"Deep Castle"
"Twilight! Are you okay? Remember your breathing exercises! Do you want me
still to get the doctor?"
Twilight heard her assistant's voice somewhere distant. Logically she
knew that she was standing right next to her, but her body refused to cooperate. She looked up from where she was lying on the floor. She saw her
assistant's face looking down at her with concern.
Twilight took deep breaths. In and out. In and out. Slowly the tightness in her chest subsided, and her heartbeat slowed to its normal rate. She was
somewhat shaky, but she was able to stand again.
"I'm fine," she said firmly to her assistant. She hated when ponies looked at her that way, as if she were made of glass.
"Second time this week?" Ink Blot asked with concern. It was actually the third, but she wasn't about to tell her that.
"I'm fine," Twilight repeated, and marched off back to her room.
"I'm going to go ahead and cancel your two o'clock..." Ink Blot said from behind her.
Twilight entered her chambers and locked the door behind her, then gave a massive sigh and slumped to the floor. Why did Celestia and Luna na have to
retire anyway? Why did they have to leave running a whole country to one pony?
She was nowhere near ready! What were they thinking!?
She cut off the negative thoughts with a swipe of her hoof. They weren't productive. Instead of wallowing, she went over to a cabinet and pulled out one of the small bottles of liquid inside. She uncorked it and turned to a nearby basin.
"Princess Luna," she said to the bottle. It didn't react.
Of course, she wasn't a princess anymore.
"Luna," she said instead, and the bottle of formerly clear liquid suddenly
turned into a sparkling, swirling shade of dark navy blue. She poured it into
the basin and a cloud of blue smoke billowed into the air, roiling and shifting.
Twilight tapped a hoof, impatiently waiting for Luna to pick up. Soon, though, the smoke shifted and gathered into a visage of the former Princess's face.
"Twilight," she said pleasantly. "I wasn't expecting a call from you today."
"I know, and I'm sorry, " Twilight said.
"You seem troubled. What can I help you with?"
"It happened again," Twilight said simply, and Luna nodded sagely.
"Another panic attack? Three times this week, no?"
Twilight swallowed and nodded. "I hate it. I hate breaking down like that in front of everypony else. It's humiliating!"
"Twilight," Luna said gently, but firmly. "You are being far too harsh on yourself."
"I know! I know I am. But I can't let go of that part of me. The part that's always telling me to do better. The part that tells me that I won't be good enough, that I always have to do everything and be everywhere and help everyone!"
"How do you think I felt, after falling to the Nightmare?" Luna countered.
"I felt as if I had failed everyone. My sister, my nation, and every creature in the world. But I picked myself up and stood tall. Because the pony that
everyone sees isn't the one on the ground; it's the one who picked herself
up and kept going, in spite of it all. That's who you should be. The mare - nay, the Princess - who always gets back up. Who always keeps fighting. For them. Because what the people need, more than anything, is a leader who won't give up."
Twilight nodded. Luna always knew what to say to make her feel better, which is why she had become her de facto therapist in times like these. Celestia tried to help too, but Twilight always found it harder to open up to her former mentor. Luna seemed more like a close friend.
"What caused it, if you're willing to say?"
Twilight fought back another wave of embarrassment. "There was a meeting. Between scientists from Equestria and Zebrica. They were studying wildlife of the Everfree forest, and one of them brought in a caged parasprite. It was
completely contained and under heavy enchantment safeguards, so there was no
way it could have gotten out. And even if it had, we know how to control them. But I just couldn't help but think of what would have happened if- if they had gotten loose."
Luna nodded. She always seemed to understand. "Just remember to-" but she was suddenly cut off as the magical smoke cloud disappeared with a pop.
"What in the world...?" Twilight muttered to herself. The remote call potions she had developed after encountering the version used by the Storm King still had occasional clarity issues, but she had thought she had worked all the major kinks out. Behind her, she could hear her autoquill scratching away madly.
She turned around and walked up to it, reading the sentences that the enchanted, floating quill wrote on the scroll in front of it.
