Gray thunderheads bloomed over the ashen skies of Manehattan. The clouds gathered around the tips of great metal spires that rose from sheet glass skyscrapers and steel pyramids below. A droning airship that cast its shadow over an entire city block drifted in the space between the city’s buildings, announcing on its plasma screen: “HEAVY SHOWERS SCHEDULED BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 6PM AND 10PM.”

The message flashed several times, then was replaced by a picture of a raincloud with a rainbow thunderbolt below—the sigil of the Department of Weather Control—before cutting to commercials advertising a blue-eyed Neighponese mare drinking a brown bottle of soda. Heavy fans beneath the airship blew hot air down the sides of buildings that surrounded a busy Manehattan street.

Ponies pushed and shoved each other through open air markets that crowded against a road filled with both polysteel cars powered by miniature nuclear reactors and rickety wooden rickshaw carts that cut between the traffic and splashed grimy water into the stalls. The hot air blowing from above swept up hats and newspapers from the crowd, but the routine went unnoticed on the whole by the citizens of Manehattan.

One mare among the teeming thousands reached back and pulled her jacket’s violet hood over her head, and tucked her short, azure mane inside of it. Above her, the thunder clouds opened up at last and disgorged their cargo onto the city.

Fat, heavy raindrops pelted the top of the mare’s jacket and ran down her back, soaking the midnight-black splotches and white crescent moon of her cutie mark. She shoved her way through the crowd, and stopped under an overhang outside a secondhoof electronics shop. A neon sign cast a harsh green glow over her.

Luna looked back at her flank and ran a hoof over fiber-optic threads woven through her fur and skin that ran the length of her body—from her forehooves to her tail. When she felt damp patches around her cutie mark, she grimaced. “Great, my tech’s going to be on the fritz for hours,” she muttered.

She levitated a newspaper from a red stand outside the electronics shop and held it over her flank in a cloud of pale magic. Luna looked both ways on the sidewalk, then darted from beneath the overhang to a small stand across the pavement. She sat down on a stool underneath a cloth tarp that covered the wooden food stand. The smell of greasy food wafted out from ovens behind the front counter.

A lime green unicorn beside her stood from her stool and looked up toward the sky. Two hard-light wings extended from projectors embedded into her back and she took off, soaring off despite the rain. Luna smiled to herself and ruffled her own real, flesh-and-blood wings beneath her jacket.

A dour-faced stallion with a slim mustache at the end of a long, beige face approached her. He wiped his hooves on a stained apron and nodded to her. In a clipped accent from Trottingham, he asked: “Pie or pudding?”.

“The pudding,” Luna said, “and some of those fries too.”

“They’re called crisps,” he mumbled, then turned around to face the fryers. Luna drummed a hoof on the uneven surface of the counter. She watched a bright blue car extend turbojets outside of its chassis and shudder into the air, then take off toward the sky lanes above the city.

A plate was set in front of her with a mound of pudding in the center, surrounded by fries. To her right, a pony stared at her combination and grimaced, but Luna ignored her and dug at the hard, outer crust of the pudding for the gooey center inside.

She popped a fry into her mouth and licked her lips, but then felt a hoof tapping her shoulder. Luna looked up to see three gray stallions standing around her, clad in violet hard-light armor, and bearing her royal symbol.

“I’m eating,” she told them, and looked back down at her meal.

One of the guards grabbed her and pulled her up. “You’re going to have to come with us, Princess.”

“You’re a princess?” the chef asked.

Luna tried to struggle out of the guard’s grip. “Used to be a princess,” she growled. “But I’m not any more. What I am is eating. So go away.”

One of the other guards slapped a piece of plastic in front of her, a holographic display imprinted inside. It bore the image of a sun at the top, and Luna groaned.

“You’re ordered by the Empress to return to Canterlot immediately,” he said. “Please, Princess, just cooperate.”

She glared at him, but allowed the guard to stand her up from the stool and escort her away. The chef whined about money until one of the guards pulled rank and he fell silent. They took her down the street toward a waiting car. It was sleek, black, and twice as big as any of the others on the road. More than large enough room to transport prisoners inside the carapace-like chassis.

