Harmony Defended

by Starscribe

First published 14th of June, 2014

When Equestria is threatened with an invasion of all its greatest enemies, Celestia and Luna are forced to turn to the only ally with a chance of helping them: Humans. The only question left now is whether any of Equestria will be left to save.

It's been a handful of years since Twilight came into her own as a Princess of Equestria, a few years spent in peace and harmony without so much as an angry spirit or clandestine invasion to take away from the tranquility of Equestrian life. Unprecedented developments in the technological and thaumaturgical sciences seem to be preparation for something, though nopony realizes what that something might be.

Nopony except the Princesses, who have not failed to see the signs of impending disaster that began with the mass kidnappings just following the Summer Sun Celebration. When all their preparations are turned upside down, can an alliance with the mysterious Precursors turn the tides of the most devastating war in Equestrian history, while there is still anything left to save? Enemies and allies appear in the most unlikely of places, and friendship with a dying elder race can be more dangerous than an invasion of Dragons and Changelings. What is a pony willing to give in defense of harmony? What are they willing to sacrifice?

---

This story now has a companion piece, The Sunset Campaign! This story is designed to bring Harmony Defended more into line with the three-story version of My Little Apprentice. If you read Apogee and Perihelion, you may want to read that as well!

This story was written prior to season five, and as such any events which transpire therein may or may not be treated as canonical. All events up to and including "Twilight's Kingdom" are treated as having occurred, however.

A huge thanks to my Alpha Readers! Thanks to these wonderful people, new chapters aren't nearly so riddled with mistakes and errors as they used to be. Thanks to Sparktail, TwoBit, Withered Pyre, and Zutcha. Zutcha of course deserves double the love, since he's also the artist of the cover and any other fantastic art that finds its way into the story.

Prologue: Drums

These are alien beings, what is the biological imperative in helping them? If survival is the continuation of genetic material and resources are limited, then their extinction might also complete our objective.

If we were competing genetic machines I suppose that would make sense. But we are not machines, and these are not aliens. We are all pilgrims, traveling together to the altar of intelligence.
-Operational Log, Equestrian Intervention

Twilight Sparkle was scared. No matter how she considered the possibilities in her head, no matter how much she tried to twist them into something more favorable, there was simply no configuration of possibility that would translate this situation into good news.

First, an urgent summons from Princess Luna during the day. It took something big to take the Princess of the Night away from her sleep. Usually, only imminent danger to Equestria was sufficient. Second, the location of the summons. Luna had summoned her to a meeting not in Canterlot, but at the Gates of Tartarus. Third, and most frightening of all, Luna had not sent a message or a letter but arrived in the flesh, and refused to speak of the matter until they were in the air and flying toward their destination.

Once in the air, Twilight and Luna joined formation with an entire platoon of pegasus guards, three dozen heavily armed and armored ponies resplendent in glittering bronze. Of course Twilight knew full well the armor was not actually made from bronze anymore, even if the design was made to carefully approximate the old ceremonial wear the Solar Guard had worn in more peaceful times.

This innovation was not at the foremost of Twilight's concern, even if its source did give her a little twinge of pride. "Luna," She said, glancing around them in the tight protection of the pegasi. The soldiers flew above and beside and below, giving them protection from every angle and sight of every possible angle of attack. The formation was not quite as extreme as a Sovereign-class warship and several smaller destroyers, but it was still more of Equestria's military than Twilight had seen in one place since the siege of the Changeling stronghold a little less than a decade ago. Back then, Celestia and Luna both had boarded the greatest of Equestria's warships and sailed to reclaim a number of ponies that had been kidnapped during a well-coordinated Changeling incursion.

Twilight's only source of comfort was that Celestia had not accompanied them. "Why are we flying to the gates of Tartarus with so many soldiers?"

Luna seemed hesitant to speak, almost as if she thought explaining the situation might make it more real. The Princess of the Night had changed almost not at all since the day of her return, save for a greater mastery of modern Equestrian common speech. "Are you aware of the security in place at the gate?"

"Cerberus." She answered, almost reflexively. "He's always been there, and nopony knows where he came from. And since he wandered away from the gate last time, there's a little guard station there too, to warn us if he ever leaves his post again."

Luna nodded. "Your information is accurate in all but one regard, Twilight Sparkle. The garrison there, a pair of ponies from both the Solar and Lunar guard, have the capacity to sound a variety of alarms should the situation require it." There was a little pop of magic, and Luna passed Twilight a tightly rolled scroll. There had been a time where the concentration required for Twilight to fly at a pace with pegasi of the Solar Guard and do magic at the same time had been a serious strain. Even if flying was still far from her strong suit, she had overcome that particular disadvantage and was able to fight against the wind resistance and hold the scroll at the same time.

There was not much to read. The writing was stamped in deep red ink, and read simply:

There were several places on the form for various bits of information such as the nature of those that had escaped, how they had escaped, and their apparent destination. These were all blank, save for a few drops of what looked suspiciously like blood splattered on a blank section of the scroll. With a shiver Twilight returned the scroll to Luna, and watched as Luna vanished it away in another little burst of magic. "So we replied and there was no response." Twilight guessed.

"And the possible repercussions are dire indeed," Luna said, visibly shivering as they flew. Considering it was nearly summer outside, the Princess clearly wasn't cold. "It would be nearly impossible to free the greater monsters imprisoned there, if my understanding is correct. Many of the realm's lesser creatures would be formidable adversaries even on their own. You still remember Tirek."

Twilight did. Equestria had been in more danger than during any of her previous adventures, threatened with near absolute destruction in a short few days. Had it not been for a blast of last-second inspiration, there might be a crater here now instead of a nation.

Was Luna saying Tirek was one of the lesser creatures imprisoned in abyssal Tartarus? Twilight had time for a shiver of her own, and this brought a nod to her companion. "You understand now. Our party is not meant to confront whatever has escaped, only to obtain information." She lowered her voice, so quiet it was difficult to hear over the rush of noise that came from flight. "We fly with an entire platoon to ensure at least one of us survive to bring needed information back to Canterlot."

"Oh." Was all Twilight could say in response, her heart nearly freezing in her chest. Luna did not have her elder sister's sense of humor. She hadn't been joking, or exaggerating, and that meant there was a very real possibility Twilight would never return to Ponyville, never see her friends again. It was enough to make her droop in flight a little. "Is that why you didn't give me a chance to get better prepared?"

Luna nodded. "Tartarus is the prison of many of the foulest beings from ages long forgotten. Many are all but invulnerable unless their specific weaknesses are brought against them. Should such a monster be waiting for us, I do not think your apprentice's most dangerous toys would be potent enough even to serve as distractions."

They were getting close already. A journey that might have taken Twilight a full day on her own hooves took far less than that at the speed of brisk flight. She suspected the brisk wind at their backs hadn't been scheduled either, though it did not surprise her. "What do you know about Tartarus, Princess Luna?" She asked, her voice urgent. "Information is always our most important weapon, but I think that's doubly true here. I've read several books on mythology that mentioned it, and Starswirl had a few pages about it in 'Advanced Planar Summoning'. Most of that was just warnings of danger."

Twilight could see smoke rising from the horizon, and the shapes of hills and streams below were vaguely familiar to her eyes. They had perhaps a few minutes left to talk before they arrived.

"I know more of it than any other living pony." Luna began, speaking in a lower rushed voice just as Twilight had. "Though I know almost nothing. The gates were there before Equestria was established, when the tribes warred and harmony was only a distant dream. I cannot tell you what race worked its powerful spells or how. I can tell you it is what you might term a pocket-reality, as might be wrought by Alicorn-level magic on a scale far vaster than even you could have attempted when wielding the power of all of Equestria's Alicorns. So far as I know, it has no boundaries or limits. Its layers stretch downward forever, and at each more fearsome creatures are contained."

"Its upper layer is called Erebus, a single cell containing all the lesser monsters ever cast within the gates. The beings there would be most familiar to you. Powerful sorcerers of centuries past, and the foul creatures they spawned or summoned to the world. Monsters of the Everfree that attacked and killed ponies. Unrepentant criminals of the most despicable cast."

This revelation made Twilight choke, drooping momentarily in her flight as the weight of it hit her. "There are ponies down there?" She asked, horrified.

Luna's face was suddenly hard. "In name only, Twilight Sparkle," She said, voice suddenly cold. "Our language no longer has words adequate to describe the evil that once was. You are a product of your time, a time of harmony and peace. When Celestia and I were young, there were ponies capable of evil you could not picture in your darkest nightmares."

"Some of the greater monsters of my knowledge dwell below Erebus, in isolation and cold. Tirek was one such being, and there are many others." She paused for a deep breath before finishing. "I have never traveled further, nor am I aware of anypony who has and returned. Considering the difference in power between those imprisoned in the first layer and those in the second, I shudder to think of the creatures that might have been imprisoned there. Horrors of the ancient world perhaps, fallen gods and titans of destruction. It is fortunate that such fiends are unlikely to escape."

Twilight Sparkle wanted to do what she always would and ask how Luna knew what she was being told. How could she be so sure that the really dangerous monsters wouldn't be able to escape? But there was no time to ask that question, since they had clearly arrived. Beneath them was the base of a barren mountain, clear of all but the most skeletal vegetation. Nothing moved around its base for hundreds of meters and nothing would grow, the ground all but blackened by the constant flow of negative energy out from within the prison.

From the air Twilight could make out two important details. First, the barracks evidently built by the Guard was ablaze, walls and ceiling collapsed. Second, the massive hound that rested before the gates was surrounded by powerful magic, the ground burned with intricate runic marks. Even as they watched the massive beast strained against the spell that contained it, slamming itself against an invisible barrier with fierce snarls and barks.

"Do you sense anything living beneath us, Twilight Sparkle?" Luna asked, sounding as though she already knew the answer.

"Nothing but Cerberus." She replied, though she did not abandon the use of her eyes. After all, there were ways to hide from magical senses, even those of an alicorn. There were forms of life that simply failed to register at all, for whatever reason. They were fortunate that it was still so bright, and that the area around the gates was clear of trees and other obstructions. Save for perhaps within the gates itself there was no place for a possible ambush to be hiding. Should an army of monsters be waiting just within the shadows of the trees, their party would still have plenty of time to take to the sky. It looked as though whatever had escaped had tried to put as much distance between it and the gates as possible. It made sense; it was what she would've done after escaping a horrible prison.

"I feel the same." Luna echoed, then gestured with her wings. The gesture was all their escorts needed, splitting off into two formations. The first formation closed around the two of them as the second flew down toward the ground, passing low over the scene a few times before landing and spreading out to check everything for danger. It wasn't just physical traps they knew to look for either. They might be pegasi, but several would carry magical tools which could detect active or dormant spells. Granted those tools were probably a little overwhelmed by the presence of a magical circle powerful enough to contain a mythical beast. Still, Twilight Sparkle did not worry. The Solar Guard were professionals, and these days their training was more rigorous than ever.

One of the ponies on the ground beneath them whistled loudly, and one of the pegasi closest to Luna turned to her and said: "It's clear."

Luna nodded and beckoned, and Twilight followed her to the surface. She kept her senses alert every moment, fearing an ambush. But none came, and her hooves found rocky soil without danger or incident. Now that she was standing beside instead of looking down on it, she was struck with how massive the gates to Tartarus actually were. A stone archway of elegant Corinthian columns had been carved into the solid granite, and it was easily large enough to fit her old library inside it twice over. A gate of thick metal bars with the appearance of tarnished steel had been swung outward and left that way, easily wide enough to permit a dozen ponies walking abreast to exit.

Cerberus looked exactly the same as Twilight remembered him, with one caveat. Last time he hadn't been livid with anger. It was a terrifying sight even for an Alicorn, those three snapping jaws, each lined with teeth as long as one of her legs and wicked sharp. Saliva dripped in thick rivulets, and through it Twilight could see something else. Burns. Cerberus had been burned, parts of his coat blackened and charred. Yet the wounds were apparently healing, with such speed she could practically see the dark brown taking the place of black in a slow wave. At this rate, she imagined little but a blackened husk must have been left after whatever assault had taken place here. Even death could not discourage the guardian of the underworld.

Luna approached the beast, looking calm despite its obvious fury. None of the guards dared follow her, and even Twilight kept her distance. She watched and listened, as Luna appeared to be speaking with the creature. Her words, spoken in some arcane tongue even Twilight did not know, soothed the monster’s struggles. All three of its heads turned on Luna, and it replied in the same strange tongue. The heads did not quite speak in unison, and Twilight could not be sure what frightened her more: the strange chorus of voices, or seeing it talking to Princess Luna as though conversation with mythical beasts was the most natural thing in the world. Princess of Magic or not, Twilight did not yet have Luna's millennia of experience and knowledge, and this was a frightening reminder of that reality.

After a time Luna seemed to conclude her conversation, and she reached out with a hoof to break the magic circle that contained Cerberus. Even if none of the runes were familiar to Twilight at least she could understand a spell when she saw it. Whatever power it was meant to direct, no magic circle could contain anything should it be broken from the outside. As Luna brought her hoof down on the diagram there was a brief flash of light, and the symbols abruptly lost their power. Cerberus shot like a bullet from a gun, ignoring them and the guards and returning to the gates. It pulled the massive metal gates one at a time with its teeth, closing each with a loud metallic clang and vanishing into the darkness of the archway.

"What did he say?" Twilight asked, relieved to see the unearthly gates secured again. She would have liked to see the guardian at their side capturing whatever had escaped, but knew that was impossible. If he came with them, who was to prevent further escapes?

"Nothing good." Luna replied, turning her attention on the burned guardhouse and setting a slow pace toward it. Even though they both sensed nothing living in the ruin, even though it seemed clear the guards left behind had been slain, Twilight followed anyway. It was their duty to confirm the fate of the brave ponies who had apparently given their lives in the defense of Equestria. "A rebellion of a large number of prisoners from Erebus. A futile gesture in most circumstances, but not when the gate is opened from the outside. The guardian was unable to fight foes on both sides of the gate at once, and he fell in battle."

Twilight gulped. She already knew the answer to the question. With the level of magic she had seen demonstrated and the way everything had been burned, it did not seem like there could be any doubt as to the response. It also might explain why none of the escaped prisoners were here, if they had been able to fly away. "Who helped on the outside?" She asked, dreading what Luna would say.

It was exactly what she expected. "Dragons."

“So tell me about this friend you’re taking me to meet.” Pipsqueak asked, trying to hide the smallest hint of nervousness from his voice. It was a futile gesture, however. Even if Second Chance hadn’t been able to hear it through his accent, the slight elevation of his heart-rate and body temperature made it impossible for her to miss.

You’re cruel for leading him on this way. Came the words in her mind, over the local network. The sturdy crystal of Twilight’s castle did little to interfere with the mesh network that centered on their present destination. There was nothing special about the pony receiving the transmission, except perhaps that her entire body had been colonized by microscopic machines centered on her brain. This provided her with many new senses, though the most useful of these was being able to communicate with machines wirelessly.

Second Chance was a fairly normal young unicorn mare, which was why this relationship with Pip Squeak made her feel so lucky. She was taller than she had been as a filly, with a grass-green coat and a mane like summer sunlight. Her eyes were gray, which sometimes made her a little uncomfortable in a world with such impossible hues. Of course the strangest part of her was her cutie mark, like a miniature caricature of her beloved Earth. She had not seen her home in what felt like many years, yet her cutie mark ensured she would never entirely forget.

If he can’t handle you, how is he going to take the news that I’m from another universe? She retorted with just the tiniest fraction of her concentration. She walked too close to him, too slowly, and thought about things that would’ve made her younger self either recoil in revulsion or blush bright crimson. “Well, he’s smart.” She began, head resting briefly on his shoulder. Even so she had to lead them through the little castle and she knew it. Her laboratory was strictly guarded and strictly secret, its doors hidden in the crystal of ordinary wall and responsive only to electronic keys. “Well read. Helpful.”

“And he won’t let us date without meeting me,” Pipsqueak said, a little glum. “Parents.”

Not cruel to him. Replied the voice, somewhere between bitterness and amusement. To me. Making me the villain.

Chance ignored the voice, finding it difficult to split her attention between her hardware and wetware when hormones were governing so much of her thoughts. “Not exactly.” Chance corrected, directing them to walk straight toward what was apparently a blank wall. Pip Squeak followed her lead, though his confusion seemed to grow with every clop of his hooves. “Just a friend of mine.”

“If he’s not your father, and he’s so smart and helpful, why did you say yes to me?” Pipsqueak asked, meeting her eyes for a second. This colt had changed quite a bit over the last several years. No longer a fearful little foal, his eyes were bright and intelligent and shone with desire.

Maybe Truth was right, and she was being cruel. Chance had to admit the idea of the next few minutes brought her great satisfaction. Yes, Pipsqueak was bigger than she was, stronger, better coordinated. He knew how infatuated she was. It gave Chance enormous satisfaction to know what was about to happen to Pipsqueak’s worldview. “I’m going to tear the scales from your eyes.” She muttered, with the same voice she might have with something teasing and romantic. Then she broke from his powerful eyes, directing her attention on the blank wall.

Though her horn remained determinedly unlit, it seemed as though she had suddenly called upon powerful magic. “Request lab access.” She told the wall, in what was nearly a shout.

“Unidentified equestrian individual detected.” Replied the wall, in a flat synthesized voice.

“Security override.” She told it. “Create a user file for the unidentified pony. Name: Pip Squeak. Guest access.”

Her coltfriend just stared, his eyes as wide as teacups as the wall retracted mechanically into the floor. Beyond was a small room, perhaps four feet wide and twice that long, with wires and flat electronics set into everything. Scanning equipment, though he had no way of knowing that.

“Last chance to run away.” Chance walked calmly into the room, then glanced back at Pip Squeak over her shoulder. There was something seductive about the gesture, or at least that was what her instincts told her. Besides, she hadn’t said yes just because Pip Squeak was a stallion and she was a mare. He was an explorer, braver than most ponies she knew. He looked nervous, but he did follow her.

“Not likely.” He replied, though now he seemed able to look at things other than her. He stared at the machines as though they were artifacts from one of the ancient ruins he explored. If his reaction was anything like those of the other native Equestrians she had seen, she couldn’t wait to see what he thought of her lab. “Did you make this?”

The question impressed her, and Chance was forced to shake her head. “I didn’t invent any of it if that’s what you mean. I just installed it.” The door abruptly shut behind them, and removed all but the faint light that streamed through the crystal. It did not remain dark for long though, as sensors whirred to life one by one. There would be no covert infiltrations into her laboratory, and should the slightest discrepancy be detected the room could be flooded with a sleeping agent and the interlopers kept safely until soldiers could arrive to take them into custody.

But as she had known, the sensors would not detect any discrepancies, and lights that were red went green one by one. Only when the walls were filled with little green lights could the door on the other side of the room begin to retract into the ceiling.

Chance’s laboratory, the center for Equestrian technological development, was a round room perhaps fifty meters across with a fairly high ceiling. It had only one window, made of thick security glass instead of crystal and shutters that were never opened. Of course there was much to see. Along the many desks and tables were many unfinished projects, attempts to adapt human technology into forms ponies could mass produce. Those machines might look strange, but at least they would be familiar to her guest.

For every piece of clearly Equestrian technology there were several objects of clearly non-native construction, smooth plastic and metal objects of impossibly fine craftsmanship. Many were built right into the furniture; inlaid holographic terminals or laboratory equipment with no equestrian analogue at all.

The greatest of all the machines stood against one of the walls. It was a cube of metal several meters across and taller than either of them. Its surface was a bright silvery metal, broken at many places with deep grooves which glowed faintly blue. It was an OMICRON Core, one of the single greatest pieces of technology mankind had ever developed.

“Pip Squeak, this is Truth.” Chance did not freeze in the doorway as he did, but continued until she stood just a short distance away from the cube. “It’s okay to freak out. Way older ponies than you did when I took them here.”

To his great credit, her coltfriend did not freak out, at least outwardly. He advanced slowly down the stairs and into the room, eyes scanning the many strange-looking machines and mouth hanging open. It took him a full minute to collect himself enough to speak, and when he did it was hushed. His hooves fell lightly on the crystal and his motion was gentle, as though he were afraid that this was indeed some old ruin and one false step might unleash a devastating cave-in or some dangerous trap.

“Your friend is in a box?” Pip Squeak asked, looking between her and the cube resting on its pedestal. It was not a look of doubt exactly, more like a pony who knew this was a prank and was waiting for the moment where Chance would tell him so. He would be waiting a long time.

“After a manner of speaking.” The cube responded to his voice, burning bright enough to light the room and flickering a little to the sound of the voice that came from within. “I am an Artificial General Intelligence. Local designation: Truth. Who are you?”

I’ve been talking about him for weeks. Chance transmitted, rolling her eyes. As if you don’t know who he is.

It’s polite to ask. Retorted Truth in her mind, who unlike her had no problem whatever multitasking. It was a good thing he didn’t, considering the fantastic workloads he frequently had to carry.

Chance went to stand beside Pip Squeak, reassuring him with a gentle touch to his side. He seemed very grateful for her contact, returning the gesture even though he did not take his eyes from the cube. “I’m Pip Squeak,” He said. Though his voice was a little higher than usual, he managed to say it without quavering. “Explorer.” A trace of a proud smile returned.

“You are like user Apple Bloom,” Said the cube. “Native species: Earth Pony. Superior strength and endurance to other breeds.”

“Yeah?” Pip Squeak tilted his head slightly to one side. Second Chance hardly blamed him. After all, artificial intelligences had some funny ways of looking at logic.

“User Chance indicated the formation of a non-platonic relationship between the two of you. I wish to extract confirmation that she will not be in danger. The success of mission-critical objectives depends on organic-synthetic cooperation that cannot be achieved in her absence.”

She couldn’t help it, she had to look away so Pip Squeak wouldn’t see her grinning. There had been no father to give this talk to her human boyfriends back on Luna-7, and the OMICRON Core had stood in for one back then too. Only that time, she had actually hated the threats it made on her behalf. Now, hearing them from the speakers of a much younger and far less experienced Core, she could barely restrain her giggles. Truth was being purposefully obtuse, and it amused her even more.

Pip Squeak might not fully understand that he was being tested, but he was passing. Instead of react in confusion, he parsed what Truth had said and put a gentle leg over her shoulder, almost protectively. “She’ll be safe.” He insisted, gesturing around them. “If she can handle all of this, she can handle me.” He turned back to her, whispering into one of her ears. “Is this real? Scootaloo isn’t in that box, is she?”

“I’m afraid not.” Chance separated herself from him, turning to stand between the earth pony and the massive OMICRON Core. “Truth is a construct, like a magic artifact from long ago. He has been helping us adapt technology to Equestria over the last several years. Most of the changes you’ve seen over the last several years started in this room.”

“You mean Sweetie Belle was telling the truth that you four actually work for the princesses? I thought it was some sort of prank.” He looked a little doubtful, as though he wasn’t yet sure it all wasn’t a prank after all. But she didn’t really have to convince him, not all at once. She just had to make sure he could handle the knowledge. She wasn’t surprised to see that he could.

“Build, deliver, and install valuable technology.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Are you satisfied with him, Truth?”

“For the moment.” Truth switched seamlessly to English for the latter half of his statement. Though his voice lacked emotion, Chance could practically feel his cynicism dripping from the words. “Should I include the rest of your night’s activities in my official report? I could include a sensory dump from your Neuroboost implants in my next transmission. Imagine what could be learned about the Equestrian reproductive cycle.”

Chance returned the expression with a brief curse, also in English. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say it was her best imitation of English using a mouth never designed to speak it. Not that she took the threat very seriously. In some ways Truth had a distinct human sense of humor, and that included teasing her often. “I don’t send home videos of your dates to your boss,” She said, tone venomous. “Besides, I’m not that easy. It wouldn’t be worth watching.”

“Was that… High Precursor?” Pip Squeak asked, looking between Chance and the cube. Doubt seemed to be fading, replaced with awe as the weight of everything around him sunk in. She wasn’t just getting through to him, but hinting at secrets that only her closest friends here in Equestria knew.

Chance was not in the mood to correct him, though she was honestly impressed. “I knew some ruins used it, but I never expected you to recognize the spoken form.” But then, Pip Squeak wouldn’t have been interesting to her if he wasn’t smart. “I’m not the only one who can. Applebloom learned to read some technical stuff, and Twilight Sparkle is almost fluent.”

“From Truth…” He muttered to himself, impressed. “You know the Jebr Stone is a really important artifact! I assumed it was still in storage, but it’s up here making Precursor artifacts and teaching their language…” His face brightened, and he looked around the room again. “I’ve been a part of this, without even knowing?” Then a tiny frown crossed his lips. There had been a time where Chance had struggled reading pony emotions, not so much because they were different as because ponies expressed them differently. But those days were over now, and she could see the pain her coltfriend was suddenly feeling.

Forget Truth’s almost mocking threats, nearly every native Chance had met was weak and vulnerable by human emotional standards. “You knew I studied ruins, that was why I came with you four all over Equestria! You could have told me!”

The green unicorn closed the distance, meeting his eyes with confidence. She found that few could maintain contact like that for long, and that doing so expressed a sincerity no words could. “Sorry, Pip Squeak. We had to be sure we could trust you.” She gestured around them, without breaking eye contact. “I trust you now.”

Worry gripped her heart, like the talons of a bird threatening to squeeze. She had hoped that all the work he did around dangerous places would help him handle difficult information. But if he couldn’t handle the knowledge that she had powerful Precursor artifacts, what would he say when she told him she was one.

The fear did not last long. “Alright,” He said, resting his head briefly on her shoulder. It took time to get used to how often ponies had to use their necks to show emotion, but Chance had years and recognized the gesture for what it was. “But you have to teach me. If I could read High Precursor, I could understand some of the most mysterious places in the world!”

“Sure,” Chance said, practically whispering. “I’ll teach you.” She pulled away, walking slowly for the door. “But not tonight. You promised me a date, Pip. It better be good.”

The colt had to hurry to catch up but hurry he did, only slowing when they were side-by-side. “Nothing as exciting as this,” He said, with a demonstrative flick of his tail. “But I think we can figure out ways to make it interesting, eh?” He did something that make Chance blush, before shoving him against the wall and taking off with a giggling gallop, out of the security checkpoint and back into the castle.

Whatever else she knew, Second Chance had a feeling tonight was going to be interesting.

"When you swore yourself to my service, what was your oath?"

Sir Gray did not have to think long. It was true that cyberbrains required more and more time to access memories as its holographic storage was filled. Perhaps after a few centuries someone with a cyberbrain might have to spend as much time thinking about something distant as an ordinary human might have to. Gray was one of the youngest embodied individuals in the entire Steel Tower.

"I will to my Lord be true and faithful." He began, lowering his head respectfully. When he had actually taken this oath it had been in the Great Hall, with a dozen of his fellow nights as witnesses and his armor gleaming. Now he was in the ragged cloth tunic and trousers he wore when at leisure, and it did not feel right to drop to one knee and raise his hand on a ceremonial blade that was not there. He said the words though, as sincerely as he had said them in the beginning. "I will be a knight of the Steel Tower, and uphold the honor of my Lord through my actions. I will strengthen the weak. I will comfort the fearful. Confidence without arrogance. Truth without deception. Peace without oppression. Compassion without restriction."

"Well said." His king nodded approvingly. It was a very subtle gesture, yet to see it from his king made the young knight's heart swell and nearly made his eyes water. He wanted nothing more than to serve and impress the king of all mankind, and he had apparently done so. Much had been said by the Federation before and during the war about the way cyberization sterilized the mind and removed all human emotions and feeling. Charles was living proof those statements were false.

"But do you mean those words? Would you honor what they mean? Would you risk your life for the honor of the Tower?"

What could his king mean? Charles found his mind racing with predictions. Would the campaign begin again? Had the Federation violated the armistice? Perhaps the massive construction project that had been underway for the last several months was a new capital-class interplanetary vessel. Could he be the captain Richard chose to end the war for good? His heart twisted into knots at the prospect. How could he shed blood and bring honor to the Tower at the same time? Those goals were diametrically opposed. True, he could bring glory to the Tower, and safety for mankind. But that was not the same as fulfilling his oath. How could he strengthen the weak if he was killing them?

The delay was only seconds long, yet it might as well have been minutes in a world of full-synthetic humans. "I meant the words of the oath when I swore them, your grace," He said very quietly, not meeting his king's eyes. "Every word. It has never been just ceremony to me." He looked up, daring to meet those blazing gold eyes for only a moment. "I am a knight of the Steel Tower."

The king nodded and turned away, staring for several seconds out the window of his massive office. The sunrise outside was probably quite beautiful, though Charles wouldn't dare approach a step closer to get a better view of it himself. Instead he waited, and listened as his king spoke. "Why do you think you were Knighted, Sir Gray?" Charles only spluttered, struggling for a response. "You were not the most experienced. You were not the mightiest warrior, or the cleverest. I will admit, you are an excellent pilot. But that was not why when the smoke cleared you were one of those I chose to lift."

He stopped then, and was silent for some time. He seemed to be waiting for Charles to break the silence, and so he did. "Why then, your grace?" Of course this was not new information to him. He had suspected some of it, and knew some quite well. He had fewer confirmed kills than any other knight he knew. He had not won any battles, and his family was obscure.

"A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means," Richard said, returning his piercing gold eyes on Charles. Between the thick black beard and the eyes, he was an imposing and powerful figure. This impression was aided somewhat by his unique appearance, older than most full-synthetic bodies by at least a decade. He was also tall, a seven-foot giant of a man. Yet the strength Charles saw most was no physical quality at all, but in bearing. Perhaps in honor also, if honor was something that could be sensed. "I have knights who can slay any foe, or penetrate any computer system. And perhaps you're the best pilot in my service. But that isn't it either."

Charles knew what the King was talking about now. As he stood there, his memory returned to that moment during the first days of the war, when a city called Seattle had been under siege. As one of the foremost drone pilots, he had directed the largest part of the air-squadron over the city, with the goal of protecting the nuclear device until it could be delivered. He had zealously accomplished this goal, shooting down manned fighters and drones and larger vessels with equal impunity at the helm of dozens of different unmanned drones.

As the large vessel carrying the nuclear device neared the city, he watched the Space Elevator fire again and again into the sky. For no reason he could understand, his command ordered him to shoot down the escape craft, and he moved several drones into position to accomplish that task. One went rocketing past his drones, and his sensors detected what he had already suspected. The ship was unarmed, and seemed to be carrying a full complement of children.

Charles fired on the target, but at reconfigured vectors that directed each shot harmlessly into the sky. The vessel quickly accelerated out of range, along with several more. He disobeyed orders and allowed each to pass his drones without a scratch. How furious his commanding officer had been when that mission was over.

Yet instead of facing a court martial under one of the many Liege Lords, Charles Gray had been somehow noticed by his king. Disobedience had earned him one of the most coveted position in all the world, along with several new enemies.

"I understand," He said, suddenly confident. "What mission do you have for me?"

"A diplomatic mission." The King explained. "You will serve as the captain of my guard. I expect you to select a dozen of my finest footmen or your fellow knights to serve as the rest of the guard, and to complete your selection before dawn. I will have the details of the mission transferred to you when this conversation is finished." He took a step closer, his eyes intense. "I expect those you choose for this mission to exemplify the qualities you have consistently demonstrated in my service. We may have to overcome prejudice and mistrust, and I expect the conduct of every soldier to tear down any lies that may be believed about our conduct. You will be held responsible if any of the guards under your command should fail to represent the Steel Tower with absolute uprightness."

Sir Charles Gray snapped to attention and saluted. "Yes, your grace. It will be done."

"By dawn." Richard repeated, returning the salute and then giving Charles a dismissive gesture. "Every man and every woman battle ready. The quartermaster will provide newly manufactured armor to the specifications of each soldier." He smiled faintly. "It takes a few minutes for each set, so don't put off your choices too long."

Charles nodded respectfully, not daring to say that of course he knew how long it took to manufacture and prepare armor. Instead he bowed one last time and departed, rushing to accomplish the labor that had been entrusted to him.

He could not hear the sound of voices as he entered the lift and shot down, away from the office of the good king. "This assignment will destroy him," Said another voice, one he would not have recognized if he had been there to hear it. "My recomendation would have been a better choice."

"I know," Richard said, with a deep sigh.

"That kind of man; he won't be able to live with himself after this."

"I know," He said. "Yet liberty is a tree which must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots. And tyrants," He said that last while looking down at his hands, with an intense frown. "Which are we?"

Author's Notes:

Why hello there, dear reader! Welcome to the very first chapter of Harmony Defended, or at least the prologue. Welcome back to those joining us from My Little Apprentice, and a fresh welcome to those who haven’t read that adventure. As everyone can hopefully tell, this story begins several years after the end of season 4. With any luck, that should insulate me from changes to the cannon when season five begins while still allowing me to work it into the story.

For those who are joining us from MLA, I’m sorry to say this story will only be updating once a week instead of twice. I’m also looking for another alpha reader or two, if anyone’s interested in getting chapters a week early and drowning in spoilers from all my behind-the-scenes notes. If anyone’s interested, feel free to drop me a private message. I would prefer someone who’s read MLA, since it would be hard for creative oversight to come from someone who doesn’t have the whole picture.

Yes, this is a Sequel to an existing story. With any luck though, it won’t take any experience with that story to enjoy this one.

Chapter 1: Bridge

It began near dawn, when Ponyville was at its quietest. Second Chance rested soundly in bed, sleep no longer light or troubled with nightmares. There would not have been very much for her to hear even if she had been awake. Chance couldn’t hear the grinding sound as lasers sliced clean through the glass and shutters of her lab. There were none awake to see the hoof-full of drones that poured in through the opening, each smaller than a football. Thick cable spooled out behind the last of the group, even as the earlier machines moved quickly through the lab.

The security programs required not even a full minute to circumvent. Why should electric power be wasted for Truth to run cyberwarfare software when the world they inhabited lacked even rudimentary computers? The drones closed the distance to the cube under the shelter of active camouflage. The largest of the drones latched onto the side of the OMICRON Core, its spindly legs digging into the flexible metal but leaving no scratches.

In an instant Truth woke from hibernation, illuminating the lab with vibrant blue light. It had far less than a second to resist, not enough time to do anything meaningful. It had enough time for one transmission, only one word long. "CHANCE!" The plea was desperate and panicked, and it was what woke the young unicorn one room over with a frustrated moan.

"What is it?" She croaked, looking around for whomever had called her name. Of course there were no ponies in the room with her, and she very nearly rolled over to go back to sleep. If Twilight or Spike needed her this early, they wouldn't have called her name and wandered off again. Half-delirious, she didn't even register that no voice had actually spoken to her. As she laid her head back against one of her pillows, Chance saw a faint blue glow emanating from beneath one of her bookshelves.

Was Twilight talking to Truth this early in the morning? That was strange. Either that, or the general intelligence was awake on his own. Was he making good on his threats to transmit scandalous reports? Groaning, Chance rolled off the bed, landing easily on her hooves. Her mane was unkempt and one of her eyes half-closed, but she didn't mind. If somepony was going to wake her at this ungodly hour, then it didn't matter if she was presentable or not.

Chance's bedroom was only a wall away from the lab, though few who visited her here knew that. One of the bookshelves on the far wall was quite densely packed for a reason: it could slide away to give her quick access to the lab. It was a struggle to make use of her microscopic cybernetic implants with so little concentration at her disposal, but she stood still by the bookshelves until she could concentrate long enough to send the "open" command.

Nothing happened. At first she thought she was simply not sending the proper commands, assumed the mistake must be hers and repeated the signal. Even if, for whatever strange reason, the command were not accepted, she should have at least received a ping from Truth explaining why. Not enough energy to use the servos, mechanical failure, or just that he didn't want to be bothered. But as she continued to persist and still received nothing in response, the shock provoked a sudden return to alertness and her eyes opened wide.

This was not good. There was definitely a light coming from under the bookshelf, the glow of Truth when he was not actually using any of his internal displays. Yet if he was active, there was no reason she would not have received a response. Truth, is everything okay? She asked, without moving her lips. This time she tried to use the mesh network, sending the signal directly to the OMICRON Core.