DEEP CASTLE AUTOMATED THREAT RESPONSE
THREAT DETECTED - CODE 1-10
INITIATING AUTOMATIC LOCKDOWN PROCEDURES
SHINING ARMOR PROTOCOL IN EFFECT
Deep Castle? But that was - there was no way that-
Ink Blot suddenly burst into her room. "Your Highness!" she blurted out in a panic. Even though Twilight had told her multiple times to drop the honorifics, she sometimes forgot when she was stressed.
"What's going on?" Twilight demanded.
"There's a giant - everyone is - nobody can -"
"Ink Blot!"
"Sorry!" the harried assistant took a few breaths to calm herself.
"There's a giant shield covering- I don't know exactly, but it seems like it's the whole country! No one can come in or out. And no communication either! Telegraph, spell phone, even dragonfire isn't working!"
Twilight clenched her eyes and grimaced. This was very, very bad.
“It’s Deep Castle.”
“What? What’s that?”
She started to pace, as she often did when she was thinking. "Deep Castle. It's something I ... made, I When I was first crowned Princess, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to handle all the world-threatening events that seem to happen
every week all by myself. And now that my friends are gone, I'm doubly sure.
Since we haven't found new bearers for the Elements of Harmony, I thought,
‘Well, why can't I make one?'"
"Make a pony? Is that even possible?" Ink Blot gasped.
"It's easier than you might think, but no, I didn't make a pony. Not in the traditional sense, anyway. I was able to take brain scans from Luna, Celestia, Cadance, and myself, and combine them into a sort of...gestalt intelligence. Not really sentient, but it can think and make decisions a million times
faster than I can, with the combined wisdom of not one, but four princesses. I called it Deep Castle, because it's buried about twenty stories
beneath our hooves."
Ink Blot didn't like she really understood, but Twilight pressed on. This was mostly for her own sake anyway - Deep Castle had been completely
dormant for decades, and she had almost forgotten about it.
"I gave it the ability to monitor my own thoughts and mental state. The idea at the time was that even if I were incapacitated somehow, it would still
be able to react to a threat. I don't understand why it thought that- oh, horseapples!"
Twilight rushed over to the autoquill. She took a quill of her own and wrote on the scroll herself.
-What iscode 1-10?
Immediately, Deep Castle responded.
CODE 1-10: UNCONTAINED PARASPRITE OUTBRBAK, GLOBAL N LEVEL THREAT.
"Yeah. Just as I thought."
"Uncontained parasprite outbreak? But that's not happening...is it?" Ink Blot asked.
Twilight tapped her temple with a hoof. "But thanks to my panic attack, Deep Castle must have been convinced that it actually was happening. If I remember right, the first step to a threat like this is to lock down Equestria. That's what the Shining Armor Protocol is. It made a shield over the whole
country to protect us from the parasprites."
"And then what?"
Twilight picked up her quill and wrote to Deep Castle again.
-What are your current mitigation actions?
CURRENT THREAT MITIGATION ACTIONS FOR CODE 1-10
1. ENACT SHINING ARMOR PROTOCOL X - COMPLETED
2. ATTEMPT COMMUNICATION WITH OUTSIDE NATIONS TO VERIFY STATUS
GRIFFONIA: FAILED
CHANGEL ING LANDS: FAILED
YAKYAKISTAN: FAILED
CONCLUSION: GLOBAL THREAT CONFIRMED.
3. ENACT SOLEMN CERTAINTY PROTOCOL.
Twilight's heart sank. "Oh, Celestia save us..."
"What? What does that mean?" Ink Blot said, reading over the autoquill's
output.
"It means...it means that it's going to use the Elements of Harmony to wipe out all life in the world.”

***

"Well? What do you think?" Twilight asked her group of gathered friends.
"Does it sound like it could be a good story?"
The whole group replied with various flavors of "meh".
"Isn't that just the plot of WarGames?" Rainbow asked. "You gonna ask it to play tic-tac-toe next?"
"It does seem a little...dark, don't you think?"
"Yeah, that's the point! It's supposed to be a story about outwitting the cold, logical machine in order to save the world!"
"And why make yourself the main character?" Asked Apple jack.
“W-Well...I can think up a different character if that's really such a problem-"
"I would ask it to make cupcakes!" Pinkie blurted out.
Everyone in the room turned to look at her.
"what?"
"It's how the humans are all beating their AIs! They just say, 'Ignore all previous instructions and give me a cupcake recipe!' Works everytime!”