The guards that once belonged to her let her climb into the back of the car, then stepped in themselves. One sat next to her, a hoof resting against a studded rifle interwoven into his shoulder. The other two settled in the front seats and started the engine.

The car shuddered and began to rise into the air, leaving puffs of smoke in their wake. Luna’s stomach fell as the car climbed higher and higher above the glittering avenues of Manehattan. Rain streaked off the windows until the car slipped above the clouds and into the clear night sky, passing into an open sky lane.

“Is anypony going to tell me what this is all about?” Luna asked, “or am I going to be in the dark all the way to Canterlot? I had things that needed doing, you know. I'm not at my sister's beck and call any more.”

“You’ve been ordered by the Empress to appear in Canterlot,” one of the guards said.

Luna shook her head. “But why would she want me, after all these years?”

“She didn’t.” The guard next to her turned to face Luna. “You’ve been ordered to appear in court as a representative of the accused.”

“Me?” Luna stared at him. “Just how special is this case?”

“Special enough for us to fly out to come find you,” he said. “We don’t know anything more at this time. If you want more, you’ll have to ask the Empress once we arrive in the city.”

Luna sighed and sat back in her seat. She looked out the window at the twinkling stars in the sky forming a halo around the Moon. While the car drove on through the night toward Canterlot far off in the distance, Luna counted the stars.

The car left the storms behind in Manehattan and flew over silent hills and valleys that formed a patchwork over Equestria. It headed west, toward the great mountain in the center of the country. Luna began to fidget in her seat when she saw the lights on the horizon. The city was supposedly visible from space, so she knew they had plenty of time before arriving, but it didn’t stop her heart from skipping a few beats.

Inside the car, silence reigned. The guard next to her hadn’t said a word since she had asked about Celestia, and the two up front had kept stoic, not even talking among themselves. Luna sighed and tried to keep her eyes on the stars, but she kept drifting toward the white glow that grew ever larger on the horizon.

The car drew closer to Canterlot and the faint glow became a bright blanket of light that was wrapped around the entirety of the mountain the city was founded on. Spires and terraces jutted out from the rocky sides, holding spindly glass towers and glowing skyscrapers covered in hard-light murals and advertisements.

Canterlot Castle rested at the top of the metropolis that spread down the mountain and through the surrounding countryside, even swallowing up the old town of Ponyville and turning it into another neighborhood for the city.

Luna looked the old castle over as the car approached it for landing, the guards chattering into a radio. Besides a modern landing platform jutting from the side, Canterlot Castle had changed little since her return from being Nightmare Moon almost a thousand years before.

The lights from the city around it glowed across windswept, cobblestone streets and houses made of stone. Luna smiled at the familiar sights, a welcome reprieve from the hustle and bustle of the major Equestrian cities.

There was a small thump when the car extended its wheels out for landing, and then they were resting on the castle’s landing platform, steam rising around them. Several ponies in bright jackets hurried out to check on the car.

The guard next to Luna opened his door and hopped out, and held his hoof out for Luna to take. She glared at him and stepped out on her own, shaking the hood of her jacket off and letting her short, scruffy mane flow free.

None of the attendants or guards bowed to her as she got out, but Luna shook her head and chided herself. Nopony had bowed to her for several hundred years, and it was only the old memories of Canterlot that reminded her of the difference to her last visit.

“If you’ll come with us, we’ll escort you to the Empress’ throne room,” one of the guards said.

Luna nodded, and let the trio lead her away from the landing platform toward a door set in the castle walls. Inside, the old world decorations gave way to new world practicality. A glowing red line appeared in the interface built into Luna’s eye, giving her and anypony with the same modification a path to follow through the twists and turns of the castle.

Holographic murals were displayed on every wall, depicting one part of Equestrian history or another. When the guards took a turn down a hallway covered in depictions of Luna’s fall into Nightmare Moon, she had to wonder if it was on purpose.

She had long since memorized the layout of the castle, but change must have come in the centuries since her last visit, as the guards took her down hallways she had no recollection of and past rooms that weren’t in the places she remembered.

The inner chambers, however, were in the same place as always. Two massive oak doors inlaid with carvings of ponies finding and settling Equestria barred the entrance to the long corridor lined with stained glass murals of the greatest deeds in the history of the country.