The mesh network was gone.

Not disrupted, not busy, not out of range. Just gone. Chance shivered all over as she pounded on the bookshelf. "Truth, is everything okay?" She shouted through the wall, as her hooves made the crystal the shelves were made from resonate oddly with each strike. It was strong stuff though, and didn't chip or break as she hammered against it. The young mare's panic did not remain untempered for long, and the banging quickly stopped. So what if Truth wouldn't open the door for her? She could go in without his help; she didn't need one drop of human technology to teleport.

Twilight Sparkle had been absolutely right about the importance of practicing teleportation from a young age, considering the difficulty learning even the short-range transport spell had been. Yet she had years of practice now, years of diligent study at the hooves of the very Element of Magic herself. Second Chance closed her eyes and forced the emotion away from her perception. She pictured the inside of the lab just behind the bookshelf, saw the translucent floor, the shelves, Truth's pedestal against the wall. She focused her concentration, and felt power surging through her horn. She pictured the diagrams in her head necessary to contain the spell, and only when she was absolutely confident did she allow the energy of the spell loose.

Her teacher, Twilight Sparkle, could teleport so smoothly and perfectly that there was almost no way to know she had even traveled, stepping halfway across the continent with all the discomfort of a mildly breezy hallway. Chance's spells were... less elegant. There was a loud WHUMP of displaced air from behind her, and a crack as she came into being in a new location. The transition itself was even worse, and were it not for the little shielding bubble built into the spell she likely would've been charbroiled and flash-frozen both by the strange pressures of circumventing even a few feet of ordinary space. If there was even a slight lapse in her concentration, she could emerge on the other side with a singed mane or frost condensing thickly on her coat.

Her concentration had not slackened now. When the bubble of grayish magical energy faded from around her, she was able to look out into the lab and see what had caused Truth to malfunction.

Chance screamed, her voice shrill and terrified as she was forced to see something she had never imagined ever seeing again: combat drones, like gigantic steel dragonflies with too many wings and too many limbs. She staggered back as she saw them busily at work. Even as she watched, one dragged a spool of thick cable through an opening in a window and across her room, knocking her work haphazardly aside as it crossed.

Memories overwhelmed her, memories long buried. She was a child, one with two legs instead of four. She was in a small, confined space, probably a subway car. She was on her way home from school, and aside from her younger brother there were only strangers all around her.

Then came the sound of glass shattering, and she turned with several other passengers to see several metallic objects recovering from their collision with the glass. They were each bigger than her head, with metallic limbs and wings that gesticulated strangely on their artificial bodies. For a second there was silence, the car full of civilians merely staring down in ignorance at the strange machines. With the grace of an exotic cat, one sprung suddenly for the nearest passenger, an elderly man half-slumped in his seat.

Even as a child she had known what would happen, so she had looked away. That hadn't been enough to strangle the gurgling scream, the hideous bubbling sounds, and the shouts of terror and panic as the passengers realized the danger they were in.

"No!" Chance screamed from within her own lab. She wasn't in the subway now, but she did exactly as she had then, getting as low as she could to the ground and covering her face with her forelegs. She had no younger brother to pull down with her, but that didn't stop her from yelling for him too. "Don't hurt us!" She bellowed, as loud as her lungs could manage.

In the memory, she and her younger brother had been near the back of the crowd and close to the machines. She had not been old enough at the time to understand that the machines were not really meant to kill, but to cause panic. Instead of descend on her or her brother, they passed harmlessly overhead, cutting and slicing at the passengers in the back of the mob but inflicting no more lethal wounds.

When it had all been over, the stampede had done far more damage than the drones. Chance and her brother had been some of the few to emerge from that subway with only psychological trauma. That was what happened now. She heard the drone of mechanical wings, heard clicking of metal on crystal, but she felt no pain. Perhaps the passage of time would never have been enough to extricate her from the painful memory. But then a strange synthesized voice came from beside her, and she tentatively opened one eye. The voice lacked intelligence, lacked emotion, sounding more like a recording than true communication.

"Equestrian native, remain where you are. You will not be harmed." Three of the drones had taken up positions around her, metal bodies shining with reflected blue light. Chance thought about fighting them. Thought about how able she might be to grab all of them in her magic at once, or maybe teleport back through the wall, so she could run and get Twilight Sparkle. But in her fear and shock it was all she could manage to stay still and not to cry. After all, the drones were less than a meter away from her. If she miscalculated, they would be coming at her from all sides, with metal limbs to cut and tear.

"W-what are you doing?" She squeaked, through her whole body was frozen. It was almost as though a large bee had landed on her, and any motion might cause it to sting.

"You will not be harmed," replied the voice, echoing from all the drones at once. Which was more or less what she had expected. Drones would be lucky to have even a rudimentary AI controlling them. If this was Earth, she would have suspected a human pilot somewhere. But this wasn't Earth, and there was no way anyone could be piloting them. Right? But how had they gotten here? The Steel Tower didn't have the technology to bridge worlds! That was why the only fellow travelers she had met in Equestria were an OMICRON Core her people had built and a pair of scientists that had somehow managed to cross the universal gulf.

Or maybe not. There was, after all, a grave deep beneath Canterlot Castle, one that belonged to an ancient hero named Leo the Bold. Had the Tower managed to finally reproduce that technology? If so, why had they invaded her lab? What interest could they have in her research adapting human technology to the needs of ponies?

Text scrolled rapidly across the face of the cube, though from this distance she could not read what it said. It was English, though beyond that Second Chance could not be sure. She was just a unicorn now, trapped by dangerous technology and unable to do anything to fight. Whatever these machines had come to do, they would accomplish their purpose.

It did not take them very long. Soon the screen cleared and darkened and a low hum began to issue from its surface. The thick cable began to crackle with energy. Any of her laboratory machines it touched reacted badly to the sudden input, exploding in showers of sparks and broken glass. The electric lights overhead flickered and died with anticlimactic little pffts. And with the surge of electricity, nevermind what it was doing to her work, came a greater, more terrible realization. In the basement of this castle was a microfusion reactor, providing Twilight's tiny castle with the same amount of energy used by the entire nation at once. There was only one activity that could not be supplied by that reactor, only one purpose that would need such thick nanofilament cable.

Opening a door. The one that led to Earth.

Not far from Ponyville, within sight of a little cottage and also the tall stands of the Everfree was a patch of grassy field where nothing grew. The ground had been blackened into an intricate pattern like a crop-circle, burned from the energy of the Hawking Rift. Animals and ponies avoided the place, as it unsettled both. Yet never, not even on the night Second Chance arrived from the stars, had it lit up like it did now.

Energy crackled and spiraled from a central point about fifteen feet above the ground, and thunder rolled as lightning struck the ground within the spiral more than a dozen times, each strike digging deeper gouges than the last. Animals from the nearby cottage were startled into a frenzy of activity, bleating and barking in terror. But the electrical storm did not heed their cries, melting increasingly wide patches of ground into fulgurite.

A single blot of furious energy shot upward into the black sky. There was only one pony close enough to watch, but since she was cowering under her bed she could not see that. With eyes so tightly closed, there was no way to watch as that last energetic blast seemed to tear the air open, and the Rift widened from a few molecules across to over a dozen meters. Harsh artificial light illuminated the clearing in every direction, replacing the sporadic flashing of the electrical storm.

The first object to come through the Rift was the size of a steel shipping crate and fell through the gap as though propelled by an invisible giant, impacting the ground with enough force to shake the earth all around it. The object was clearly mechanical and went to work at once, even as the opening began to shrink. Just as ancient planetary probes had done in ages past, the initial casing that had protected the inside of the machine began to unfold. The machine within was round, perhaps three meters tall and covered with strange protrusions. Even in the dying light of an alien world its metallic surface shone, though not nearly so brightly as when it began to spin. As it did, energy lept between it and the opening, tearing it open again to near the original width. Further machines began to assemble themselves around it, anchoring it securely to the ground and stringing cables between it and the smaller components. Automatic defense-turrets unfolded, swiveling around to survey the area near the landing sight. Of course, there was nothing to see.

The sound of a blaring siren issued from the opening in the sky like the cry of a distant god, strained and twisted by impossible distance. Motion stirred in an alien chamber no Equestrian was close enough to look upon, though many would soon see its consequences.

A pair of aliens fell together from the opening in the sky, holding a large plastic crate between them. They fell gracefully, and landed as though the drop had been mere inches. The pair quickly advanced into the field, before dropping the crate and readying their weapons.

Silver-gold armor covered much of their bodies, revealing little of what they looked like save for a few vague suggestions. Lithe they were, standing not much more than two meters and wielding strange weapons that were not swords. Yet they moved like trained soldiers, and were soon joined by companions. Another pair emerged like the first, then another and another, until there was a protective circle of tall alien figures in gleaming armor.

Another figure fell from the center of the opening, armor concealed within the folds of a silver robe. He wore a weapon like the others on his back, though he did not draw it. With unheard radio transmissions he signaled back across the gulf. One last alien, the greatest of them all, fell from the air and landed no less gracefully than any of the others. There were no Equestrians close enough to hear the words he spoke, voice clear in the muted stillness. "Now, we wait."

Second Chance could not see or hear any of what was happening more than a mile from Twilight's castle, though she heard the sound of distant lightning and knew what it must mean. Her resolve swelled and she prepared for another teleportation spell. Regardless of the dangers to herself, she would have to reach Twilight. Maybe together they could stop the drones before the Steel Tower could get whatever through that it meant to send. The gesture proved futile, however. Before she could gather the required magic, the drones seemed to abruptly lose interest in Truth. Almost as though they were a flock of birds the metallic monsters took to the air in unison. At least, the drones that hadn't been in contact with Truth. Only one of these seemed intact enough to flee; the others had been melted into slag by their contact during such a profound exchange of electrical energy.

One by one the evil flock passed through the opening, leaving Chance alone. There was no time for her to see if Truth was okay, no time to repair the damage that had been done to him. Whatever the drones had been sent to accomplish, it was done. Something or someone had come, and Princess Twilight Sparkle needed to know about it. Second Chance darted into the lab, eyes searching desperately for anything useful that had survived the localized electrical storm. Aside from the consoles most of the lab seemed intact, but there wasn't time to get into a detailed search. Unfortunately, a brief glance proved in vain. There was no time for any serious searching. Having the Element of Magic would have to do.

Teleporting into Twilight's bedroom was not much harder than traveling through the bookcase, save perhaps that the numbers in her mental equations were a tad larger and she did not know the room quite so well. It was nothing like Twilight's old bedroom in the library, far larger and grander and more regal. Chance appeared in the empty center of the room with a bang louder than a gunshot, loud enough to make the crystal of the chamber shake. Twilight jolted at the noise, sitting suddenly upright and blinking blearily around in the dark for the source of the intrusion.

Ordinarily Chance would have felt terrible about waking Twilight like this. Under the circumstances she reached out with her magic and flicked the lights on, while simultaneously calling, "Twilight, we've got trouble!" She closed the distance to the bed in a few quick strides, mentally prepared to dodge out of the way if her teacher decided to react badly to being woken.

Twilight did look annoyed through her grogginess, though the expression did not last long. "W-what?" She managed to ask, looking nearly as bad for being woken as Chance herself. "What's the emergency?" She sat up, sending a wave of magic through her mane. Maybe the Twilight of a few years ago wouldn't have been concerned with appearances. Little gestures like this had become subconscious for her now. She probably didn't even realize what she was doing. At least her mane hadn't done the "waves of energy" thing.

"The Rift I came through is open," Chance explained. She raised her hooves almost defensively. "It's not my people, they've honored Celestia's request! It's the opposition."

Her teacher shook off the last remnants of sleep and lept from the covers to her hooves. "Same place as before?" She asked. A nod from Second Chance was all it took to send them both into a gallop. The doors to Twilight's bedroom swung open with a flick of her horn, and the crystal halls sounded with the pounding of their speed. They only stopped as they reached a large staircase, spiraling down to ground level from the main floor of the castle. There one of the guards was stationed, half-asleep at his post.

Still, activity had roused him, and he looked almost alert by the time Twilight and her apprentice reached him. "Wake the rest of the guard," Twilight instructed, her tone authoritative. Gone were the days of her squeamishness with her position. "Warn Ponyville that a dangerous monster is near the Everfree and may come this way. Make sure everypony stays indoors, except my friends. If they come looking for me, send them to Fluttershy's cottage." Then she returned her attention to Chance, who realized at once what she was about to do and closed her eyes tightly.

She was not surprised when she opened them to find that they were now on the outskirts of Ponyville, on the little dirt road that led to where Fluttershy still lived. Of course she could have brought them the whole way, or flown there far faster than Chance could gallop. It seemed Twilight had other plans, though she started galloping again as fast as Chance could keep pace with her. She became very grateful for the time she spent with the Crusaders, or else she might not have been able to keep up even a modest galloping pace. "How did you know?" Twilight asked as they ran, sounding as though the rapid pace barely winded her. But then, she was an Alicorn, and Chance was not.

There was no room for dispute, not with strange lights glowing in the distance. Metal clanked somewhere far off, and bodies rustled in the dark. Artificial light was crisper than the glow of stadium lanterns. "They attacked the castle," Chance called, her breathing labored after less than a minute of full gallop. Times like these she wished she were an earth pony. "Broke into to my lab and did something to Truth. I couldn't stop them." Even while running as fast as she could push her body to move she couldn't keep the shame from her voice. After all, she had been the one who designed the lab's security. She was the one who had neglected an obvious weakness, which their enemy had exploited.

But Twilight Sparkle did not chide her for her failings, did not even look as though she were disappointed. She just nodded, then asked. "What do you think they sent?"

Chance hadn't really considered that, and her pace slowed a little as she thought about what she knew of the Steel Tower. It was difficult, both because of her stress and because she had tried very hard to forget as much about them as possible. One of humanity's two factions, the group had created for themselves a strange oligarchy that actively sought to resemble many aspects of the middle ages extrapolated to modern technology. "I think..." She began, slowing her pace still more as they neared the clearing. They were close enough to see the silhouettes now, and her incorrect suggestions died in her throat. "I think they sent their King."

Twilight slowed from her gallop as the clearing came into view, that familiar patch of ground that marked the bridge between her own universe and the one that was home to the aliens. When Second Chance had come through nearly a decade ago she had done little to transform the area around the opening. There would have been no signs at all of the portal were it not for the irradiated patches of dirt, which stubbornly refused to grow even weedy life after all this time.

A massive machine spun and whirred in the center of the clearing, and crates large enough to hold several adult ponies each had been stacked neatly beside it. There looked to be over a dozen of the beings Twilight knew were called humans, arranged in a protective circle around the machines.

This was not the first time Twilight Sparkle had seen a human. After all, Truth had access to nearly every piece of information that mankind had ever generated, and that included photographs and video recordings of many different humans. She had also seen Celestia’s own memories of a human ambassador, and seen the thoughts and recollections within her apprentice. Not even the most vivid memories could have prepared her to greet the aliens herself.

They were tall, seeming to tower over her. If she had expected them to resemble primates she was to be disappointed in that regard: Every feature was concealed by armor or cloth, though the way the aliens held themselves held little of primates. They stood erect, with shorter arms than proper apes. Besides, she had a hard time imagining monkeys in a menagerie holding weapons as dangerous as these.

Twilight and her apprentice clearly attracted attention as they reached the clearing, though it was hard to tell for sure when each wore a helmet that concealed their features.

Except two. In the center of the clearing stood two who wore robes on the outside instead of armor, and seemed to be wearing no helmets. Twilight stopped perhaps a dozen meters away from the edge of the circle, watching as the two figures walked out of the protective circle. The taller had a full beard of black hair, along with a short mane and piercing yellow eyes. He towered over even his fellow humans, probably even larger than Celestia herself. In a flash of insight Twilight recognized him, thinking back to the strange visions Clover the Clever had preserved detailing the eventual fall of Equestria. This was him, the one in her vision. This was the human king.

It was hard to judge his face, with eyes and nose so small and features so flat. Yet it was not the powerful man who spoke, but the younger-looking figure in a white robe at his side. If Twilight expected the babbling nonsense Second Chance called “English”, she was disappointed, because he spoke in perfect, confident Equestrian. “Greetings,” he said to her, sparing only a glance for Second Chance. “Forgive us if we appear strange. Can you direct us to the city called Canterlot? We are on an urgent diplomatic mission to Princess Celestia and Luna.”

The Alicorn was determined to provide these fragile-looking beings with a shock of their own. She wouldn’t look surprised, worried, or even the least bit perturbed to be around them. She was one of Equestria’s princesses herself, after all. These aliens might not know yet that Celestia had entrusted much of the responsibility for extra-universal relations to her, but they would find out soon enough. Twilight Sparkle might not have an artificial body, but she could make herself look confident and dignified when she tried. She wasn’t going to give these interlopers the satisfaction of disorienting her, even for a minute.

“Of course,” she said, watching the taller man more than the younger robed figure at his side or any of the guards. “They have been expecting you.” She turned to her apprentice, whispering something. Without a word of objection, Chance took off down the road as fast as her hooves could carry her. Twilight knew her apprentice wasn’t one for intense physical activity, but that did not diminish the trust she had in her. When Twilight told her to get something done, she could count on Chance pushing herself to the limit to accomplish it as quickly and precisely as possible. Not at all unlike a young unicorn she had once known, apprentice to a different princess.

“Canterlot is several miles from here." She pointed with a hoof, where the light of sunrise gleamed on white stone set almost sheer with the mountain. Twilight was properly satisfied with at least a few gasps from some of the soldiers, though the ones speaking with her maintained their composure. Still, neither could stop from looking impressed. Was it wrong of her to feel a little smug? Whatever Precursors, with your "superior" technology. We ponies can manage a few impressive things too now and then. "I've instructed my apprentice to stop the train before it leaves." She frowned, looking from guard to guard. There was very little to see, of course. Their helmets concealed their faces and their emotions. "I think Celestia will want to see you immediately."

The smooth-faced one looked deferentially to the taller man beside him. He nodded, however slowly, then began to speak. His voice was deeper, more resonant, and also more confident. It was the voice of a king. "We would be honored to accept transportation," he said, inclining his head very slightly out of respect. "Would it be permissible for the captain of my guard and two of my knights to accompany me to meet with your princesses?" He did something with the digits on those hyper-dextrous appendages, a gesture accompanied by a snapping sound. At once, two of the soldiers jerked to attention and lifted one of the plastic crates between them as though it were an inflatable toy. Twilight couldn't even guess at how much it might weigh. "The rest of my men will remain here, to guard the portal. They will not leave this clearing until my return."

Twilight considered that a moment, impressed that this obviously powerful figure was showing her such deference and respect without even knowing who she was. How could he tell that she had any authority at all? Did he know what an Alicorn was? Just how much did these humans know about Equestria? Leaving so many of these strange aliens in defenseless Ponyville with nothing but their word that they would remain here and do no harm was a testy business, though perhaps not so testy as bringing a dozen heavily-armed aliens straight through Canterlot magical defenses and into the castle. However powerful these beings were, she didn't worry about her odds against four of them with Celestia and Luna beside her if needed.

The conundrum resolved itself before she could answer as a cyan pegasus streaked through the air toward her, armor glittering. Rainbow Dash was a Wonderbolt now, as well as captain of the Equestrian Army Reserve here in Ponyville. She had chosen the latter costume for this particular morning, which didn't surprise Twilight as much as seeing her so early in the morning. She watched as several of the guards moved dextrous limbs to their strange weapons, as though they feared she had come to attack.

Twilight need not fear, however. The one in the white robe gestured, and the rest lowered their weapons. Only the two that had spoken to Twilight so far were unphased at Rainbow Dash's approach, watching her twist into a dive. "Damn, she's fast," muttered the one in white. Perhaps he would have said more, except that the king fixed him with a pointed glance, and he fell silent.

Rainbow Dash might not have fallen from a bridge in the sky, but she knew how to make an entrance. She shot down at an extreme angle, wings spreading wide to catch her mere meters from the ground. Her hooves met dirt and sent it flying in all directions as she slid the last few meters to Twilight's side. Dust swirled around her, making the gold of her armor look as though it were smoldering in the light.

Her face was steely. "Princess." It was an act, and Twilight knew it. Only when acting in an official capacity did they play this game. Only when there were other ponies to see.

"Captain," Twilight echoed, nodding very slightly. She was as good at playing this game as Rainbow Dash. Usually, when they were doing this for the benefit of other ponies, they would integrate another layer to the game. While acting as seriously as possible, they would each try to make the other laugh. Not this time. "A moment," she said to the humans. Both nodded, and she retreated several paces with Rainbow Dash. Not far enough that they wouldn't be able to overhear, though far enough to feel as though they weren't being rude. "Mobilize the Ponyville Reserve, and get them here. They are to help our visitors guard their machines, and ensure Ponyville can function normally. Send a message to Canterlot, let Celestia know human ambassadors are on their way. Then get all our friends to the train station as quickly as possible."

Rainbow Dash nodded, then saluted. "Aye, Ma'am!" No objection, no hesitation. She took off with another wave of dust, nearly shaking the air around them with her speed. Twilight was sad to see her go.

"Our information on your people seems to be woefully out of date," rumbled the voice of the king. It was like hearing the will of a mountain, powerful and confident as few mortal beings ever could be. Twilight had no choice but to turn and face him again. Without so much as a word to ask permission or coordinate with his men, the man that was king began walking forward along the trail toward Ponyville. The one in white kept pace most quickly, followed by the soldiers who carried the crate. The others returned to their positions, circling around the machine. "Are you familiar with a pony named Clover? She indicated she held a position of some distinction."

Twilight positioned herself at the front of the group, hoping to make it very clear just who was in charge. That, and she hoped that her presence at the front of the group might alleviate the fears of anypony who happened to see them. A group of aliens that were apes and armored insects and yet neither would seem frightening indeed. Ponies were right to fear. She was afraid too, though she was determined not to show it. So she nodded, focusing instead on the excitement. This whole adventure was pretty thrilling too, though she might not appreciate that until afterward. "Clover the Clever," she repeated, nodding enthusiastically. "She was Archmage to the Solar Court, though that was more than a millennia ago. Too long for anypony alive to have known her, except for Celestia and Luna. She did write about you, though."

The king took enormous strides, without even a hint of fatigue. But then if Second Chance had taught Twilight anything, it was that every one of these beings were machines. There was no flesh to grow tired, no matter how far or fast they walked. "Good things, I hope," he said, after a time. Already Ponyville was coming into view, and Twilight directed them to the shortest route to the train station. "For us, it hasn't even been a century. I hope your people are no less willing to establish a relationship with friendly strangers."

As they passed into Ponyville proper, Twilight was reminded of when she had been new here and she had seen Zecora for the first time. Streets empty, doors slamming, eyes peeking furtively through cracks in shutters. Zecora was a zebra, not a pony but not far from one either. These aliens were strange, walking almost like diamond dogs or like young dragons. Unlike Zecora, they actually might be dangerous. Perhaps the ponies hiding in their homes were the wise ones.

"We've been expecting you," was how Twilight answered, leading the four aliens through Ponyville’s unpaved streets. "And we're always eager to make new friends. If that is the reason you're here, then you will find Equestria to be a welcoming place, once ponies get to know you."

She could see the train now. It was probably past time for the morning Canterlot Express to leave, but it seemed her apprentice had not failed to halt the train in time. She could see the familiar shapes of her friends waiting for her outside the train, the only ponies not hiding. This was going to be the strangest ride of her life, but at least she wouldn't have to take it alone.

Author's Notes:

And there we have it, chapter one. I'm currently home in California on vacation, so it was a little harder than I would've liked to find the time to get this together. Being a beach bum might be fun, but it isn't really conducive to getting things done on time. Still, we made it. An enormous thank you to my Alpha Readers who helped edit and review this chapter before it's posting. With any luck the number of mistakes people find in the final version will decrease now that I handle editing differently.

Chapter 2: Traditions

There were only a few Royal Guards along for the ride to Canterlot, far less than the number who were staying in Ponyville to keep an eye on the newcomers and reassure the populace that life was going to continue as normal. It was a good idea, but that didn't mean Princess Twilight trusted herself and her friends alone to protect their important guests.
|
Amber Sands was one of the few that had been assigned to come along for the journey, and from the outside she was almost exactly what might be expected from one of the pegasi of the Royal Guard. Her coat was light brown, her mane and tail brilliant yellow, and her armor light and strong with openings for her wings. As she supervised the loading of the train, she could practically feel the furtive eyes of ponies on her. The ponies were plainly immensely grateful for her and the other guards. It was a reminder that however strange things might seem, the established order was still in control. They were safe.

She could taste the warmth of their love and appreciation for her presence as delicious ambrosia trickling slowly down her throat. It wasn't much of course; none of them knew her by name. Sergeant Sands was the last to climb onto the last car of the train, giving the conductor a gesture with a hoof as she slammed the door closed. The train began to move at once, the steam engine roaring as it pulled the impressive steel mass along rusty iron tracks.

There were only six ponies in Equestria that knew what Sands really was, and half of them were on this train. Even then, she hardly expected any but Rainbow Dash to give her even a second glance in the armor she was wearing. That was part of the enchantment: making each and every guard look as similar as possible. The effect was powerful: it meant that no matter how many of their number fell in battle, enemies and allies alike would see the same ponies returning again and again to the field. It was a powerful psychological effect, and it meant Sands could count on at least a trickle of love anywhere in Equestria where ponies loved the royal sisters and the guards that represented them. That was why Celestia had suggested this position for her in the first place.

Granted, for all that Celestia's trust in her seemed to be growing, she had never allowed her to be assigned any further than Ponyville. Sands did not mind the suspicion, not really. It had been much worse (and better justified) when she had first arrived in Equestria, a nearly perfect copy of Twilight Sparkle's apprentice. The ruse had been discovered on the very day it had been attempted, and the then nameless young changeling had expected brutal torture and an ignominious death.

That wasn't what happened. The first pony to show her compassion was the one she had been sent to replace, Princess Twilight's apprentice. She was not the last, and Amber survived for years on a steady diet of love from Equestria's ruling sisters. Shame at failing and then betraying her hive was gradually replaced with resentment that Mother had so callously used her, imprinting her with the memories of the pony Second Chance and sending her off on what amounted to a suicide mission. Her own kin had abandoned her, but the ponies that had every reason to hate and fear her had instead shown her love that she had not deserved.

Amber did not know the true language of her kind, which was hardly strange since she knew almost nothing about them. She had taken a pony name, adopted a pony persona, and wore it almost constantly. In truth, Amber Sands was more truly her than the nameless changeling she was underneath the illusion. It was her almost constant prayer that one day she would wake up and find the illusion was reality and her changeling nature would be a faint and distant nightmare.

Sergeant Sands passed through the caboose, where four ponies her age conversed in harsh whispers. None of them, not even the one whose memories had created her, spared her more than a glance. Ponies were so easy to fool, so easy that effort was rarely required on her part. Even one that knew what she was paid her no mind. No wonder the Hive had been so successful infiltrating their nation all those years ago.

Then again, maybe it was just that Second Chance knew her now, and trusted her. "You can tell us what'cha really thinkin', Chance. Who are ya' supposed ta' talk to if not your friends?"

Sands listened as she walked slowly though the caboose, which is usually as far as things went. There was no telling when something she overheard might be useful. Besides, more than half of Amber's memories were copies of those Chance carried. She couldn't help but be curious, even though the mission of impersonation was over and so many years had gone by that she probably would not have done a very good job imitating her anyway. "You shouldn't have come," Chance said, looking sternly at her friends. "Equestria doesn't need all its human experts in one place, where they could all be taken out at once."

"We weren't safer in Ponyville, dummy," said the pegasus named Scootaloo. "There are way more of them back there than on this train."

"Why are you so upset, anyway?" That was the other unicorn, the younger sister of the one sitting with the Princess in the compartment with the human ambassador. "They didn't do anything bad, unless you count squishing some grass."

"You don't know them like I know them," said the one with the green coat. Her eyes went to each of the ponies around her in turn. "The things they did... there aren't even Equestrian words for some of them. And tonight, in the lab-"

Amber felt a powerful desire to leave the room, a desire she promptly followed. Even so, she was not fast enough to prevent some of those old memories from bubbling back. She saw whole cities turned to ash, millions of innocent lives snuffed out in seconds. She looked down from a high place and watched as her family trapped on the surface of the Earth burned before her eyes. Except they were not really her family, because of true family Amber had none. Not the swarm that had abandoned her, not the ponies who did not know what she really was. Not even Celestia and Luna, who were so kind to her but still treated her subtly like an outsider. Not the original whose memories she held, the pony that for her had only pity.

That did not make it hurt any less when these memories came to the surface.

How did the real Second Chance deal with them, knowing that for her they were reality? What had stopped her from completely losing her mind after all these years? Amber thought of that very little as she shut the door to the caboose and began making her way through empty cars.

Maybe she ought to pick one of them and sit out the rest of the trip, hide somewhere safe from any reminder of those things she would rather forget. But she wouldn't be much of a guard if she left a potentially dangerous enemy alone with some of the most important ponies in Equestria, would she? So she kept walking, knowing full well that she would soon pass through occupied cars and be forced to be in proximity to the fiersome-looking invaders.

These trains were not long, and there were not many empty cars to buffer the young ponies in the back from the aliens sitting further up. First Amber passed through a baggage car, with two alien soldiers and a plain-looking plastic crate. They said nothing to her as she passed, and she said nothing in reply.

Then into a passenger car, where the tall being in a white cloak conversed with several ponies of the guard including Captain Rainbow Dash. "That was some seriously impressive flying," he was saying, sitting with an erect back in one of the seats and looking like an adult using furniture built for foals. "I didn't think flesh wings could do directional changes that fast without shearing."

There were several other guards, but it seemed Rainbow Dash was the only one who dared actually talk directly to the alien interlopers. "Real wings are the only way to fly," she said, as though even considering an alternative would have been ludicrous. "Ponies have airships with metal wings, but they're nothing like the real thing. Flaps instead of feathers? Please! I fly circles around those things without even trying."

"Maybe that works at low speeds," answered the strange creature with pale skin and short mane, helmet resting beside him on the seat. Yet at the same time the alien did not seem so strange to her. Even now there were days when the Equine natives were the aliens to her. Yet how could that be, when the pony she was based on seemed almost no different from any other pony? "As fast as we fly, the air resistance alone would shatter bones."

Rainbow Dash rose to her hooves, glaring up at the alien. "Are you sayin' you're faster than me? Anyplace, anytime. I'll take you down! I don't care if you're a big lemur with fancy armor, nopony calls me slow!"

"Yeah?" The alien in his white robes only smiled wider. "Maybe when these negotiations are over, we'll get the chance for a race." Amber shut the door to that car, passing into the last of the passenger areas. It was like walking out of a rainstorm into a warm house, the environment dramatically different from the chest-thumping of the previous rooms. The quiet was almost oppressive, and Amber sat at once near the door, as though she were simply on some imaginary patrol duty. Of course there was no such duty, but not even Princess Twilight knew that. Attention slipped away from her and she was able to fade back into the background, where she felt the most comfortable.

"Admirable progress in so short a time," said the tall and powerful alien, evidently returning to whatever the conversation had been before she opened the door. "Your civilization seems poised on the eve of an industrial revolution. I can assure you that with our help that revolution can be made a swift transition, and your nation into this world's undisputed superpower."

Twilight Sparkle was not the only other pony in the room. Several of her friends were here, whose names Amber knew only from inherited memory. There were also several guards, with lesser positions than her own and singular duties. They looked at nothing and said nothing, though Amber knew they must be as interested in what was being said as Amber herself.

It wasn't Twilight who answered. "I reckon we could always use a new friend," said the farmer named Applejack. "But I don' see how you figure we wanna be whatever the hay a 'superpower' is. Most ponies ah' know are right content with the power they got." Sands could not miss Twilight's pointed glance at the speaker, who stopped at once. But then, Applejack was the element of honesty. Perhaps excessive honesty would do more harm than good in a delicate negotiation.

"We are aware of the advantages you could bring to Equestria," Twilight said delicately. "However, we also know that changes and improvements can be dangerous too. Anything you contribute will have to be weighed carefully against its potential cost."

The alien was equal to the task of the diplomatic game, and as Amber watched his face she saw none of the emotional tells she could see in Twilight Sparkle. No signs of anxious fear, no barely suppressed desire to flee. No sense that he was speaking slowly or guarding his words, even if the words he spoke were carefully guarded indeed. In all of Equestria there was perhaps only one diplomat that was his equal. Amber found herself glad that she was the one he had come to see.

"Of course," he said, inclining his head in a delicate nod. "We can assist with every step of the process. Make no mistake, we don't promise not to bring change to your world. Change is exactly what we promise, in exchange for modest generosity on your part. I do not doubt ponies as wise and powerful as the royal sisters will see the advantages of an alliance."

Amber frowned, even though she knew the memories that created that emotion were not her own. She knew full well what had happened the day before, with the apparent escape from Tartarus. She knew about the increasing number of border-skirmishes, and the ever-increasing danger Equestria was in. Yes, Celestia and Luna would probably see the wisdom in an alliance. But could Equestria survive it?

The throne room of the great castle had seen many prestigious parties over its long history. Many diplomats, emissaries, and envoys had been received at the thrones of Celestia and Luna. Yet in all that time, none was as strange as the one that visited now. For those waiting to be received were not gryphons, minotaurs, dragons or goats. They were not diamond dogs or trolls or spirit animals of the Everfree. Indeed, these beings had not come from anywhere in Equestria. They hadn't even come from the stars.

Yet here they were, following behind Twilight into a chamber their height would make far less imposing than it had been built to be. Armor clicked on stone more softly than hooves, yet there was still something heavier about their steps than a pony. There was something subtly unnatural about the way they moved that unnerved her. They were machines, and this reality could not be totally concealed even if they might wish to. They were not fleshly beings assisted by prosthetics, as she had thought at first. Rather, they were unnatural beings pretending to be alive. Yet though they moved and twitched as livings things, it was more a rehearsal than true motion. She had the feeling watching them that it was a show put on to make her feel better, and were they on their own they might scarcely move at all.

Was it wrong to be unnerved by a type of life just because it was different from her own? She wanted to ask Celestia now, but knew she couldn't. So instead she did what she knew was expected of her, and took her place at the base of the throne.

She had to admire the crier's resolve. Despite the strangeness of the situation, her voice did not falter or crack as she repeated the titles and information she had been given to recite. "I present King Richard Morgan, Protector of Mankind, Defender of the Faith, and Sovereign of the Steel Tower." Down the aisle came the towering figure, followed by his reduced entourage and the plastic cargo crate they had carried all this way. He closed the distance with long, confident strides, then bowed very slightly.

Twilight watched, gauging every inflection and nuance for hints of what his true emotions might be. What did this large and powerful creature think of the native rulers who only called themselves princesses? Without a living body of his own, could he feel the magical power radiating off them like sparks from a fire? Twilight found herself wishing suddenly that her apprentice were here. Chance would be able to explain what these humans were thinking.

"Princess Celestia," said the king's voice like the rumble of a distant glacier. "Princess Luna. And Princess Twilight Sparkle." Twilight nodded politely, as Celestia and Luna had done above her. Richard was nearly at eye level with her, despite the significant height advantage the throne conveyed to her. Yet meeting his eyes did not carry the same impact that other encounters with important figures had. It was hard to describe exactly what made her feel that way, but it felt as though something was somehow missing. If there was a soul in there, she couldn't see it through the eyes.

"It is an honor to stand in your presence and address you on behalf of the human species." It was hard to keep her face impassive as he spoke. He didn't represent the whole species! Could he really think that they didn't know about the biological humans that Second Chance represented? Or was it that he just didn't think of them as human? "As a king, my time is as limited and precious as yours, so I will not waste it with empty words and flattery. Rather, I will place my petition before you, answer any questions you may have, and leave the matter of specifics to diplomats and negotiators who will arrive at a later date should they be needed."

