Luna gave us a half-determined stare, obviously choking down her sorrow for her sister as the gun was dropped to the ground with a clatter.

"There may be some time for explanation. But we have to run."
"Run where?" Pick responded.

"The underground. The alicorn testing facility. In case you didn't know, this tunnel leads to it."

I gave a hollow laugh as I picked the gun up and stored it again. "Yeah, we could tell. Why else would Celestia do that?"

Luna scoffed at my remark and turned around, facing the unexplored area of the long tunnel. "Let's go."

I don't know if you've ever had to do this serious of running after a crazy amount of mental and physical torment before, but if you have, you know my position. I had just witnessed four deaths face-to-face (one of which I was directly responsible for), already ran several kilometers, had about three woozy adrenalin spikes, not to mention having hundreds of glass shards being driven into your skin, several of which are still there... Put the pieces together, and you have a vague understanding of the situation.

At least the past of the situation. This is the present. I'm running like hell trying to catch up to Luna, all four of my legs are numb from the running, I'm trying to comprehend what the hell happened, and, I might add, fearing the future. I caught a glimpse of where we were headed by looking at the two photos earlier, but I was sure that those barely scratched the surface of our problem. There was blood on those fucking metal walls...

I shuddered at the thought of all the death that happened (or could be happening) ahead of us. Pushing over the scar of thought, I trudged forward, barely ignoring the pain coursing throughout my entire body just to push on.
Luckily, my run was nearly over. Unfortunately, my pain was not. The end of the perfectly straight tunnel was near, approaching us with an intimidating glow. As we neared it, some of its details became clearer: It was entirely made out of a shiny metal (which I guessed was steel) and was shaped like a circle, giving it an eerie appearance as it loomed over us, dimly lit by a single torch placed next to it. The door had a large, metal-pronged wheel on it, definitely for opening.
We cautiously neared it, half-expecting a jump scare by the time we were directly in front of the large door.
"Anypony know how to open this thing?" Pick asked.
"I'm not even going to bother with that..." Before any of us could tell what she was doing, Luna had already torn open the steel door with a powerful display of magic. The grinding sound of metal on metal echoed throughout the corridor and the room in front of us as the the entire slab of pure steel was coated in a radiant blue haze, was bent off of its hinges, and thrown to the ground in an explosion of shrapnel with a bang.
"Was that really necessary?" Boldkey asked.
"For the time we had, yes," Luna flatly stated as the four of us stepped in and observed the room just beyond the ruined doorframe. The room turned out to be a normal, white-walled lobby with a few scattered couches and a desk in the back. I was oddly alarmed at this, but I wasn't the only one thinking that.
"What the hell is this? A decoy?" Pick shouted.
"Hold it. We haven't even looked around yet..." Right as I said that, as though I jinxed the entire thing, we heard another grinding metal sound behind us. Ears cringing, we turned around to find that the door that Luna had ripped to shreds was being taken over by a bright orange glow as the door bent itself back into shape and replacing the previously empty doorframe, it sounding metal screeches the entire way. We were locked in again.
"Oh shit... Luna! Can you open it again? We gotta get the hell out of here!" I screamed at her.
A spark of blue emitted pathetically from Luna's horn. "Oh fuck. This is not good." Luna said as I tore out my gun once again and aimed it blindly around the room, looking for another exit. There was a hallway towards the back that we could use...
She should have taken that back, because things were about to get worse than just Luna not being able to use magic. Before I could let the others know about the hall, the lights went out. It wasn't even the way you just turn them off, either... The lights were instantly destroyed with a small shockwave that had an unknown location of origin.
Pick starting to panic as all of us got yet another heart rate spike. "Ooooh shit. Ooh shit. Oh shit."
"Pick! Silence!" Luna hissed back.
There were a couple of tense seconds of silence as we tried to listen in on what was going. We knew that it was probably Rose... We couldn't prove it yet, though... We needed to see her face to face.
That gave me an idea. I fumbled my hoof blindly around the gun until I felt a switch, instinctively flipping it on. A temporarily blinding beam of light shot out in front of me and onto the furthest wall from the door, lighting it just enough to see about a quarter of the wall in front of us. As steadily as I could with my now shaking hoof, I slowly pointed the gun around the room to look for her. And inch by inch, the wall was slowly scanned. My heart pounded anxiously in my chest as I neared the right side of the room, grabbing the gun with sweaty death grip. Death could be inches away from me, or worse...
I was too late; I didn't find her in time. The very second I realized it was happening was the very second that I realized I couldn't do anything about what had already happened. I heard a bloodcurdling scream next to me as a small whoosh of wind by my left ear. I looked to my side... Pick was gone.
I flung the gun behind me to find the vault door and nothing else. "P-pick?! Oooh shit." I backed away from the door and looked up. There was an open air duct... Was Rose in there...?
Luna, Boldkey and I listened in with horror as we heard Pick's last words. "Oh no. Don't do that. Please. PLEASE!" Following that was a sickening, gut wrenching crunch. I couldn't believe my own ears as I instantly perceived the one feeling that I had never before truly: Terror.
Blood started slowly dripping from the ceiling as Boldkey threw up on the spot. I don't blame him, though... I was on the verge of doing so myself.
"What the hell do we do now?!" I screamed at the now smaller group.
"Run." And with that simple statement on Luna's part, we did just that. We bolted as fast as we could into the hallway, nearly collapsing from the insane amount of surprise energy that we had to use to get this far. I wasn't prepared for it, and sure enough, I collapsed under the weight of my own tired body. My body came crashing down as I saw my gun skidding across the ground, completely oblivious to pain as light was crudely cast onto the walls of the corridor. I didn't care any more. I was defeated. I didn't want to live anymore, especially if it meant more of this hell. "Just... go on without me..."
I heard the sound of magic. Everything went black.