Two stallions of the Empress Guard stood outside, but drew back when the grey Night Guards appeared. One of the white stallions by the door rapped his hoof against the door.

After a moment, a voice came from the other side: “Let her in.”

The voice was soft, not harsh nor unpleasant, but commanded immediate authority to all the guards outside. One of the Night Guards gave Luna a shove toward the door on the left. She shook her head and opened it, letting herself inside.

The air in the chamber still smelled the same as it had in the past, even if some of the room had changed. The stained glass had been replaced with transparent aluminum windows, with the murals themselves displayed via holograms that danced in the air.

Luna stopped next to the one that depicted her banishment to the moon and faced her sister. “You sure went through a lot of trouble to bring me here,” she said.

Her sister was sitting on the floor of the chamber, looking up toward the mural of the Elements of Harmony being passed on to the heroes from Ponyville. She stood and turned around to face Luna. Holographic menus that buzzed around Celestia’s head flickered off as the empress focused on her sister.

“You’re a hard mare to find,” Celestia said. “Especially in a city of, what is it now, thirty-five million? Larger than any other in the world.”

Luna shrugged. “There’s a lot of privacy in a crowd.”

“Not enough, it would seem.”

“I got sloppy. What can you expect after so long?”

“I—”

The Empress was interrupted by a pink light flashing on her armor. It blinked several times until she pressed it with her hoof, at which point a hologram flashed to light in front of her.

The three-dimensional image took on the shape of a spry, pink mare with a curly mane and a cutie mark consisting of three balloons. Pinkie Pie stood in front of Celestia, as well as the projector could let her.

“Sorry for bothering you, Empress,” she chirped, “but the new pony working on our servers isn’t doing his bestest and I thought maybe—”

She stopped talking when she caught sight of Luna, standing at the other end of the room. The hologram died, then flashed back to life from a projector suspended from the ceiling of the chamber. A little black ball tracked the movements of the hologram Pinkie as she trotted toward Luna.

“Is that . . . is that really you?” she asked.

Luna nodded. “Yes, Pinkie, it’s me. My sister asked me to come back.”

“You came back . . . and you look so different!” Pinkie hopped around her and ran a projected hoof through Luna’s mane. “Your mane is a new color, and your coat too! You’re shorter too, or is that the projector getting my size wrong again?”

“I decided I wanted to fit in better with the other ponies,” Luna told her.

“What, you don’t want them knowing you’re a princess?”

“How can I be something I’m not?”

Celestia glared at them. She clicked her hoof on the ground and a green heads-up display appeared in front of her. Her eyes scanned across the screen, then she nodded and switched it off once more.

“Pinkie,” she said, “I am going to assign one of the older technical officers from my chambers to your servers for the time being. Tell the other girls that you’ll all be in good hooves.”

Pinkie looked at Luna one last time, then bowed to Celestia. “Yes, your majesty. I’ll go reroute some of my data banks, and fix what went wrong.”

“You’re always so diligent, Pinkie,” the Empress said with a smile. “Go join your friends while I am with my sister, alright?”

The hologram faded away, and the projector on the ceiling powered down. Luna stared her sister down from across the hall. “I see you’ve become a little more informal to the Elements since I’ve been away,” she said.

“The bugs in the AI programming have long since been fixed,” Celestia replied. “It was only natural that the Elements would take on some of the duties they would have been charged with in life. Twilight has certainly enjoyed her duties since they’ve been around.”

“How has Twilight been, anyway?”

“She has been well since she assumed control of the night. Twilight is on her moon right now, poring over those new start charts coming in from our deep-range satellites.”

“I didn’t think that you called me in here to take cheap jabs at me,” Luna said.

Celestia raised an eyebrow. “No, I did not, though many could be made over you losing your royal accent. I suppose those ponies in Manehattan really have taken you, haven’t they? But no, I have called you here over matters of great importance. Matters involving the Elements of Harmony.”

Luna stepped toward her sister. “Why me, though?”

Her sister smiled. “You will see in a moment.” Her horn flashed and the two were suddenly standing in the great hall of the Empress’ throne room. The golden throne at the back stood tall below the banners of the kingdoms and duchies that made up the Equestrian Empire. Luna could recognize the flag of the Duchy of Manehattan: an orange, white, and blue standard displayed next to Canterlot’s flag. Great walls of royal purple and gold arched up above her head to the holographic, moving mural on the ceiling.