It was hard to tell, but it seemed as though the princesses were listening more intently. Twilight had little court experience, but this was highly irregular for the usual pattern here. Normally, flowery prose was exchanged for quite some time before anything of significance was discussed. Certainly if actual rulers from other nations arrived they would not have been so direct with what they wanted. Whatever their thoughts they did not stop him, and Richard clearly interpreted their silence as permission to proceed.

"I understand our information about your world is out of date. If you have relied on what Clover brought back, then I must admit that it is unfortunately no longer true. In the time since her brief visit less than fifty of our years ago, our planet has been rendered almost uninhabitable by catastrophic war. The war is over, but the damage is so severe that rebuilding will take thousands of years. Even with our best technology, the ecology might never fully recover. Our request therefore would be simple: a new home. As many or as few miles as you can afford to spare, in order that a small population might be established here. It would not have to be what you would consider productive land: we have no farming and little need for water. Even an impassable mountainous region or a desert wasteland would be sufficient to fill our needs, so long as we're granted full permission to use the land as we see fit."

"In exchange-" Richard snapped his fingers, and the men advanced with the crate. Only when they were beside him did they lower its considerable bulk to the ground with a thump. One, whom Twilight only then realized had vaguely feminine suggestions about her, flipped the lid open to reveal the contents of the chest.

Machines, all tightly packed into neat rows and nestled snugly into foam padding. Twilight probably knew far more about human technology than any other pony in the room, and she did not recognize any of what was there. Richard smiled broadly. "we offer our technology, freely and completely. This first shipment we offer as a gift, proof of our goodwill and the utility of a partnership."

Luna leaned forward then, gazing intensely down at the open crate. "Please explain the contents of that container to us. What gifts have you brought?"

Richard nodded gracefully, as though he had been waiting for that exact question. He reached inside, removing one of a dozen large rods. With a flick of his hands, he extended the strange fins. "This is a solar-powered pest-repellent device, meant for agricultural use. This device protects all the crops within a radius of several miles from microbial, fungal, and insectiod pests." He slid the device back into place and hefted a layer of foam and machines as though it were utterly weightless. It was frightening to see arms so small move metal as though it were cloth. King Richard was stronger than a minotaur. Maybe even as strong as an earth pony.

Beneath the first layer was another, and judging from the volume of the crate, probably another few layers below that. Richard removed another device, this one roughly resembling a syringe with a plastic bladder of orange fluid behind it. "This is a medicine we created using genetic samples provided by Clover. It's an artificial virus. After a brief infection period resembling a mild fever, it will render the pony immune to most diseases. At least those our worlds share in common."

He replaced the injection device and displayed the remaining two layers of machines, each with their own technological wonders. The choice was careful; not only did all of the machines he had brought have direct practical use to pony society right now, they were also so far advanced of present technology that reverse engineering would be completely impossible. It was a gift, but a gift calculated to have limited repercussions. Not without further such gifts in the future, at any rate.

Twilight wondered if Celestia and Luna had noticed this hollow generosity from the invaders as quickly as she had. But then, why was she so determined to see the worst? Was everything Chance said rubbing off on her? Eventually Richard had explained the contents of the crate. "And all this is only the beginning of what we can offer to our allies. Sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and freedom to the invalid. All in exchange for the least valuable territory in your kingdom."

She had remained quiet and almost still during the brief demonstration, and only now did Celestia move. Twilight's heart began to pound in her chest, eager to hear what her mentor and teacher of a lifetime might say. Regardless of how experienced and powerful this Richard might be, the Princess of the Sun was older and wiser by far. She would not be easily manipulated or deceived. "Equestria thanks you for your gift," She said, indicating the crate with a delicate nod of her head. "Your terms are generous, asking so little in exchange for your knowledge."

"But you aren't the only travelers from your world to court an alliance with Equestria." There was no immediate change in Richard's appearance, no twitches or obvious tells for Twilight to gage his reaction to this news. Perhaps she was simply imagining what seemed to be a brief charge in the air around him, like the ozone of a thunderstorm. Or perhaps he had a soul after all. "And our agreement with them was different than the one you're proposing. I think you would like to hear it."

Ever graceful, it was all Richard could do simply to nod in reply, his eyes more blank and emotionless than ever.

It had been hours since the human king and his entourage had entered the great hall, so long in fact that Celestia had lowered the sun and the moon was well up. Occasionally Chance heard snatches of heated conversation from that part of the castle, though she wasn't close enough to make out many coherent phrases. No doubt this was very much the idea, but that didn't mean she couldn't try. Her friends the Crusaders had joined her in the gardens as close to the throne room as it was possible to be, but as the day wore on each had grown too bored to remain listening with her when they could catch so little of what was being said.

Only one person cared enough to wait with Chance even as night fell and Luna lifted the moon, and he wasn't a pony at all. It was Spike. They had now shared two meals together in the garden, watching the flicker of light in the throne room as figures passed in front of windows in what was apparently animated conversation. "How much longer can they take?" Spike sat beside her on the dirt beside a little pond, drawing shapes in the dirt with one claw even as he made gestures on Chance's tablet with another. They were playing a card game on the screen, and he passed it towards the young unicorn when his move was complete.

"Dunno. Alicorns and androids. Could keep going forever." Chance took the tablet in her magic, grinning at the sour response on Spike's face. Dragons seemed to age even slower than ponies, and she was now decidedly bigger than he was. He wasn't still a baby dragon, but he wasn't quite an adolescent either. She could relate to the frustration he felt, considering this was her second time going through puberty. Of course she had no fingers for the screen, but a plastic stylus served well enough as a substitute, and she flicked the virtual playing cards into the positions she desired before passing the tablet back to Spike.

"We're not either," Spike pointed out, before yawning exaggeratedly. "Are you really going to watch them all night?"

She was a little more forceful than she had to be jerking the tablet from his claws with her magic. Chance could tell herself all she wanted that she didn't really need sleep, but here in Equestria she didn't even have the aid of time-release stimulant patches to keep her awake. She had tried that about a year ago, but as it turned out human stimulants had strange effects on ponies, particularly unicorns. "If I have to. Why, are you too tired to stay up all night?" She stuck her tongue out, which was more infantile than she usually acted.

“Dragons sleep for centuries!” Spike replied defensively. “But I would settle for a few hours. You can pretend you don’t need rest like Twilight used to do, but she never fooled me either.”

Chance groaned in protest, but was eventually forced to nod. She cleared the screen with a flick of the stylus, saving their unfinished game for when they were both in better shape. It wasn’t as though Twilight wouldn’t tell them everything worth knowing in the morning. As her personal apprentice and number one assistant, both could (correctly) count on hearing any interesting news Twilight learned almost the moment she learned it. Besides, Chance wouldn’t be any use to anypony if she was exhausted.

Her muscles were a little stiff as she rose slowly from the ground, shaking the dirt off that was clinging to her coat and stretching her legs one by one. There was a little bit of an evening chill in the autumn air, and she was grateful she hadn’t fallen asleep out here. That could have made for some painful cramps. There was little to distract her from sliding the tablet into its normal protective case, and heading with Spike up the path towards one of the castle’s many entrances.

“Thanks for coming along, Spike,” she said as they walked. “Nopony else made it this long, even though they all said they would.”

The dragon smiled in reply, looking as though he were about to reply with something flattering. Chance never heard it. At that moment she turned the whole of her attention on a strange sound gathering in the distance. Spike noticed it too, and they stared off into the sky to the north. It was hard to describe, a deep thrum combined with a buzz that grew gradually louder like the beating of many distant wings.

That was when the explosions began.

Chapter 3: Audience

The ground shook with the force of distant thunder, though there were no clouds in the sky and no inclement weather scheduled. Each blast brought distant flashes of light from below, accompanied by a sound that could only be distant screaming. Chance did not know how an enemy could have penetrated this far into Equestrian territory, didn't know for sure who was even attacking or why. But it didn't matter. She had to do something.

"Spike!" She called, breaking their stunned silence. "Get close to me! You're alright teleporting back to our room, right?"

The dragon complied. "Please. Twilight was dragging me through teleports when you were still in diapers."

Even under the circumstances it was impossible not to smile at least a little. "I don't think that's actually true," she said, before closing her eyes and forcing all her attention to the spell. Teleportation was one of the more difficult forms of enchantment a unicorn could learn, partially because it required both a large natural store of thaumaturgical energy as because a mastery of complex mathematics was also involved.

Second Chance could not have asked for a better teacher, though she only ever needed help with the first. When it came to mathematics, she actually had an advantage over her instructor. Her body contained one of the most sophisticated human innovations: the Nanophage. This model was one constructed specifically for scientists and intellectuals, and provided its user with increased response time and access to mathematical sub-processors.

Magically there was no competing with her mentor, nor would there ever be. But that was fine. Twilight was a very patient teacher when you made your very best effort. Thanks to all those years of careful instruction, Chance was able to draw down the strange phenomena the natives of this world had taught her to call "magic". Through force of will she bridged the distance between the gardens and the bedroom. There was a brief imposition of air, a pressing of otherworldly forces against their flesh, and then a bang like a low-caliber gunshot as they forced air aside that already occupied their destination.

Chance still hadn't mastered managing the air displacement so teleporting didn't sound like the first shots of a war. Not that it mattered, considering the sky outside was already providing ample noise.

Whenever Second Chance visited the castle she was always given the same room, which normally felt enormously spacious but tonight a little less so since beds had been brought for her friends. Of the three former Crusaders only Scootaloo looked alert, standing upright and looking out the window at the flashes of orange light and subsequent screams. Apple Bloom was just sitting up, and Sweetie Belle seemed to be trying to cover her ears with her hooves, moaning in protest at the interruption.

"Those flashes are coming from the ironworks!" Scootaloo shouted, her voice panicked. "The Fury! What if she catches on fire in the drydock? We have to go make sure she's okay!" The little pegasus darted over to Sweetie's bed and yanked the covers off with one powerful tug. "Come on, we'll need your magic to put out the fire!"

"I don't reckon this was an accident," said Apple Bloom as she rolled out of bed, taking her saddlebag full of tools and shrugging it on. It did not take long for her judgements to be confirmed. Though evidently taken off-guard, Chance watched from the window as Canterlot's defenses rose to animated life. She smiled to herself as a low vibration began to shake the ground beneath her, accompanied by a series of loud mechanical noises. The sky lit up with the tracer rounds from the city's newly installed M-18 HURRICANE turrets. The loss of the Mesh network's main hub had evidently delayed their activation. It was fortunate the city had measures in place for Truth's loss.

Fires began in the air, and rubble began to rain down on Canterlot doing nearly as much damage as the bombs and spreading fires. As scary as the airships were, they couldn't compare to the roar that shook the air, and the dark shape she saw hurtling for the castle. Tracers from the HURRICANE AA rounds impacted without any discernible effect, and it seemed to be gaining speed rather than losing it as it approached the castle. It was going to collide.

There were only seconds to brace for the impact, but they proved unnecessary. The magically-reinforced structure shuddered at the force of an incredible impact, but ultimately held. Even so, the volume was spectacular. A great rumbling in the mountain, glass shattering and stone tumbling down. It hurt to hear, as much from the thought of the beautiful structure being damaged as the raw decibels.

"Why would somepony be attacking us?!" Sweetie shouted, her voice only slightly less shrill than she had been a decade ago. Far from being annoyed by the volume, Chance was encouraged to hear that Sweetie Belle was fully awake.

"Doesn't matter!" she answered, looking quickly between the three ponies and one dragon. "Whatever that was, it's out of our league. But if we can get Prismatic Fury into the air, maybe we can help somehow." Chance hurried over to their belongings, dragging a large hard-plastic case away from the loose pile of Scootaloo's clothes that had formed a little hill on top of everything else. With a few clicks the case was open, revealing a pair of Magnetic Accelerator Rifles. She lifted both into the air, clicking the only non-practice clips they had with them into each one. She passed one to Sweetie Belle before throwing the one made for her over her shoulder by the strap. A pity they didn't have the custom-built harness that would allow Scootaloo or Apple Bloom to use the weapons, but they had hardly anticipated to be in a battle.

Chance didn't particularly like the idea of pointing a gun at anything that wasn't a paper target on a practice range. But what alternative was there, hiding and leaving Canterlot to its fate?

There was nothing they could do about the strange object that had collided with the opposite wing of the castle, or the periodic roars that shook the foundation. Magic flashes from behind them as they ran into the streets of the city told them Celestia and Luna must be dealing with it. Spike felt heavier on her back than he had when she was a filly. But with the adrenaline pounding in her veins, she hardly even noticed.

The damage to Canterlot wasn't nearly as extensive as it had seemed. Chunks of burning airship cluttered the streets, but magic was already containing the worst of the fires. They could hear the sounds of combat from further into the city, and more than once squads of armed guards passed them at a rapid gallop. Whatever this attack was, it was clear the Equestrian population was doing what it took to get it contained.

That did not mean they were safe, though. Somehow, an unknown enemy had managed to get troops on the ground in the heart of Equestria. How many were still at large? What kind of monsters were they?

That question resolved itself as they reached the industrial quarter, and private dwellings were replaced with factories and warehouses. There were fewer soldiers here, and no mage-crews despite several large fires. "C'mon!" Scootaloo urged as they rounded a corner and the ironworks came into view. "We can't let anything happen to her!"

That was when Apple Bloom noticed they were being followed and shouted for them to turn. It was harder to do an about face on four legs than two, but Chance managed. Granted, Spike had to wrap his arms around her neck and cling for dear life, but if she hadn't they might not have lived through what came next.

The monsters (she could think of no other word to describe them) were taller than adult ponies, with nearly albino flesh that bubbled with uneven growths. They were bipedal and armored with uneven scraps of metal and leather, with reptilian eyes and muscular scaly tails. Her mind struggled to identify them from any of the Equestrian books of species and classification she had studied, though it took no great struggle to identify the weapons they carried. Large muskets, with wickedly curved bayonets.

There were less than twenty meters between the five of them and the pair of muscular hairless abominations. The monsters were at a full charge, and upon seeing the ponies had noticed them both let out guttural roars and pounded at the ground with focused determination, preparing for lethal strikes.

Neither got the chance. In the heat of the moment a pony lifted a human-designed weapon into the air with a shimmer of magic, took careful aim assisted by nanophage implants, and fired two shots.

The MAR's electromagnets accelerated a pair of shaped rounds to supersonic velocity, causing a series of loud bangs. First as the rounds left the muzzle, and then as the rounds hit their targets. Rough steel and iron plate might have blocked an arrow or even a low-impact ball like those a musket fired, but offered almost no resistance to a human weapon meant to counter human personnel armors made of strong nanomaterials.

Both monsters kept their forward momentum when they were hit, skidding to a halt about a meter from where Sweetie Belle was standing with the rifle still held in her magic. Chance wasn't the only one who spent several seconds staring blankly at her friend, not believing what she was seeing. Somehow, demure little Sweetie Belle had just saved all their lives! The unicorn herself seemed to be suffering from the greatest disbelief, her body locked into a motionless rigor.

"We best get goin'!" Apple Bloom pushed Sweetie Belle, turning her to face the foundry. As it turned out, the large wooden roof that sheltered the drydock seemed to be in good shape, though the warehouse next door had changed into a bonfire. There were no fire-containment unicorns in sight, and no water trucks. How long would it take the fire to spread?

"Y-yeah..." Squeaked the white unicorn, as though watching the capital burn and killing monsters was the most normal thing in her life. Then, without warning, she lowered her head to the ground and began to heave, body shaking violently.

Scootaloo whimpered. "I'll get her ready for takeoff!" She managed to call back, galloping off toward the apparently empty structure.

Apple Bloom stood beside her struggling friend while Chance and Spike kept watch, though there seemed to be no further immediate danger other than the spreading fires. Sweetie Belle's moment of strength appeared to have passed, and her heaves gradually gave way to incomprehensible sobbing.

"Ah know ya' feel awful," she encouraged, nudging Sweetie forward with gentle gestures. "But if we don't get that there airship up soon, then we'll lose it and won't be able to do a darn thing to help anypony."

"I... shot them..." Cried the unicorn, along with plenty of other sounds that were nearly some words and almost others. Still, she did begin to amble forward, at a pace not nearly equal with the speed the flames were spreading. "Killed."

"You saved our lives," Chance added, lifting Sweetie Belle's rifle away from her and into Spike's clawed grip. The dragon was on his own two feet by now, and though he had barely any practice with the weapon he took it with a resolute nod. "They tried to kill us. They're burning Canterlot down... killing ponies. Your big sister is back at the castle right now... we've got to get the airship and get back to help!"

This seemed to work as a motivator, because the shell-shocked pony started to move again, and they galloped through the huge door Scootaloo had left swinging ajar.

The shipyards were a strange structure with no close parallel Chance could remember from her past. The structure was built over one of the mountainous edges of Canterlot, and consisted largely of thick wooden docks and supports over empty air. The ceiling was flat, resting on metal tracks that allowed it to be retracted. There was only one ship, occupying the smallest of three docking sections. The young mares raced the flames across the room toward it and the pony who scurried busily along the docks.

The Prismatic Fury was a very old ship, and to Chance's eyes resembled an ancient schooner that had decided inexplicably that gravity wasn't worth listening to after all and had taken to the air. It had two masts and numerous sails, all of which Scootaloo could name and precisely describe. The Prismatic Fury had been a luxury yacht for some rich unicorn a century ago, but had fallen into such poor condition that the four no-longer-Crusaders had paid little more than the cost of lumber for it. Years of labor and all their disposable income (which was considerable when you held an important crown-appointed position) had done far better than just restore her. Each had contributed in her own way, but none so much as Scootaloo. Even after all these years she was an extremely weak flier. The Fury had given her back her wings.

And now leaping flames were near to taking them away and turning half a decade's worth of labor to ashes. Though still clearly disoriented even Sweetie Belle charged with renewed determination, shadows leaping in the strange light that came from above. It was like a gigantic orange animal was eating its way in, cracking rather than chewing as it went. The beams were strong, but beams and tarred thatch made for a fire that was almost alive.

Scootaloo passed them as they ran, a large blade in her mouth. Rather than take the time to loosen the complicated moorings, she was cutting away at what bound the ship to the docks. It seemed these were the last she had to sever, because the Prismatic Fury had already started to drift in the wind, its side grinding loudly against the dock before beginning to slowly list the other way. Apple Bloom was first, and cleared the gap onto the ship with ease. Her momentum made the jump a little harder for Sweetie Belle and Spike, though both ultimately cleared the growing gap. By the time Chance brought up the rear, there were nearly three full meters of empty air separating her from the ship. Far too great a distance for her to confidently jump, even at a full gallop.

It might have meant disaster, if she weren't able to teleport. Twilight's intense magical training meant that complicated spellcasting on demand did not phase her, even when her mind was already heavily weighed down with stress and fear. Besides, crossing a distance that was within sight was far easier than the spell she had done earlier with Spike, and she appeared on the deck with another loud bang.

"I'm taking her down!" Called Scootaloo as she raced past them onto the raised rear deck, wings beating furiously. There was a nautical name for it, but Chance hardly tried to remember as she followed. "Everypony find something to hold on to! I won't let her burn!"

The latest run of upgrades and improvements was far from complete, and they scrambled over loose bundles of wire and piles of raw materials. Still, whatever the case of the electrical systems Truth had custom-designed for this ship, the underlying Equestrian thaumaturgical engineering should still be intact. Even if all the consoles and fancy weapons didn't work as well as they ought to, or at all.

Sweetie Belle passed her, disappearing below deck. Apple Bloom braced herself against one of the masts, taking a line of thick rope in her teeth. Chance jammed herself up against the railing, putting as much pressure against it as she could. Just in time, too.

Enchanting was not Chance's field, so she knew little about the thaumic "Levitation Seed" or how it worked. She only knew enough to know its effects could be controlled from the helm to alter the ship's altitude. In one quick jab of her hooves, Scootaloo slammed the control all the way down to the "off" setting. This was a mistake, something you never ought to do, since it caused gravity to reassert itself on each and every part of the ship as though they were all free falling bodies and not a single entity. Chance felt her stomach ripped out from under her along with the ground, which fell away from her hooves just an inch or so before her back caught against the railing and prevented her fatal separation from the Prismatic Fury. Plenty of loose objects on deck were not so lucky, and the air around her was soon filled with dangerous debris. Of course the acceleration imparted by gravity was universal, but the different shapes and densities made Chance feel as though she were suddenly under-water, with tools and wire and bits of unsecured deck planking floating along with her.

Scootaloo might be young, but she was a skilled enough captain to know not to reactivate the antigravity all at once, which would seem to the ship and all its passengers like suddenly striking a solid surface. It was likely neither would survive such a mistake. Instead, she waited three seconds, long enough for the ship to get considerable distance from the burning warehouse, before reinitializing gravity on its lowest setting. The ship continued to fall, but at a gradually reducing rate. Eventually Chance's hooves touched delicately back on the deck, though all around her debris of all sorts from the Fury's unfinished refit impacted more harshly, spinning or spiraling out of sight.

By all accounts it was some expert flying, and the ship's crew joined together in a hearty cheer. They had more or less stopped about two hundred feet from the ground, and aside from the moonlight and the flicker of the distant burning city the deck was dark.

Scootaloo was the first to regain her composure. "I know she wasn't ready," she said, looking around with obvious displeasure at the state of the deck. Chance had seen Scootaloo's bedroom, and it was usually a mess. She was a disorderly student and sometimes couldn't even be bothered to brush her mane. But when it came to the state of her ship (even though they theoretically owned it together) she would never have permitted such disorder. "What about those fancy weapons you were putting in, Chance? Does anything on here pack more punch than the guns we put around Canterlot?"

The young mare thought about that for a moment, considering the imperfect state of the ship's modifications and exactly what the power systems could handle. Eventually she settled on her answer, and took a few tentative steps toward the stairwell that led belowdecks. "Yeah. I think we do." She looked over to Apple Bloom. "Got your tools?" The other mare didn't have to say a word; she already had a wrench in her mouth and a spanner close at hoof. It made Chance smile. "Ten minutes, Captain! We just need ten minutes!"

A little earlier...

As the first and only sovereign of the Steel Tower, Richard had experienced many failures. Indeed the term "leader" ought to be synonymous with failure so far as he was concerned. This day, however, might very well be one of the worst examples he had ever experienced. Not only had the enemy beaten them through the universal gulf, but they already had diplomatic relations established with the natives on the other side. Not only did they understand perfectly well what his people had done with their OMICRON Core, but they were very unhappy about the disruption it had caused. Nearly a decade's careful planning was going up in smoke around him.

Well maybe not completely. They were still willing to hear him, and the offer he had made was unlike any the opposition had made. With universal travel disallowed, the United Earth Federation could only trade the limited number of goods and technologies that could be manufactured by the OMICRON Core that was already here. He had violated that injunction, and brought trade goods in volume and quality that no Core could ever manufacture.

And there was something else, some unspoken stress he saw in each of the rulers. In some way they were animals to him, yet the behavior was quite familiar. Each buckled under the stress somewhat differently, yet all seemed oppressed by it somehow. In his mind this was why they had even bothered to hear him out for so long. In the midst of confusion and even disgust, they seemed to see him sometimes as though he were the timely answer to a prayer.

Yet they were also experienced. The purple one who had first met him, the youngest and most inexperienced, said only innocuous things and asked few questions. The others, Luna and Celestia, spoke so carefully that he knew not even his most adroit probability-mitigation algorithm would be able to explain what they might be thinking, not without more information about what the current situation here in Equestria was like. He feared they would not be permitted to remain long enough for that.

He would not have to. Without a word exchanged between the three ponies, all three looked suddenly alert and almost frightened, eyes directed outward towards the windows. It was impossible to see anything through the stained glass, which meant to Richard that their "magical" senses must have been triggered somehow. He judged the expressions for anything they might reveal, though only the purple one kept anything on her face for him to read it confidently. Distress and fear, the kind of fear one felt when people they loved were in personal danger. Richard knew that feeling well, since it had been a part of his life for so long.

It was as if his entourage had suddenly ceased to exist for all the attention the ruling ponies paid him. "Luna," said Celestia, as all three rose to their hooves.

"Of course, dear sister. Our ponies are ready." The pony named Luna really did vanish, blinking out of existence with a brief surge of electromagnetic radiation his enhanced senses could detect but make nothing of. The natives called it teleportation, and it was one of the examples of why calling this planet "primitive" was not strictly true.

"Twilight Sparkle, if you would join the battlemages in the eastern tower. I believe they could use your magic."

"O-of course," she stammered in reply, before vanishing nearly as elegantly as Luna had. That left Richard and his men along with Celestia and her guards at the door, with a growing understanding of what was going on.

Celestia glided gently down to the ground about ten feet ahead of him. "I am sorry to say that-" She was interrupted by a sudden shaking beneath their feet, and the distant rumble of an explosion. The software in his brain analyzed the sound before she even finished speaking, identifying it as a black powder based charge of about fifty pounds in an iron shell. "Canterlot is under attack. Princess Luna and Princess Twilight Sparkle have left to augment the city's defenses. I will remain here and ensure no harm comes to you." There was no change in her he could see, except perhaps a certain steely tone in her voice.

Richard bowed just slightly, though as he spoke his mind was alight with conversation on radio transmission between himself and his guards, as well as his men back in the village they had arrived in. "We need no protection, Princess," he said. And even as he said it, he listened to the captain he had chosen coordinating the defense of the room. His guards drew their weapons and began to fan out, forming a very loose barrier of protection around him. This seemed to unnerve the pony guards a little, though not as much as he expected. They must not have much experience with accelerator rifles. "We can remain here if you are needed to defend your city." The ground shook again, this time with much greater intensity.

Maybe Celestia would have taken him up on the offer, maybe not. He would never find out.

One of the walls of wonderfully worked stained glass abruptly exploded in a shower of stone and glass as a gigantic shape came through it with the force of a freight train. One of his men was not fast enough, and vanished with a scream beneath the rubble along with one of the pony guards that had been unlucky enough to be standing nearby.

Richard spent a few precious processor cycles debating whether he should take the white-furred ruler with him as he leapt backward through the air to avoid the massive intruder. In the greatly slowed time that was his most battle-accelerated reactions, he saw this was not required. Celestia sprung backward even more rapidly than he could with muscles made from the strongest artificial substitute. Richard retreated in a single twenty-foot bound, landing near the rear wall.

He got a good look at the creature while it shook bricks and glass from black scales, adjusting its massive bulk. Even though this was an alien world with alien creatures, good king Richard knew immediately what he was looking at. A dragon, perhaps a hundred feet long from snout to tail. Red fire burned in its eyes, and light glistened from teeth that were each as long as his arm. It seemed a miracle the structure beneath them could even support such a bulk.

Of course there were some aspects he did not understand, like the way its black scales seemed to glow faintly with symbols he couldn't read. The symbols flickered and danced on almost every part of its body.

The beast raised its head on its long neck and looked towards Celestia. Then it spoke. Richard did not understand the language that it spoke, its tones so deep that they shook the floor like the explosions further away. Yet somehow, impossibly, it sounded as though the beast was speaking English. "Your reign is over, Lightbringer," it said to Celestia, who hovered in the air about fifteen feet above where Richard stood. It seemed not to see anyone else. Not the pony guards rushing at it, or his own spreading out to tactical positions around the room. It did not even see him, resplendent in royal regalia atop the mightiest armor of the tower. To those eyes there was only one equal here; all other creatures were less than insects. "Your city is in flames. I shall take your head before my father and devour your court."

Several of the pony guards were trembling, and at least one had already fled. One of his own men was also motionless, too fearful and surprised to properly react. That left Richard only with the captain of his guard, Sir Gray, who ignored the words in order to approach the creature from the side, flanking it. It took no more notice of him than an ant crawling along the floor. 'At your command,' came his voice silently over the radio. 'I can put a plasma charge though its neck.'

'No,' Richard replied immediately. 'Not yet. Is Lewis dead?'

'Crushed,' came the instant reply. 'All systems destroyed. Cortical recorder is giving me a green signal, though. It survived.'

Or very nearly instant, since Celestia was already replying. Once again Richard found himself almost paralyzed with fascination as he listened. The language was the same, far stranger than the noises Equestria's natives usually made. Yet at the same time he heard the words as perfect English. There also seemed to be a faint light coming from Celestia, one that did not register on any spectrum his sensors could detect. "Was it worth your life to penetrate Equestria's defenses for a moment?" Celestia replied. In spite of everything, she sounded as compassionate as ever. "Perhaps defiling yourself with those runes allowed you to teleport a few ships, but no more. My sister has dismantled entire navies with her hooves alone, and she will not be alone in the seat of our strength." She gestured imperiously to the sky. "Leave now and spend your last hours in peace."

The dragon was clearly not in much of a mood to debate, because it did not listen any longer. Instead it let back its massive neck, heat and light boiling up from deep within its body. Not only did dragons exist then, but they could also breathe fire.

Richard took a few great strides, tearing the robe in his haste to get behind some nearby rubble as quickly as possible. A second later the room lit up with brilliant green and orange. His mind lit up with a barrage of warnings, even though he had cleared the area of danger. 'Plasma weaponry detected in vicinity. Gamma radiation source detected. Internal defense systems activated, magnetic capacitors charging. No strategic coordination drones detected, deploying.' The grenade launcher embedded in his left shoulder tore through his robe as it inclined straight up, releasing a fist-sized drone to hover as close to the ceiling as it could. Its battery of cameras and sensors opened the entire battlefield to his eyes, highlighting the areas of danger and those of safety. Had there been more of his soldiers, they would all share the sensor input and be able to coordinate their strategies accordingly. As it was, he had only two men besides himself.

How were their odds? Three men, a handful of pony guards, and one princess against an enormous mythical beast?

Maybe better than he thought. When the flames cleared Celestia was still there, a little bubble of protection vanishing from around her. As the beast bore down on her, she replied in kind with a wave of invisible force. As though gripped by the very hand of God, the dragon's claws scraped huge divots in the floor as it was slammed backward out the opening, vanishing from sight as it sunk down to the garden below.

"Flee!" Came her voice, in that same language that was at once universal and commanding. The command was for all, human and pony alike. "None of you can fight a dragon! Retreat to the eastern tower!"

Her guards did not salute, but they obeyed immediately. Richard was shocked to see his own men obeyed as well, at least the two he still had. As though compelled by some supernatural force, they ran from the chamber, keeping pace with the pony guards who they seemed to be trusting to lead them. Of all who heard the voice, there was only one who had the strength of will to resist the command it gave. Richard could hear his advisers screaming in protest as he drew off what was left of his royal vestments, letting them fall callously to the ground.

He had every right to leave. By all accounts, the princess wanted him to get out of here and away from danger. His advisers were already appalled at the enormous risk to his person this expedition had become. If they could see what he was about to do, he couldn't even guess how they would react.

But that didn't matter. Celestia, this ruler of Equestria, was locked in combat with a deadly foe, one who had "killed" one of his own men. It was true he had everything to gain by assisting this pony in deadly battle when he wanted to become her ally. But that was not what motivated him to draw the longsword from its sheath on his back, the weapon which until now he had considered to be purely ceremonial.

No, Richard was not motivated to fight by the political gains. He fought because he honored the same oath he expected his knights to keep. Richard was a good king.

Author's Notes:

Well here we are, another chapter! Things sure are picking up much faster than they did in MLA... but I suppose that was a different sort of story. Not really a story about any sort of physical conflict like this one is. I'm sorry if I'll be a little slow about answering comments this time around; I'm going to be at Anime Expo all day today and tomorrow (and the last two days, but those are already over) so that will probably effect how fast I can respond to comments sent my way. Still, I really do apreciate everyone who takes the time to read and comment on the story, and if you ask questions or do anything that requires a response you can be confident that I will eventually do just that. And again, a huge thanks to my alpha readers for doing so much to make this story more readable before it even gets posted. Sure makes my Saturdays less stressful knowing most of the mistakes have already been fixed.

Chapter 4: Free

Maybe it was wrong of Richard to expect Celestia to react the way he would have, had his commands been disobeyed. She landed beside him, body tense as she watched the opening for the return of their enemy. But she did not repeat herself or chastise. Perhaps she understood as he did that one ruler need respect another. "That is a very fine sword," she said, with one gentle inclination of her head. How she could be so fierce one moment and so calm the next baffled Richard. Despite all his focus, all his practice being calm in the face of difficulty, he couldn't imagine the level of discipline this pony possessed. "I hope you wield it well."

Richard nodded in reply. "As do I," he said, before springing to one side with all the speed his body possessed. So what if this monster didn't give him the respect he deserved? He would teach it a harsh lesson, a lesson taught with a blade forged of the strongest and sharpest material humanity had ever invented. 'Prepare for recovery protocol,' he passed silently along the network to his men waiting in Ponyville. 'This body may be destroyed.'

There was no time for further communication, because that was when the dragon slammed its way into the opening it had made, jaw snapping at Celestia with murderous intent and fire already glowing ready for use. Again his armor lit up with warnings, though this time she dodged to one side rather than shield herself from the brunt of the incredible attack. It was obvious what she was doing: drawing the dragon's attention away from him. It had turned away, and didn't see him coming.

The beast had massive limbs, easily as thick as a large tree-trunk. Up close, the scales glinted like precious stones, each at least an inch thick. They looked stronger than steel.

His sword was much stronger than steel. Even possessing the weapon was a largely ceremonial function, but that did not mean the sovereign of the Steel Tower would carry a cheap sword, or something made from pretty but fragile metal. It would also never be said that the sovereign could not wield a sword, though it was an ancient and impractical weapon. With a deft two-handed stroke, Richard directed the strength of a hydraulic pile-driver into his sword and parted the dragon from one of his claws.

The beast reacted immediately, the flames that melted rock and irradiated the chamber ceasing as swiftly as they had begun. The creature collapsed with his blow, but not before striking out with what was left of that limb with enough force to send Richard spinning through the air. There was no wind to knock from his lungs, but the shock sensors in his armor screamed in protest.

The bureaucrats and senators of the United Earth Federation followed the new, "enlightened" order of governance, and would have been torn to pieces by the angry dragon that had turned its attention to him at last. But Richard followed an older order, in which the King was someone who fought alongside his armies and could perform any task in his kingdom with a level of skill to rival the masters. So while the dragon had knocked him into the air, intending to be upon him with teeth and claw by the time he landed, Richard had no intention of being thus dispatched. His recovery crew might have difficulty getting his cortical recorder out of a dragon's belly.

Without moving any of his limbs, King Richard activated the short-range rockets embedded in the armor, propelling himself fifty feet or so in the opposite direction and landing on his feet with sword lifted in both arms. Though limping, the great dragon ignored the pulsing blood as it bore down on him, its rage conquering pain.

"The human creature has forgotten its place! Dress in pony armor and wield a pony sword, it cannot make you less fodder! You are only what we made of you, animals of a magicless wasteland!" The roar came with another echo of light, and this time the dragon was focused on him directly. He was in the open, there was no way to dodge this strike. The beast was too fast.

There was only time for the internal command. 'All power to magnetic shielding!' He screamed internally, slamming his sword down into the stone and gripping the hilt with both arms. Unlike a steel blade, it did not shatter on impact, but sunk as easily as it had cleaved aside the flesh of the dragon. Much easier, actually.

The circuits in his armor reacted much faster than an operator could control them, faster than the sickly black flames as they leapt at him. He felt capacitors building a charge, felt the plates in the armor begin to hum. As the flames approached, the magnetic charge was released, forming a bubble of energy meant to disrupt human plasma weapons.

As it turned out, dragonfire was not all that dissimilar to plasma weapons. The air around him was superheated by the impressive blast, enough that he would've been cooked alive if he were organic. But Richard's body was the most durable, expensive type just as his armor was the very best technology could produce. Perhaps one of his footmen would not have survived, but Richard was no footman.

Besides, the attack did not continue as long as it had probably been intended. For just as Celestia had distracted the beast while he struck, this rage-filled creature had completely forgotten it was fighting two and not just one. The flames ceased to lick at Richard right about the time the power supply in his armor was nearing depletion and his own systems began to warn him that his body would soon shut down to prevent damage, to say nothing of the ungodly levels of radiation glowing around him. Because dragonfire was apparently radioactive.