I awoke with a jolting start. I was still in the hallway... What had happened? My eyes adjusted to the hallway as I noticed that it was bright again... Bright, but with no lights. I thought no more of it as I stammered to my hooves in a klutzy manner. I felt different this time... Like I was oddly relaxed for the circumstances. I couldn't wrap my head around it... Questions flooded my mind. What had happened? How long was I out? Why was I in the same place when I blacked out? Why was I relaxed? Why was I alive? That last one grew on me like a weed. I was very much alive, but I should have been dead, after what happened to Pick...
Finally on my hooves again, I looked down at the ground to find the gun still on the ground. Odd... I picked it up again with a hoof to find that it had the exact same number of bullets in it before I shot it, meaning that it had been refilled with ammo. Even weirder. I looked down the hallway to find an endless corridor, with several light fixtures and doors all along the way. I could only hope that Boldkey and Luna escaped safely...
I turned around again in hopes of finding life. I had barely moved down the hallway before I passed out, so I was only about five meters away from the room that I was running from in the last few moments that I remembered. I started walking down the hallway to find, to my surprise, that I wasn't sore or in pain at all... How long had I been out?
I couldn't tell if I was happy or angered at what happened, but that gave me an interesting idea: Had Pick actually died? I tried not to think of it as I continued to slowly walk down the hallway. The room was bright again, but something else was different about the lobby... Something I couldn't yet put a hoof on.
That is, until I stepped fully into the lobby. I noticed right off the bat that the lights had been replaced, but that wasn't the strangest of it: The door had been completely replaced. Even worse, there were other ponies in the lobby...
"Whaaat?" I stammered. I was in shock... What had happened? Had I even been out? Out of pure confusion, I stumbled around the room, gathering several hilarious looks from other ponies as I crashed on the couch in the middle of the lobby, revealing something that put the first puzzle piece into play to actually figure out what the hell was going on.
I noticed it in the very second I landed: My coat color was no longer green. Looking closer and not believing my eyes, I found out that it was now golden-colored. Holy shit... I was no longer myself. Looking further down my now sweating body, I found something that honestly scared the single fuck left in me out. I had wings.
I wanted to pass out again, but I couldn't yet; my short period of pure insanity wasn't over yet. As I continued staring at my new body, my eyes slowly moved upwards to find a pony now standing in front of me, who completely took me by surprise.
"P-princess Celestia?!" There she was, standing elegantly above me, completely alive and well. She even appeared to be somewhat happy...
She gave a light-hearted giggle. "That's my name, don't wear it out! Well, Ingot, you should start making your way to the operating room. They should be starting soon." I was in pure shock. She was alive...?
Eventually, my brain sorted itself out and spat out one answer that made everything suddenly make sense: I was in the past. I don't know why I didn't think of that in the first place...
Quick thinking on my part kept my cool with the now-still-alive Celestia. "Sorry, I forgot. Which room is that in again?"
"Third door on the left side of the main hallway. Weren't you just over there?"
"Uh, yeah. I just wanted a more comfortable place to sit until it started, so I came over here." Smooooth.
Celestia stared at me awkwardly. "Uh, okay. You... go ahead and... sit." She walked away without looking back.
I sighed in relief and decided to check out the room that Celestia was talking about, so I stood up and made my way back down the hallway, this time trying to not look like an idiot doing so.
Ingot... So that was my name, and now I was a pegasus? Okay. I could at least try to cope with this...
I had several second thoughts as I neared the third door on the left. I didn't even know what was behind that door...
Hastily, I pushed open the door to find an observation room for an operating table with about four other ponies inside. One of them, who was a purple unicorn, turned around and greeted me. "Ingot! It's about time... We were just about to start without you."

I walked up to the window and was shocked at what I saw: In a metal room, surrounded by doctors and on a metal operating table, was a purple earth pony.

Violet Rose.