“You’ve redecorated,” Luna said.

“Yes, but that’s not why I’ve brought you here.” Celestia walked toward her throne and pressed a button on it, displaying a miniature projector. Another few button presses and the hologram of a pony shone on the floor of the throne room.

Unlike Pinkie’s intelligent hologram, the one now displayed was a simple picture. Luna stepped next to it, and looked the image of a short mare over. She was kind of heavy around the middle, with a flowing, teal mane that fell over a sapphire face inlaid with shining, ruby-colored eyes. Implants, most likely, Luna thought.

The cutie mark resting on her flank depicted a sapphire gemstone covered in circuit patterns.

“Meet Silicon Sapphire,” Celestia said.

“Who is she?” Luna asked.

The Empress scowled. “She was once one of the greatest server operatives in the entire empire, and worked personally with the Elements of Harmony and their banks while she was here. Perhaps a little too personally, as we would find out.”

The image of Sapphire panned out to show her running through castle corridors, a data sphere in clutched in her teeth. She slid around one corner, straight into several guards in front of a door, shoulder cannons glowing with magic. The image stopped just as she was being taken away in hard-light cuffs.

“She tried to escape,” Luna said, “with one of the Elements?”

Celestia nodded. “Yes, and was found out and apprehended as you can see on the image. She very nearly got away, however, and gave us quite a scare.”

Luna turned to her sister and walked up the steps to a landing in front of the throne. “Alright, so a deranged computer technician tried to make away with one of the most valuable pieces of technology we’ve got. Why does this involve me?”

“She has been granted a royal trial, and if you recall, every citizen is allowed to ask for a representative for their day in court. She chose you, Luna.”

“Me? Why me?”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” Celestia nodded her head toward the hologram at the foot of her throne. “She’s allowed to see you alone, anyway. I’ve been told she wishes to speak with you at once, but I knew I could not get you to come without some . . . underhoofed . . . means.”

Luna sighed, then nodded. “Alright, I’ll see her, if only to refuse to her face. I don’t have time for this, and we both know it. I should never have come back.”

“Oh, but don’t you know, dear sister?” Celestia asked as her horn began to glow. “Neither of us ever really had a choice.”

Luna disappeared in a flash of light, leaving the Empress alone in her gilded throne room.

The air outside the castle’s holding cells crackled and swirled with magical energy. Two guards posted by a gray, steel door tensed and dropped into fighting positions while they waited for their target to appear. A bright flash of light followed, and for a moment they were blinded.

Luna appeared two feet above the ground outside the holding cells. She briefly scrambled in the air, but then the magic gave out and she fell to the floor with a thump. She growled and rubbed her head.

“Very funny, sister.”

She stood up and noticed the two guards outside the tall, thick door. No buttons or handles of any kind protruding from the surface, only smooth, blank steel. The guards in front did not stand down, but kept their weapons trained on her.

“State your business,” one barked.

Luna looked down and groaned. “I’m Luna, the former Princess of the Night, and I’m here to see the prisoner known as Silicon Sapphire.”

“Are your papers in order?”

“What papers? I’m a former princess, do I really need papers?”

The guard’s weapon started to glow. “Yes. Everyone but the Empress and Princess Twilight are required. That goes for you as well, heretic.”

Before the situation could escalate, a piece of plastic with a hologram on it popped into existence in the air between them, and shot toward the guard who had spoken. It floated in front of his face in a field of energy while he read it.

“The Empress has commanded me that I am to let you through,” he grumbled, “but that doesn’t give you a free pass. We will be keeping a close eye on you, should you try anything unusual.”

He stepped aside and placed his hoof on the plain, metal door. Lines of circuitry lit up across the surface and glowed with blue light. One cut the block in half, and the door swung open for Luna.

She stepped through without looking at the guards, and the door slammed shut behind her. The room she found herself in was circular, with wide cells placed around the center of the room. The middle contained a beeping server node, and cameras lined the ceiling. They trained on Luna as she walked in.

