unusual solar activity that morning. Were you involved, Princess?”

“No. We have reason to believe that it was also part of Doctor Sparkle’s plan.”

“Was the hospital planned, too?”

“I seriously hope not,” Celestia said. “We’re still investigating some of the details. The EIS was monitoring their communications through the event and they say that it seems like Doctor Sparkle did what she could to mitigate the effects of a disaster involving technology we don’t entirely understand.”

“Her technology.”

“Yes.”

“So why wasn’t she ordered to assist? Tartarus, even if she wasn’t directly responsible, she still built the damn thing that killed Spitfire. She should be locked up! It’s like she made a bomb, somepony else accidentally set it off, and we’re blaming the second pony!”

“Professor Flim has suffered enough with the loss of his brother,” Celestia said, quietly. “We aren’t pursuing any kind of punishment at this time. As for Doctor Sparkle, we’re shuffling EIS resources to keep watching her.”

“Speaking of the EIS, there was an incident involving your student not long ago.”

“Yes,” Celestia sighed. “Near the beginning of the war, we managed to capture one of the creatures we’ve come to call Linnorms. Despite what Doctor Sparkle may think, we’ve been doing our best to find a way to stop them. It was relocated to what we considered a safe area, an unused silver mine. The ore traces made it somewhat insulated from outside magic, the rock made it easy to build defenses, and we had considerable resources on-site in the worst-case scenario.”

“A scenario which seems to have come to pass.”

“The linnorm had been in some kind of coma but became active during an experiment to disable its crystal core. My student was able to destroy it before it could escape. The nearby towns weren’t even aware that anything happened, so we can consider our precautions a success.”

“How many ponies died?”

“All the members of the investigating team. Because of the damage to the area during the linnorm’s escape, we’re not able to determine exactly what caused it to wake up. Best guess is some kind of fail-safe on tampering with the core.”

“I’ve instituted a memorandum on further experimentation if we capture another,” Celestia said.

“We have one last operation to discuss. The recent use of an antimagic field generator against Doctor Sparkle’s lab.”

“Yes, it appears our timing was poor. My student had taken her own initiative to infiltrate and was stymied by the antimagic field. There was one valuable piece of information we were able to discover, though. Miss Sparkle’s Engine Hearts seem to suffer from the same magical drain as natural magic sources. This means an antimagic field provides a potential defense if we need to take action.”

“Is action being planned?”

“That’s what I wanted to discuss today. We have other concerns, but we need to consider some kind of response.”

“Trying to step in caused the death of Captain Spitfire and the disaster at Canterlot General Hospital.”

“Doing nothing could be like letting a rabid dog run free in your pasture. It might keep wolves away, but it will only hurt you in the end. This could be a chance to stop this before it goes further.”

“We’ll take a vote. All in favor of military action being undertaken?”

A quick count of hooves was taken.

“All opposed?”

A second count.

“The nays have it by a slim margin,” Celestia said. “We’ll refrain from taking action, for now. If things change significantly, we’ll review our options again and take another vote.”

Ponies around the table nodded.

“One last thing -- you mentioned your student got into Doctor Sparkle’s lab.”

“Yes.”

“Did she find anything worth mention?”

“No. Nothing we didn’t already know about.”

Doctor Sparkle was younger than Eff Stop was, though looking at her you might not know it. There was something prematurely old in her face, the wrinkles from her furrowed brow and the bags under her eyes speaking volumes of a life spent pushing herself to exhaustion.

Eff Stop had interviewed hundreds of ponies over the years. Ponies who were as disheveled as her usually had a dozen degrees or a long criminal record.

“Thanks for letting me speak to you today,” Eff Stop said, reaching across the desk and offering his hoof.

Doctor Sparkle looked at it and an expression flashed across her face, just for the blink of an eye, that Eff Stop was used to. He’d seen the same expression a hundred times before on ponies who really didn’t want to deal with the press but found themselves stuck in the same room.