Celestia, the Equestrian monarch of the sun, did not wield a weapon he could see. Her weapon was apparently magic itself, focused force and energy that glowed with the warmth of sunrise. And unlike Richard, she did not merely strike a serious but non lethal wound.

The dragonfire had stopped because the dragon no longer had a head. Richard's armor sparked and protested a little as he tried to move, climbing free of the crater the flames had blasted in the floor and removing his sword from its place. The intricate hilt had been melted away and only the plain hilt beneath remained, its metal not even glowing in the heat that had made orange patches in his armor that only now began to cool. His body was damaged too, though not seriously. He would not appear weak before Celestia, who had struck down a terrible monster in one blow.

She landed again on four hooves, her eyes sweeping across the room and the damage the dragon had done to the ground where Richard had stood. Her horn glowed briefly again, and a shimmer played across his body. 'Radiation levels nominal,' it said, even as the advanced plates of his armor popped and sprung back into shape under the focus of Celestia's magic. The errors and heat-melted circuits in his body remained, and for this Richard was glad. Had Celestia been able to fix him as easily as the shape of his armor, he would have been genuinely frightened. He couldn't even imagine any being able to understand such advanced technology so quickly.

"That is... all I can manage right now," she said, her voice drained. And to look at her, she seemed suddenly weary and bedraggled. She might not have received a scratch from the adventure, but it had clearly cost her strength all the same. "And I am sorry for your guard." She gestured at the fallen wall, which began to slide away. The pony and human guard beneath were in equally poor condition. Even Richard, though not a squeamish man, had no desire to look closely. "It is a stain of shame we could not protect our guests." Even as she said this, the faint sparks from her horn brought magic to the body of the fallen Equestrian guard. His body began to knit together, until the sparks faded and Celestia released him, lowering him with the compassion of a tender parent.

For one awful moment Richard feared the guard would sit up and return to life before his eyes. Were that to happen, Richard might have feared this operation had been even more of a mistake than he had already known. It was one thing to speak to another ruler, and quite another to speak to a god.

But the guard remained quite dead, and the king realized what Celestia had done had been a gesture of respect, to allow one who had served her die with dignity. He could understand that, even if the power he had seen just now made him feel very humble. "And my deepest regret that your kingdom faces such enemies." Richard inclined his head towards the fallen dragon, collapsed as it was in the midst of rubble and its scales still glowing with strange runes. That light was fading now though, however slowly. "We knew from Clover that Equestria had its wars just as we have, yet we did not know you had enemies like this."

Celestia made her way toward the rather large window the dragon had made, looking out over her city. The explosions were gone now, along with the shouts of fear and terror. A few fires remained, though most of the smoke Richard saw rising now was white and not black. There was great damage here, but most of the city he saw was intact. At some point during their fight with the dragon, a shimmering field of purple energy had formed above the city, protecting it from any future attacks.

"We rarely do," Celestia admitted, sitting on her haunches to collect her breath. She managed to make the posture look as elegant as anything else she did, yet it was still weakness most rulers would not dare show to an enemy. Perhaps she no longer considered him one. "That dragon used old, forbidden magic. The runes carved into his body allowed him to use his life force to fuel his magic. Dragons are dangerous enemies, but not usually that dangerous. He would have died on his own in an hour or two. Otherwise, they are nearly invincible." She gestured back, and he followed the flick of her hoof with his eyes. The limb he had severed had... regrown! He hadn't even noticed in the flames. Yet the severed claw was there, and the foreleg he had cut it from had a fresh, new claw. "The slightest thought can repair any injury. Had all its magic not been directed towards killing you, my strike would have done nothing. I had aimed to decapitate with my first blow, not to ruin half the garden." Then another nod of respect. "I have never seen a mortal creature survive soulfire before."

Richard's respect for this pony grew. Not only was she showing weakness to him, but she was being honest. It was what he had done when his audience with her had began, yet the gesture hadn't been returned until now. "Executive privilege." He chuckled. "Only three sets of armor with plasma shielding have ever been made to my knowledge. The cost of manufacturing it is equivalent to the GDP of a small nation. But being assassinated is worse than a little short-term fiscal irresponsibility."

This elicited a small smile in return. Slowly, the Alicorn rose to her hooves. "If you don't mind, I must depart to ensure no further harm comes to Canterlot tonight. Ask anypony to direct you to the eastern tower; you will be safe there until my return." Celestia did not wait for a reply. Rather, she spread her great wings and took off into the night, in the direction of the brightest remaining fires.

Richard looked on a moment before turning away, giving the fallen monster a wide berth as he left the room. Yet as he walked, he couldn't get the creature's words from his mind. What had the monster meant?

Chance poked her head up from belowdecks, looking around. "Why have we stopped, Captain?" It was pretty silly to call Scootaloo anything different, but the pegasus seemed to like it when they did. So they usually indulged her. Just now, doing something so silly made Chance feel a little less like she had just watched an important city burning in the fires of an apparent invasion.

Nor did Scootaloo get a proper chance to answer, since Chance could see immediately what had stopped them. Specifically, the magical shield that had come into being around the city like a bubble. All three of them knew what that bubble meant: the city's defenses were in full effect now. Of course all four of this ship's passengers could pass through that barrier without difficulty, since the standard spell would recognize them as friendly natives.

The problem, as they had learned through previous experience, was that the Nanophage machines that swam in their blood and interfaced with their brains and bodies would not pass through the barrier, not before being registered as a threat and being magically short-circuited. Without the Nanophage, controlling any of the human-designed sections of this ship would be much more difficult. What was worse, there was no telling just how damaged Truth really was. If he could not be repaired, then new injections could not be procured. There would be no way to clean out the microscopic contaminants in their blood. They might all die painful deaths.

Scootaloo probably hadn't put any of that last part together, but she seemed to remember their last adventure with a magical barrier. Cutie Mark Crusaders, thauma-technological pioneers of Equestria. "We're holding position outside the barrier. At least the friend-foe thing seems to work; the guns aren't shooting at us."

"I could bring up the castle on satellite," Chance offered. "See if they still need-" But she didn't finish, because at that moment Scootaloo gasped and twisted hard to starboard on the wheel, causing Second Chance to lose her balance and tumble down a few of the steps. By the time she had made her way back to the surface Apple Bloom was beside her.

"Warn us when you're about to do something like that, Scoot! Sweetie Belle's still recovering down here!"

Scootaloo ignored her anger. "Yeah," she replied, before gesturing energetically ahead of them. "Looks like that ship is getting away!" Both of the other ponies followed the gesture, and indeed there was a ship on the horizon, moving away with great speed. Much faster than any ordinary vessel in the Equestrian Air Service could've caught up with it. Maybe a swift pegasus could close a distance like that, but none of the clumsy propeller-driven ships.

"Is that an Equestrian ship?" Apple Bloom asked, moving to the railing and squinting after its retreating form.

The answer did not come from any organic creature. Rather, it came from the ship itself. Its computer core was up and running again. Though not a General Artificial Intelligence, it was fairly powerful in its own right and responsible for all the Fury's human systems. "Communicating with Celestia 1," came a bland voice over the ship's speakers, before, "Observation link confirmed. Vessel is of Griffon construction, Dreadnaught-class." To the eyes of the three young mares, a gridwork of lines appeared briefly superimposed over their vision, sent over the ship's little mesh network. Highlighted on it were its twenty guns and thick deck-plating, along with the thaumaturgical components that gave the ship lift.

The image was superimposed with the picture from the satellite, which included several figures moving about the ship's surface. They clearly weren't griffons, and if anything they resembled the monsters they had fought in Canterlot. "We can't let them escape!" Scootaloo said, angling the ship directly at the retreating vessel. Their propellers began to spin, and they gradually started building speed. It wasn't enough to catch up, of course. But at least the other ship wouldn't get any further away.

"Shouldn't we let the Air Ponies handle them?" Apple Bloom asked, dodging a box of screws that had begun to slide along the deck toward her as they accelerated. "We're not fighters, Scootaloo." She glanced over her shoulder then, obviously indicating Sweetie Belle. While Chance could hear nothing from her friend, she knew she was still in an unfit state to render them any assistance right now. Spike had been an able assistant, even if he didn't know half as much about the technology as Sweetie Belle.

"We don't have to fight them!" Scootaloo argued, leaning hard on the accelerator. "Just follow them. Maybe they're just gonna run away. If we follow them all the way to the ocean and they leave, then that's fine. If they try to hurt anypony..." She narrowed her eyes, then looked to Chance. "You did say you had some of the weapons running, right? Just because we can't help at the castle doesn't mean we can't help somewhere else."

Chance shifted uncomfortably on her hooves. Yes, they did have some of their weapons working. But she wasn't sure how she would feel about using them on anyone. She hadn't been able to take the lives of the monsters that had been trying to kill them. Her friend had done it instead, and was suffering the consequences. Until now, they had never killed before. They were engineers, tinkerers, explorers, performers, scientists. But not soldiers.

"They dropped bombs on Canterlot!" Scootaloo continued. "Hurt ponies, lit the city on fire! They'll do it again somewhere else unless we stop them."

Chance sighed. It wasn't as though she hadn't known this moment would come. The moment where peace gave way to war. Ships battling in the skies above Equestria could not be isolated. Whoever had attacked would know Celestia and Luna wouldn't tolerate this unprovoked assault on their territory. Could Chance shelter her friends from the reality of war?

She looked to Apple Bloom. "What do you think?"

The mare seemed to contemplate that question for several moments before eventually answering. "Ah reckon... if they wanted tah drop them things on my farm... hurt Granny Smith and mah big brother, I'd do everythin' I could tah stop 'em. If they wanted tah up 'an hurt me, I'd hope there was somepony around teh' help me. We wouldn't do nothin' to 'em if they'd let us be... so I say we go." Her eyes grew steely for a second, almost as much as Scootaloo's. "What's the point of all the fancy machines you gave us if we don't use 'em tah help ponies who need help?"

She thought about that for a few seconds, and then nodded. After all, the weapon systems installed on this airship were more advanced than any in Equestria, more advanced than any in the world. Fully operational, the Prismatic Fury could probably take on a squadron of Tower Fighter Drones. Even a massive Dreadnaught would only take a few direct shots from the main gun. "Okay." She looked around. "Let's get back to work. I don't want to bring the drive online until we have the deck clear enough that the acceleration won't throw saws and nails and things at us. It's a miracle we haven't been impaled or something." She turned. "Spike, you wanna help me get this crap down into storage? Apple Bloom?"

"Sure thing!" Came the familiar dragon's voice, ever helpful. Chance was a little surprised he had stayed out of the argument, but less surprised about how helpful he was afterwards. There wasn't a pony in Equestria more helpful than Spike. Besides, his claws gave him a decisive advantage in many situations where human devices were involved.

It didn't take long for the two ponies and one dragon to clear most of the detritus from the ship and drop it haphazardly into one of the storage lockers they usually used for long-term supplies like food. This left loose wires and missing deck planking on the main level, to say nothing of the paintings and other decorations that had been removed in order to labor on the ship's inner mechanisms. By the end Sweetie Belle had recovered enough to offer some assistance below, sorting out what they found in her magical grasp and removing those objects from the pile that they might actually need. Perhaps the four of them weren't nearly as good as a proper Air Service crew, but they made do as best they could.

When that was done, Sweetie and Chance went to work connecting the remainder of the cables and the interfaces to the pair of point-to-point batteries on deck while Apple Bloom busied herself on the deck of the ship closing down all the openings and hatches and hastily running cable around. It was impressive to see her friends working so confidently with human technology. Even with the computer supplying directions directly through the Nanophage, it was still remarkable. There were no other ponies in Equestria who could do work like this, not even Twilight.

There were days of work left to be done before the upgrades would be complete, but they weren't trying to finish the upgrades.

"Don't worry about it," Spike said, standing confidently at the forward gun. It was the only one of their weapons that could be manually fired, and even then it hadn't been customized past the human configuration it had been manufactured with. That meant it took hands or unicorn magic to operate. "I got the idea. Look in the glass, point it so the light goes green and squeeze. But are you sure it will make a difference? This is way smaller than the cannons I've seen. Twilight said Griffon ships use a metal we don't have in Equestria to make their armor, and cannonballs just bounce off. You need magic to bring them down, and we don't have any."

There really wasn't enough time to explain the intricacies of the technology Spike had at his claw tips, not with so many repairs to make. If they couldn't get the jet engines running, they would never close the distance and the ship that was escaping into Equestria would be able to attack with impunity. Yet there was already grease on her coat and she was sick of looking at wires. Just how long had they been working, an hour? Two? "This doesn't fire cannonballs." She knocked the side of the steel mount with one hoof. "It's a plasma weapon. Their metal armor plates will conduct the current great, trust me. You'll be the first Equestrian to take down an airship with one shot."

"But only if they're hurting someone," he said, though his tone was questioning. As though he wasn't sure about what he said, but he wanted to be.

She nodded. "If they shoot at us or we see them hurting ponies, we shoot. Otherwise we'll just follow them until they leave Equestria."

"Good." Spike's grip tightened on the handles. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe to use the gun, but very nearly.

Chance returned to her work. There were the real engines to tend to, the ones that could actually get them anywhere. When that was done, maybe there would be time to get the automated defense turrets ready before they closed within firing distance of the strange vessel. She certainly hoped so.

Spike might hope that this was all some enormous misunderstanding and the ship was just flying out of Equestria, but Chance knew better. They would have their share of the fighting to do soon enough.

"Will you walk with me?" The question surprised him, though Richard showed none of his surprise. Perhaps fleshy bodies could be ruled by their instincts and desires, but being fully synthetic meant he could restrict an emotional reaction from reflecting in his face. All the extra effort to imitate all the muscles in the face and he could still switch them off and act the mask. Yet he doubted the princess was fooled.

"Of course." That was the only proper response. She had, after all, left her work in the city to speak with him. The sound of distant explosions was gone completely, along with the protests of metal on metal that indicated distant combat. Celestia's manner made it clear her people had won. As though he had any doubt. Even with the one dragon, the attack had been incompetently led and poorly planned. So much about their enemies had been revealed, and the population would no doubt be roused to a violent frenzy. The sleeping giant would wake now, and had anything been accomplished? The city was too sturdy to be affected much by the small bombs. Perhaps a few dozen had been killed, tops.

Richard gave a nod to his captain and followed Celestia from the room. Celestia did not speak to him, nor to any of the ponies they passed in the castle as they walked. The number of guards had increased dramatically since his arrival, and Richard counted no less than three hundred with his electronic eyes as he followed her from one of the upper rooms in the tower to the ruined gardens. Amidst perfect flower-beds and beautifully sculpted water features were great gaps and gouges torn by claws or crushed by scaly limbs.

There were no ponies here. The city was fully awake, but repairing the castle gardens were clearly not a priority. Richard hadn't asked what Celestia had ordered and he had no intention of doing so. After fighting beside her, any doubt of her competence had vanished. "I have received disturbing news," Celestia said as they traveled, once they were far from any who might overhear. "Urgent action is required, and bureaucracy is not fast enough. The unique advantage of a monarchy is the ability to make rapid decisions. I have a feeling both of us are about to make some tonight."

How she managed to smile in the face of everything that had happened tonight bewildered Richard, but he did not dwell on his confusion. "What news?" He asked, as blandly as possible.

"Not yet." Celestia stopped suddenly, and Richard realized he had not figured where she had been leading him. Now he looked around himself, and saw they were standing in the center of a nearly circular reflecting pool of some kind. Only a slice was removed to allow access on dry land, though there was a circle of moderate size in the center that would have permitted perhaps two other ponies to join them. The pool itself was still, and mirrored the stars above them almost perfectly. In the faint starlight, Richard could make out the shape of continents and land-masses carved into the pool and beneath his feet. It was this planet, he was sure, and the map was positioned in such a way that Equestria was at the center of the circle. His powerful eyes seemed to indicate that the green used as dry land came from actual emeralds, and the blue of oceans and seas from aquamarines or similar gems. Each stone was small, perhaps the size of his pinky-nail. They had all been set into perfectly flat flooring. It was work fine enough to put the Romans to shame.

"I have another question to ask first, and my decision depends on your answer." She tilted her head very slightly toward him, and powerful eyes looked down on him. "I expect an honest and complete answer of your feelings, no matter how irrelevant it might seem. Do you understand?" He nodded, and Celestia asked the question that would change Equestria forever.

As Richard had expected from her explanation, it seemed to have no direct correlation to the situation at hand or the relationship between the Steel Tower and Equestria. It seemed to have no relation to much of anything, yet it caught him so much by surprise that he was silenced for several minutes afterwards. During his entire life he had only ever heard such sincerity from another living being once before. Celestia had the power of the largest nuclear reactors, yet her voice seemed almost like a child. The years were stripped away, the wisdom and the confidence, and she spoke the words.

"Is there such thing as free will?"

Silence was her only answer, silence and the faint ripples of the wind on the reflecting pool. The moon was on its way down now, gliding toward the edge of the pool. Its builders seemed to have intended it to perfectly capture the rising and setting of the sun and moon, because it looked as though the moon would pass from the reflective surface from their perspective exactly as it set beyond the horizon.

Richard opened his mouth, and was silenced by an imperious flick of Celestia's ears. "I don't want philosophy," she said firmly. "I don't want explanations or what others have decided. I want to hear what you think and nothing else."

He closed his mouth again, and stood still long enough to see the moon begin to slip across the pond. Celestia did not waver, though she did sit in that dignified way ponies sometimes did. Even so, she never averted her gaze from him, not even for an instant. Richard could not meet those eyes, and while they were on him any pleasing explanation he might've spun withered and died. Eventually it was all he could do to explain the truth, as best he understood it.

"I do not know," he began, turning away from her to look out over the reflecting pool. Anything not to have to look into those eyes. "Though the evidence weighs heavily against it, I persist in an irrational faith that it must, even when we have robbed ourselves of any possible vehicle for its existence."

"Consider first if a living creature is body alone. If every decision we make is dictated by the combination of genetic predisposition and the influence of environmental factors, then what was considered an intelligent being's ability to choose is merely blind obedience to the combination of inheritance and external pressure. It's true the uncertainties of quantum behavior make the exact chemistry of low-level brain behavior somewhat elusive even to our science, but even quantum uncertainty in the behavior of neurons does not mean a being has free will, only that the universe applies inconsistent pressures."

Richard had no idea if Celestia could understand what he was telling her. He didn't dare turn to look at her. He was not a man afraid of his actions, but for the first time in his life he had encountered a force strong enough to make him feel a twinge of fear. So he went on. "The proof of free will is in the soul, some argue. Our science has failed to detect such a thing if it exists, however. And even if it does, the nature of the soul is important."

He looked, and found only a look of contemplation. Not anger, frustration, or fear. So maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all. "Where does the soul come from? How did it originate? Many of my citizens once believed that a being called God was the creator of souls and had given them to humans chiefly of all his creations.”

This elicited a slight smile from Celestia “There are ponies who believe my sister and I created them in much the same way. Or that we gave ponies souls and therefore intelligence.”

“Did you?”

Celestia chuckled. “The evidence seems to suggest we didn’t. Our reign did not begin until recently in the history of ponies. There is no mention of us before the unification of the tribes, even though ponies had been building civilizations for thousands of years. The device you tampered with to get here has records of twenty-six thousand years of time and those ponies are functionally identical to the modern species.”

Richard did not have to force himself to smile. “I suppose if you could create life like that, you wouldn’t ask a question like this. I would ask you. Yet even if a godlike being did create souls for us, it would not prove we have free will. If God created our souls with our personalities and drives and instincts, if they and not our brains guide our actions, then how is this different from being slaves to our DNA? A soul like this does not prove that we have free will."

"As I understand it, there is only one way free will might exist, and I have never seen evidence to suggest it might be true. We must be more than genetic instructions, and this essence that is ourselves must have no creator. Yet this is impossible. Even the universe has a beginning, which we can calculate and even observe by recording its conditions today. The old faiths also seem to clearly indicate that the only being without creator is God himself. If so, I suppose that means that free will is an illusion and our universe is entirely mechanistic."

"That is not what I believe, Princess Celestia. There is one piece of evidence to support a belief in will, and I doubt your species will have experienced it. The first experiments conducted with the cyberization process — converting humans from biological to technological life — involved "copying" the individual memories and brain patterns into a computer simulation. This left the original intact, and so far as we understand there is no reason this strategy should not have worked to simulate a perfect copy of the individual within a powerful computer. Yet to our great surprise, the results were... lifeless. Even a perfect simulation of the brain in all of its connections resulted in repetitious recordings. These individuals repeated behaviors of the original beings, yet they were completely unable to act in unexpected ways. Not reduced in intelligence, yet without intuition or real emotion. Not alive."

"Our present cyber-conversion process destroys the original, replacing cells individually until the entire brain is cybernetic. As you have observed, my people are as vibrant and alive as any physical beings. Something has remained that cannot be explained by organic parts we no longer have. A conversion like this even allows the person to be "uploaded" into computer simulation without losing whatever intangible is responsible for creativity and genuine emotion."

"It even seems to be able to survive death in some situations. Our bodies keep a constantly updating backup of our brains in a small device called a Cortical Recorder. So long as this device survives, a fallen cybernetic individual can be revived as alive as when he died. We observe nothing unusual in the body with any of our instruments, which are significantly more advanced than any in this world. There is nothing there to explain this phenomenon, and few of my people even know it exists. If there is a soul, that is where it is."

"I don't know if there is free will. But I hope there is. I believe there is, because without it I can't rule my kingdom. I can't hold my subjects responsible for their actions if they only do what God or their DNA or their upbringing is telling them to do. I can't punish those who do evil and reward those who do good in a world without free will. There is no way to operate as a civilized society without a belief in will, even if that belief is not supported by evidence."

There was silence, though not for nearly as long as Richard had taken to put his answer into something approaching succinct. When she did speak, Celestia's tone had returned to her normal confidence, without giving a hint about what she might really be thinking either way. "This attack was not meant to do serious damage," she said, as though this had been a conversation about tonight all along. Did that mean he had satisfied her? "It was meant to distract and divert attention away from the true target. While my sister and I were occupied here in Canterlot, their main force captured the city of Los Pegasus. Sources indicate that ships are unloading thousands of soldiers an hour. It's possible the Guard of that city might have protected the city if Luna or I had been there."

"They're entrenching themselves as we speak," Richard offered. "Reinforcing their position with troops and preparing to expand rapidly to other territory. Blitzkrieg is a historically effective technique. They will be reluctant to return your city to you." Realization filled his face, and he understood what this was about. She wanted allies, she wanted help. He could do far better than that. "Do you have any allies who will help you?" The game had resumed, the game of careful maneuvering and measured words. Yet for all of it, neither was quite so reserved as they had been. Celestia's question had softened Richard a little, and his answer seemed to have had a similar effect. He didn't understand why, but he would not question good fortune.

Celestia shook her head. "Equestria hasn't had a war in over a century. Yet the last decade hasn't been what I would describe as peaceful. The Zebra tribes have been embroiled in tribal disputes lately that make them unable to offer any unified response. Representatives from the Griffon Empire have visited rarely and are evasive about new treaties and agreements. Despite our pleas for assistance, they have done nothing about the piracy along eastern trade routes and our airships must travel under escort when near their territory. As for the dragons, there is no formal government at all but a complex system of relationships and favors owed and exchanged between clans and individuals. The present basis of Draconic cooperation with Equestria is based on such debts incurred on their behalf during a previous era. There has never been an Oathbreaker until tonight, and no recourse other than a declaration of war. Relations with minotaurs are and always have been... extremely complex."

"Our intelligence suggests that enemies of Equestria have risen to power in Draconic lands and have been tolerated by them. After tonight it seems the dragons were more than tolerating our enemy. We also have evidence of significant trade taking place between griffons and this enemy, and I suspect the chaos and petty warfare between Zebra tribes is the result of political sabotage."

"No, King Richard. Equestria is presently without support in our world. Our few remaining friends are either too frightened of reprisals to help us, or small enough that their help is ultimately insignificant." She looked at him again, her expression pleading. "We desperately need your help to end this conflict before more ponies are killed. Yet we cannot ask without terms, because the consequences of accepting help without them might even be worse. Will you hear our terms?"

Richard smiled, and nodded slowly. "Of course, Princess. The Steel Tower came to your world as friends. We are not weak-spined creatures who balk at danger and retreat from difficulty. Yet our lives are hard, and in order to spare the power to help you we must be helped in return."

Celestia nodded in turn. "The hour is late. If you would consent to delay a moment while I raise the sun, I can explain."

In spite of everything, these words elicited a chuckle from Good King Richard. It was true that when Clover the Clever visited Earth fifty years ago she had spoke of Celestia raising and lowering the sun, but none who had heard her took those words very seriously. To hear them repeated by Celestia herself, a person who had seemed reasonable and logical to him at every moment, was almost beyond belief. He just stared blankly, wishing he had biological ears to blame for hearing her wrong. Maybe the plasma had damaged his body worse than he had thought. "U-uh... yes." He tried not to sound skeptical. "Of course. I'll wait."

Author's Notes:

And another chapter's come and gone. Thanks to all of you who have made it this far, whether through MLA or joining us for the first time. Also a huge thanks to my editors and alpha readers, whose names I've put in the story description since I'm not likely to be less grateful to them as time goes on, but rather more. Special thanks to Zutcha who does the art whenever there's art in here. Got a long way to go yet for this story and it's a little discouraging sometimes to see it take so long (as opposed to the twice a week updates) but that doesn't mean I have any intention of missing an update. If I can stay on schedule while on vacation and going to conventions, the start of the upcoming semester shouldn't slow me down either. I intend never to miss an update!

Chapter 5: Shots

"A moment." There was no way to deny the instructions of a king, though Charles had no reason to want to. They had just finished an intense briefing, and he had just learned of the mission that would begin by the time evening came around. This information made him excited to get started. No doubt King Richard was taking him aside to explain some secret aspect of the assignment, some particulars he was supposed to keep in mind during the task. Yet he had no need to do that, not when they had a secure radio link. He was making a show of it in front of the Equestrian rulers. Why?

Richard seemed to know where he was going, because nobody asked if he needed help getting around or suggested the use of any particular room. 'Your grace?' he asked, after a short distance down the hall. 'Where are we going, sir?'

His king was still a towering, gigantic figure. His robes were gone and the leather scabbard was gone, but this last the natives had apparently replaced already. The damage was quite extensive, as though he had taken several direct hits from plasma weapons. Charles's body couldn't take punishment like that, but apparently the synthetic skin of a king was sturdier than even soldiers could obtain.

The room they entered was not a meeting place as he expected, or some sort of storage closet where they could have a private word. If anything it seemed to Charles like an armory fused with a jeweler's shop. Glass cases on the walls and floor held intricate looking charms resting on red velvet. He thought of an armory because so far as he could tell each item was the same boring-looking bracelet, though at first glance the patterns carved into the metal links were quite intricate.

Then Charles saw the jeweler and stopped in his tracks. The person standing behind the counter was human.

He was a tall man, nearly as tall as Richard though with far more modest dimensions. He had gray hair with a matching goatee, and eyes that were unidentifiably peculiar. His suit was strange too, a seeming patchwork amalgamation of several colors. Brown and green and gold at least. Charles's sensors immediately registered the pulse and body temperature, but no sign of Nanophage. Not a single cybernetic implant, either. Impossibly, there seemed to be a vanilla human here in Equestria, member of neither side and yet still a survivor of the war. How had he gotten here?

For a moment Charles assumed Equestria must have its own humans, who had perhaps independently evolved here. That theory was shattered when the man laughed and began speaking in flawless English. "My little test subject has arrived!" he said with a wide grin, taking a few steps behind the counter so that he was only a foot or so in front of Charles. "Bet you didn't think you'd be signing up for this one, did you?" The man reached under the counter, seeming to hesitate a moment before finding a charm he liked. "Yes, I think this one looks perfect. Come here, boy."

"Sir?" He didn't bother using the radio. He wanted this impossible man to know he had his doubts, and that he had no intention of following his instructions. On the other hand, he would follow the orders of his king, no matter how strange they might seem.

"Do as he says," Richard said, eyeing the charms darkly and standing as close to the door as possible without actually preventing it from closing. "Celestia has made this device a condition for all our leaders in the field. Since you will be commanding tomorrow's mission, you will need one."

Charles stepped forward at once. After all, there was little to fear in a room full of bracelets and a strange man. Each looked to be made of a tarnished metal, though it was strange to see them so small. They would fit a human wrist, but they were too small for a pony to get around their hooves. Could they have been made for humans? Still, obedience did not preclude curiosity. Celestia and Luna had handled the botched invasion of Canterlot rather deftly in his eyes, and it seemed highly irregular they would insist on something as pointless as jewelry. Some sort of identifier, maybe? The strange symbols might be so Equestrian soldiers could tell who he was. "What does this do?" he asked the jeweler, reaching towards his right wrist with his left hand. A few bits of careful pressure and the armor came off in two chunks. He pulled back the sleeve of the tunic beneath to expose bare simulated skin.

At first there was no reply, and the bizarre man slid the chain around Charles's wrist. The bracelet had a single length of metal about two inches long covered in symbols, along with a delicate looking silver chain. It looked delicate enough that even a vanilla human could have the strength to pry the links apart. That was good, because Charles could see no way to remove it. Come to think of it, how had the jeweler got it around his wrist?

"Now that is the question, isn't it?" he said, flashing Charles a strange grin. Seeing no reason not to, Charles immediately replaced the armor, hiding the bracelet from sight. Despite having been sitting alone on a velvet cushion, it felt quite warm on his skin. That was strange. "Why do these primitive aliens insist that all the officers and nobody else wear them? What purpose could they possibly serve?" He leered across the counter at him. "It was some very complicated magic, even for me. The magic of the bracelets can be activated one of two ways. First, break the chain. Either that, or act naughty enough that Celestia triggers the spell remotely. Either way the bracelet will undo the damage you've done to yourselves." He shook his head. "No mutation, no diversity, no evolution. No fun."

The man folded his arms across his chest. "That was what all the extra work was for, and why we only have enough for your officers. Be on your best behavior, since I'm the only one in Equestria who can get that off without setting it off!"

Charles shivered, putting a little pressure on his armor so he could feel the shape of the bracelet beneath it. In spite of himself, there was a little fear in his voice as he asked. "If that's the extra work, what..."

"Ever wonder what it's like to be stuck with your hands in the mud and doing everything with your mouth?" He grinned. "Or maybe learning about the advantages of using five nails for horseshoes instead of seven. How about why fried hay somehow works as a replacement for beef? You can, any time you want! Of course, I'm fairly confident it won't be easy to reverse. Since that would make you an Equestrian citizen, our resident Sunbutt wouldn't let you leave. No ripping that brain back out and sticking it in another jar."

Of course, what this impossible man was telling Charles was impossible. There was no way to put a cybernetic brain back into a biological body! No way a little piece of metal could do anything the man suggested, the least of which was apparently make him into one of the natives. The amount of energy required for such a conversion was... beyond what his brain could estimate in a split second. On par with the Federation's antimatter reactor at the very least. "That's... absurd," he eventually said, only just stifling a laugh. He turned to his king. "Sir, is this man insane? I think we must have gotten ourselves lost on the way to wherever we were actually going."

It was the stranger who answered, and not Richard. He laughed, a sound so deep and subtly disturbing that Charles shivered involuntarily as he heard it. It was as though the lights above them suddenly failed to illuminate as they ought to. It was a dark, cold laugh entirely out of place with his appearance. "Go ahead, Charles. Break the chain and find out."

Sir Charles Gray had not introduced himself. He didn't break the chain.

"Alert!" came the warning, blaring over the ship's speakers as well as the tiny fragment of mesh network that existed aboard the ship. "Weapons fire detected in monitored vessel! No course corrections required."

Chance rushed to the bow as fast as her hooves would carry her, straining her eyes against the sunlight and her own exhaustion. Her ears provided more useful information, and she heard several distant BANGS! Nothing changed aboard the little speck that was their target, but had those explosions been on the ground below? The Fury wasn’t the target! At this distance there was no chance of hitting their target with anything but long-range rockets. The Prismatic Fury had such a weapon system, but they hadn't actually gotten around to building the rockets yet.

Scootaloo had apparently fallen asleep at the helm, though they hadn't swerved off course even a little. How she could steer the ship while apparently asleep was a mystery to Chance, but it was not one she would solve now. The voice of the onboard AI sounded in her mind as she rushed to wake Scootaloo. Her friend would know what they needed to do! She was the fighter!

"Sensors indicate the use of twenty-five pound black powder charges. Air to ground weapons only. Intervention at this range impossible. Query in progress with Central Operator."

That made Chance stop, if only for a moment. "How are you querying the Central Operator?" she asked out loud, momentarily forgetting herself. "Truth was damaged, and we haven't got the chance to assess how badly."

"Wha?" Scootaloo blinked, closing her mouth and wiping away the line of spittle that had begun to form there. Then she jumped abruptly, securing her hooves firmly about the wheel as though she had been alert the whole time. "Second Engineer Chance, what's our status?"

It was hard to reply, because the shipboard AI spoke at exactly the same time and Chance took a moment to sort one input from another. Her annoyance with Scootaloo's pretending they were on an Air Service ship during such a serious situation didn't help matters.

"Relay established with Central Operator through link with Cadence and Luna satelites, throughput 50 Gb/s. Connection stability nominal."

The AI could wait. "Captain Scootaloo." She couldn't help but sound a little sarcastic. Her "captain" had been asleep at the wheel, after all. Not that it was hard to imagine why. It was some time in the afternoon and there had been no time for sleep. "The enemy ship has begun firing on a ground target. Some sort of caravan..." The few pictures she had seen hadn't been very clear or matched anything she well understood in Equestria. It had just looked like a... crowd. Perhaps thousands or even tens of thousands, hard to say at this distance. What they were doing walking into the desert or why the ship would attack them was a mystery, but she hoped to resolve the situation even if the answers couldn't be discovered. "No defenses we can see."

There were some things Chance was grateful she couldn't see well, and that included the awful destruction those bombs might be doing to what was obviously a group of civilians. Maybe they could do something to end the slaughter, but they would have to do it immediately.

Scootaloo looked shocked, but she was not kept silent for long. "Then they're bad, just like we thought. How can we stop them?"

"They've stopped moving!" Apple Bloom called from somewhere near the bow. "We could close the distance pretty quick now with that new engine! We gotta help!"

Scootaloo nodded. "Can we do it? I thought the new engine wasn't finished."

"It's not." Chance frowned, but it was hard to argue with Apple Bloom when ponies were probably dying right now. Every distant pop could mean unprecedented devastation. Over the din of the propellers and the rush of air, she thought she could make out faint screaming. "But we might be able to get a brief burst of speed with what we have, if somepony watches the system to make sure it doesn't overheat and light us on fire!"

"I can do it." Chance hadn't seen Sweetie Belle walk up behind Scootaloo, yet there she was. The one who needed the rest most, but she didn't look as though rest was prominent on her mind just now. "I helped you put it in, I can keep it from blowing up." Her usual brevity was entirely missing, and her expression was flat and completely serious. So serious that it was impossible to argue with her, even if Chance wanted to insist that she was better qualified and the engine was too dangerous for anyone but her to operate.

"Apple Bloom, go help Spike with the forward cannon!” Scootaloo gestured, seeming suddenly as serious as Sweetie Belle had been. "Chance, the AI. They haven't put the armor in yet, so we will need its help in case they have anything to shoot at airships."

She nodded and ducked down the stairs. And she didn't mind if Scootaloo had chosen her for what some might interpret as the least important of all their assignments. After all, they would need defenses to survive this encounter, and they would need to survive in order to take the wounded to a hospital.

"Good luck." She gave Sweetie Belle an encouraging nudge as she passed on her way to the engine room, smiling as big as she could. They'd done so many exciting things on this ship, visited so many interesting places. But until now, only their lives had been at risk.

"You too." Sweetie Belle returned the smile after a moment, before hastening off to her own task. So there was hope for her eventual recovery.