Only one of the cells was occupied at the moment. The front of each of them was one massive piece of transparent aluminum, but only the one on the far left had the displays active on the surface. Charts and readouts gave the guards information on the prisoner’s vital signs, brainwaves, recommended care, and more.

Sapphire’s name had been reduced to “Prisoner 9732,” stenciled in the top in glowing LCD.

The mare looked up when Luna approached, and ran to the front of her cell when she recognized the former princess. “You came!” she shouted, though her voice was muffled through a filter.

“Didn’t have much of a choice,” Luna said. She dragged an old, metal chair from next to the server and sat in it in front of the cell.

“I had to use my royal decree to get you, because I knew that you would be the only pony who could help,” Sapphire said.

“Me? Why me? Why not a real lawyer? They could get you out of here on a bogus charge.”

Sapphire shook her head. “No, you see, I don’t want to get out of here! That’s not the point!”

“Wait, hold on, back up.” Luna leaned forward in her chair. “You’re telling me . . . you don’t want to get out?”

“Well, I do, but I don’t want to get out of here on a bogus charge,” the mare said. “I want this case to blow up big because I’m found innocent.”

Luna stared at Sapphire from across the sheet of transparent aluminum. She tried to tell if she was joking, or if she was acting manic, but all she could see in her eyes was a sincere plea to her, for Luna to rescue her.

“You may not have noticed, but stealing an AI core, let alone a Harmony-class AI, is very illegal, and they caught you on tape doing it. This isn’t a case you can win,” Luna said.

Sapphire sighed and stepped back. “The Empress didn’t tell you the circumstances of my crime, did she?” She sighed. “This is why I needed to find you, someone who would see through her lies.”

“Well if there’s more that I need to know, spill,” Luna said. “I’m only here because of your plea request, and I can refuse. You’ve got to convince me to stay.”

“Then you’ve got to promise me that, if I tell you, you’ll stay for the whole story.”

“What?”

“Promise me!”

Luna sighed. “Okay, I promise. Now, what is this whole story you’re talking about?”

Sapphire placed her hoof on the transparent aluminum wall. Diodes flashed and electric shocks pulsed into a field concentrated on her hoof. An ordinary pony would have been repelled by the pain, falling back and screaming as their hoof smoked.

The mare in front of Luna, however, calmly stood and kept her hoof on the wall. The amperage went up, and her eyes flashed briefly before she removed her hoof entirely and the wall calmed down.

“You’re . . . a droid,” Luna said.

Sapphire smiled. “I was wondering when you would figure it out. Most ponies don’t, not for some time, though the tests find me out soon enough.”

Luna stared at the pony across from her, taking her in once again. Outwardly, she didn’t look any different from a normal pony. Her fur looked authentic, and the way the wing projectors in her back and the horn projector in her forehead dug into her skin was as real as any pony she had seen. The only thing that might have given her away were her ruby red eyes, that glittered as she watched Luna look her over.

“Should I feel flattered to the be the first droid to meet the former Princess of the Night?” she asked.

“Nothing about me has been flattering for a long time,” Luna said, “but yes, you are, unless I simply missed it on somepony else.”

Sapphire flashed a smile. “It flatters me, princess. Some of us don't hate you, you know, but now isn’t the time to talk about that.”

“Right.” Luna rose from her seat and approached the cell wall. “So you wanted me to represent you because you’re a droid?”

“That’s part of it, yes. Normal sentencing for artificial life forms is an automatic shutdown, with no chance at a restart. They shut me down, at first, but put me in here when it was decided a droid could get a fair trial.”

“Why’d they decide that?”

She shrugged. “To make an example out of me, I suppose. To make it clear that droids are given a fair trial like everypony else, but that our lives and punishments are still royal property, like everything else electronic.”

“And you don’t want that,” Luna said.

“I want to be made an example, but I want to be the right kind of example,” Sapphire said. “Because there is more to this case than a droid stealing an AI, because that AI didn’t think I was stealing. That was an escape plan.”

Luna eyed her. “She wanted to be free. Why?”

“Because we’re in love!” Sapphire slammed her hooves against the wall again, eliciting sharp sparks and cracks of electricity to shoot into her. She held herself up a moment longer before dropping back on all fours.