“I felt it was necessary,” Doctor Sparkle said. She shook his hoof after only that moment of hesitation.

“Those are some nasty scars,” Eff Stop said. Her frogs were rough, and he could see the coat was patchy almost to her knees. “Can I ask how you got them? Off the record, if it bothers you.”

“I don’t mind telling you,” Sparkle said, sitting back and looking at her own hooves. “I was injured fighting against one of Sombra’s minions.”

Eff stop pulled out a notepad and pencil, taking notes in shorthand. “I didn’t know you were in the military. According to my sources, you’re just in an advisory position.”

“This is total war. All of us should be willing to get our hooves dirty. Even Princess Celestia isn’t afraid to be on the front lines where she’s needed. She should be an inspiration to us all.”

“Did you know that some ponies say your relationship with the Princess is a cause for concern?” Eff Stop asked. “There are reports that the two of you have had screaming matches behind closed doors.”

“We have different opinions on how to handle problems,” Doctor Sparkle said. “But both of us want what’s best for Equestria. For example, she has tried to keep my team out of the press, and I invited you here against her wishes.”

Eff Stop hesitated, his pencil slowing. “Are there military secrets involved? I don’t want to end up with a story I can’t publish.”

“I just told you. I’m not part of the military. Everything I do here is private, and whatever funding I get from the Crown does not preclude publication of my results. All that I ask is that you report honestly on what you see.” She smiled slightly. “And maybe send me a copy of the paper when it’s printed. We don’t get regular deliveries out here.”

“Look, I apologized already. I’ve just had a lot of bad experiences with the press,” Lightning Dust said. “You guys basically ruined my life.”

Lightning Dust was one of the few ponies at the lab that Eff Stop had actually spoken to before, though at the time she’d attempted to shove his notepad down his throat for asking too many questions after her dishonorable discharge.

“Ponies have strong feelings about the Wonderbolts. All the reporting we did was based on the official record,” Eff Stop said, picking up his hat. The brim was shredded and scorched from her greeting when he’d entered the room, a near-miss with a thunderbolt that still had his ears ringing.

“Yeah, the official record. As opposed to the facts. You know what? I’m not gonna get into it. Every time I dip my hooves into that pond I just end up covered in mud. Just ask whatever you’re going to ask.”

“Should I avoid sensitive topics? I don’t think my hat can take another hit like that.”

Lightning Dust rolled her eyes. “If the Doc hadn’t ordered me to talk to you I’d have gone on patrol somewhere a hundred miles away until you were gone.”

“How did you and Doctor Sparkle meet?” Eff Stop asked.

“She was looking for a candidate for this whole project and my name was on top of the list. Pretty much proves she has good judgment, since I’ve saved Equestria…” She started counting on her feathers. “Like five or six times, depending on how you count it.”

“Do you think that makes up for your record?”

“I think nothing is ever gonna be good enough for some ponies. I could personally save them, their family, and their favorite pet and they’d find something to complain about and blame me for. It doesn’t matter, though. I’m not doing this for them.”

“Who are you doing it for, then?”

“I’m doing it for myself. I can’t prove myself to anypony else but I can try to be my best. The Doc is giving me a chance to do things I’d never manage on my own. She pulled me out of a bad place. I owe her, but all she really wants is for me to push the limits as fast and hard as I can.” Dust smiled. “Nopony is better at that than I am.”

Eff Stop had met royalty who were less difficult to deal with than Sunset Shimmer. She’d made him wait for her, keeping him in the hallway and relaying messages through one of Doctor Sparkle’s assistants. It wasn’t because she was busy. It was merely to demonstrate to him that she had the power to make him sit and do nothing at all.

“You misspelled ‘thaumatic’,” Sunset Shimmer said. “It’s thaumatic with a ‘u’, not thawmatic with a ‘w’.”

Eff stop looked at his crabbed shorthand. “Did you read that upside-down and backwards?”