As much as Chance hated to admit it, she was probably the only one who had any chance of configuring their defense-AI in a matter of minutes. Her friends were all skilled in their ways, but none had the advantage of another lifetime of AI programming experience.

As it turned out though, she wouldn't have minutes. 'Everypony hold onto something!' Sweetie Belle's voice echoed over the internal mesh network. There was no true emotion conveyed in those words since only words were transmitted, but somehow Chance could feel the nervousness. After all, this was the first time they had ever tried to use a full-sized ionization engine. The first model Chance had ever tried to build had failed quite spectacularly.

Chance trusted her engine not to explode this time and instead braced her rump against the panel that was the interface between the AI and the various point-to-point weapons that would protect their ship from attack. There was a fantastic roar, indicating the improperly regulated mixture within the ionization engine. It was enough that Chance swore she felt her soul rattling around in her body. The burst of acceleration was tremendous, enough that the closet they had filled with the tools and refuse of construction burst open and a box of nails exploded open against a wall. The pointy contents went everywhere, though none got close enough to hurt her.

As it turned out, their previous suspicious about the ability of the anti-gravity spell to also protect them from the effects of the rapid acceleration was confirmed. It would do nothing to the blast of air upstairs, but hopefully the simple shield spell they had made would handle that. It must have, because no new injuries popped up on the ship's mesh network. Scootaloo and Apple Bloom hadn't been filleted by friction or blasted off the ship, and she hoped it was safe to assume Spike hadn't either. No way to know for sure since he didn't have the Nanophage, but it wasn't as though there was time to climb to the deck and find out.

'Firing range in eighteen seconds.' It was too loud for normal conversation, but the familiar voice came over the mesh. 'Strategic analysis indicates you're acting like idiots. Should I alter course for you?'

'Truth!' Chance didn't want to risk moving too much, unsure of what was going to happen when the engine ceased applying forward thrust. Would Sweetie Belle realize they would need to accelerate in the opposite direction when they got close, or else pass their enemy without the chance to do any real damage? 'Guess you weren't hurt bad. Help Sweetie with the engines, make sure we don't crash. Can you take over the defense grid? We weren't finished installing the S.I.I., and pony reflexes aren't good enough to shoot cannonballs out of the air before they hit us.'

'Of course.' Unlike the organics with their limited-range implants, Truth could communicate his full spectrum of tones and feelings. His sarcasm and affection came through with equal clarity, as well as the genuine worry for their well-being. All of them, not just her. Actually, Chance was under the impression Truth cared for Apple Bloom more than anypony else he knew. 'Didn't even finish building this monster of yours and you're already fighting battles with it. I'll make sure you don't scratch the paint.'

'Good.' Chance braced herself, gritting her teeth against their imminent arrival. No doubt the deceleration would be as dramatic and unpleasant as the acceleration. 'How are you up and running again so quickly?'

'My personality was not damaged, only placed in diagnostic mode. Substantial damage to the transducer elements though, I don't think I'll ever open the rift again. Guess it's a good thing they left it open for us. When you're done fighting this ship, could you explain what happened? The sensor readings I'm looking at indicate an 87% probability Equestria is being invaded.'

Even at the speed of mind this conversation was ticking away at the time they had, and it would probably only be a few moments before they slowed. Not much time for this silly conversation, as happy as Chance was that Truth was okay. 'You mean it isn't just Canterlot they attacked?'

'Slowing down!' Sweetie Belle called over the mesh, and substantial force suddenly pushed on Chance from the other direction. It was a struggle not to be thrown around, but she wrapped her hooves around a rail and held on for dear life. She was sure by the end that she had pulled something, but the injury seemed trivial compared to what was going on outside.

'I'm going up!' There was no logical reason to climb onto the deck, and as a matter of fact there were plenty of reasons not to. They would be in range of the enemy vessel now, and their ship's true defenses weren't actually installed. These days Equestrian airships had custom thaumaturgic shields, but as it turned out the spells were finicky enough that they only functioned properly if that component was installed last. Twilight had tried to explain why to Chance, but all that mattered now was that they had to finish the upgrades before they could install a magic shield that did more than keep passengers from being blown off the deck by air pressure. 'Don't let anypony shoot us!'

Second Chance emerged from the stairs and onto the deck of the Prismatic Fury. To her it seemed as though their ship was sailing on the oceans of hell itself. Voices of agony and fear twisted by the wind ascended up to meet them along with the smoke from numerous fires. There was a little wood of some kind beneath them, perhaps the last shelter before the harsher desert resumed. Only the wood was afire. Ponies, thousands of them from the look of it, fled in panic from the bombardment of the enemy vessel.

The enemy's cannons pointed down, though the shots they fired seemed to fall more than they were propelled. It didn't matter. There were so many ponies beneath them that every shot was bound to hurt someone. How were there so many? It was like the population of a city was on the move! "Take them down!" Scootaloo shouted. "They're adjusting their cannons, fire!"

Chance was a child again, cowering behind the large sofa that separated her from the window. Yet as fearful as she was, morbid curiosity forced her to peek over the edge. Through the polarized skyscraper window she saw one of the Steel Tower's aerial combat drones. She was too young to understand what it was doing, though to her it seemed clear it was searching for her. It was going to get her, just like it got all those people on TV.

Only it didn't, because the Air Force had arrived. There was a brief moment of quiet and faint illumination, as though the pilot had only been shooting a pointing laser. Then the magnetic corridor was established and air roared as it boiled. A firestorm of blue impacted the drone, frying its circuitry even as it melted through thick armor. It slammed into the polycarbonate window, before sliding loudly down and out of sight.

That had been a small weapon, fired upon a target that was armored and insulated with the finest technology available. What was happening now could hardly be called a battle. The enemy's guns had been so devoted to slaughtering the innocent beneath them that they could not even fire in return. Instead of hardy nanomaterials and superdense alloys, the enemy vessel used thick plates of steel for armor and aluminum as a structural support. The ship itself was made largely of wood.

None offered much protection. Spike and Apple Bloom fired wide with their first shot, but even so the heat melted through a wooden propeller assembly and set that part of the ship ablaze. Chance felt the momentary ionization in the air as the second shot established a magnetic corridor with one of the most heavily armored sections of the ship's interior. A second sun came briefly into being in the air beside them, a sun that was blue instead of yellow. The temperature shot up, climbing from the low forties to the upper 120s Fahrenheit in the few seconds that Spike fired. It was like the roar of a dragon as air expanded and contracted rapidly under the effects of superheating, rushing forward at the vessel that was raining death down on those who could not defend themselves.

Only when the light faded and Spike had completely exhausted the gun's battery did Chance make her way to the railing to survey the damage. She could see though the ship, as though the hand of God had reached down and stuck His arm through the heavily armored griffon dreadnaught. The vessel had at least five levels, and all five were exposed. Huge globs of molten iron cascaded down through the air, and little of the ship did not seem to be burning. The semi-reptilian bipeds had been charred to ruin, and she saw none that hadn't been obliterated by their mere proximity to the heat and pressure of anti-capital plasma fire.

The screaming from below came suddenly mixed with cheers and shouts, though it was hard to make any of that out over the crackling fires and sound of splintering wood. The world seemed strangely still then, still enough Chance could make out Spike's voice over the din. "Sweet Celestia... humans have weapons like that on all their ships?"

Abruptly the ship's powder magazine went up. Though the effects of the explosion were largely contained by the broken armor, the force was enough to splinter the ship into ruin and send it tumbling to the ground in great chunks. It was fortunate that the ponies directly below had time to scatter before it came crashing down.

"I don't see why we need you idiots to help with this mission," said the prismatic pony, entirely diplomatically. "The Wonderbolts don't need any stupid metal boxes slowing them down."

Sir Charles Gray could not say what he was really thinking, no matter how much he wanted to. His king had made it very clear how he was supposed to act. This mission was the first joint cooperation between Equestrian natives and humans. If it went well, it would pave the way for many missions like it. Together they would quickly bring an end to this war of primitive nation-states and win the love and adoration of the natives along with a second chance for their species.

The field outside Ponyville had been transformed, its crates of cargo moved aside. A wall separating the field from Ponyville had been built with sturdy timbers, nearly ten feet tall and over a mile long. It ran from the Everfree on one end to one of the Sweet Apple Acres orchard fences on the other. There was only one gate, across from where the train had been, with pony guards on one end and humans on the other. As he understood, the purpose of the fence was entirely psychological, to give the ponies in the nearby village a sense of separation and independence. The message was that their lives would keep going as they always had, and that their leaders were dealing with the unusual happenings. It had been impressive to watch the ponies building it, nearly the whole village coming together to erect a feeble barrier between them and the unknown.

Gray could've leapt the barrier in a single bound, but he had no intention of attempting that particular feat. His king and the princess called Luna were here to watch the first of the human war machines come through. As he understood, the ponies expected this wave to be the only required to put an end to the war before it started. He was part of that plan, along with his good friend and fellow pilot Lindsy who waited behind him making disparaging remarks about the rude pegasus over radio.

She was trying to get him to laugh. He wouldn't. "The idea is a show of superior force, Captain Dash," he said as respectfully as he possibly could. "I don't doubt your pegasi are impressive, but your enemy already knows about the Wonderbolts."

Princess Luna spoke quietly to Richard not far away. The discussion seemed heated, but both were so emotionally mastered that their voices never grew loud enough to hear. Richard's royal vestments had been burned to cinders along with the greater part of his beard, and the burns all over his armor and body made him look far more fearsome than he had when they arrived. Sir Gray did not like the change. It was like watching a piece of fruit rotting.

"Yeah, whatever," Rainbow Dash replied. "Dragons don't need airships, and Gryphons have really good ones. I don't see why a few more would impress them. Now if we didn't have to wait for you slowpokes, we'd already be halfway there. We could have brought a whole battalion, showed them they can't mess with Equestria. But now we're sitting here, and the bad guys are digging trenches in Los Pegasus."

"Our target is across the ocean," he said, his discipline fading a little. "Over four thousand miles. You can't seriously be telling me that your biological wings will get you that far. What about food? What about sleeping? That's why we're taking you: drones don't need to stop and rest."

"Whatever," she said again. "It's a dumb idea. We never needed your help before and we don't need it now."

Gray just kept quiet, biting back a retort. He did not have to wait long, since the Ethereal Bridge was coming online. Whatever else the overgrown blue pigeon might be saying was drowned out by the low rumble in the ground. Light rivaling sunset came into being in the center of the machine, its mechanism beginning to spin as it sent a bass rumble into the soil. It was as though the universe was a bell, and the machine had just struck it. Gray had already seen this once, and still he was struck with awe. The cosmic Om sounded deep in his chest, and lightning soared up from the ground into the cloudless sky. The lightning tore the sky open, and all close enough to watch were struck by the brilliance of it.

Once the door was open, Charles was immediately connected to the Mesh on the other side. There were four dozen drones waiting in the hanger, and half of them were his to control. Richard had said to make this as impressive as possible. He intended to blast the smirk right off Captain Dash's face.

The first of the drones came rocketing through the gateway, traveling straight up into the sky with a thunderous roar. Each was the size of a large fighter jet from earlier times, though somewhat stumpier and with much shorter wingspans. Of course none used chemical fuel anymore, but the sound of air rushing through the ionization chamber and being blasted out the other side still sounded very much like old-fashioned jet engines. Charles purposefully twisted the mixture into suboptimal to make the drone louder, directing it straight up for a mile or so until it finally began to stall. As it fell, two more drones passed through the opening, splitting and spiraling around each other with the third falling through the center. They kept coming in groups of two, though he increased the speed with which they came through the gateway until standing beneath it became one constant roar instead of an occasional blast.

It was immensely satisfying to see the pony's ears pressed flat to her head, as well as the fear he had been sure he had seen when the first drone emerged. As the drones fell, they settled into a hover just above the Everfree and began fitting together into a sort of squished cylinder. Drones clicked together one by one, spraying the foam that would form an atmospheric seal in the temporary troop transport.

Lindsy, on the other hand, did nothing showy with the drones she had to control. They just came through one by one, zipping straight into position in the growing troop transport. Only the last two drones were an exception, which came through at a very low speed and flew down to land just in front of them. Cockpits opened with a rush of compressed gas, and the metal plates unhinged to allow them to climb inside. Any drone could carry a passenger, and like the others these had no windows or openings or any sign they were different from the others. That was what made drone pilots so dangerous, after all. You never knew which drones had a pilot and which were merely part of the swarm.

Only when it was fully formed did the massive drone carrier set down. A ship like this could carry dozens of soldiers and many tons of equipment. Tanks, bombs, it didn't matter. He didn't think they had ever been used to deliver mythical creatures before, though. Nobody back at the Tower was going to believe he had flown a carrier of armored pegasi into battle.

"Captain Dash, begin loading your troops," Luna ordered, sounding much calmer than any of the other ponies looked. "You are aware of your mission. Carry it out."

Rainbow Dash saluted, and barked commands to the assembled pegasi. They took to the air with impressive coordination and flew toward the carrier. It was loaded within three minutes, leaving Charles and Lindsy alone with the rulers of both worlds.

His fellow pilot climbed inside her drone and took off, but Charles felt a hand on his shoulder that stopped him from doing the same. "Remember, exactly twenty-six buildings were damaged during the attack last night. Quid pro quo. Dragons are apparently big on favors and debts, so make it exact. Not just damage, though. I want ash."

Chapter 6: Warfare

Not many ponies in Equestria had the opportunity to ask for personal help from one of its monarchs. Anypony could submit a petition to the Solar or Lunar Court, but such petitions were much more likely to be answered by any of the countless lesser nobles that orbited around the ruling monarchs the way planets in other star systems orbited their stars. Only those issues that were politically significant or complicated in some way actually made it to the rulers.

Unless you happened to know them somehow. Amber Sands hadn't ever made use of her relationship with Celestia for anything other than survival, and this was no exception. It might have been impossible to arrange even a few moments with her, were she not currently assigned as one of Celestia's personal guards. All it would take was a few moments to explain how she had been feeling, and everything should be okay. At least, she hoped so. There was no telling how Celestia would react, considering how much stress she was already under.

As it turned out, her only opportunity happened to be while she was standing just inside Celestia's private quarters, pretending to be alert and disinterested at the same time. All the guards looked that way, and even if Celestia knew the real reason Amber had this job, she had become so firmly entrenched in the habit that she knew no other way to act when on duty. Celestia was in the royal bathroom, going through the intricate procedure she always went through before making a public apperance. Amber had never actually watched, but she had stood outside for upwards of three hours or more while Celestia did whatever it was she did to make herself up for these appearances.

Of course she wasn't supposed to be talking to the princess unless she was addressed first, but she doubted very much Celestia would report her. Now that she was no longer a captured spy, they rarely had any other opportunities to talk. "Excuse me, Princess." Even after all these years, it was hard not to feel timid. Talking to the pony whose power raised the sun was a pretty big deal.

"Come in, Amber," Celestia called from inside the spacious royal bathroom, her voice echoing a little on marble floors. Amber flicked the door open with a little burst of telekinesis and walked inside. It was easily as large as many of the castle bedrooms, with massive picture windows at odd locations that would allow a view of the sun at almost any time of day from most of the room. A representation of Celestia's cutie mark was worked into the floor in pure gold, and it glittered in the light of morning.

Celestia wasn't using any of the countless oils and perfumes. She wasn't curling her "mane", which Amber had to admit she would've been interested to see. No, the monarch was sitting rather calmly on a cushion as though she had been ready for hours. Instead of primping in any of the many ways Amber expected, Celestia was reading a book, a new-looking one that wasn't written in Equestrian. Few ponies indeed would've recognized the strange characters on the book's cover for English letters. Of course, how the monarch chose to prepare for her speeches was none of Amber's business.

"I... just wanted to tell you something," she said, feeling useless and not able to meet celestia's eyes. She had been rehearsing this for over an hour in her head, why had she suddenly forgotten what she had planned to say? "About what's been going on. I think it might be important." She looked up, forcing herself to look into Celestia's face. Every time, she expected that maybe this time the monarch would have finally lost patience with her and decide that she was best off back in the dungeons. She never saw anything but love.

At the moment it was somewhat tempered with tiredness, but not enough that Amber didn't feel an immediate rush of warmth in her chest, sating whatever minor hunger she had begun to feel as her duty shift wore on. Even the smallest fraction of love from such a powerful being could keep her going for weeks. "Yes? What did you want to tell me?"

"It's about the war," she began, then before she could rationalize her way out of explaining she went on. “For the last two days, I've had this weird feeling. I... haven't felt anything like it in a long time. I wouldn't have mentioned it, except the more time goes by the more I think it might be important." She expected Celestia to say something, ask for clarification, anything. Instead, she just waited patiently for Amber to elaborate. "Like something is calling me west, towards Los Pegasus. It's this feeling that something important is going on. Like I need to be there. I think..." And this was the hardest part to admit. "I think my mother might be calling me."

There were no words of anger or suspicion, only a slight nod. "I can see why she might. With all you know about Equestrian defenses, you would be extremely valuable to them." She casually closed her book, setting it down on the nearby counter. "It's possible this was her plan all along, trusting your life to our mercy and counting on the fact you would have learned something valuable during the last decade. If she knew you were one of my personal guard, she probably would have tried to recover the information you have long before now."

Amber's jaw dropped, and she was unable to reply for several long seconds. "You're not angry? You're not going to call the guards, or turn me to stone? Even though you know how bad it would be if I went over?" Amber felt something burning in her chest, something no proper changeling ever ought to feel. Was it guilt? Loyalty? Or perhaps, love.

"No." Celestia rose, closing the distance with her elegant, graceful steps. "You can't control what others do or might do, Amber. I'm more interested to learn what you intend to do. I won't stop you from flying right out the balcony if you want to get going immediately. But if you betray Equestria, you will never be welcome here again."

"If you do not answer the summons, you will be known as a traitor among your own kind. Even those hives not involved will learn of your treason eventually. Whatever chance you ever had of rejoining your fellow changelings will probably be lost. No matter what you choose, one family will be lost. Which one will you give up?"

Some of what Celestia said she already knew, and other parts she had only suspected. The pull had been strong, and it was getting stronger. Chrysalis was definitely alive, and pulling her as strongly as she could. The promise of belonging, of being welcomed back into the swarm after a lifetime of being an outsider was a tempting one indeed.

But probably not as tempting as Chrysalis wanted it to be. Instead of hesitate or debate with herself, Amber leaned forward and touched her head lightly on Celestia. It was a young, childish gesture. But however mature she might look, Amber wasn't much older than a decade herself. She had only days of memory in the Hive, and ten years with Celestia and the other ponies in her life.

Whatever pull her mother may've expected instinct to hold over her, it could not compete with the true love she felt, love felt and returned by those who cared for her in Equestria. "I don't want to go!" She screamed, tears streaming down her face. "The pull is so strong, but I don't want to go! I want to stay here, with the other guards! I want to protect Equestria! Stop them from taking anymore cities..."

She felt feathery wings embracing her. "I know," came the voice. "Now you know why I won't call the Guard, and I won't turn you to stone." She held her tight, the way no changeling mother ever could with those thin insect wings. "I won't leave you to fight off the instinct on your own, either." She released her suddenly. "You need a distraction, something to help you focus on another part of yourself until she gives up on you."

"How would you like a transfer to Normandy?"

This was a strange question to Amber, since her work with the Guard meant she knew each and every city where the Solar Guard had even small postings. She knew every fort and every bunker, even if she had only worked in a small number of those that actually existed. It was a strange question to her because she had never before heard of anywhere with such a strange name. Yet there was something familiar about a name like that, too. Familiar in a way she couldn't completely describe. "I... I've never heard of Normandy, Princess."

"That's because it didn't exist until yesterday. It's what the humans are calling their new settlement. Clover wasn't wrong when she called them the builders, they're already hard at work."

It wasn't Amber's place to question. Really it wasn't even her place to ask, but she couldn't help herself. "You let them have part of Equestria?"

If Celestia was annoyed with the obvious breach, she did nothing to show it. "Most of it is actually the Everfree, but no. They can't have anything. It's a staging area for the war only. We'll negotiate about what happens to it once Equestria is safe again. I would like to have somepony I can trust as their coordinator, as well as somepony who knows more about their culture and behavior than the average pony. Their individual representatives might try to abuse or manipulate a lesser guardspony. I don't think you'll be an easy mark for them. Besides, such unusual surroundings should help you keep your mind clear. A different kind of emotional turmoil will do you good."

Who was she to argue? Besides, the thought of being near humans was secretly thrilling to her, even if she wouldn't have admitted as much to Celestia. When Amber had been created, her mother hadn't used her own memories to imprint on her in the normal Changeling fashion, but had instead used the foalnapped Second Chance. Instead of knowing how to run a hive, Amber had been born with painful memories of a planet at war, and a retreat to the moon that hadn't been enough to save very many of the people she cared about. She knew about technologies that were a thousand years away from Equestrian development, she knew about the taste of many different kinds of meat. But for everything she thought she knew, she hadn't ever met one of the creatures for herself. What would they be like?

"I would love to go to Normandy, Princess."

"Good." Celestia strode past her through the open door and into her room. Amber had to hurry to catch up; after all, she was theoretically still on duty and that meant following right behind her wherever she went. Not so much to protect her in outright combat, since of course no guard of any species really did much when compared to one of the Royal Sisters. Rather, to be alert to threats she might miss, and provide warning enough to allow her to protect herself. "But for now, I have a speech to deliver."

And so they walked through the castle, with Amber returning to the usual position of a guard and falling back into her usual pattern of disinterested silence. Once again she faded into the background, and found the lack of attention on her to be a great relief. No matter how much she loved the princess, conversations with her were always stressful. Considering the subject, this had been one of the worst.

Celestia stood atop the balcony, her sister at her side and practically all of Canterlot assembled below. A tiny wooden platform had been erected on the balcony, positioned so as to be impossible to see from below. This seemed a little strange to Amber, but she didn't think about it long. As Celestia rose to speak, the roar of countless ponies died. "My little ponies! As you are all aware, Canterlot was recently attacked. The force, composed entirely of goblins and dragons, caused enormous damage before it could be stopped. To those ponies who suffered losses in the assault, know that you are remembered. I plea for compassion from each of you in the coming days. Those who were spared, lend a hoof to your neighbors who lost family or property. Open your homes to them, and show our enemies that the Equestrian spirit of friendship cannot be easily vanquished. This attack came unprovoked and undeclared, contrary to international law. I wish for each of you to know you have done nothing wrong. This attack came not because of some slight, or as vengeance for Equestrian aggression. You have done nothing wrong.”

“As many of you know, Canterlot was not the only city in Equestria to be attacked. At the very moment bombs fell on your rooftops, a significantly larger force landed on the shores near Los Pegasus. As of this moment, Equestria has formally declared war with the Draconic Sovereignty." There was a collective intake of breath from the crowd, and Celestia waited for the whispering to die down. Even Amber, watching from the shadows, was a little caught off-guard by what she heard.

"This will not be a skirmish, and it will not end in a single battle. Much is going to have to change. As of this moment, the Equestrian Royal Army is now officially reorganized. The Solar and Lunar Guard cannot fight this enemy without your help. Only working together..."

And so it went on. She watched the crowd more than the princess. Some looked nervous, some afraid, and some resolved. One thing she was sure about, though: nothing would ever be the same.

At some point, Luna had taken the role of speaker for her sister. Her delivery was no less powerful, though she was clearly using magic to amplify the volume of her voice. "We are not fighting this war on our own. We have secured the aid and support of another world, who have promised to fight beside us until Equestria is free again. They may look strange to you, but however they look these aliens are friendly to us and have already proven their loyalty to our cause." She gestured towards the closed door. "King Richard!"

The door opened, and a towering figure strode past Amber. She might have been frightened, had she not already seen how massive these humans seemed up close. His beard was shorter than she remembered, and the robe he wore was clearly of Equestrian workmanship even if the colors were the same. He had been in some sort of battle, that was what the rumors said. His movements were stiffer than the other day, as though he was injured somehow.

The figure ignored the gasps and the signs of fear, stopping on the edge of the platform beside the Equestrian diarchs. He did not stand on the platform, and the extra inches made the princesses look larger than he was. It was a clever illusion, and they hadn't even used magic. "Ponies of Equestria!" he boomed, shouting loud enough to still the murmurs from the crowd. There was no magic to it, just a powerful voice and a more powerful personality. "On behalf of all humanity, I pledge to protect and defend your nation! Over the coming months, you will see others like me throughout Equestria. I hope that seeing us will become synonymous with battles won and lives saved."

He turned, and bowed dramatically towards Luna and Celestia, before addressing the crowd again. "We swear loyalty and obedience to the Royal Sisters until the day every invader has been destroyed and your land is your own!" Maybe he expected cheers, or shouts and riotous applause. It was true a few ponies did, particularly the members of the Solar and Lunar Guard who had seen any of the humans in battle.

Most of the assembled ponies did not applaud, and only stared at this strange creature in all its strange clothes. Maybe some of them wondered, as Amber did, if they hadn't invited the help of a wolf to deal with a troublesome spider.

The towering human king took this all in stride, however. "I hope you will allow us to win your trust!" he called, before bowing again and walking back into the castle where he had come.

Amber stared after him. I'm going to be dealing with them. I hope they're more honest than they seem.

By the time the Prismatic Fury found its way to the ground they were awash with the cheers of countless ponies. They landed just beside the largest fragments of wreckage from the Dreadnaught, expecting to have some mopping up to do of whatever members of the crew had survived the crash, plus whatever troops the ship had been carrying. It didn't seem the ship contained any actual griffons, because none jumped as it fell. It seemed goblins were not well suited to mile-long falls.

Chance avoided looking at the burning hunk of wood and iron, fearful that she might have to see the remains of the unfortunate creatures that had rained death down on Canterlot and then on a caravan of ponies out in the wilderness by themselves. Too bad looking away from the ship only meant focusing her attention on the refugees.

Apple Bloom and Chance together lowered a ramp from the lower deck of the ship onto the ground, and together its entire crew emerged onto soil blasted by explosives and flames. Dozens of eyes looked up, ponies that had been cheering and praising them abruptly fell silent. Instead of celebrating, the ponies all around them suddenly looked shocked. "You're not Air Ponies?" asked a mare with a dark coat and some sort of chart for her cutie mark.

Scootaloo opened her mouth to answer, but she wasn't fast enough. A stallion watching them with panicked eyes shouted, "The fleet isn't coming! We're doomed!" Screams of fear echoed from the crowd around them. Chance had seen this sort of crowd before, when the Federation had operated its lottery for space in the bunkers across the United States. When the crowd had discovered they were not going to be saved, the crowd had turned into a violent, trampling mob. Ponies were herding animals, if anything the mob might form sooner. Her eyes could practically see the magic coursing through the ponies as their auras interacted, the mood of the crowd shifting like an amoeba crawling its way across a petri dish.

"The Royal Sisters know about what happened!" She took a few steps up the ramp so that she seemed higher and thus more authoritative. Indeed, the crowd quieted and the shouting died. Of course, she didn't actually know for sure that she was telling the truth, but it was hard for her to believe otherwise. Truth knew, and if he was back up than Equestria's fledgling Mesh was running again. They would be able to see every city from space. They might be watching right now. "They will send help! For now, bring the injured! We'll take them back with us to Canterlot!"

Chance didn't blame her friends for dealing with this situation less easily than she did. This wasn't the first time she had seen such horrible situations, though it was the first time for them. Still, her brief delay was long enough for Scootaloo to take charge. "Only the most injured ponies, please! We have a very small ship, as you can see. The Prismatic Fury isn't normally meant to carry passengers. We can't bring all of you!"

In Chance's own world, a situation like this might have been resolved by computer, with the health of all assembled calculated and weighed against the odds of their survival as time went on. For the ponies compassion was the rule. Perhaps slightly over a dozen ponies were wheeled forward on carts or carried on makeshift stretchers. Many of these were unconscious from their injuries, painfully burned or disfigured by shrapnel. Chance had no stomach for blood and had to look away, distracting herself by walking back down to the pony that had first spoke.

"Where are you ponies coming from?" she asked, in her normal speaking voice again. "We were following that big ship, but we don't really know about anything else that might've happened. Why are you all crossing the desert?"

"Los Pegasus," the mare answered. "There was an attack. Lots of ships, like that one." She gestured at the wreckage not far off.

"Uh, Chance?" Spike nudged her shoulder. "I think you should see something." The sound of the crowd around them had died down to near silence, except for those ponies she was talking to.

Chance frowned, annoyed. "One second!" she said, without actually looking away from the mare she was talking to. "You were saying?"

"It started in the middle of the night, like what just happened. There was fighting on the streets, spells and cannons firing."

Chance hadn't noticed until right then, but the mare had a colt, a colt with a gray coat and slightly paler mane and tail tipped with black. He seemed to be a unicorn, though Chance could see no cutie mark. It was wrong of her to think of him as just a colt, though. He couldn't be all that much younger than she was. "Ponies were screaming. Guards told everypony to get out right away, don't stop. We listened. The ones who didn't took too long and couldn't get away."

"Chance!" Spike said, a little more urgently. "Apple Bloom?" The pony in question was too busy helping the injured onto the Fury to even glance at him.

She ignored him completely this time in order to listen to the colt. "We walked all night, and all day. They followed, and the ones who couldn't keep up got caught. Only gave up a few hours ago. They might just be waiting to get ships or something and catch us all, though."

She never got to reply, because at that moment Spike shouted her name in fear and frustration, and turned her head with his claws to look in the direction of the wreckage. She didn't fight the pressure, mostly because Spike was never physical with her or anypony else! She instantly regretted not taking him more seriously. Apparently she had misjudged the lethality of the Fury's plasma cannon and the crash. Figures were emerging from within the great ship. Many looked injured in some way or another. Some were burned, others had broken or missing limbs. Yet many still had the strength to lift their weapons, and there was a general movement towards the assembled ponies. How could anything have survived a fall from that height?

"Back onto the ship!" Scootaloo called, then more loudly, "Everypony else, run! We'll take care of this! Get away from here!" She might be young, but there was great confidence in what she said. Besides, as Chance soon realized, her instructions were clearly not new ideas to the crowd. Many were already doing what she suggested. The most severely injured were already loaded aboard, filling the bedroom and most of the other rooms below decks. It probably wasn't the best place for hurt ponies, and it would've been better if they had doctors or nurses along to tend to them.

There was no time for such debating and deliberation. The propellers were already spinning, and Chance barely made the jump behind Spike before the ramp began to retract and they started to ascend. An injured army was forming on the sand, strange reptilian soldiers whose determination was superhuman. "We have to stop them!" Scootaloo called, taking the helm. "What should we do? Sweetie Belle, what weapons do we have?"

"Plasma cannon is out of juice," she called over the wind. "No rockets either. We could probably use the ship's defense cannons if we brought ourselves in close enough, but we would have to stick real low. Pass over them, without scraping ourselves up. Some of them still have guns."

"We can do it." Scootaloo twisted them sideways in the air, directing them down again towards the advancing army. They were just humanoid outlines now, though as they got closer Chance could make out some pretty disturbing details. Some of them didn't look like they should still be alive. The injuries were too horrific to look at, but the magic she felt in the air was worse. "You two, be ready for it! We can't stay in range long, or they'll shoot us to pieces! A real quick pass, just one. Make sure they don't get up this time!"

This mission was proving to be one of the easiest Charles had ever been a part of. Flying halfway around a planet in a drone-carrier was tricky work for inexperienced pilots, but for Charles it was easy. This planet had plenty of sapient creatures capable of flight, though they would be moving so slowly compared to the carrier that there would be no opportunity to avoid them. To avoid any unfortunate collisions, he kept the craft at about the middle of the planet's Stratosphere, high above the levels of breathable air or habitable temperatures. There were no collisions, or any interruptions in their flight. At the speed they traveled, a trip nearly to the other side of the world would take just over four hours. It was good, but the drones could have made far better time if they weren't all connected and carrying such heavy cargo.

"Why did we have to bring the horses?" he asked over the radio to his partner, making sure the message was not sent to any of the ponies with headsets inside the carrier. "I'm not even sure what they think they're doing here. Are they gonna kick the buildings down?"

Lindsy was a friend, and he knew her well. She wasn't one usually inclined to show too much emotion, one way or the other. "Maybe they're going to screen us while we do the attacking. Distract the ones shooting us so we can be more effective."

"Maybe," he agreed, though there was still a note of obvious skepticism in his voice. "Except that would be protecting empty metal machines with real lives. It doesn't matter how many drones we lose. Worst case we don't have enough to make a coherent carrier for the way back, and we all have to fly back at wingspeed."

"Worst case-" began her correction. "if we lose the carrier, we're a thousand miles inland in enemy territory. The ponies that make it through the mission get hunted down and killed by everything living here. Even if nothing chases them in the air, they've got to land eventually and rest."

Charles didn't point out that according to what they had been told, the pegasi did not in fact need to land eventually and could rest on clouds. He didn't point that out because it was just about the stupidest thing he had ever heard, right up there with the rulers of the country here apparently controlling the sun and the moon. "If they weren't with us, that wouldn't be a problem." He countered. "We don't need them. Maybe a diplomat or two could've rode in another drone. We don't need the dead weight."

But the conversation could not continue, because at that moment the voice of the lead pony came in over the radio. The one whose name was Rainbow Dash was the one in charge of the ponies, and she had all the patience of a goldfish. "How much further do we have?" she asked, her tone reflecting her perpetual annoyance.

Charles flicked his mind through the ship's computer, referencing his position with the Equestrian satellite network. Of course they had to know his people were using it now, but so far as he observed nothing had been done to stop them. "Six minutes," he said over the radio, trying to be as polite as possible. "We're already decelerating. You can prepare your men for whatever it is you're going to do when we get there."

Even when she got an answer she liked this stupid pony had to be bitter about it. "We don't have any men, stupid. Just ponies who don't need some metal crutch to let them fly. Why don't you just drop us off right here and let us fly the rest of the way, huh? I bet we could do it twice as fast."

His king expected him to be diplomatic and have a friendly attitude, even when faced with those who did not. But robotic or not, Charles still had the full range of human emotions. He had been dealing with this cocky captain and her absurd statements about what her pegasi could apparently do. Fly so fast they formed an artificial tornado? Ridiculous. Break the sound barrier? Impossible. He had run the numbers in his head just to be sure. Even a reinforced combat prosthetic like his own would have trouble in supersonic conditions. "Because you would die." He tried to make himself sound matter-of-fact, but there was some smugness there too. "Our speed is currently what we call Mach 13, Captain Dash. That's thirteen times the speed of sound. If I dumped our cargo right now, you would die instantly. It would be better for all of us if you remain on-board until we reach our destination."

If the pegasus was grumbling with her dissatisfaction she didn't do it over the radio, and he heard nothing else from her for the remainder of the voyage. They reduced speed and altitude, into the range where it was likely sound would carry. He wondered what the population of this so-called dragon city would think about the deep, distant rumbling that rose in the east. Would their eyes be able to focus on an object traveling so fast? Surely not, had they been able to perform the braking maneuvers they were used to. But the sudden deceleration would have killed every one of the passengers, since none of them were cybernetic. "Where should I bring you?" Charles asked, over the radio. As he expected, their approach had been too rapid for any effective resistance to be mounted. There were more of this world's primitive airships around, but he hardly paid them any mind. They were no threat to him.

"Over the biggest, most important-looking building!" came the reply, more excited than he had ever heard it. "We'll do the rest!"

Sir. Charles Gray very much doubted that. "All passengers, prepare to disembark!" he called loudly, over the internal speakers. "Our current position is approximately 2,000 feet over the walled city, out of range of any of the ships here. Do not be alarmed if there is a sudden drop in cabin pressure."

In fact, there would be no such drop, not at this altitude. "You ready, Lindsy?"

"Aye, Sir," came her reply, without any sign of emotion.

"Let's keep as many of them alive as we can." There was a tone of exasperation in his voice. "Target their defenses first. However unlikely it is they have AA guns."

"Aye, Sir."