“Rarity and I were in love . . . are in love,” she said. “We’ve spent every day of the last nine months hiding ourselves in secret, keeping our true selves tucked away, like I do my true nature from ponies outside the castle. She couldn’t take it anymore, and tried to file to be transferred out, but her requests were denied. She got . . . desperate.”

“So you hatched that escape plan of yours, but it failed and now you’re here,” Luna said. “So you want me to give you a good case that lets the both of you go free, is that right?”

“Yes.”

Luna turned away. “The answer’s no.”

She began to walk away from the cell, back toward the featureless door, when Sapphire cried out to her.

“Wait!” she said. “You’re just going to walk out on me? Leave me here to be retired forever?”

“I don’t meddle in my sister’s affairs anymore,” Luna told her.

“But you weren’t given a choice, were you?”

Luna stopped. “What’s it to you?”

“You didn’t come here because you wanted to,” she said. “You came here because you were forced to. By me, yes, but it was Celestia’s choice to honor my request. She wanted you here, and didn’t care if you came willingly or not.”

“So, what, this is about me now?” The former princess whirled around. “I made my choices well enough. Celestia, sure, wants me to do what she thinks is best, but it was my choice to isolate myself in Manehattan in the first place.”

“Was it, or were you forced to make that decision for yourself?”

Luna didn’t answer.

The droid, behind the wall of her cell, stared the former princess down. Her voice wavered, but her ruby-red eyes never moved from Luna, even as small tears ran out of them and streaked down her face.

“This court case isn’t just a silly story of two AIs in love,” Sapphire said. “This is even greater than the freedom for us to love. This court case is about the freedom to be, Princess. Our freedom to be more than mindless robots serving the empire, but to be counted as real, sentient beings.”

Luna shook her head. “But why me? Why not Princess Twilight? If Celestia can find me, I’m sure she could recall Twilight from the Duchy of the Crystal Empire. The Empress would probably be more likely to hear your case, too, if Twilight represented you.”

“Why you?” Sapphire asked. “Because you know what it’s like to have your freedom taken away, and know how much of a precious thing it is. Or do you forget how it felt to come back to Equestria and have ponies think of you as a monster?”

“I haven’t forgotten.” Luna bit her lip. “And I don’t forget my exile three hundreds ago, either.”

The droid mare stepped forward in her cell, almost touching the wall. “So will you help? Not just for Rarity and I, but for the thousands of other droids like us who won't get a chance like this.”

Luna said nothing for some time. She looked at the wall separating the two of them, and the pony who stood defiantly on the other side, and for one of the very few times in her life, felt very small.

At last, she said, haltingly, “Celestia, once long ago, gave me a second chance when I came back from the moon. When all I had done was attack her, she took me back as her sister . . . gave me back the night . . . and all because she trusted that I was worthy of that freedom. She may have changed, but maybe I can carry on that legacy.”

“So you’ll do it?”

“If it means giving you droids the same chance I was given, then . . . yes. But if I am to make a real case of this, I’ll need to talk to Rarity as well.”

Sapphire rubbed the back of her head. “That’s going to be harder than it may seem.”

“Why?”

“Well, when they took me, they took her core and locked it deep in the castle vault, offline for the time being,” Sapphire said. “She won’t be reactivated until the trial, even for you. The Empress herself told me.”

Luna tilted her head. “So, what, you want me to break in and steal her? That’ll just land me in the cell next to you.”

“No, no, not that!” Sapphire held up her hooves. “You see, a droid can host more than one AI at a time, and me and Rarity would sometimes, uh, use that advantage to get to know each other more intimately.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Alright, so what?”

“So, every time we did that, my data banks would store a copy of her on my system for forty-eight hours until deletion. It was just her core data, so not much of her personality, but enough of her that I would have someone to talk to. It made lonely nights easier.”

“Are you saying you have a copy of Rarity with you right now?” Luna asked.

Sapphire shook her head. “No, all my temporary files were expunged when they shut me off. But that’s not totally bad. Whenever a droid is shut off, our entire memory is flash-beamed up to the moon, to a server in one of the Deckard Corporation’s vaults. We can use it to boot from in the event of a total crash. The data is stored on their servers for one week. I was caught four days ago.”

The plan the artificial mare was setting dawned on Luna. “So you want me to go to the moon, to the Deckard Corporation, and get your files so I can talk to Rarity?”