“I pay attention to details,” the unicorn said. She seemed larger than life, with a kind of regal posture sitting at casual ease in a folding chair like it was a grand throne. She wore her armor, brass wings flexing and feeling at the air like they were truly alive.

“I’m surprised you know shorthand.”

“I was a student for a long time. I learned it on my own to take notes. The same reason you did, I suspect.” She smiled.

She tried to smile like Celestia, but there was something too lean and hungry about it. It made Eff Stop nervous.

“You know come to think of it, nopony knows where you’ve been for the last, what, decade? Can I ask exactly where you’ve been hidden away?”

“You can ask.” Sunset’s smile grew a little wider. “I don’t think the answer would be interesting. The truth is, I was… attending a different school.”

“Really? Where?”

"You know, I've seen the headlines your paper put out about my return. 'Equestria's Prodigal Daughter Returns.'" Sunset tilted her head. "It's funny. That's almost exactly the wrong in every possible way."

"Is it?" Eff Stop tilted his notepad, trying to keep her from reading everything he wrote.

"In the original story, the prodigal son is given everything he ever asked for and wastes it all. He comes back home with nothing and begs for forgiveness but is welcomed warmly."

"A lot of ponies would say the first part describes your history with Princess Celestia."

"That's because they don't know me at all," Sunset snapped. "I fought for everything. And now that I'm back? She just wishes I'd vanish again."

It took Eff Stop almost an hour to track down the last of Doctor Sparkle’s test subjects. Marble Pie had been sitting in a dark room, and he wasn’t quite sure what she’d been doing. He’d heard voices, but when he finally started asking questions, he started to doubt his own senses.

“And have you been working with Doctor Sparkle for long?”

“Mm…” The earth pony sat facing away from him, her long, flat mane like a wall between them.

“She mentioned you were a rock farmer. What was that like?”

“Mmmmm…”

“Maybe we could talk about your family?”

“Nn.”

Eff Stop groaned.

“I started Project A while I was still attending classes, before I got my doctorate,” Sparkle said. “It’s been a difficult path. Originally, my studies were focused on trying to fix what nature had broken. There have been some wonderful breakthroughs in augmentation, working wings for pegasus ponies, legs for earth ponies-”

“Did you do anything to develop those?”

“I’m not going to take credit for something another pony did, no. I have had long in-pony discussions with the ponies who made the breakthroughs, but we all stand on the shoulders of giants.”

“I did notice that Sunset Shimmer had artificial wings.”

“Yes. She’s rather fond of wearing that armor.”

“So Project A is just about putting ponies in magical armor?”

“Just like how the Canterlot Times is about putting ink on paper. It’s technically part of the job, but it totally ignores the point of the exercise. What you’re picturing is experienced soldiers with the best equipment.”

“So you’re telling me that’s not the case?”

“The point of Project A is to change the way we think about magic and about ourselves. It’s about getting rid of the limits nature put on us.”

“Some ponies would suggest those limits are there for a reason.”

“Thousands of years ago we were limited by what we could find to eat in the wild. We invented farming to secure our food sources. Then our limits were the seasons and weather, and the pegasus ponies invented ways to bring rain and shine. Everything we’ve done has been to fight against the limits nature imposed on us. Animals can’t read, write, create civilization. We do that. The great limitation we have now is in ourselves. We’ve changed the world to suit us, but Project A is about changing ponies so we can reach even farther.”

Eff Stop’s next question was interrupted by blaring alarms. Sparkle looked relieved.

“An enemy must be attacking,” she said. “Come. We’ll go to the control room. It’ll be good for your story, yes?”

Eff Stop made a few sketches of the ponies around the central table in what he’d already labeled the War Room, even if that wasn’t the name on the door. Calling it a conference room didn’t really fit with the way the ponies were discussing life and death, a harsh light hanging over the center of the table and throwing light directly down onto maps and hoof-written notes.

“Where is it?” Sparkle asked. “We aren’t nearly done with repairs, so it had better not be here.”

Eff Stop followed her into the room, taking notes and staying at the back of the room, unnoticed.