Without a word, the carrier began to fall apart. The drones from the top levels shook themselves loose of the sealant foam, peeling off to left and right and gunning their engines powerfully as they spread off and away from the ship. It rapidly disassembled into a mere platform, from which the pegasi were free to begin their attack. The city spread out beneath them, a sprawling mountainous metropolis at least as large as Canterlot. Instead of white plaster and stone though, most of these buildings were made of mud brick, with sharp spires a prominent fixture of many buildings. The city almost seemed to glow in the red sun of late afternoon. It had high walls of stone and brick surrounding it on all sides, and red flags hanging on every pole.

This is going to be stupidly easy, Charles thought to himself. We could've done it with half as many drones. They haven't even done anything to stop us yet. Their passengers shouted and charged down off the platform, into a remarkably complex and well-orchestrated dive. It was nearly as well coordinated as what he could've done with the drones and fairly impressive to watch. But Charles wasn't here to watch the natives perform their little stunts.

He was here to fight.

Author's Notes:

This was a hard one. Getting a little discouraged now, and it's been wearing down a little. Still, I made it, even if things ended up being much harder on the editors. Bless them for helping me even when I failed to deliver the manuscript on time. Hopefully we caught everything, though there was less time to look over the story so we probably didn't.

What can you do? Keep going, keep trying. Hopefully most of those people who were with us for MLA will eventually find their way here.

Oh! And I've started a side story, currently called "Can You Hear Me Now?" I won't say much about it, except that it will be a oneshot, taking place between MLA and HD, and that it stars Lyra Heartstrings. Hopefully something cute and much less serious than this story is. War is sad, and it can be discouraging. It's nice to think about something else some of the time.

This story will not effect the release schedule for Harmony Defended in any way. I'll probably post it on a Wednesday, two to three weeks from now. I'll announce it in a blog post tagged with MLA, and probably mention it in an author's notes when it eventually shows up.

Thanks for your patience, and for sticking with me. Hopefully I can overcome this discouragement and keep this story from getting side-tracked. I've got so many exciting ideas!

Chapter 7: Rescue

Four fillies and one dragon proved to be very poor nurses. Of the lot of them only Chance had any formal medical training, and that was with two-legged primates using a medical science centuries ahead of anything in Equestria. Their patients in many cases had received no treatment at all, as many had only been injured moments before the Fury landed. Were it not for the supplies they kept aboard, Chance had no doubt that half would have been dead before they reached the hospital.

"I thought Celestia had decided not to make the Nanophage publicly available," said Truth over the speakers. He wasn't reproachful. Actually, his voice was as cheerful as ever, which Chance found subtly disturbing. General Artificial Intelligence or not, inhuman intellect or not, there were many concepts that he did not fully understand. Death was the foremost example, though Chance had never seen that more painfully illustrated.

They weren't ignoring him per se, even as Chance led the way to the first patient, an older mare with several large chunks of shrapnel penetrating her barrel. Blood had pooled below her, though they knew enough not to remove the foreign objects. Do that, and she was sure to bleed to death. Her friends were in various states of numb panic, though Spike and Sweetie Belle were alert enough to actually help her. Both carried little white and red cases.

"What's that symbol?" Apple Bloom asked, as Chance dropped the case she had been carrying. She ignored the question, flicking the clasps with her magic. The case sprung open, revealing thickly padded foam. Within the foam were six syringes, two red and four blue. The top half of the case made the instructions very clear: the red injection was to be administered as close to the base of the neck as possible, while the two blue should be administered in the chest, near the vital organs.

Truth, on the other hand, was not occupied with lifesaving procedures and was free to answer over the speakers. "It's called the Rod of Asclepius, Apple Bloom. It's the universal symbol of human medicine."

"That sure is a funny-soundin' name," she murmured, though there was a hollowness to her voice that Chance could not mistake. Ponies were too delicate to see things like this, too sheltered. It was a testament to the toughness of her friends that they kept going. "Why is there a snake?"

"It's actually a very interesting bit of mythology. He was an ancient god of healing, who learned how to heal any injury listening to serpents. He became so skilled a healer that he could eventually resurrect the dead. Another, more powerful god had him killed to prevent overpopulation. The staff-"

"That's enough, Truth," Chance interrupted. "These ponies don't have much time, and Apple Bloom has to see how this is done." Chance had been strictly forbidden to teach this technique, and forbidden to administer it to anyone not directly approved by Twilight Sparkle. She had never really accepted the ruling, which was why she had asked Truth to make these medical kits in the first place. Celestia might rule Equestria, but the country's only OMICRON Core answered to Second Chance.

"First, the red one goes in right at the base of the neck." Chance lifted the hypodermic in her magic, removing the plastic cap. "Make sure you squeeze out a little before you do it, since if you get air into a vein it can kill the patient. It's better if you do get a vein, but... the nanites don't really need one. They're just faster that way."

"Why are there three small needles instead of one big one?" Spike asked, watching more intently than Scootaloo or Apple Bloom. If he was hovering on some sort of personal breaking-point, he showed no sign of it.

"The insides are actually the same," she admitted, lowering the largest of the needles carefully to the mare's neck. It was awful technique, but that probably wouldn't matter. "These were designed for people critically wounded. The Nanophage is smart enough to know where you inject it. The first injection goes straight for the brain and keeps it alive even if the heart stops. The other two injections go and find all the important organs, making sure they keep going. One big needle would work but not nearly as fast. For ponies as badly hurt as this, seconds can be key."

Chance quickly administered the next two injections, and lifted the half-empty case in her magic again. Her eyes wandered briefly over the outside, tarrying on a faint inscription set into the plastic. "Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity." She gritted her teeth, gesturing around the room. There were many ponies just as badly hurt as these, and standing around explaining the medkits was far less important than getting them used. "Just as I did it, right there."

Beneath her, the older mare had already resumed breathing, however unsteadily. No doubt her heart was beating again too. Asclepius wasn't the only one who could bring back the dead. "We don't have to lose a single pony if we work quickly!"

Work quickly they did. Of all of her friends, Sweetie Belle and Spike made by far the best team, moving through the crowd twice as fast as Chance did despite the fact that they had never used technology like this before today. Sweetie Belle's whole body was tense as she walked, and before each of the ponies she would drop down and say. "You're okay. Nopony else dies." And in the time it took her to say it, she was already done and moving onto the next one.

Nopony did die, not during the entire flight to the hospital. Truth reported that Canterlot General was overflowing with injuries from the attack, and recommended they set down outside Ponyville instead. He would let the hospital know they were coming. By the time they set down in the grassy field just outside the hospital, there wasn't just a crowd of emergency medical staff waiting there, but also the siblings or parents of each of her friends.

Of the whole group, only Scootaloo pretended not to see them, directing the orderlies and the medical teams aboard and leading them belowdecks. Chance and Spike didn't watch. There was only one pony waiting for them, though neither could've asked for more. It was Princess Twilight Sparkle, teacher, mentor, monarch, mother. They embraced her, and before a word was spoken they were all crying. They weren't the only ones in that field to be crying, either. So many had been hurt in Canterlot.

"My little heroes," Twilight said, the first to clear her eyes and speak. "What would Equestria do without you?"

Chance laughed in spite of herself. "We broke the rules, Twilight." Even as she said it, the first stretchers were being unloaded, carried past them into the large square hospital building. The guilt was burning in her, nevermind all the good they had accomplished. "We used nanomedicine, to keep those ponies alive during the trip. We-"

But Twilight shoved a hoof in her mouth, silencing her. "It's okay." She glanced sideways, at the steady stream of ponies being brought past them. Only now did Scootaloo reunite with her parents. "I think those ponies' families would be very happy you broke the rules for them." The hug ended. "There's a war now, Chance. Lots of rules are changing. I don't think Celestia would mind."

"I thought I saw a dragon the other night," Spike said, more than a little uneasily. "Why would a dragon be attacking Canterlot?"

Twilight hesitated. "We should go back to the castle," she said, nodding emphatically. "We have lots to talk about, and not much time."

This was going to be one of the easiest missions Sir Charles Gray had ever commanded. Actually, it was his first real command. He was the least of all King Richard's knights, the youngest and the worst connected. It was the chance of a lifetime to be able to impress and serve the first alien race they had ever encountered, and prove the effectiveness of an alliance. It was just a bonus that the mission itself was piss-easy.

"I want one of your drones circling and relaying information about the horses' positions," he said over the radio, in the same tone he might've used in the office asking to borrow her stapler. "I'll have one of mine do that too. Together we ought to be able to watch them all. Keeping them safe is just as important as sending a message to these other primitives here. Overgrown lizards, all of them."

"Aye, Sir." Lindsy did not comment on the chatter, but then she almost never did. She could be downright cold when they were on assignment, but Charles had always admired that level of focus. She was not quite the pilot he was, though. Not quite so good at multitasking. Sure enough, it was her own drone that she chose for the observation loop. That meant she could spare more of her concentration for the fleet at her command, while not needing to worry about keeping her drone safe since it wasn't actually doing any combat. The only problem was that it gave the enemy a clear target.

But he didn't lecture her about it, not now. Once he had a clear map of where the pegasi were in reference to the rest of the city, he let a probability program chew through everything he saw and identify the most threatening potential targets. False color highlighted ships with the largest, most accurate-looking guns, as well as some stationary embankments he saw on towers and structures. Some colors changed further, as Lindsy selected those targets that would be easiest for her ships to reach. An ordinary mission would not have been so casual, but it was not as though there was much to fear. The dangers highlighted to his view were really only dangers to the ponies. The only way any of their drones would be brought down was freak accident.

Charles paid little mind to what the ponies were doing, except to notice the strange bursts of electromagnetic radiation that flared briefly across his vision. His own drones peeled into a roll, and his mind effortlessly split his mental resources between each one. Compared to a real battle, this was nothing. Federation aircraft all had real pilots, which meant that individually they usually performed better than drones. They had ways of searching for the ship that contained him, and if they found it it would mean swift victory.

There were no Federation ships here, though. Charles was conservative with his ammo, allowing a program to find the most vulnerable spots on the airships and firing only on those. All had crews of course, and many fired on his drones with guns or even cannons. They didn't stand a chance. Drones flew above the city like a swarm of angry bees, passing over the entire city in about three seconds and turning around for another pass. Only computer-guided weapons could have hurt them.

One colossal airship, easily bigger than a house, began to tumble downward, falling far slower than gravity would suggest. He found the powder magazine on another, and detonated it with a rocket meant for bunker-busting. Easy. It was like playing a child's video game. He wondered if these creatures had thought as much when their ships were over the Equestrian city.

At once, his gut turned over. "Military targets only," Charles said suddenly, over the radio. He hadn't attacked anything besides the ships yet, but his memories of a few days ago were fresh enough. "We won't be like them. No intentional civilian casualties." Of course, raining burning buildings down on the city was bound to cause plenty of those, but probably far fewer than they could've inflicted by targeting housing structures and schools. That was what these creatures had done to Equestria. That was what the Tower had done to the Federation, and the Federation had done right back. There were no orders against it. In a traditional conflict with a traditional enemy, it might even be a good idea. But Sir Charles Gray would not fire on a civilian target.

This wasn't fun anymore.

"Of course, dummy!" came the voice of Rainbow Dash, over the radio. Apparently he had sent that as a general transmission, not just to his second. He wasn't actually authorized to give orders to the Equestrians, though there hadn't been anything wrong with the suggestion in any other way. "Is this really all they got? A few towers and some ships? They didn't see this coming anymore than we did!"

Gray's sleek drones found ground targets, and bombarded them with high explosives. It wasn't like a gunpowder charge, where the shock would weaken a structure's integrity and the subsequent fire might bring it down. His rockets were designed for this, concussive shells with flesh-shredding shrapnel and micro EMPs. They wouldn't start many fires, since little of their energy was wasted as heat. But they wouldn't leave survivors behind in the ruins they created either.

Their efforts were attracting attention. It might have been five minutes into the assault or it might have been ten, but distant rumblings signaled something else was coming.

Charles expected great reptilian shapes rising from the mountains. He even welcomed it, since how many people could claim they had actually slain a dragon? More to the point, it would have been wonderful to put the overgrown lizards in their place with a little modern firepower. Even if they were as strong and fast as King Richard had reported, his ships were equal to that. They were strong and fast too, and ultimately disposable.

There were many caves and tunnels near the city, this he had seen from the satellite images. What he saw streaming from them now was almost beyond belief. A cloud of small creatures emerged from the depths, each so thick that the sky began to grow dark. There were millions of them, black and glittering and heading for them like the largest flocks on old Earth, back when there had still been an ecosystem. It didn't matter that each one was only about three feet long, even smaller than the ponies. It didn't matter if all they had were teeth. In numbers like that, his drones would suck them into air intakes, collide with them and shatter glass. Computers were very good at automatic obstacle avoidance, but there needed to be a path without obstacles for them to do any avoiding.

The ponies. They must've heard the buzzing sound because a glance at the overhead view showed they had begun to move in the opposite direction, favoring the west side of the city over the swarm coming from the east. But no... there was another swarm coming from that direction too, no smaller than the last! How many of these creatures were there? What even were they?

"Retreat!" Charles called into the radio, over the general channel again. "There's too many, we've got to pull back!" Could he re-assemble the carrier before the millions reached it and forced it out of the sky through weight alone? A quick calculation answered in the negative. Even if the pegasi retreated immediately, there was no chance they could gather inside the carrier before the first waves would have arrived. Why hadn't these creatures been deployed at once, and prevented most of the damage to the city? The answer came without any of his programs, as an ache deep in his soul: the destruction of the attacking force was more important to them then protecting their own city. It was a horrific, sickening thought.

But Charles had not been put in command because he was stupid. His electronic brain simulated the process of human thought for perhaps three seconds, which was all it took for him to formulate an insane plan of retreat. "Start forming the carrier!" he ordered Lindsy, even as he transferred about a third of his drones to her. The absolute minimum required for the smallest carrier they could form with just combat drones. Obviously the one he was piloting was not among that number. "Ponies, reduce your altitude now! Get behind something big, but still fly towards the carrier if you can!"

"Aye, Sir!" She obeyed without question, even in the face of the oppressive buzzing that even he could hear through the ionization engines in his fast-moving ship. Already many of his drones were having to correct their flight-paths to avoid the fastest of the creatures. The pegasi were retreating, but not fast enough for all of them to make it. There were going to be casualties. All of them would be casualties unless he did something soon.

He did. Charles pulled his own ship into a vertical climb at maximum acceleration, getting as much distance from the creatures as possible. The sound of just one engine on full burn shook the whole city, and a bright blue contrail lit all the way up. Of course, it was really just an excuse to give himself more mental power to precisely calculate the positions each of his ships needed to be in. Drones soared through the air, speeds adjusted as some accelerated and others slowed down so that they were all set to collide with the encroaching edges of the densest swarm.

Each fighter was powered by a tiny microfusion reactor, whose design completely precluded runaway reactions. They weren't fission reactors that could be forced to overload by removing control rods, nor indeed was there any way to accelerate the rate they produced power. They wouldn't even scatter radioactive waste, since only ordinary hydrogen and helium were involved.

But that didn't mean the ships couldn't be blown up. Charles sent the universal kill command to five of his remaining fighters at exactly the same time, just as they began to collide with members of the swarm. In perfect unison, every remaining munition, every ounce of energy, and all the hydrogen in their tanks was detonated. A hundred thousand of the creatures died instantly, those closest to the edges. The greatest damage was in the pressure-wave, expanding outward in both directions from the explosions. A gale of flesh-melting heat drove the swarm back, and caused many more of the creatures to simply drop from the sky. The ponies had taken shelter as he had instructed, and the combination of something to hide behind and significantly decreased altitude meant that most of them were still moving. Had there been casualties? No time to count. "Fly for the carrier!" he bellowed over the radio.

If the swarm noticed that its size had been cut in half, it showed no sign. It was already regrouping, moving again towards the ponies and the half-formed carrier. Two halves converged into a central mass to advance on them again just as Charles detonated all his remaining drones in an explosion no less spectacular than the first. The results were no less effective, and mud buildings in the city beneath began to collapse under the weight of the dead, filling the streets in broken fragments.

Charles's drone began to stall, and he pulled sideways into a slow dive, with just enough incline that he began to accelerate in the direction of the nearly complete carrier. There was no place on it for his own drone, but that didn't matter. He could follow it just as easily as be a part of it. Lindsy was a qualified pilot.

"I'd like to see a Federation squad try that," he muttered to himself, more than a little smugly. His plan had worked; the carrier was assembled and the ponies were inside. They had probably done more damage than the exact 24 buildings and there would be no diplomatic message left behind, but in the face of these odds he was sure he'd be getting a medal for this mission anyway. Even better if all the squishy organics had survived. That would be a powerful message to send to the enemy, that even in their own territory with the best preparations they could not hope to win against this alliance.

None of them saw the dragons until it was too late. They came from nowhere, simply appearing as though emerging from advanced active camouflage. Charles saw them perhaps a second before they reached the carrier, even as it began to accelerate. "UP, NOW!" he screamed over the radio, hands tightening so much on the controls that they cracked under the pressure.

Even with the reflexes of a machine they were not fast enough. Massive scaled creatures, at least forty feet long apice, collided with the carrier with all the inertia suggested by their size. Thick armor plating caved in, but the not-yet-dry sealant foam all over the carrier crumbled instantly. Flames erupted as the largest monster unleashed a torrent of flames directly into the crumbling carrier. A fourth landed atop the mass and tore one of the drones from its place as though it were made of styrofoam, armor buckling as it ripped the cockpit open and unleashed its own flaming assault on the pilot.

On the pilot. They knew. God, how had they known which one had Lindsy? Had they been watching the whole time? She didn't even get a chance to scream. One minute she was there, and the next the combat network immediately gave him control of all the remaining drones. A dozen thermal warnings popped into his vision, as well as sensor readings from inside. Several of the ponies were already dead, more were injured. The dragons were decimating them.

He swore into the radio, tears streaming from his face. It was falling apart! They were all doomed! Ponies were burning before his eyes, the dragons would kill all of them! In one of the cameras, he saw the native captain, badly burned but pulling her own men back, sheltering them from the flames and searching for a means of escape. Even so, there was terror in her eyes. She was staring death in the face.

Maybe he would've given up and detonated all the drones. But they had killed Lindsy, right before his eyes. And here he was, flying in from above. The perfect angle to make a difference. "Get inside!" he called to the remaining ponies, opening the cockpit of every drone near the ponies. Of course, they were designed for human pilots, but humans were larger than ponies by a significant margin. Two could probably fit in each one, if they packed in close.

The dragons were massive and powerful, but they were also tactically clueless. Attacking the carrier was smart, but holding on afterwards? They would pay for that. The drones on the sides accelerated downwards and away from the formation at their maximum velocity, carrying two of the four assailants away. When there was enough distance between them and the main force, Charles detonated those drones, and their unwilling passengers right along with them. One of the dragons he impaled, accelerating the rearmost drone so that it passed halfway inside the beast before both tumbled sideways from the sky.

The last of the monsters, the one that had killed Lindsy, he targeted with his own drone. First a low-grade concussion rocket knocked it far away from the crumbling formation. He fired all six of the bunker-buster rockets his fighter carried into its belly, one after another. Only a smattering of shattered blue scales survived to fall charred back to earth.

The swarm was bearing down on them, and besides that cries of reptilian rage without a source shattered the air around them. The surviving ponies were packed uncomfortably inside the cabins of the six drones he still controlled, though he was pained to see there was not enough room for the captain. Judging by the state of her wings she was not going to fly away from this easily. She had probably already gone into shock. She looked resolved, ready to die.

Like hell he was going to let one more person die on this mission. But there was so little time. A second's delay and the swarm would descend on them. Charles pulled his own drone down to her level and opened the cockpit. Air rushed in around him, hot with the smell of charred flesh. "Get in!" He flew as close to her as he could. There was no room for two of course, not when one of them was human. He wouldn't be able to get the cockpit to close around them both. Even as he accelerated the other drones slowly, he opened his arms to catch her.

There was no argument. Rainbow Dash jumped, and Charles caught her, helping her clamber into the cockpit and closing it behind her. Of course, that left himself balanced precariously on one of the wings, like a 1920s barnstormer. He jumped onto the roof of the cockpit with inhuman dexterity, wrapping both arms around the nose of the ship like a vice.

He dropped the remaining ordinance the drones carried on another upward climb, doing his best to fracture the swarm and whatever reptilian beasts were bearing down on him. He heard many roars now, though he couldn't spare enough concentration for his own body to even look backward and see. And it worked. The now-occupied drones made their way up and up and up, accelerating as rapidly as he thought was safe.

Not fast enough to stop one of the largest and fastest of the insect-like creatures from landing beside him on the surface of the drone, sharp limbs digging deep into the armor and holding fast even when he kicked the engine into a quarter-second of full burn.

This just kept getting better and better! He couldn't reach for his sidearm without taking one arm off the front of his ship, and risking tumbling into the void. Nor, it seemed, could the creature move without being dislodged. The force of air pushing against him was quite intense, though so long as he kept the ship's speed down he could survive it, and he accelerated away from the rest of the swarm.

The creature was strange, as though someone had put an Equestrian pony and a spider in a blender and given the result so many tumors its exoskeleton began to fall off in huge chunks. Its proportions were uneven, and oily fluid drained from a dozen different seeping injuries. How was this thing even alive enough to fight? Even as he watched it lowered its head towards the wing, pointing a horn-like protrusion on its head down at the armor and blasting it with sizzling green energy.

"Shit!" he swore, even as a dozen or so warning indicators came into his mind. The creature paused, seemed to look up at him with its horrible insect eyes, and fired again. This time the drone visibly shook, its momentum faltering slightly. It didn't seem as though the monster knew the drone's vulnerabilities, but whatever it was using was scrambling his drone's electrical systems.

There was little time for thought. Charles turned, baring his artificial teeth at the monster even as he accelerated the drone a little, so much that even his superhuman strength found it difficult to hold on. It wasn't enough to dislodge the creature, or stop it from firing twice more. Smoke was trailing behind them now, along with bits and pieces of melted body armor. "Hey!" he shouted over the roar of air around them, as loudly as he could, swinging with all his strength to kick out at the creature.

The monster slid backward along the wing, digging deep gouges into the metal. It made a horrific noise of pain and anger, and fired its next shot of green force directly at Charles. The energetic projectile seemed completely unaffected by the air around them, striking him directly in the chest. His muscles all spasmed in random electrical firings, though he managed to keep his arms wrapped around the front of the ship and concentration controlling all the drones. There were advantages to being able to completely ignore pain, even while parts of his chest melted away before his eyes.

That was about as long as it took to maneuver one of his (now occupied) intact drones above and behind them. It fired a few well-aimed shots at his command, directly at the alien insect.

The monster exploded, its insides sliding backward off the drone and falling to the earth. "See you in hell!" Charles called backward after it, gripping more tightly around the front of the drone. He took them up, higher and faster than would be easy for their pursuers to keep pace with. Still, he doubted they would have just given up.

Unfortunately, there was nothing Charles could do about the damage to his drone. The automatic-repair circuits were not functioning, and he didn't have the equipment to repair it. Further, any drone he was actively holding onto would be limited to subsonic speeds. Even as his own ship began to fly lower and slower, he occupied every bit of his brain programming simple instructions into the remaining drones. Now that they were separate, there was nothing stopping them from engaging their active camouflage, lifting back into the stratosphere, and flying back to Canterlot. He sent the program, along with a dump of all the data his senses had recorded during the battle. The aircraft would be helpless to do anything other than avoid basic obstacles, but he counted on them making it back. At least some of them would survive this debacle.

"We're... going to crash," Charles said over the internal speakers of his drone, even as the others left them in another upward climb. "Nothing I can do. One of those monsters... no way to repair it... I'm going to get us as much distance from the swarm as I can. Hopefully far enough the rescue team gets here before the swarm does..." His own systems were having trouble, though combat prosthetics had considerably better self-repair circuits than drones did. Not that it would matter if they crashed at this speed. The trick was going to be deciding when to slow the ship down. The longer they kept going, the longer they would have to get away from the crash-site. But if he pushed too far, the drone might not survive long enough to slow to a safe speed and they would die anyway.

Well, Rainbow Dash would. Then again, her injuries might be fatal anyway. There wouldn't be any hospitals out here. His cortical recorder would survive a crash, and a rescue team would recover it eventually. Maybe he ought to push harder.

Amazingly, the pony captain was still conscious. She sounded weak, and in agony he could hardly even imagine. But she was alive. "We should jump." She coughed. "Let your airship keep flying... So they don't find us... I've still got one good wing. That should be... enough to get us both down to the ground..."

Charles doubted the captain was in any condition to fly them both, but her plan did have merit. If they jumped, the drone could keep going for many miles before it got out of range or crashed. The swarm might pass right over them when it got here. He looked down, as they passed over yet another range of tall hills. Small mountains? Besides, his people could track his recorder here even if it didn't work. It sounded as plausible as anything they might try.

"Okay, get ready!" The cockpit opened. Charles drew out the extra-large emergency pack from behind the seat and took hold of the pony with his free hand. They were blown back from the drone almost immediately, though there was a very long way left to fall. Together they fell, twisting further and further out of control and clinging to one another against the impact rushing up to meet them.

Chapter 8: Landfall

There was no time for rest, and so much information to absorb that from the moment she woke up Chance was practically assaulted with news. Some of it was good. There had been an unexpected miracle at the Ponyville General Hospital. Despite the awful condition the bombing victims had been in when they arrived, not a single one had died in the night and all were now stable. None had lost any limbs or apparently suffered any of the mental degradation associated with severe cranial injuries. They would all make it back to their families.

But most news was not so good. Los Pegasus had been taken and the guard there completely destroyed. Worse, that entire part of the Equestrian navy had burned while floating useless in the port. There would be no deterring invaders by water, for by the time reinforcements could arrive from Seaddle their enemy would have all its troops and resources installed. If reports from the as-of-yet unassailable pegasus quarter were to be believed, the invaders were burning their own ships as well. They obviously didn't plan on going anywhere.

"Celestia has a special assignment for you," Twilight explained, when she had caught them up on all the recent happenings. It wasn't just Chance she explained it to. Her friends were there too, looking as quiet and dignified as the CMC ever did. She was not so different from her friends that she felt anything different than they did. Exultation and pride welled in her. Celestia had thought of them! She had a special assignment! Not that this was the first time. The entirety of Equestria's electronic defenses were their special contributions, at her personal request. That did not make future requests any less meaningful in their eyes.

Still, there was something sad about the way she said it. "You don't all have to go," Twilight Sparkle was explaining. "But when the mechanical humans arrived they damaged Truth. We realize now just how much we depend on Truth for our entire infrastructure. That his location is known even by an ally puts Equestria at risk."

"Because you could blow up their stabilizer and stop them from getting reinforcements," Chance explained, for the benefit of her friends. "But if the Tower knows where Truth is, there's nothing stopping them from doing it again. They don't depend on us to stabilize the bridge, so they could make their own supply-lines. They could even invade if they wanted to." The way she said it, she tried to make it seem as though she knew that was exactly what they were going to do. It disturbed Chance greatly that the alliance with humanity had been expanded to include the Steel Tower.

If Twilight caught on to her implications, she ignored them. "It would be even worse if Truth fell into the hands of the invaders while trying to get him safely out of human reach. After what the Fury did to that dreadnaught, we think it might be the only ship in Equestria that we can be sure will keep Truth safe. So the assignment is to take Truth far away from any major city, maybe out of Equestria completely. Just get him somewhere he won't be found, and keep him safe until the war is over. Make sure nopony finds out where you are, not even me."

Scootaloo nodded. As the captain of the Fury, she was the de-facto leader when it came to making decisions for the group. "We'll do it!"

"For Equestria!" echoed Apple Bloom.

Sweetie Belle just nodded.

"The Fury's upgrades aren't finished." Chance was a little less optimistic. She could see that, while this assignment was important, it also seemed chosen to practically guarantee their safety. It was keeping them out of danger, babying them. "The armor isn't installed, no telling when the thaumic shield we commissioned will be delivered, besides the lift-crystal not being configured for a four-ton steel cube."

Scootaloo deflated visibly with her words, chest not puffed out nearly so much. But Twilight didn't seem the least bit perturbed. Not even surprised. "I know. We've already had all the parts you had in storage in Canterlot shipped here, and Truth has been making more ever since he woke up. Celestia requisitioned a thaumic shield from the royal armory, along with a military lift-crystal. There is a team of a dozen naval shipwrights on the train from Canterlot right now to help you finish your upgrade by tomorrow morning. I've been told if you need anything else, simply give me the list and I'll see it's here before you leave."

Each time Chance was about to bring up some other objection, Twilight pre-empted her and she just shut her mouth. Celestia had thought of everything. She had to admit, it even excited her a little. They estimated that with the limits on their budget it was going to take years to finish the Fury. Now the royal treasury was opened, and everything would be done by tomorrow. Their little hobby ship was going to be a part of Equestria's defense.

Besides, so long as they got Truth to safety it didn't matter what they did after that, right? They could help with the war if they played their cards right. And unlike last time, they would have a finished ship to do it with. "You should move the Fury to the courtyard," Twilight instructed. "And get ready. The shipwrights only know how to build Equestrian ships. They'll need your supervision."

Her friends nodded, thanked Twilight, and began to disperse. Chance promised she would catch up and waved them off, looking darkly up at Twilight. Just because they were in her mentor's castle didn't mean she couldn't be mad. The other thrones were empty, so she wouldn't be arguing with Twilight in front of her friends.

"I know what you're doing," Chance said, as darkly as she could. "This special assignment. I bet it was your idea, not Celestia's. To keep us out of danger."

Twilight shrugged, though the way she avoided looking into Chance's eyes was all the answer Chance really needed. So she went on "We're more useful on the front lines. We can take out a dozen dreadnaughts when the ship is put together, easy."

There was long silence. Twilight watched her, expression growing sadder with every moment. After a short time, she got up and walked past Chance, around the throne room. "While you were gone, there was a mission to the Dragon Capital Typhon. Not Equestrian ships. The mechanical humans had little metal ships that combined into one big one. Dozens and dozens of them."

"They had enough drones to make a carrier here? Overnight?"

Twilight nodded. She had stopped walking in front of one of the other thrones. Chance stopped beside her, looking down at the carved markings in its stone surface. This throne belonged to Rainbow Dash. "Rainbow Dash led a whole contingent of Royal Guard pegasi. They were supposed to show the enemy we had irresistible force on our side, so they would give up and leave us alone." She shook her head. "Only a few of those 'powerful' human ships made it back, along with maybe a dozen of the pegasi. None of the human pilots or the pegasi officers made it." A few tears fell from her eyes, landing on the stone. She turned fierce, and locked eyes with Chance. She hadn't ever seen Twilight Sparkle this intense, not in her whole life. "I won't let anypony else I love get hurt!"

There was nothing unexpected about the first wave of troops from the United Earth Federation. There was no covert infiltration, and no massive devices were brought through, nor was their arrival unexpected. Amber Sands stood ten meters or so away from a circle of unicorn of the Royal Unicorn Corps, with Twilight Sparkle at the head. It was night now, so she saw the glow of magic from each of them as they combined their strength. Amber knew little about magic compared to the pony she had been copied from, just enough to levitate objects while she was pretending to be a unicorn. She could make nothing of the ritual, though she didn't need to understand any of it to guess what they were trying to do.

There was no green lightning when the ritual completed, no explosions. Rather, the center of the circle became a source of light, which radiated brightly in all directions. Looking at it from below, Amber saw a high empty space, and a transparent ceiling beyond which was a grey waste.

Luna Prime, the capital of the Federation. Amber Sands remembered arriving there in her childhood, and spending several years in common education until she specialized and moved to secondary school on Luna 7. Of course those memories weren't really hers, but the further back the memories went the harder it was for Amber to consciously accept that they weren't real.

First through the opening was a woman in a white uniform with black trim, which reflected the light of Earth so well it seemed practically to glow. It was a dress uniform, not the thick armor of the Tower. She had dark brown hair in a bun behind her head, and harsh gray eyes like flecks of silver. The woman was well-built and confident, but the best thing about her was that she was alive. In a flash, Amber realized exactly who she was looking at.

"Fleet Admiral Alexi Colven, representing the United Earth Federation." She saluted to Twilight, though her stance was also significantly less rigid than a common soldier. Amber's hooves were frozen in place as she watched this exchange. Her sister was a fleet admiral? No, not her sister. Chance's sister. She could tell herself that all she wanted, but she couldn't stop the tears. After all this time, Alexi was okay! Something radical must've happened after officer's school if she had climbed to the pinnacle of the Federation's military.

"Do I have permission to begin landfall operations, as described in the terms of the Terran-Solar Accord?"

Princess Twilight was obviously doing her best to seem as princessly as possible, though she was still nearly a foot shorter than the human woman if you didn't count the horn. There was no fear this time. Admiral Colven carried no weapons, just a scroll and a cap under one arm. Twilight sounded as though she were reciting something she had memorized. "Equestria welcomes its allies under the terms of the accord."

The woman extended her arms with the hat and the scroll, which Twilight took. Some sort of naval ceremony, transferring the privilege of command? Amber didn't know. Even in her false memories she had been a scientist, not a soldier. "Very good. How long will the opening last?"

"One hour. We can always cast the spell again if that's not enough time."

"One hour will be more than sufficient. Can you get your people back from the entrance? I don't want any accidental injuries as we bring the hardware through." Twilight gestured, and the assembled ponies retreated from the opening towards the huge timber fence to the south. They did not dare move left, for not far in that direction would lead directly to the camp of the Steel Tower. Nor did they flee north, where the huge trees of the Everfree loomed like dark ghosts.

The Royal Unicorn Corps in their bright uniforms waited and watched as the allies they had actually invited began to arrive. Amber thought that this wouldn't be all that bad to watch, really. After the shock of the Tower drones and those tiny unliving bodies with their enormous strength, she supposed the ponies here probably thought they couldn't see anything more shocking.

Amber knew better. She remembered the ferocity of the Free People's Army well. It was not hard to remember, since her own brother and father had fought in it.

First through the opening came four soldiers, no larger than Alexi. Unlike the admiral they wore full combat-gear, with armored vests and weapons in their hands ready for use. One stepped forward and saluted to Alexi, while the other three surrounded them and spread out a little, forming a protective perimeter. When they spoke, it was in English. Amber still remembered what the words meant, even if it took much more concentration to understand than Equestrian.

"Bring them in, Sergent."

The man began to shout commands through the opening. The ground shook, and a pair of massive shapes emerged, vaguely humanoid shells of steel and hardened plastic. They had legs and arms, attached to an entirely enclosed torso, with feet easily the size of a pony. They sunk deep into the grass with each step, carrying an enormous plastic container between them. Another pair emerged from the opening, then another and another. When a dozen of the mechanized suits had passed through the barrier they began filing back into the opening, making trip after trip until they had piled up the plastic crates higher than many of the trees. Only then did the soldiers began to flow through the opening.

"Bring the bag, Sergeant," Twilight said, and Amber slid her neck under the hefty saddle-bags waiting by the fence and slid them on. She followed Twilight obediently towards the opening. None of the grass had survived, it was all dirt now, freshly turned by numerous mechanical feet. Amber followed her to the opening, and stood mere feet away from Admiral Colven. But she didn't say anything, not as Twilight opened the bag and began lifting little bracelets out one by one. They were small, but the magic flowing in each was immensely powerful. Twilight gave one to the admiral, and began levitating them to the soldiers as they passed in their formations. Each group of nine got nine of the bracelets, followed by an instruction from one of the human sergeants.

"Put this on immediately! Do not remove it under any circumstances." Amber had no idea what that could be about, but it was none of her business and she didn't ask.

The admiral towered over Amber, tall and proud and so young. Did Second Chance know her sister was going to be here for the arrival of Federation troops? It was hard to imagine Chance not wanting to see her only living family again. But why wouldn't they have told her? Wasn't she the Federation's official ambassador or something?

Amber squeaked a quiet, "H-hello," to Alexi at one point, but was not heard over the sound of so much activity and did not try a second time. She was here as a part of the Equestrian Royal Army now, not a lonely changeling with some false memories of a past that was never hers.