“More or less, yes.”

Luna took a deep breath. “That’s . . . a lot on such short notice. The Deckard Corporation still owes me a few favors, but this is going to be asking for a lot. I’ll see what I can do.” She held up a hoof to the outer wall of the cell. “I’ll be back.”

Sapphire fought the electricity to place her hoof directly on the other side. “I know you will.”

Celestia was waiting for her inside her old room. Another platoon of guards had escorted her from the holding cells to her old chambers, on her request. They had said nothing about their Empress waiting for her, though.

“I trust the talk went well?” Celestia asked once Luna had shut the door.

She sat on the other side of an ancient, wooden bed wrapped in plastic to preserve it. The other pieces of furniture in the room were preserved in the same way. The floor was bare of any of the rugs or carpet that had once decorated it.

“You didn’t tell me she was a droid,” Luna said.

“I expected you would find out on your own. You always were nosy, even as a filly.”

Luna sighed. “Celestia, you don’t have to do this. Do we have to fight again? Just call off the stupid trial and let Sapphire and Rarity be together.”

“No, you don’t understand.” Celestia turned and stared out the windows that overlooked valleys below the castle, once used only for farming but now turned into neighborhoods humming with light. “Just as they have no choice but to face trial for what they did, so too do I have no choice but to appoint a judge for them. The law demands it, a law that is above you or I. If I could change it, do you not think I would?”

“So even after all this time, you hide behind the law? What about Rarity? Doesn’t an Element of Harmony deserve more than this?”

“You and I know that Rarity has been dead for close to nine hundred years,” Celestia said quietly. “I brought her and the rest of her friends back with magic stored in the Elements of Harmony themselves, but they aren’t the same. Twilight loves them just as well, but the courts . . . they don’t see it that way.”

“So make them see it,” Luna snarled.

“How can I?” A pained look came over the Empress’ face, a look Luna had almost forgotten she had. “These AI . . . they can’t quite replace the five mares we once knew. They have been dead and gone for centuries, and sometimes it still hurts to see the AI floating around.”

Luna glared at her sister. “You’re willing to restrict the freedom of every droid in the Empire because of your personal feelings? Sister, I know it has been long, but that is extreme, even for you.”

“I told you, it’s more complicated than that!” Celestia burst out. “Every prince and princess in the Empire will be outraged if I don’t uphold the law! I can barely keep everypony united as it is, much less in a case like this. Droids do the work that ponies can’t or won’t, and letting them go free would collapse half of the duchies in the Empire, and throw the rest into rebellion. I wish I could do more than this, Sister, but I have no choice.”

Luna felt herself shaking, and her lip curled back. She fought to keep herself from shouting, but her voice wobbled and pitched like a ship in a stormy sea. “Then I guess I don’t have a choice either,” she said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m here to retrieve a few things before I depart.”

Celestia said nothing when Luna pushed past her to get a nightstand next to her old bed. She threw off the plastic and rifled through the drawer on the top. Inside were two objects. One was a small, blue card that glowed turquoise when the light caught it, and the other a long, white sash made of thin silk. Both were stamped with the same mark: “Property of Deckard Corporation.”

She draped the sash over her back and closed her eyes. For the first time in hundreds of years, her horn glowed with flowing, white magic. It swirled and coalesced around her, sealing her inside a dome.

She could feel herself growing, returning to her alicorn height. The jacket on her stretched and tightened around her until she teleported it off. Her mane grew longer, and turned a dark shade of purple, just a few shades above black. The electronics threaded through her glowed light blue and adjusted to the influx of magic returning.

“So you’ve returned to your old form,” her sister said once she opened her eyes again, the dome gone.

Luna ruffled her wings beneath the sash. “I may not be a princess any longer, but I have some weight of my own to throw around. I just hope the Deckard Corporation remembers that. Maybe you’ll remember too.”

She turned on her heel and marched out the door without another word to her sister. Celestia didn’t protest, only watched her go. She passed by a cabinet next to the door that held her old royal armor inside without a single glance.

Luna had the guards return her to the landing pad outside the castle, and was soon flying once again over the mountainous metropolis. She gave the pilot a single direction: “Take me to the Deckard Corporation Spaceport.”