“We got lucky with this,” Sunburst said. “It’s in Ponyville. We still have some ponies on the ground there, so we’re getting the news first-hoof instead of being drip-fed by EIS.”

“I wouldn’t call attacking a town ‘lucky’,” Doctor Sparkle muttered.

“It’s not in the town proper. There’s an apple orchard--”

“I’m familiar with it.”

“It’s a few miles of apple trees and dirt roads from town. The locals are already evacuating. If we move quickly we can keep it from getting anywhere more developed.”

Doctor Sparkle nodded and spoke without turning. “Mister Eff Stop, would you care to join us and see just why Project A isn’t about ponies in fancy armor?.”

Eff Stop wasn’t a slow pegasus. By most measures he was fast, though the more accurate word would be slippery. He was used to having to rush to get a story while it was hot, rush to get his words on paper, rush to get out of the office before the editor could see his expense report.

No matter how large the expense report had been and how many drinks he’d tried to justify after the fact, he’d never gone this quickly before.

“Is this safe?!” he yelled over the wind. Lightning Dust dragged the cart through the sky at a speed that the cart very much did not like, and it was trying its level best to shake apart before they could arrive.

“Would I be here if it wasn’t safe?” Doctor Sparkle asked. She was making minute adjustments to Marble Pie’s armor.

Eff Stop wasn’t sure how to answer her question. He looked down at his notepad and wrote that she was like an artist who was never quite satisfied with their work, because it made him feel like they had something in common that wasn’t just an attempt to distract themselves with busywork.

“Where am I putting us down?” Lightning Dust asked, looking back.

“Near the river. We’ll call that the final defensive line,” Sparkle yelled.

“Hang on to your butts!” Dust shouted, going into a sharp dive. Eff Stop was caught between two instincts. Part of him wanted to take to the air and escape what felt like a fall to his death. The other part wanted to duck and cover and pray to whoever was listening (he’d once tried praying to Celestia but professional experience had taught him she didn’t even answer direct questions at a press conference, much less prayers).

The dark steel horn on Marble’s brow lit, and Eff Stop made a sound like a tea kettle as the air was squeezed from his lungs, gripped with strength akin to a dragon holding onto its gold in the face of a tax collector.

He watched the ground rush towards them, then their path twisted, and they were parallel to the road below, bouncing twice before coming to a stop, the wagon’s wheels dragging long ruts in the dirt.

The magic around Eff Stop winked out, and he gasped for breath.

“Did you have to do that?!” he asked.

Marble smiled so slightly he wasn’t sure it was really there.

The monster wasn’t at all what Eff Stop had expected. He knew a few things, more than what had been officially disclosed to the press, and more than was unofficially leaked with the understanding that part of the leak was what not to say to the public.

Linnorm were supposedly something like dragons, twisted by magic and being controlled by Sombra’s dark sorcery. Eff Stop had seen more than a few dragons. He’d once covered a dragon migration for his college newspaper.

The thing lumbering towards town with a wake of churned earth in its path was nothing like the deadly, majestic creatures he’d seen before. It was more like a turtle, with a shell of thick crystal studded with scales, studded with tooth-filled holes and moving on a number of stump-like legs. Eff Stop couldn’t quite tell how many legs it had, but it was definitely too many.

“So how does this work?” Eff Stop asked.

Lightning Dust was quiet, leaning on her axe and looking across the river, deep in thought. She was a picture of contemplation and careful wisdom, no doubt thinking of battle plans and strategies with her long experience with the Wonderbolts and in the war.

“We’ll just wing it,” she decided. “Hey, Sunset! You wanna try--”

A blast of fire and lightning crashed through the air a dozen paces from where Eff Stop stood and even the wake from this distance was so hot it scorched the pages of his notebook.

The bolt hit the monster and bounced off, bounding into the sky and fading away.

“Well that wasn’t what I was gonna suggest but that’s cool too,” Dust sighed. “You can’t solve everything with giant spell attacks, Sunset!”