And besides, she was going to be here overseeing the new human city called Normandy long after Princess Twilight had gone. There would be other opportunities to talk, perhaps more privately.

Still, it was not the triumph of having such a large and powerful military fighting for Equestria that occupied Amber's thoughts. It was not imagining a swift victory and liberation of Los Pegasus. All Amber could think of for the rest of the night was whether this alien biped would have a place in her heart for a sister that she didn't know existed.

Critical Error - unit damage detected

Sys.left_arm critical failure
Sys.left_leg critical failure
Sys.transmission_suite critical failure
Sys.homeostasis critical failure
Sys.autorepair critical failure
Sys.matter_accelerator critical failure
Sys.micronuclear critical failure

Transmitting Damage Report
Transmission Failure
Attempting Self Repair
Repair Failure

Charles blinked into consciousness, face-down in the red dirt of a desert wasteland. He felt no pain, which was to his advantage. It was likely that if an organic human could have survived a situation like his, the pain of it would have sent them into shock at once. As it was he had nothing but a strange numbness where some of his limbs ought to be. He tried to push himself up, but found that only one of his arms responded, and instead of sit up he ended up pushing himself onto his back. It was dark above him, and for several long moments all he did was look up at the sky, watching the stars. This is it, he told himself. This is how I die.

Begin transmission through satellite network. He thought, King Richard-

Transmission hardware unavailable. Message failure.

He swore to himself and went back to watching the stars. Of course he didn't feel any discomfort, but laying here also didn't allow his body to naturally heal itself and make him feel better as it would have if he were organic. Not that an organic would have been very likely to survive. Is library system intact?

Yes.

Is the exterior speaker working?

Yes.

Begin playback from favorites list at "I Dreamed a Dream," he instructed. If he was going to slowly die here, he might as well enjoy it. And the body's speakers obeyed, producing the English words and soft piano of Old Earth. Charles watched the stars as they moved, moving his working arm close to his chest. The uniform had been shredded to pieces, but somehow the fragile-bracelet was completely intact on his wrist. He felt the links against his skin, then grunted and sat up. He would gain nothing from laying here stewing in his regret.

Sir Charles Gray sat in a puddle of cybernetic maintenance fluids, a creamy white that had mixed with the native dirt. The arm and leg on his right side had been completely severed, with wires and contacts exposed sickeningly. Limbs could sometimes be easily reattached, but it was immediately clear that neither was a clean enough break for that. Beside him in the dirt was the native captain, her armor scattered and broken by the impact.

Charles still remembered the fall. As it turned out, she had been far less able to fly than she had first thought, let alone with his weight. As they neared the earth, Charles had curled up around her with his body, calculating the fall perfectly so that he could absorb most of the impact and she would be flung free, bounced through the air like he was a spring. He had no conscious recollection after the fall though, and had no reason to suspect any organic could survive such a fall. Not even a Federation soldier with intensive Nanophage should've survived such an impact, nevermind what he had done to try and protect her. It had been foolish. Perhaps insane.

Yet as he watched, his visual sensors registered a faint stirring of breathing. Aside from her wings, it didn't seem as though she was so badly hurt. Could she be alive? Charles had to crawl to find the emergency pack, dragging himself through the mud by his one good arm and kicking with the leg. He took the bag in his teeth and crawled back toward Rainbow Dash, lying crumpled and unconscious. He sat up again, holding the bag under one leg as he opened the pack. All the while human music from an ancient past played quietly in the muddy clearing, to the sound of clicking plastic cases and the faint electronic whir of machines.

An entire half of the pack was occupied with the largest field-issue medical kit produced by the Tower, the sort with hardware and supplies for organics. This medkit had been brought along for just such a situation, since the only casualties they had expected were the natives. Once the medical probe was in place, the screen filled with the native's medical report.

It wasn't good. She had broken bones in one of her legs, an infection growing in one of her wings, cranial trauma, and damage to her internal organs. The medical program gave her an hour without intervention, and predicted she would not regain consciousness in that time.

Charles found that completely unacceptable. It didn't matter that she had made some absurd claims. It didn't matter that she had been obstinate and difficult. It wasn't even that she was important and powerful in Equestria. None of those things mattered. It would have been easy to lie back and close his eyes. They would both be dead soon enough. His transmissions weren't getting through, his own people would have no way of finding them. The damage to his body was so severe that it didn't seem like they could escape from behind enemy lines anyway. Death would be so easy.

But Charles would not accept it. Not for himself, for that was easy. Rather, he could not accept the idea of this person, this pony, dying right in front of him when he might have been able to do something. He had seen enough death for one day.

It was hard work with half his limbs missing, despite all the training he had in field medicine. It would have been far easier if he were with the Federation, accustomed and trained to heal organics. A few doses of a Nanophage tailored for pony biology and that would have been enough. But the Steel Tower, absolutely committed to the triumph of machinery over biology, had no medical gear that simply repaired damaged flesh the way the Federation did.

No, every medical device the Tower used replaced or supplemented the function of existing organs, never just repaired them. Once applied, they were not designed to be removed, only upgraded. Perhaps the native named Rainbow Dash would have objected to becoming partly cybernetic in order to survive. But even if she had been awake to object, Charles would've ignored her objections. She could take out her implants and die later if that was what she really wanted.

Charles had performed several "emergency-field-conversions" before, in the early days of the war when the Tower still had biological soldiers. First came the cortical recorder, complete with its supplemental processor that would allow a biological brain to control artificial implants. The recorder was quite small, a silvery disk about a fourth the size of his fist and weighing just a few ounces. Once applied to the place where the neck met the head, cortical fibers began snaking their way into her brain, interfacing with every important neural group. Eventually every cell would have a mechanical partner, recording every last connection in real time for the recorder.

Next came bone-hardening injections, which were incredibly difficult to administer accurately with only one hand. He managed quickly enough, and even while her bones were "healed" he set about the third portion of the task. A fist-sized implant called a Universal Bio-Regulator could supplement the functions of damaged internal organs. Charles knew little of how the implant worked, save that once he placed it just below her ribs it sliced its way through flesh and fur and burrowed inside like a benevolent beetle. Thank God this poor native was unconscious for all this.

He didn't watch the way her insides shifted, and looked away until the unit transmitted a ready signal. Only then did he close the wound with biosealent and begin the last portion of the treatment.

One of Rainbow Dash's wings was intact, with healthy feathers glistening under the moon. The other was an awful, disgusting sight. She was lucky she wore armor, or else her body might've been just as badly burned. The feathers had melted like wax, and the flesh had sloughed off in awful sheets. He could see bone in more than one place. This was probably the wound that was killing her, and it was miraculous she had survived at all.

"I'm really sorry about this." He sat up, and despite his missing limbs he did not sway. She did not reply, of course. He had used as much tranquiliser as was safe for her body-mass. She couldn't wake up, not now. "But if I don't amputate this wing, you're going to die before we get back to Equestria. If it makes you feel any better, the Federation can regenerate lost limbs pretty easily. If you really have an alliance with them, then they should be able to help. If not... we could always design a prosthetic wing with twice the strength of the old one." He gripped the laser-scalpel in his hand as he spoke. It was hardly the tool for the job, but it was the only tool he had. "I'm so sorry."

It took over an hour for Rainbow Dash to regain consciousness. During that time Charles had managed to use some of the cybernetic sealant to reattach his leg and lock it into an extended position. It would never function properly again, but at least if he found a walking stick or something he could probably walk. There was no point to do the same thing with the arm, since it would serve no practical purpose but weighing his body down.

By the time she woke up, Charles had heavily bandaged the stump of her wing, sealing it so that it could not become further infected. Were it not for the UBR, no doubt she would not have regained consciousness for hours more, if not days. But with a partially cybernetic brain and a bioreactor in her chest, one didn't have to wait for the natural processes to fully restore one to consciousness. He had not replaced what was left of her armor after he had finished with his field-medicine. Not only did Charles lack the dexterity with one arm, but Rainbow Dash would be too weak to take on all that extra metal weight. Of course he wished he had been wearing his own armor; perhaps with it he might have survived the fall without losing any of his limbs.

"I feel funny," was the first thing she said, her voice much lighter than it had been during their previous conversations.

"You're probably feeling the painkillers," Charles explained. "We crashed. I had to do some emergency first-aid."

"How bad was it?" She moaned, one of her hooves twitching. Then, in a show of enormous strength, she rolled sideways so her hooves were beneath her and rose to a wobbly standing position. Richard couldn't believe his eyes, and for several moments he just stared openly. This native had just been in a high-altitude crash, had an amputation, and been partially cyberized. Yet before three hours were up, before he could even voice his objections, she rose to her hooves.

"Bad enough you shouldn't be moving yet!" He reached out, trying to push her back down, but she pulled out of reach and just looked at him, with all the determination of a soldier. Many humans had faced much kinder fates with far less composure. "You would've been dead already if I hadn't used our medicine. Had to give you a cyber-controller, to fix the concussion and let you have other implants. It's mostly outside your body, you probably feel it on the back of your neck."

"And?" She was already wobbling less and less, her eyes becoming more awake. The cortical recorder would be doing its best to keep the pain down to a dull ache, though no doubt it was not fully integrated yet and would do an imperfect job.

"A hardening agent for your bones. That one you should hardly notice, just speeds healing and makes it so you don't need a cast. No maintenance, and those bones should never break again."

"And?"

He wilted. It was true that the interface in the recorder would eventually provide her with basic information about her implants and how they worked, but it should take at least a week before the network in her brain was developed enough to communicate anything with her conscious mind. "Internal damage, pretty bad. Gave you something to keep you alive inside until we can get you to a hospital. Encourage them to heal naturally. Hopefully you won't even need surgery when we get there."

"My wings." There was a weakness to her voice he hadn't heard from her, not since they had first met. It didn't sound very much like a military commander at all. Rather, it was a frightened young woman. A girl, who had seen something horrible and knew what it meant. "Dragonfire... right in the wing..." She made as if to stretch the right wing, muscles twitching on the base that remained. But there was nothing to bring before her face to inspect. No injury remained, because there was no longer a wing there at all.

Rainbow Dash looked at him for a long time, and in her eyes Charles could see such a sense of pain and loss as to defy his ability to describe. There were no tears, just a soul-crushing despair that made the pony's shoulders slump. "Yeah," was all she said, dropping onto her haunches. "I thought so."

Chapter 9: Eclipse

Celestia was not a pony easy to get in to see. During wartime the affairs of the Solar Court were handled entirely by lesser nobles, so Celestia's time was completely free for matters that actually mattered. Only high officers from the various branches were permitted free access, and even then only during specific hours of the day.

She was in the right place to receive an audience, the "war room" on one of the higher floors of the castle. There was an enormous map of Equestria on a table, with a large open area around it for ponies to walk around and examine the situation from many sides, and a balcony overlooking the rugged mountainous side of Canterlot. In all of Equestria's previous wars the map had been an illusion spell; these days it used a projector mounted to the ceiling and an overlay from the satellites Twilight Sparkle had put into orbit about a decade ago.

No, the problem wasn't the place, it was the time. It was nearly midnight and still Celestia was poring over the maps, turning over the information that had returned with the defeated convoy. None of it was good news. One of the human pilots was confirmed dead, along with half a dozen ponies. The other human pilot and captain Rainbow Dash were missing in the field and presumed dead. Worse, the ponies had returned with eyewitness accounts of "millions" of changeling-like creatures.

How could such a large changeling population been sustained in one place? Dragons were not well known for an overabundance of love, and their lesser servitors were scarcely capable of any real emotions these days. Changelings were potent warriors, as they had demonstrated a decade ago when they took Canterlot during Princess Cadence's wedding. If their enemy had such enormous forces, why hadn't a single changeling been reported by the survivors that had fled Los Pegasus?

No matter how she stared at the maps, watching as draconic forces advanced outward in all directions from Los Pegasus like a disgusting taint, she could not find answers. Her vast intellect had never failed to solve dilemmas of this type before. Yet since little Second Chance had arrived a decade ago, everything had changed. There were so many new variables on the table, methods of war she had never considered. Were it not for her human allies, it was easy to see how this war might lead to defeat. How could you fight an enemy who had changed all the rules?

Celestia was startled out of her thoughts by the voice of an unfamiliar pony, calling to her from across the room. "Princess, may we have a word?" There were no guards in the chamber with her, though no doubt every door had a pair. Yet the voice came from the direction of the balcony. She did not have to turn to feel the ponies waiting there, with senses that were entirely separate from the physical.

There was only one being on this planet capable of concealing her true nature from Celestia, and she had no reason to believe she had encountered her since the wedding. She felt instantly that these beings were changelings, though they were far greater than any individual drone, with a will that could exist beyond their bodies. They were both immortal, though neither had the magical strength to create bodies from nothing as Celestia and Luna did.

A decade ago, another such intelligence had arrived in Equestria, a disembodied alien consciousness that later took the name Second Chance. She had lost that particular part of herself and was no longer able to exist outside her body. These beings had not, and they also thought much more like natives of Equus than Chance had. They thought like changelings, in a swarm of two.

Celestia didn't call for the guard. It would do no good to imprison or even kill these beings, since they could leave these bodies and be entirely beyond her power if they wanted to. Yet there was also very little they could do to her. She could turn their bodies to dust with the tiniest fraction of will, if she wanted. They had to know assassinating her would be impossible.

"Why have you come?" she asked, without turning around. She wouldn't even give them the satisfaction of her eyes on whatever illusion they had crafted. No doubt they looked like ordinary ponies, or else an alarm would have been raised by now. The illusion had to be pretty impressive to make it through the city's shield. Could she capture them long enough to extract their memories of how they penetrated the city's defenses?

"We've been here since the invasion." The voice was male this time, and seemed almost eloquent. "Waiting for a moment of privacy. Now that we have it, we were hoping to have a brief conversation."

"It shouldn't take long," assured another voice, this one female but otherwise identical to the first. Twins? "Just a few minutes, and we can be out of your city."

"You aren't attempting deception. That is wise of you." Celestia turned slowly. These "ponies" that had walked into the room with her were pegasi, at least outwardly. They had powder-blue coats and bright red manes, both impossibly well styled for the flying they had just been doing. "Explain yourselves then, ambassadors." Celestia did not allow her anger to show, even now. Changelings had been responsible for the death of some ponies she was close to, perhaps even one of the Elements of Harmony. That did not mean she would give an enemy the slightest sign of weakness.

"I believe a demonstration would be simplest, Princess." The male lowered his head, gesturing toward the balcony from which he had just come. "If you don't mind." The strangers led the way out onto the balcony. It was a small area, scarcely large enough for all of them. Its presence in the castle was more of a formality of architecture than any serious commitment to having an observation point.

"We set up this demonstration in the wilderness, about thirty miles from Canterlot. There isn't a single pony anywhere close enough to be endangered by this demonstration." Contrary to the visual evidence, the pegasus offered Celestia a pair of binoculars in a faintly green magical field. "Notice the darkening of the lenses. With this magnification factor, an ordinary observer would be in serious danger of blindness. Just look off to the west, by that peak. You'll see it."

"Three... Two... One..." There was a distant rumble, so intense it seemed a minor earthquake. Celestia did not have to wonder at its source; as a brief flash lit the night, the first thing light enough to be seen through the dense goggles the Changelings had given her. The city itself would doubtless have been sheltered from the flash, since no other structures were so tall as the castle. Yet for Celestia, that meant an uninterrupted view. She watched as a column of red fire rose into the sky, trailed by a thin column of smoke to the ground like a gangly mushroom. She watched as the cloud grew, swallowing up a little forest and all that was inside. A quarter of a second later, she heard the roar like a distant animal, easily as loud as the Tower aircraft had been despite the intervening distance, and felt a sudden blast of warmer air. The rumble continued, though it was already dying away. The cloud was getting darker too, already mere embers with the darkened lenses. She lowered them, watching the distant fireball as it petered and died.

"That was a .1 kiloton nuclear explosive," said the female from beside her. "The others are a hundred times larger."

Celestia turned her head to face the changelings, her eyes practically burning with hatred. "What exactly are you saying?" The temperature around her rose several degrees, completely beyond her conscious control.

"A dozen 10 kiloton explosives have been carefully hidden in cities across Equestria, including Canterlot," the male said, somehow able to meet her eyes as he said it. That was a rare courage. "If our demands are not met, these explosives will be detonated one at a time until they are. Each is guarded by a changeling that will detonate the explosive if its location is discovered."

"The King does not wish to use these devices, nor does he expect your complete surrender. Rather, he wishes this war to be on equal terms, unlike Equestria's previous engagements."

"Does he expect we won't involve humans? Those negotiations are over; I cannot expel them now."

The male chuckled. "Hardly. The King of Equus welcomes their involvement. He does not, however, wish to see you ever take the field. You would be expected to leave Equestria immediately, to the neutral location of your choosing. There you would continue to perform your usual responsibilities involving the sun, but otherwise exercise no involvement whatever in the war."

The female continued what the male said, their two-pony swarm as effective as ever. "No spells of your creation would be permitted to leave this location, nor would anypony who ever visited you be allowed to leave. You would not be allowed to communicate strategic advice to anypony outside the location you chose or cast spells affecting any area outside your own except for your solar responsibilities."

"A violation of these terms would require the use of our nuclear arsenal. Should the terms be respected, you can have His word of honor that none of the nuclear devices will be used regardless of the direction the war is heading."

Celestia didn't believe that for an instant. So long as the invasion was going well she had no doubt these weapons wouldn't be used. Yet, if the war seemed to be going badly, and it seemed the invasion would fail anyway, what would the Father of Dragons have to lose? She didn't ask for proof the devices really were hidden in her cities, since that could only be proof of the most awful and devastating kind. So far as she could tell, these changelings were being completely honest with her. They genuinely believed what they were telling her. They also had no idea where the nuclear devices were actually hidden. If they had known, Celestia would have been able to extract that knowledge, and pass it to her most competent servants.

"May I inform my sister of this... situation?" she asked, her tone as neutral as possible. In truth she was absolutely furious, frustration nearly causing her mane to burst into flame. There was some genuine despair as well, that now no matter what happened Equestria was doomed, and there would surely be millions of casualties before this was over and decades of magical cleanup. If enough of Equestria survived to even be called the same nation when it was all over.

Yet there was hope as well. They had allies now. If they could somehow be informed of the threat, maybe they knew some way to end this hostage crisis before the war turned too far in Equestria's favor. Of course the injunction on communication was completely unenforceable. If nothing else, she could pass messages back and forth with Luna in her dreams. Her disappearance would not be a great mystery for long even if they did not allow her to send a message.

"Of course." The female inclined her head, respectfully. "We will accompany you to your chosen neutral destination, and provide an observer to insure you honor the terms of the arrangement."

Celestia turned away, sliding back into the castle so these invaders would not see the fury on her face. Still, there was already a shred of hope mixed with the despair. This was an awful turn for the war, riding on the tail of another awful turn in what had already happened with the Equestrian invasion. Still, they were not beaten. It wasn't over, and they would overcome it.

It would just take longer without her own personal intervention, that was all.

They walked.

Maybe walking wasn't quite the right word. Rainbow Dash had found Charles a long stick, and with one arm missing and one leg glued to his body rather than functioning he trundled after her, struggling to keep pace with the injured mare. This would have been embarrassing in the extreme were it not for the circumstances. But all their posturing about speed came to naught in the face of the awful events they had just experienced. There was very little conversation, with Charles painfully aware of his reserve battery draining away. Another twenty-four hours of activity or so and he wouldn't have enough energy to move anymore, not unless he could get his hands on one of the auxiliary reactors that were stored on his drone.

That was where they were going now, though he doubted they would make it there before he "died." Charles did not relish the thought of his body left here in the dirt, with no way of ever reporting his location. He might really die here, on an alien world with only a native who hated him for company. At least he would die doing the Tower's good work. Besides, he had been injured while honoring his oath. Rainbow Dash would be dead now if it wasn't for his intervention in the battle. Now instead of death by painful fall, she could die of dehydration around the time his energy reserves ran out. Wasn't charity grand?

"How do you know this is the way?" his companion asked, after an hour or two of trudging down the gradual slope onto an endlessly flat plain. The fire was gone from her voice now, and all that remained was pained resignation.

"My compass is still working," he answered, too weak to be annoyed with her question. "And I still have the map downloaded from before. I won't know for sure until sunrise... I can use the time to estimate our latitude, and compare this terrain to the satellite map."

Rainbow Dash chuckled, though her voice sounded no less weak. "Egghead stuff. You should talk to Twilight, she loves egghead stuff."

Up until now they had more or less ignored each other. But the mare sounded so completely heartbroken he couldn't bring himself to keep silent. If she were human he might've tried to hug her, one of those physical gestures that even cyberization hadn't killed. He had no idea how these equines reassured each other, and beyond that if he did anything with his one arm he would surely fall over. That didn't mean he couldn't talk to her, though. "Twilight is one of your friends?"

"Yeah." Pause. "She's only the smartest pony in Equestria. Pretty decent flier now too, after all the lessons I've given her." Her steps slowed a little, and Charles caught her glancing backward at her wings. "Guess she'll need a new flying buddy. If she doesn’t mind… going slower than walking, I’m sure fluttershy would…”

"No she won't," Charles insisted, walking close enough to strike her briefly with the edge of his walking stick. "If enough of my drone is intact, we can make you a new wing: a cybernetic wing, just as good as the old one. Then you can fly back to Equestria and tell them where I am."

There was a long silence, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes. Charles didn't bother trying to force a response, he knew better after all this time. At least the moon was full, and gave them plenty of light to navigate all the hazards of the wilderness. He was confident that if Rainbow wanted to talk, she would. He could only fight so hard to keep her talking.

He wasn't wrong. "I'm military too, stupid," Rainbow Dash croaked, eventually. "We both know that plan won't work. Even if your fake technology really can give me my wing back, there's no way we can get a rescue out here before that swarm gets here. Even your metal ships couldn't fight that many bad guys at once. Assuming they don't just kill you when they find you. Assuming we can get to your crashed metal ship before the swarm gets to us."

She was right of course, and Charles didn't argue. He had always known that even if enough machinery was intact to make a wing for Rainbow Dash, even if he could somehow retrofit enough of it with only one arm and a failing body, there wasn't a chance in hell he would ever make it out. Actually, he had secretly planned to give Rainbow Dash instructions on how to extract his Cortical Recorder before she left, and return it to his King. There would be no rescue. But to extract it, he would have to be dead first, and telling her she would have to kill him hadn't seemed like a good idea.

Rainbow Dash seemed to take his silence as assent. "I know they gave you a bracelet. It's no fair you expect me to turn into a stupid metal pony when you won't even think about turning things around." Charles had no response to this, not yet sure what the mare was telling him. She did not wait for him to argue. "If you stay, then you're dead no matter what. But if you use the spell, there's a chance you'll end up a pegasus! We could fly back together! And if you weren't, you wouldn't be any more dead then if you just waited!"

Charles glanced down at the intricate links on his wrist, spelling out strange words. They looked a little like norse runes, now that he thought about it. The same sort of symbols the Tower used as decoration everywhere but that nobody could actually read. Well, maybe his King could. Not normal people though. "I saw the unicorns levitating things. That doesn't mean I think this 'magic' can transform something fully mechanical into flesh again." He held up the arm, shaking the bracelet. "This thing is just a toy. I don't mean any disrespect to your religion, but I'm not part of it. Nothing's going to happen when I break this."

"Yeah?" Rainbow Dash stopped walking, and turned to face him. "Then break it right now!" She rolled her eyes. "I can't believe you think magic is our religion! For people able to make amazing machines, you guys are pretty stupid. And... whatever the word is, for when you say one thing but really think something else. You're doing that too!"

Charles was amazed to see such life from the blue pegasus after how dead she had seemed earlier. Still, now that she was using her energy to point out how hypocritical it was for him to deny the "magic" while simultaneously acting too afraid to use it. She was right, too. But did he have the humility to admit it? "I... did hear a rumor..." He began. "That Equestria has an official ambassador with the United Earth Federation, who used to be human." That was no proof that these primitive aliens could change machines to flesh, but it was powerful evidence of something.

"Twilight's apprentice," answered the pegasus, without the slightest hesitation. There was nothing rehearsed about it, like a careful lie. It spewed out her mouth like everything else she said, completely without rehearsal. "Another egghead. Being a pony's worked pretty well for her, though. She never complained about missing whatever those claws are you've got."

"Hands," he supplied, more out of reflex than anything. He started walking again, but there was no way to get around Rainbow. Her injuries were already stabilized, while his were still debilitating. He would have to provide her an answer before they could continue. "Fine. Tell you what; if my ship is intact enough that I can make wings for you, I'll give your magic a try. Good enough?"

Rainbow Dash considered that response for a long moment, looking at him seriously. She moved aside and resumed walking. "Fine." There was a grumble in her voice now though that hadn't been there before. "We'd go faster if you weren't limping along on two legs."

"You're not in any condition to be running either!" he reminded. "You might feel better, but that's the UBS shooting you full of painkillers. Except for your bones, you're in basically the same condition you were in before. My slow pace is good for both of us."

"Unless the swarm gets here before we get to your ship."

There was no argument with a statement like that, and Charles didn't bother. He conserved his energy, walking in silence. His eyes went frequently to the bracelet on his wrist, back to the discordant biological human that had given it to him and his king's strange attitude. He was essentially alone with his thoughts from that point on. He considered why, for instance, King Richard would have agreed to forcing the officers to wear these "magical" devices if they actually worked? Wasn't that a betrayal of what the Tower represented?

Then again, if he never intended to break Celestia's confidence, then Charles supposed King Richard would consider it a non-factor. Once they had a settlement up and running, they could easily convert any affected officers back to their proper cybernetic forms if it became necessary. It was nothing really but power that their ally would think she had, but which would ultimately mean very little.

Did he actually consider there was a real possibility he could end up (at least for a while) as one of the natives? If he did, he never would admit it to Lindsy. Well, he supposed he wouldn't admit anything to her anymore. Those flames had been hot enough that even her recorder likely hadn't survived. She had been the one to pay the price for his overconfidence. Well, his and the ponies who had organized this mission. They had both assumed their enemy had no defense against the attack, only the reasons for their assumptions had been different.

"What were those things that swarmed us back there?" Charles asked, as the sun began to rise. Without a word exchanged between them, they had both stopped to watch the sunrise over the desert. Sunlight on the red stone of this wasteland was positively beautiful, and neither cyborg nor pony could ignore it. But Charles was able to interrupt it easily enough. "Those black bug-things... nobody mentioned anything like them in the briefing."

Rainbow Dash resumed walking. She was slowing down, though. Probably running out of water. Having a bioreactor in her gut would only keep her going for so long. "They were like changelings," came the reply, after some delay. "But I've fought changelings, and they were different too. Smaller, and... more broken. Those things were sickly. Changelings are black, they don't have parts hanging off or red goo leaking out the openings. They were like someone had tried to made changelings, but got all the details wrong."

"Could they have been adolescents? Maybe these... changelings... look different from their adult forms when they're young and small."

"No." She shook her head, quite definitively. "We know what young changelings look like, and it isn't like that. But they were just as fast, just as strong... I'm glad you killed so many."

Charles smiled a little. "My pleasure. We wouldn't have lost if we had an actual fleet with us. During the war, the European Air Division had 100,000 drones and 3,000 destroyers. We would have squashed those bugs, I promise."

"Do you still have that many ships?"

He shook his head, however reluctantly. "Not since the great war ended. Maybe 1,000 working drones left... after yesterday. And destroyers are too big to fit through the Hawking Rift, even with our most generous calculations. We would have to build them here if we wanted any." He shook his head again. "By the time we finished building the war would be over."

Rainbow Dash thought about that. "What about the others, Chance's ponies. How many ships will they give us?"

"People. Not sure. They keep their military information closely guarded. Back on Earth... We thought they had maybe 5,000 fighters in the whole world, no more than 10 in any one city. No destroyers. They didn't have any aircraft on their moon colonies, since there's no atmosphere. So... Probably none, unless they build new ones for you. Luna doesn't have the metals to waste on airships, and their Earthside bunkers are too busy trying to survive to worry about the war." Charles paused as they began to climb a steeper slope. Not that he grew winded or overheated the way his companion would, but no doubt she would appreciate the break from thinking to simply breathe. She was huffing pretty heavily, but the air coming off the top was several degrees cooler than the air around them. Maybe they were nearing the end of the desert, or the sea. The latter was too good to be true. "They have the only interplanetary ships. Three, we're pretty sure. They run almost constantly between Mars and Luna exchanging metals for manufactured goods. They're way too big to use a Rift, and they can't work in atmosphere anyway. Too bad... We could bombard a city from orbit if we had one of those ships. Turn that dragon city into a crater, kill everything. Even the monsters living in the caves."

"You could do that?" This thought did not seem to reassure his companion, even when he expressed doing it to Equestria's enemy. She sounded exactly the way Charles had sounded when he had been ordered to shoot down evacuation ships.

But Charles did not get a chance to answer, because they reached the crest of the hill. There was the beginning of a forest at the base of the hill, perhaps a quarter mile away. The trees were sparse for a few miles yet, but there was more green than red and that was fantastic to look at. Even moreso was the scorching on the hard desert rock, the trails that led to the wreckage of his drone. The ground was so flat and clear here that it had done very well indeed, and looked to have sustained almost no damage from the crash.

No, that was not what made them stop and stare. They stared because there were a dozen creatures surrounding the drone, staring intently. They were human-sized and larger, with thick reptilian skin and patchwork armor on their bodies. Goblins, the same monsters that had attacked Canterlot. They were armed too, with spears and slings and even a crossbow or two. No firearms though, unlike the ones that had attacked the other night. They were poking at the drone with their spears, completely without effect, and seemed to be speaking. They were too far away to overhear though, with the breeze muffing some of the words.

Charles dropped backward over the ridge, and Rainbow Dash followed without instruction.

She glared down over the edge. "Well... this sucks."

On the surface, there was very little different about this morning from many that had come before. Princess Luna watched from the balcony in her room as her elder sister raised the sun, ending the night. Except she knew Celestia wasn't in the castle anymore. She hadn't gone far; with her world held hostage, Celestia had chosen the Castle of the Two Sisters as her place of captivity. There were a dozen changelings in that castle with her now, acting as a staff of servants, but also the most observant spies. Nothing could prevent their mental communication, but now Equestria's most powerful weapon was confined to a crumbling castle. It wasn't as though Celestia had ever really been behind Equestria's military strategy. She was always a better politician than a general.

Luna did not look forward to making the public announcement of what had happened, assuming she ought to make an announcement at all. She could ask Celestia's advice about that tomorrow. It wasn't as though ponies would think anything was wrong with the day coming exactly as scheduled. Only the hoof-full of guards that had seen her moving through the castle with that ghastly changeling entourage would have even a suspicion. No doubt those rumors would spread. Confound those changelings! They had to know what walking around in their true forms would do to morale!

It was foolish of her to think this enemy wouldn't use every possible weapon against Equestria, even the subtle ones. Especially the subtle ones.

There was one place Luna could go for comfort, and it was not back to the growing settlement of Normandy and the human military leaders. Princess Luna was no fool; she fully expected treachery from at least one of those two factions before the end. Clover's prophecy was clear on that point. It had also been clear on Celestia's kidnapping. Did that mean there was no personal choice in any of this, and all they were doing was acting out a script? Equestria would survive with humanity's help, and end up swallowed by the monolith of human culture and influence. Luna would live to see her sister and herself become the last ponies left, as everything that had made Equestria great was given away in little bites by her own ponies in their desire to be more human.

That looked all the more possible now that Luna knew there were nuclear devices hidden throughout Equestria. There was no telling how many there really were, but there had been at least one for her sister to see, and there was probably at least one more hidden in another city, probably not Canterlot. If there really was a dozen of them, then the fact their enemy hadn't used them yet meant that they wanted ponies alive, since their detonation would practically guarantee the end of the war. Or at least the end of ponies' will to fight, which might as well be the same thing. It was possible the humans would keep fighting as Equestria's liberators, for what it was worth.

Luna traveled to a small, obscure room in her own personal wing of the castle. There was no guard outside the door, nor was there any door at all. Still, she knew the spot of blank wall well, and the short teleportation to the other side that would leave her inside it. The room was brightly lit, with electrical lights in the ceiling instead of torches or glowing crystals. These were not the Equestrian bulbs that required replacement every few months, but thin bars that used less power and produced more light. They had been running for nearly six years, and showed no sign of dimming.

Of course, the silver pad in the center of the room, perhaps a meter across and a quarter of that thick, used more power than the rest of the castle combined. That was why it was kept off, except when they needed it. When Luna and Celestia needed council about human matters, it was to the one called Truth that they turned.

The object knew she was there, it always did. It began to whirr and hum, and light poured from its surface. As the seconds passed, she watched a pony take shape in the air, first as a grid of geometric lines, and then as a gradual filling-in of textures. In the end the stallion that formed there had no cutie mark, nor could he move from beneath the silver projector. Still, Luna found it more effective to communicate with him when she had a face to look at, even if in reality she was speaking with a featureless metal cube dozens of miles away.

There was a slightly hollow, tinny sound to Truth's voice, as though it were coming in over a gramophone. Luna often suspected he did that on purpose, since all the other devices that allowed him to speak with her made him sound crisp. Almost as though he knew she expected a distant recording to sound distorted, so it obliged her. "Princess." He inclined his head. "I expected you would contact me."

There was nopony else to see her in here. She let herself sit down, not worrying about image for once. It was true that Truth could record everything if he wanted to, but Luna knew she was safe here. Truth was a machine, and completely incapable of deceit. He barely even understood the concept, and was never anything to her except exactly what he was. There were no masks or hidden layers of desire with him. That was why Luna trusted him, even more than Second Chance. At least when it came to being unbiased. The pony had been shaped by her world, and too often would do anything in her power to steer them away from the Tower, even when they were better able to fill Equestria's needs.

"You did?"

"There was a radiation spike near Canterlot. Had to be close enough to see. Don't worry, the wind was blowing the other way, so ponies won't be getting cancer... And I know you refused the idea of a nuclear program or accepting nuclear weapons from humans. That meant it was an attack."

"A demonstration." Luna couldn't keep the fear and desperation from her voice. Truth was impassive, as always. He had never shown anything around her besides complete propriety. Showing her true feelings around him was the same as showing her sister. Except for the being comforted part. Holograms were bad at giving hugs. "And a threat. They claim to have more machines of death scattered and hidden throughout our cities. They have forced Celestia from the war and into seclusion, and I do not doubt they will use them to make further demands in the future. Is what they claim possible? Is this an empty threat, or could they really have more weapons like the one they used last night?"

Truth was not a pony, despite the coat of dark blue and light blue mane his image presented. He did not require time to think and collect himself. "The science behind nuclear fission is quite simple." Images appeared on the screen. A cylindrical shape transparent to her eyes. There were two halves of a sphere on either side, and dark patches behind them. "Conventional explosives are used to push two halves of fissionable material into each other." One half of the image lit up like someone had detonated a gunpowder charge, and the cylinder slid down to meet the other half. The result was a miniature explosion in the display, momentarily displacing Truth's own image. "The difficult part of constructing a nuclear device is refining the fissionable material. The most common starting point is-" An unassuming pile of stones appeared in the place of the bomb. "Uranium ore, which is common both in Equus and on Earth. The most technologically simple way is to crush it, saturate it with sulphuric acid, dry it into Uranium Oxide, heat and combine with volatile gasses to form Uranium Hexafluoride, and concentrate the U-235 while in gaseous form, then cool back into pellets. The refining process is extremely inefficient and requires enormous amounts of energy and time, and a clean laboratory environment for the later stages."

Luna listened, absorbing everything. "This process is how they made the explosives?"

"I believe so. Uranium-based explosives are limited in size and efficiency, but refining more effective fuels is technologically beyond any facility on this planet. The unfortunate advantage they have is that the refined fuel can be easily shielded by a few inches of lead. A bomb with a lead casing would be enormously heavy, but completely undetectable except at very close range."

"We can't use the satellites to find them." Luna lowered her head, defeated. "We are truly hostage in our own land."

