The first things I saw was a rapid slideshow of images. Steven's incorporeal voice behind them as they passed.

Dad. Mom. Tears. Emotions. Pain. Mom. Tears. Pain. Tears and pain.

Suddenly the flashing of images stopped and slowed down, letting me see some other memories longer. Steven's voice played over all of them.

"Amber was always a little weird and off," Steven's voice said in narrative fashion. "No one ever understood her. Not even me. If we had, we might have been able to do something before it happened."

A memory went by of Steven watching the little girl climb out the window of her room, the sound of two people fighting heard in the background.

"Amber liked to sneak out of the house and play with her friends late at night. Go to parties she was years too young for. Play dangerous games no one should play. One time, she got in too deep and things took a turn for the worse."

Suddenly, a dozen images flew by. There was blood and bandages, flesh and bone twisted and burned grotesquely. More images of their father and mother crying. More blood. The doctor saying something to the parents and them bursting into tears. It finally stopped on a single memory. Steven looking through a glass of a chamber at a little girl inside. A little girl wrapped in bandages, hooked up to dozens of tubes and monitors, her right arm being the only limb still attached to her torso, and her face completely obscured.

"As everyone else wept for her, I found myself wondering what her last thoughts were and asking myself how her mind worked. At some point in my distress, that last question was answered. I suddenly understood exactly how her mind worked and many, many other things. And as the months crawled by and Amber stayed in a coma, I began to make a plan."

The image changed, and suddenly I was looking at a mug shot of someone that was much closer to resembling the Amber I knew now. Only there was someone else's name beneath it. I found myself not liking the direction this was headed.

"Sam. I had forgotten her last name but it wasn't important. Murdered her parents and little brother and was getting out on parole. She was a few years older than Amber, but she would do. She didn't deserve the life that was taken from Amber. I sought to correct that."

I felt my mouth go dry as I watched the next memory play out. A day or two spent stalking to the lady. The purchase of drugs. Him putting it into the needle. Him following her one night, injecting it into her neck. And then I watched with horror as her body was lying side by side with Amber, Steven drawing black marks across her forehead.

"It was all set, I just had to make the switch. I would put the murder in the prison my sister's body had become and move my sister to the other one. But there was an issue."

Thankfully, the memories skipped the cutting and the switch itself, but I soon found myself looking at far more of Amber's brain than I ever wanted to.

"Amber was traumatized, I knew these because I understood how her brain worked. I knew what she was going to be like when she woke up. She would be broken, destroyed, never the same again. So I did the only thing I could do, and I erased her memory of it."

I watched him slide a metal rod into the brain now sitting inside the convict's body and felt a little sick to my stomach. This was too much.

"But even that wasn't enough, Amber was missing something. Something that no amount of memory erasing was going to fix, and I was running out of time. So I started doing some rewiring, using the convict's brain to help with the process."

Once again, I was thankful it didn't show me the process. Instead, the memories skipped to the final product with everyone's skull put back on the right way. It showed Steven rolling the new Amber away as the heart monitor of Sam's new body picked up speed, quickly climbing to a hundred beats per minute. The monitor began let out an alarm. The noise faded away as the memory shifted.

The next months worth of memories flew by as quick as the individual events had. Amber waking up, being embraced by her brother. Steven teaching her to walk again. Steven helping Amber adjust her body. Steven stealing the tools she needed for her Tinker stuff. Them celebrating a birthday. Them running from the police. Them breaking into a morgue. Them playing in an arcade. Steven meeting Cheshire for the first time. Cheshire raising an eyebrow at Amber, but not saying anything. Steven, Amber, and Lisa spending hours talking to one another. Each memory they were together, they looked out for each other. They helped one another, no matter what.

Suddenly the memories faded away and something different took its place. Not a memories, the details were missing. This seemed more fabricated, rough around the edges. And more important, it showed something that hadn't happened.

It was Steven talking to me, how he saw me. Large, looking down on him. My wings spread and my mane flowing imperiously as I looked at him judgmentally. I saw him moving his hands in the thought, speaking to me as calmly as he could.

"I won't pretend I lived a blameless life," Steven said. "Not everything I did was morally right and not everything left people unharmed. But everything I did, I did for my sister. And I can honestly say, neither I nor her have ever killed anyone. But that-"

Suddenly, my connection to him shattered as I reached the end of his thought process. My mind surfing abruptly hitting a dead end. And at that moment, both of us snapped back to reality.

---

"What… was that?" Steven asked through thick, laboured breath. I suddenly found myself also exhausted and magically drained. In fact, I think more than half of my magic was gone! I could teleport all the way across the city several times and still not be close to that with my new reserves. That was a ridiculous amount of magic I used.

"A… new spell… I just made," I answered as best I could through my own heavy breathing. I got back up on all four hooves with a wobble. I took a moment to catch my breath and then said,

"It was an accident, I wasn't really trying to do that. But I saw it all, everything you wanted to tell me. The accident, the transfer, the days after. I'm sorry about that, I didn't mean to."

"No, it's fine," Steven said, catching his breath. "If you saw it all that means I won't have to go through the trouble of trying to make it all words. If help my case out at all, I'm okay with it."

"Alright," I said dumbly. Suddenly at a loss of what to say. He watched me for a minute, waiting for my answer. All I could say was,

"I need some time to process this."

He nodded sadly. "I understand."

I found the statement morbidly ironic. His power was understanding how things work. When this had first come to light he had told me I simply didn't understand, that it was just how her mind worked. And in a way, it was true. He made it work that way, but it was how her mind worked now. It made me wonder if every time he said someone didn't understand something he was referring to his power. And what did that make his last statement?

As I turned to leave I heard Steven say one more thing.

"Nova, I understand how you feel, and I realize why you thought you had to do something about this. And I don't blame you for it, not a bit. It's my fault, and I can't change that. And while I don't think it would be possible very soon, after this is all over, I still think we could be friends if you want it."

Celestia dang it.

---

Previous examination found Ergo unlikely of Friendship bond. Host found the path to Friendship bond despite conclusion. Differing to host for reason… Found. Recording as Friendship Lesson #001: Friends can't replace family (maybe).