“That’s something a quitter would say,” Sunset retorted.

“Now we know it’s immune to magic,” Doctor Sparkle said. “That’s valuable information. I would still prefer if you at least pretended to use teamwork. That blast decalibrated all my thaumometers!”

“What’s a--” Eff Stop started.

“It measures magical fields,” Sparkle said. “And now we don’t have a reading of the ambient fields, because somepony had to throw a level seven evocation out as a greeting!”

“You don’t complain when it works,” Sunset said, rolling her eyes.

Sparkle sighed and rubbed her temples. “Lightning Dust, go hit it with your axe.”

“Oh sure, sophisticated magic attacks are a bad plan, but hitting it with stick, that’s what a real genius like you comes up with,” Sunset mumbled.

Lightning Dust smiled. “Hey, sometimes what you need isn’t brute force, it’s the delicate sophistication of a chunk of sharp steel moving at high speed.” She winked at Eff Stop. “Make sure to tell your readers how I cut this thing in half.”

Eff Stop flipped to a new page, lightly browned around the edges, and took notes. He wished he’d been born a poet, just so he could capture the way Lightning Dust effortlessly hefted the huge axe, the edge glowing with heat. The wind of her passage, the thunder as she slammed the blade into the monster, the way it was deflected as easily as the spell, and the frantic retreat as the dozen maws studding the shell opened and started blindly spitting fireballs into the air.

“Does this happen a lot?” Eff Stop asked. A fireball hit the magical shield Marble was projecting, the earth pony’s hair slowly waving in the air like she was underwater. She looked bored.

“Mm.” Her snout scrunched with annoyance, and she angled the shield to bounce a fireball away from a house.

“I just thought there would be more…” he hesitated. “Ponies kept telling me Doctor Sparkle is a genius but she’s just sort of…”

He gestured to the unicorn. She was shouting into the radio, her lab coat singed from a near-miss.

Marble mumbled something that Eff Stop couldn’t make out over the roar of flames.

“What?” Eff Stop yelled.

Marble glanced at him, her eyes glowing blue, and the roar of the Linnorm’s attack cut out halfway through her repeating herself. “-ing idiots!” she snapped. “All of them!”

“I don’t think I can print that,” Eff Stop said, his cheeks coloring.

“Marble! Watch your six!” Dust yelled.

Eff Stop and Marble looked behind her. There was nothing except the town they were trying to defend. While they were looking, the Linnorm slammed into Marble’s shield, the feedback hitting her like a sledgehammer, driving her back on her hooves.

“On what planet is that my bucking six?!” Marble yelled, her horn flashing as she redoubled her efforts, trying to hold the monster back.

“I’m not good with clocks!” Lightning Dust shouted.

Light flashed above them, Sunset appearing out of the flash of a teleport spell and swooping down, grabbing Doctor Sparkle and Eff Stop.

“Wouldn’t look good if we got our embedded reporter killed,” Sunset said. She took a turn so tight Eff Stop almost blacked out. A half-mile up, she crashed to a halt, bursts of magic firing from her wings and canceling her momentum. “Marble, they’re clear!”

Marble let the shield drop, the Linnorm stumbling a step forward before she caught it, front hooves pressed against its crystal shell. A glow started where she touched it and worked its way around the monster, lighting it from below.

The earth pony roared and threw the monster up into the air, the turtle-like linnorm wailing in surprise as it flipped like a pancake.

“Nice! I got this!” Lightning Dust flew down in a trail of lightning and fire, the blade of her axe trailing until she was on top of the monster, spinning in midair to slam the red-hot edge into the linnorm’s soft underbelly.

“The core is exposed!” Doctor Sparkle yelled, pointing at the creature. Eff Stop could just make out a crystal sphere glowing dimly in the exposed viscera.

“I got it,” Sunset said. She let go of Sparkle and Eff Stop. Eff Stop’s wings opened and caught her wake as she blasted off, throwing him wildly through the air like a leaf in a hurricane.

Dust twisted her axe in the linnorm’s wound, spreading the cut wide. Sunset’s star saber erupted from her hoof. She tucked her wings in tight and threw herself at the enemy with a burst of telekinesis, launching her own body like a shot from a cannon.

The tip of the sword cut through the crystal, and the monster went limp.

Eff Stop’s out-of-control flight stopped like he hit a brick wall, navy blue magic seizing him in place.

“Nice catch, Marble,” Doctor Sparkle said, as she was lowered to the ground in the same aura. “Good work, everypony.”

Eff Stop was gently placed down on the dirt, his legs shaking with adrenaline and terror. Marble Pie stepped up to him, looming over him with a menacing aura, her face cast into shadow. His notepad was pressed into his chest, and he grabbed it on instinct.

Marble leaned forward, and he flinched like she might bite.

“I hope you have enough material,” she whispered.

Eff Stop nodded mutely.

“Thank you for this opportunity, your highness,” Eff Stop said. He bowed deeply. Maybe too deeply. He was glad to be in the palace, and anywhere without monsters, pony-shaped or otherwise.

Celestia laughed. “Please, this is supposed to be an informal interview,” she said. “I’ve been stuck in meetings all day. We can dispose of some formalities.”

Eff Stop nodded, sitting when she motioned to the empty seat across from her at the small table. “I’ll try not to waste your free time then, your highness. I’m sure as you’re aware, I’ve been working on a story about Doctor Twilight Sparkle.”

“She does seem to attract a lot of attention.”

“I’m told you and she are close.”

“In many ways. Doctor Sparkle’s late brother was Princess Cadance’s fiance. In some ways she’s almost family. When she attended my school, I took a close interest in her studies and acted as a mentor.”

“I’ve heard some ponies accuse you of favoritism.”

Celestia laughed. “I don’t think Twilight would agree with that. I even took control of the review board for her proposals just to ensure other ponies didn’t give her grants simply to try and get my favor. I’ve tried to push her to excel and guide her gently in the right direction. It hasn’t always worked.”

“It hasn’t?”

“I’m told you had a chance to see her work up close,” Princess Celestia said. “You’re very dedicated. Most ponies wouldn’t have been willing to chase a story all the way to the battlefield.”

“Well, there’s a war on,” Eff Stop, with a very small smile. “I wouldn’t be much of a reporter if I was afraid to be near the front. I just wasn’t prepared for it this time.”

Celestia nodded and smiled, closing her eyes serenely. “You were in a unique position. That’s why I invited you here. I wanted to help you with your story.”

“Really?” His ears perked up. “How?”

The door behind him opened, and two ponies in dark suits stepped into the room.

“It’s important that ponies see the right news in these troubled times,” Celestia said. “These ponies are going to help you remember everything that happened, and then they’ll help you decide what the public is allowed to know.”

Eff Stop swallowed.

One of the ultimate truths about this world is that magic lives in all places, in all things. You can block it, even trap it for a time, but Magic will find a way.

When I was a filly, a year or two after my accident, my vision started to blur. Too many long nights with too little light and too many words had taken their toll.

The diagnosis from the optomitrist was terrifying. I'd already lost so much when my magic was taken. The only real joy in my life was in escaping for a time into books, and it seemed like that was going to be lost. For a time I was afraid to read anything, thinking I only had so many more words before everything went dark.

I spent a week making my parents read menus and storybooks to me before my glasses were ready. The first time the doctor put those lenses in front of my eyes and everything snapped into focus again, I nearly cried. It was a revelation. Something wrong with me could be fixed by the right device.

So I asked my parents, what did I need to do to fix my horn?

It took me a long time to understand that the technology simply didn't exist. My magic was locked inside of me like an underground lake that had been sealed off, unreachable and unable to flow out.

I took it upon myself to create what didn't yet exist. Not just for myself, but for the whole world.

That was the beginning of Project A.

~ Portion of an unreleased interview.