All the images of ore and chemicals and science vanished from the screen, leaving only the transparent blue stallion. "Perhaps not. The satellites can detect trace radioactive signatures. The problem is that these signatures are quite common. Numerous processes and objects produce nuclear radiation in small amounts. If the bombs were underground and shielded with lead, the strength of the signal would only increase when in very close proximity. Fortunately, you don't have to rely on the satellites to find your bombs." Luna looked up in time to see him smile. "You're bringing in troops from both human factions, Princess. Humans just fought a nuclear war. Every single soldier has extremely sensitive radiation sensors, every ship, every machine. All you have to do is spread them out as much as possible and connect all those sensors to my network. I'll collate all the data, and tell you where the bombs are. If there are any bombs. However... There is one further concern worth mentioning."

Again, Luna did not interrupt. Truth only spoke when his words were worth hearing.

"It might take some time and effort to find the bombs, and I know you will have to carefully conceal troop movements in order to not allow the enemy to see what you're doing. Bombs can be hidden easily. The refinery that produced them, however, cannot." An image appeared on the screen, of a large building zoomed in from one of Truth's satellite cameras. It was clearly not in Equestria. The red rock made it obvious. Of course, the fact it was more a crater than a structure brought her a twinge of brief satisfaction. "It was in Typhon. They destroyed it during the attack, before they were overrun. The radiation that building is putting out into the air will poison anypony who gets too close." He smiled weakly. "At least they won't be making any more bombs."

Chapter 10: Meetings

Second Chance was more nervous now than she had been approaching a Griffon dreadnaught in an unfinished airship. She felt none of the sun on her back this bright morning, and dragged her hooves a little as she made her way through Ponyville towards the place ponies were calling the "human wall." Most of her traveling supplies had already been loaded onto the Fury, so all she brought was her tablet computer in a sling over her shoulder. Just one awful meeting to sit through, and she would be off. Her friends were making final preparations to leave, taking advantage of the Crown's generous sponsorship to be as over-prepared as possible.

She didn't make it halfway there before being stopped. This was a regular part of Chance's life ever since Twilight had gone from Princess in name to Princess in deed. Most ponies were too afraid to approach her with what they considered trivial matters, or to ask her questions they considered unimportant. Her apprentice was another story, though. Placed closely to their local princess, Chance had a few heroic deeds to her name to grant her enough respect to be worth asking. As a result, she was frequently accosted when Equestria was in any distress, even though she rarely knew more about it than anypony else did.

Though this certainly qualified as a time of distress, her look of focused concentration dissuaded any of the usual busybodies that might have bothered her for "inside" information. She welcomed the sort of bother that came to her that morning. It was Pipsqueak, dressed as though he expected to go on a long journey. Thick saddlebags and the wide-brimmed explorer's cap sent a message. He intended to come with her.

But he didn't have to say it. Instead he waited in the road in front of her as she approached, and moved himself into the way. Not that she had even considered moving past him without a conversation first. After all, this might be the last time they had a chance to speak for months. With as crazy as the war was becoming already, it was possible they would never meet again. Though it seemed that if Pipsqueak got his way what happened to one would happen to the other. Chance stopped walking when she was only a few inches from him and met his eyes.

She couldn't help what happened next. She embraced him, resting her head on his shoulder as she cried. There was something to be said for physical contact and its ability to comfort somepony. With everypony she knew so busy that there had been no time for even a moment of privacy, Chance hadn't had any relief from the awful things she had seen. But she couldn't stay like that forever. Eventually she pulled away, wiping away her tears with one leg.

"You planned on leaving me behind." It was not a question. "After all the adventures we've had. After meeting your magic cube. Exploring all those ruins..." There was no hiding the pain in his voice.

It was too much for her, but she was already crying a little so his words couldn't make that much worse. Her voice cracked as she answered, "We're going to be wandering all over Equestria during a war. It's really dangerous-"

"And a war isn't?" He looked forcefully at her. "All the young ponies are volunteering, you know. The stories coming back from Los Pegasus... Nopony wants to let that happen here. Why would staying here be any safer?" Of course, she had no answer, because of course it wasn't. In theory their mission was quite a bit safer, if they followed it exactly. The assignment had been to take Truth somewhere he wouldn't be discovered and stay there to protect him, which would almost surely guarantee they were left alone until the end of the war. It would also guarantee they couldn't do anything useful, so they already had plans to disobey.

But Pipsqueak went on. "I'm coming with you... We both know that we can do more good with the Fury than we ever could as ordinary soldiers. I don't have any magic, and I can't join the Air Corps. But if I'm with you, I can still make a difference!"

Ponies were watching them from the shops and houses now. No doubt the gossip about their relationship would be burning through town by afternoon. It wasn't as though ponies had more important things to worry about or anything. "That's not my decision," she answered, but the defense sounded weak even to herself. "Scootaloo's the captain-"

"I already talked to her, that was how I found out you would be at this meeting. She said it was fine with her so long as I got some sort of shot thing... and you said it was okay." He took a few steps toward her so their faces were only inches apart. Chance felt his hot breath on her face, but there was nothing sensual about it as a few nights ago.

"The shot's a big deal." The explanation was true, though it was mostly to stall for time. "All the Fury's crew use the Nanophage to control the ship and communicate with each other. Once you're injected you're dependent for life, it's a very serious-" In response, Pipsqueak twisted one of his legs so she could see the bulge on the underside. "Oh." Chance recognized the injection at once by the radio "ping" it gave her, along with the simple message. 'Calibrating. Integration expected in 48:25:12' Her shocked expression seemed to satisfy Pipsqueak, because he waited patiently for her to recover.

"It c-could be dangerous," she stammered. "I d-don't... the idea you could get hurt with us..." Again, it seemed Pipsqueak had anticipated her response. He was too good at reading her, too smart for his own good. Pipsqueak kissed her. Of course neither of them were very good. Chance had been married to her work back on Luna-7 and hadn't had any romantic experiences since her early teen years. Besides, the structure of pony lips were different and the same motions didn't really work. For his part, Pipsqueak was young, and she suspected had no romantic experiences at all apart from her.

It didn't matter. They were both too young and too full of hormones to notice or care that the experience was clumsy. "I don't care how dangerous it is," he whispered, when the kiss was over and she was resting her head on his. "I want to be with you through this. I know you and the other Crusaders are ready to go through Tartarus for everypony else. That rescue yesterday, that was some real hero stuff. Well, heros need help too, and you shouldn't be alone. I want to be there for you. To be there with you. Won't you let me?"

Chance thought about it, or tried to. She wasn't really thinking with her head anymore. There had been too much pain in the last few days for rational thought, and hormones were a wonderful alternative to feeling depressed. "Okay," she whispered, not wanting to break contact with him. Of course, that little voice in her head was screaming that she was going to be late, that she had to get going right now. These weren't just ordinary ponies that were waiting for her, but important generals and commanders from Equestria and beyond. She couldn't stay here with Pipsqueak even if she wanted to.

"But I have to go." She jerked herself away. "Make yourself at home on the ship. There aren't many rooms, so I guess... You'll have to share my quarters. Let Scootaloo know this meeting should only take a few hours, and I'll come galloping over as soon as I'm finished."

"You got it. I really don't mind sleeping on the floor so long as I get to be useful." Pipsqueak hugged her again, but briefly this time. "Thanks, Chance! I know you won't regret this!" With that he was off, as though he were afraid that staying behind might give her the opportunity to change her mind. He was right.

Chance heard the sounds of labor before she was close enough to really see anything over the fence. The sound of tractor engines as they chewed up huge sections of ground, the sound of motorized saws as they toppled the massive trees and turned them into lumber to build the structures. As she drew closer it seemed as though she were watching the building of two separate camps and not one large one. In just a few nights there were already nearly as many structures between the two camps as in Ponyville, save that most of the structures looked like glorified tents, nothing like the sturdy construction of Ponyville.

There were other divisions as she grew closer. The UEF camp had far more smaller structures, the tents and quarters of the individual soldiers. The Steel Tower troops had no need to eat or sleep, and so everything on their side was related in one way or another to the labor taking place. She could see a trail burned straight through the Everfree leading to a series of low hills, and heard the rumble of distant mining machinery. There was also an airfield on their side, with just over a dozen of the manned drones parked side by side.

The fence was unguarded on the human side, but a few members of the royal guard stood duty outside and watched her skeptically as she approached. They weren't locals, or else they would not have even tried to stop her. Yet they did.

"This is no place for a filly," barked a grizzled old stallion, more in her general direction than directly at her. "Guard recruiting is on the other side of town, near Sweet Apple Acres. You must've got turned around."

She couldn't blame the stallions for doing their job, though she also couldn't stop herself from feeling annoyed. "I'm expected. Princess Luna and Princess Twilight are waiting for me in there."

Chance had been through this dance before perhaps a dozen times in recent years as she traveled through Equestria with the Crusaders upgrading the defenses of each city. At first she hadn't blamed the Guard for their skepticism, since when she had started she really had been just a filly. Still, that didn't mean she couldn't take some measure of perverse glee in the absolute predictability of these encounters. Each and every time it was as though she had passed the guards a script and they politely read along. "The princesses are much too busy to be bothered," came the response, exactly on cue. "If you want to see them, you will have to put in a petition into the court at Canterlot. I’m going to have to ask you to leave."

This was the part of the dance when Chance pulled out her identification, which was a flat rectangle of metal about two hooves by one. One's "security level" was represented by the presence of seals set into the metal, which could only be engraved by the magic of one of the princesses. There were four levels, each of which could exist independently. Twilight's Cutie Mark gave one access to restricted human technology, and that was first on Chance's identification. Cadence's Cutie Mark was essentially leave to go into any of the restricted or dangerous parts of the Crystal Empire, and that was next. Luna's meant complete military access, clearance to attend any of the highest strategic councils, to learn any restricted information presented there, and requisition supplies or personnel when required. Next to that, the only symbol she had that the other Crusaders didn't have on their own similar badges, was the mark of Celestia's Cutie Mark. Bearers of this mark had the authority to represent the Crown when required, with absolute authority over local officials or military leaders of any level when they exercised it. Such a mark could get her into any part of Equestria, and access to even the most dangerous or restricted technology and information.

The mark was so rare that Chance knew of no other pony in Equestria who currently possessed it, aside from the former bearers of the Elements of Harmony. Of course, Chance had never exercised the authority before, as Celestia had instructed when she had added the mark to her identification.

The guard looked annoyed at first when Chance levitated the identification over, glancing warily at the cutie mark in the corner that was meant to identify the owner and comparing it to Chance's flank. His face scanned mechanically over the marks, eyes getting wider as he saw each one. No doubt they were so far above his own security clearance that it was difficult to imagine what a young mare would have done to earn them.

The next part was equally predictable. As soon as his eyes reached Celestia's mark, he immediately lowered himself into a bow. "Solar Hierophant, forgive the disrespect. The office of our princess we honor in your words."

She groaned. Scootaloo might've liked this part and Sweetie Belle always giggled, but Chance hated it. It reminded her too much of the way the Steel Tower acted, with all their pretension to medieval royalty and lordship and titles. She easily removed her ID from the guard's grip with her magic and returned it to her bag. "Just stop bowing and let me in. And if you're here next time, just let me in, don't make me show you that again. I'm expected."

The cold attitude was gone now, and if anything the guard captain seemed a little furtive and fearful. Maybe he worried that she was some noble he had just snubbed, spoiling his career. As if Chance would ever use the authority the princesses had entrusted her to wade into stupid military politics. "O-of course." The lead guard turned to one of his inferiors, who hadn't been bowing all that deeply. Chance suddenly recognized him from Twilight's personal guard. He saw her expression, and winked at her. She smiled back, stifling a giggle behind a leg. Sterling Defender had known who she was and just let it all happen! The leader of the guard did seem like he could use some help relaxing.

Her amusement lasted until she made it through the gate. Had she been late to an important meeting before, she would have expected Twilight Sparkle to be standing there, with a lecture already prepared about the importance of punctuality. Twilight was nowhere to be seen. Chance’s sister, however, was.

It was hard to get over just how big humans looked. She had spent more than twice as much time as a human than she had as a pony, yet it was hard to imagine being so far from the ground now, walking around without being able to see it in her peripheral vision all the time. Seeing the Steel Tower men hadn't been so bad, since they had been strangers to her and scarcely human anyway as she reckoned things. Her magical senses did not see them at all, like inanimate objects that the native thaumaturgical field of Equestria could pass through without being influenced even a degree to one side or another.

These living humans were different. Earth had no magic at all except for the faint fluctuations her people called the Schrodinger Effect. She stopped in her tracks, looking up at her sister and letting her eyes lose focus a little, trying to quantify what she was looking at.

The magic of Equestria flowed through everything and back again, like the entire planet was one gigantic electrical network and every living thing was an individual circuit. Most things had no resistance at all. Magic flowed into the plants and lesser animals, gave them life and some measure of thought, then passed back again. Only conscious beings could alter the flow, and ponies more than most. Magic flowed into them and the flow was weaker coming out again, like a capacitor being charged. The other races of Equestria that could not use magic, goats and donkeys and minotaurs for example, did not have much greater resistance than plants. This was what she expected from humans, but it was not the result that occurred.

Like ponies, the magic flowing into her sister was barely a trickle as it flowed out again, down through the crown of her head and back out again through her feet. She wasn't lit up like a unicorn might be, as magic stored up inside the organs meant to contain it. It was more like watching a thirsty person given water for the first time in days. She drank and drank and drank, with little sign of slowing or glowing any brighter with the magic as it grew. It wasn't a black hole, though, not inert like the Steel Tower soldiers. Very slowly, the darker blues of her flesh were lighting up. It might take days or it might take weeks, but...

The human body was doing something with the magic. It wasn't radiation, wasn't something unknown. What was happening to them? Chance found herself wishing that she had some time to talk to Twilight about this. No doubt if her ignorant apprentice had put this together then the master had figured it out long ago. What did this mean about humans? What did this imply?

Of course, she also took about that long to realize this intellectual puzzle was just a way to escape from her feelings about meeting her sister. Alexi hadn't seen her since the night before the experiment that had sent her to this world, when she had stormed out of Kimberly's quarters in rage and fear. Nearly a dozen volunteers had already been killed by the process that separated mind from body, or were at least presumed dead. Nobody believed the changes Kimberly had made would make a difference. As it turned out, they had, and the universal gulf had been bridged forever.

But it had been years before Chance had been able to establish a link to the other side. In the human world, she had been presumed dead like all the others, even if her official status was "Missing in Action." Years until Truth was able to discover a way to compress a communications signal through the molecule-wide gap between universes that the experiment had left behind. But in all the time since then, nearly seven years, Chance had never once sent a message to her sister.

She had tried. Composed several such communications, but deleted them at the last second. She had sent a few messages to her little nephew Robert, who was not quite so little anymore. But not many. Heck, her friend Lyra had sent more messages to her family than she had! But she couldn't keep running forever. She even glanced once over her shoulder, as though she thought about darting away. But her desire to escape was not so great as her desire to help Equestria. There weren't any other ponies who knew as much about technology as she did, who could prevent its rulers from being duped by ignorance. Only her.

Her sister looked down at her from that towering bipedal stature, dressed in the brilliant gray and black of the Free People's Army. There was no mistaking admiralty when she saw it, though of course she had already known to expect it. Otherwise this meeting might not have to happen in the first place. The sounds around them seemed to die, though the sparks as machines chewed great trunks to dust had not lessened, nor the groan of motors and machines. But Chance didn't hear it as she stumbled forward, perhaps a meter away.

"You're... the Equestrian ambassador, are you not?" The woman eventually asked. It was strange to hear English spoken so fluently after all this time, strange on her ears in a world that had no languages like it. But for all that the voice was familiar, the same one she had heard all her life. The same one that had comforted her every night after the disastrous evacuation of Seattle. Her closest friend, vicarious mother. Yet there was something cold about her choice of words. All business.

Chance found the strength not to cry, and she focused her mind into the clearest English words she could. It took a little relying on the Neuroboost implants in her brain to dig up the old memories, so seldom had they been used in recent years. No doubt she had an accent like all the natives. But unlike most natives, she could speak it. "I'm sorry if I have delayed our meeting. I was nervous about seeing you." Apple Bloom had taught her that there was no weapon more effective in family disputes than absolute honesty. In her time of stress, she had no reason not to trust her friend's council.

"You're really..." Alexi shuffled a step or two closer, looking at her. "They said you were, but I didn't... Guess I thought you might be in a costume or something."

Chance laughed weakly. "And I don't remember you ever being so tall."

The admiral that was also Chance's elder sister smiled very slightly, reaching out to muss her mane as she had done so many times before. In a way this felt very much as it had all those years ago, before Kimberly had hit her growth spurt. It was strange to feel a human hand in her mane, but not in a bad way. Her sister's hand was warm and alive, and the shape was familiar to her. It was like being a child all over again.

Of course, it didn't last long. Officer or not, Alexi had an image to present to her subordinates, and this wasn't a place for family bonding. "Well, we better get inside," Chance said, walking briskly toward the tent. "We can... talk a little later. When the meeting's over."

"Yeah." Alexi sounded distant, almost wistful. "After the meeting. You've got some explaining to do."

Princess Twilight Sparkle did not often have important royal duties to perform, not really. Until very recently Celestia had more or less counted on her own self-determination of responsibilities (which fairly often involved saving Equestria from one threat or another). But Celestia was gone now. Not far, granted. The Everfree might not technically be a part of Equestria, might even be a part easy to teleport or even walk to if Twilight wanted to. But Celestia had left specific instructions that she was not to be visited, and Luna was to be relied on completely for relaying her will and instructions. Not that there had been many of those so far. Celestia had always ruled primarily by putting ponies she could trust in positions of power and trusting them to govern themselves.

This might be the most important meeting of their century, might be the single meeting that decided whether this war would end in victory or defeat, but all Celestia had said about it was "I trust you, my faithful student. You will make the right choices." While such a statement was profoundly flattering, it was also unhelpful. And to add to Twilight's misgivings, her apprentice was running late.

The meeting itself was taking place in one of the temporary buildings the Earth Federation had set up, which already looked strange to her eyes. The ceiling was rows and rows of identical white rectangles, with lights set into the plain ceiling evenly placed in the foam tiles. The building itself had an atmospheric seal, and an airlock she had to stand in with Luna while the humans operating the facility determined that they carried no dangerous contamination. Of course, Twilight had half a mind to tell the young human technician operating the airlock that the atmospheric seal was doing absolutely nothing to keep out thaumatic radiation, and that already magic was saturating every living thing. Not just the humans themselves, but the little potted plants they had brought to brighten up the interiors as well. Everything seemed to be coming alive, and it frightened Twilight a great deal.

She would say nothing of it. Humans had no way to detect magic, no sensor to the invisible intangible field that flowed throughout Equestria. Something in Twilight's gut told her this information would be critical before the end of all this, and it was safest as close to her chest as possible. She glanced at the technician and back at Luna, who gave her a meaningful look and walked past her. At least she wasn't the only pony who knew.

The conference room was set around a large holographic display set into the floor, much bigger than any of the displays that had been built in Equestria. A round table was set around it, with three groups of seating arrangements. Of course the pony side didn't have chairs, per her instructions. Regal mares like herself and Luna would have looked stupid sitting in the human-built seats. Of course several of the chairs in the room were already occupied.

The chair waiting for the human admiral was empty, as she was outside waiting for her sister. There was something subtly menacing about the man sitting at what would be her right. Twilight hadn't seen many living humans yet, but this one seemed very strange. Magic seemed to bend around him rather than through him as it did the others, and something was wrong with his proportions somehow. His forehead was too high, his skull larger, and his hair was so pale it was almost transparent, like a sheet of thin glass. His eyes were fierce and dark, like burning cinders.

The other section of table was full already, where the men of the Steel Tower sat. King Richard's burns and injuries were all gone, though the royal robes he wore were still the Equestrian replacements and not new human manufactured ones. A sign of respect, perhaps? At his side was a slightly smaller but equally young-looking man, with darker skin and a very calm expression. Twilight had not met him, though only recently had any non-military people come through from the Tower. His body looked smaller and leaner than the Tower soldiers she had seen, much closer in proportion to the biological humans all around them than Richard. More realistic, perhaps?

Twilight sat at Luna's right, just as Chance would sit at hers when she arrived. She removed the tablet computer from the satchel she had been carrying and levitated it onto the table in front of her, going over the presentation her apprentice had helped her put together. Luna had given her the responsibility of directing this meeting, and ensuring that they remained on topic. She had done the same thing in many royal functions, though never in a meeting with aliens.

The automatic doors to the room slid sideways to admit the human admiral, walking calmly and cooly over to her seat. The door closed, and a few seconds later Chance came hurrying in, looking neither cool nor calm. Still, at least she had the good sense not to enter with her sister. As though the Steel Tower needed any more reason to accuse them of bias. Chance took her place at her side and gave her an encouraging smile. It might be the last smile Twilight would get from her apprentice for a long time.

"A moment of introduction," Twilight began, standing up and making her way into the center of the room. The display, she had already been told, was built to be walked on, so that its contents could be studied from all angles when required. This would be simplest when she had a way to look at everyone at once. "First, I am Princess Twilight Sparkle, and I'll be conducting today's meeting. Princess Luna-" she gestured, "is presiding as Equestria's master-at-arms and acting monarch. My apprentice, Second Chance-" another gesture, "my adviser." Nothing else. Those who needed to know more about any of them already knew.

She turned to the Steel Tower first. "Would you mind introducing yourselves?"

The man with the lion's beard and giant's build nodded and stood. "I am King Richard, Sovereign of the Steel Tower. This Is Tesla, Chief Seer of the Technocratic Order. The captain of my guard would be in attendance as well, but unfortunately, he remains missing in action after our first joint military action."

Twilight nodded, and directed her gaze to the other part of the table. "And you?"

The tall woman rose, muscular and confident. Well, maybe not so muscular as the male humans. There seemed to be a small measure of sexual dimorphism here. Still, Twilight suspected any contest with her would go about as well for the challenger as any stallion who challenged Applejack. "I am Fleet Admiral Colven, of the Lunar Navy. My aide is-"

"Dr. Samil," he interrupted, the only who had not risen when they were introduced. There was something subtly wrong about the way his voice reverberated through the room, as though the strange appearance of his body were reflected by an even stranger restructuring of his organs. Twilight formed a quick spell in her mind, so quick that she didn't even have to speak it. It was one of the first she had learned in the Academy, a simple charm that told you the relative health of anyone surveyed. Species was no factor, though it couldn't give very detailed information.

Of course the spell was useless when she looked at the Steel Tower people. It did see them as alive, but not "life." Like they were spells themselves, and functioning correctly. The admiral was alive with brilliant green when she saw her, in the prime of health. All the humans looked this way, thanks to those universal injections.

Not Samil, though. As she looked, she found he met her eyes immediately, though there was no way any human should have been able to tell she was casting a spell. The charm died, snuffed out like a candle. Not dispelled, either, because of course humans couldn't do that either. It simply wasn't there. Like it had floated down the currents of a river and off the edge of a waterfall, gone from sight. She looked away as he did his own introduction, his voice as much contempt for Admiral Colven as it was for her or the other occupants of the room. "-Director of Nanotech Research."

A ripple seemed to pass briefly through the other human side of the room, as both Richard and Tesla stared at the man with barely contained rage and disgust. For once, Twilight Sparkle could share a little of the sentiment. What had this man done to earn such a reaction? "Mass murderer, you mean," muttered the man named Tesla, in a thickly accented version of the human language. Perhaps he thought he could insult the humans without making his meaning clear to the ponies, or maybe he just wasn't thinking. Because, unfortunately, everyone present spoke the language well enough to understand his words.

The room got quiet, and everyone stared at him. The absolute calm that had been on his face when the meeting began was gone, and instead that dark-skinned face was practically livid with rage. He did not relent. "Or more dramatic? Author of genocide? Death-spinner?" Tesla wasn't wearing any weapons, and Twilight found herself grateful. No doubt they would have been used if they existed.

Twilight was responsible for saving this meeting, somehow. What was she supposed to do? What could she say? She was so stunned by the allegations, which used words that she only knew thanks to studying English. Equestrian had no word for "Genocide." Just like the distances between stars, her brain could hardly make sense of it.

For all the insinuations, Dr. Samil remained calmly seated in his chair. His dark eyes sparkled as he looked up. "It is not murder to cause a machine to cease to function. That is sabotage. The two are not ethically equivalent." He folded his hands across the table in front of him, and smiled.

Tesla jerked toward him a little, only to be stopped by Richard's firm grip on his shoulder. His expression was intense, but there were no words. After several tense moments, Tesla sat back down, and Richard looked back to Twilight. "Forgive the interruption. My colleague merely reacted badly to the presence of a convicted war criminal. Even I was somewhat... surprised... he was still alive."

Twilight didn't know what to say, but she knew that if she didn't say something this meeting was going to get away and she might not get it back. What enormous hubris it had been to involve both human factions in this war. As biased as her apprentice's advice had always been, at least following it would have prevented an interspecies war from spreading onto Equestrian soil.

Fortunately, Luna saved her, clearing her throat loudly and speaking over everyone. "You should see now why the participants of this meeting were chosen. Each individual here represents a person of power in your respective nations. The military and scientific authorities of both human nations, and the scientific, military, and magical authorities of Equestria. I wished to make you all aware of the enormity of the present threat so that all skills and useful disciplines might be turned to extricating us from the present danger." She gave Twilight a look then, a sign that she should continue without delay.

"Everything we know will be presented in summary. More detailed information will be made available when the meeting is over. First, the present state of the invasion." Her apprentice tapped furiously on her own little tablet, and the display below them responded, becoming a gigantic map of Equestria. Most of the cities were blue, but Los Pegasus and an increasingly wide area around it had been taken. "As you can see, the invaders have taken cities along the western coast, and will soon be close enough to siege Seaddle in the north and Appleoosa in the east. The invaders have won every battle with overwhelming numbers, though they take great casualties with each new city they capture.

"We estimate their present army contains between three to fifteen million goblins, along with 1-3 hundred thousand changelings acting as shock troops and officers. There has been no sign of the smaller, modified changelings we saw in Typhon. The invasion is being led by 5-10 thousand dragons, which we estimate to be about 80% of the present adult population. The scale of this invasion is insane, and what little we know about the enemy troops is... disturbing.

"The goblin foot soldiers appear to be somewhat smaller than Equestria's own ancient goblin population, and less intelligent as well as less independent. We have so-far been unable to capture any live specimens for study, since they..." she shivered, "kill themselves when captured, in rather gruesome ways. They eat anything, including each other, and we believe the invading army has remained free of supply demands as much by looting captured territory as by feeding the army to itself." Another shiver, this time shared by several in the room. Dr. Samil noticeably failed to react, just watching and listening with a bored expression.

"Dragon field commanders along with overwhelming numbers have proven to be the greatest disadvantage, since few ponies of any kind can expect to win a fight with a dragon."

Luna watched the map as Twilight spoke, and nodded in approval. "Explain our present strategy."

Twilight did. "We predict the present pace of opposition to be unsustainable, and have seen little sign of the establishment of conventional supply lines. Convoys of airships mostly, and not very many of them. We believe the enemy strategy to be an overwhelming invasion, taking territory and supplies and moving on. We think they intend to conquer Equestria in one rapid offensive, before the need for supplies becomes a concern. Their present rate of expansion would put them on the walls of Canterlot in sixteen days.

"Our present strategy is mass evacuation and destruction of food resources in abandoned cities. Since the Equestrian food supply is produced largely in the midwest, we have been destroying caches of food in areas in the path of the invasion and abandon them, only putting up resistance in canyons and other territorial bottlenecks capable of slowing the advance for minimal cost in ponies. We have been planning for this war for a long time, so the northern Crystal Empire has been supplied to care for the refugees being sent there. Many of the ponies who flee will be trained for our eventual counterattack or will be put to work in manufacturing centers there.

"We intend to wait for the present attack to either lose steam or draw too close to vital resources, at which point we will concentrate all the force we've gathered by evacuating the western territory, and halt the advance. Hidden thaumic mass-transit conduits in all captured cities should allow for a sizeable force to circumvent the enemy line and attack from both sides at once."

She stopped to catch her breath, looking to Luna for approval. She did see it, but also concern. "Explain the more recent threats," she said. "In detail."

Twilight didn't want to. "The enemy came forward with threats that nuclear explosives have been hidden in several Equestrian cities, and used this threat to force Celestia's temporary abdication. We hope a plan can be put together to search for and disable these devices, if they exist, as quickly as possible. Before she left, Celestia absolutely forbid nuclear weapons of any kind be brought here, regardless of what happens.

"There are also several major powers that have not yet emerged. We believe an enormous force of... historically disreputable ponies... might exist under the command of the enemy, but we haven't seen any proof of them yet. There is also good evidence to suggest the Minotaurs have or will contribute a sizeable army to the invasion. There is also an enormously powerful changeling working for the invaders, who we believe might even be able to impersonate alien species. A decade ago she attempted an assassination of both Celestia and Luna, and very nearly succeeded." Her eyes flicked briefly to her apprentice, then back to the strange forces marshaled around the table. "Lastly, the leader of the Dragon Sovereignty is a being older than anypony else on this planet and thought to be magically equal or even superior to Celestia or Luna. What few messages we have received from the invaders tell us he has crowned himself "King of Equus," though we have no other information about where he might be or what he might be doing to further the invasion."

Luna cleared her throat again. "Thank you, Princess Twilight Sparkle." She looked out to the assembled aliens. "You now know the enormity of our adversaries. Please explain how you intend to help us banish these invaders."

Chapter 11: Wings

"For your benefit-" Alexi looked across the table to King Richard, and nodded very slightly. Her tone was measured, careful not to imply anything about what she said. "And so we might communicate more effectively. We are going to be your allies; and so provide this information freely. Seven years ago, we received the first radio transmissions through the opening designated HR-19-G, and over the course of that year negotiated the 'Unified Resistance Pact.'" She turned back to Luna, and seemed to be doing everything within her power to avoid looking directly at Chance. "We have honored that agreement, which forbade us from providing fission or fusion explosives, self-replicating nanoweapons, bioweapons of any kind, and aerosol weapons."

The android named Tesla snickered. "That doesn't leave you with much, does it? Without a single dirty trick you're no better than the natives!" Samil looked darkly at his hands, as though he agreed completely but didn't want to admit it. Richard put a gentle hand on Tesla's shoulder, looking visibly upset. For their eyes, Chance knew. They were probably conversing privately over the radio constantly, discussing their strategies.

"We're not better than the natives," Alexi agreed, managing not to look smug, even as Luna and Twilight both shifted visibly toward her a degree. Score one for the real humans! "We intend to provide Equestria with the resources it needs to fight its own battles, not win them ourselves. We have had..." the first real sign of hesitation "difficulties stabilizing a rift large enough for the Aegis, which is carrying a significant portion of our troops and military hardware."

"A-gee-iss?" Twilight repeated, struggling a little over the untranslatable human word. If the Tower recognized what the name meant, they showed no sign.

"The interplanetary-class ship we promised. It has been fully outfitted for near-atmospheric combat. We'll discuss the details of getting it here with your scientific team; not my field." There was absolutely no sign of movement from the Steel Tower now, not the slightest shiver, not even the pseudo-breathing they did. So they realized what the Federation having a capital ship here would mean. She wanted to jump on the table and scream, “You jerks can't double-cross us with a capital ship in orbit! You sure you want to help Equestria now?”

But she didn't say anything like that, because to do so would be to say she didn't trust Celestia's judgement. Who was she to tell the nigh-immortal ruler how she should handle her diplomatic relations? Showing her anger with the Tower would only weaken Equestria's position. She couldn't do that.

The conversation had not stopped for her mind to wander. "The expeditionary force arriving over the next few weeks is 80,000 souls strong, all trained in the use of the powered exoskeletons you observed earlier. Unfortunately only a small percentage are actually outfitted, but we hope to source local materials and begin production immediately. A fourth of that number represents the Ares Mechanized Division. An additional 8,000 civilian engineers, architects, doctors, and support staff are ready to transit as their skills are required and housing is available for them here in Normandy."

Luna was quiet as Alexi spoke, waiting until she had entirely finished before voicing a question she seemed to have been holding in. "Please understand I mean no disrespect. But 80,000 seems like such a small force. The reserve of the Royal Guard already accounts for five times as many, to say nothing of all the pony volunteers. How can such numbers influence the course of a war with millions of natives on either side?" There was some scorn in her voice, particularly around the word "native."

Chance was as interested as Luna in Alexi's answer, even if she already knew the facts. She was impressed at how calm her sister looked, even after what amounted to an insult of her troops and her command. "It's true most of the significant hardware was either destroyed in the Great War or stored aboard the Aegis. We intended her to serve as my command post, and the resources she would have provided could easily have ended this war in a few weeks. We devoted every spare resource to getting the field army to its present strength."

"But two in every three soldiers are veterans of actual combat, and all have been trained vigorously." There was a brief pause. "Based on the information you gave us, your world still fights in Napoleonic line formations. Human tactics render this method obsolete." She gestured vaguely at the window, where Canterlot glinted majestically in the sun. "Given a few hours to fortify, a single battalion could hold that city against a force of five hundred thousand or more indefinitely. Every soldier at every level is connected to the battlefield mesh network, controlled by a hyper-intelligent GAI."

"It is our intention to allow the primary force to be divided into battalions that should accompany each Equestrian unit. This will provide great strength to those units, as well as adding to their versatility. The Ares Division is fully mechanized. Their entire strength can be deployed to any part of your planet in six hours. We can drop them behind enemy lines, use them to rebuild bridges or assassinate high-value targets."

Was Luna smiling? It was hard to tell. "When we have more time, I would like more detailed information. We can discuss the assignments of your soldiers as they arrive from your planet." Then she turned, eyes fixed on the towering king. "I understand from what my sister told me your assistance would be less conventional. Please explain to me what you explained to Celestia."

Richard's expression remained as calm as ever. Perhaps it was an unfair advantage he enjoyed being entirely cybernetic, but he was as unflappable as Celestia. "We can't offer the same numbers as our biological colleagues," he began, clearing the holographic display with a gesture. "Until a week ago, we thought travel to Equestria would be a purely diplomatic mission. We prepared medicine and farming equipment and other trade goods, which we still intend to transport as soon as possible. Our manufacturing platform is already operational, and we can decide what to produce with as little or as much personal intervention as you wish."

"We can produce soldiers, which individually are stronger and faster than biological troops. They never sleep, never rest, and don't require food or water. Their armor is impervious to all the weapons your enemy ground-troops have used so far, and heavily resistant to their cannons and mounted guns. We have brought with us a server mainframe containing two million human minds, eager to be implanted in a body again."

"Devoting our manufacturing to printing vast numbers of soldiers would be a waste of resources, however. I would instead recommend some of our heavy hardware, which can accomplish tasks no soldiers could." With no visible gesture on his part, the screen filled with the shape of a sleek aircraft, several times larger than the drones. It was like a small building. Chance's first thought was an enlarged orca that had taken to the sky, though the wireframe structure failed to convey what its color might be. "The dragon creatures have already proven themselves to be a problem. We know from the video footage our drones returned with that they are resistant to most weapons. The Darius Heavy Cruiser is armed with a mass-accelerator cannon and ultra-dense tungsten rounds we believe should easily penetrate the scales of these dragon creatures. It carries a three-ton munitions payload and is capable of engaging targets at hypersonic speeds, far faster than any organic mind can react."

The display cleared, and another object took the place of the Darius. Chance recoiled an inch or two, her eyes widening. Twilight glanced at her, but she was already doing her best to calm down. It was just a projection... It wasn't real... It wasn't going to kill anyone. "Our answer to the massive swarm we saw in Typhon is to use the enemy's tactics, only more effectively. These drones can be produced inexpensively and rapidly, and use no exotic materials that have to be brought from Earth. Their primary weapon fires high energy heavy ions, which destroy nerve tissue. A single brief burst causes temporary unconsciousness, a condition fatal to flying enemies. The drones can also be piloted into large groups and exploded, and their bodies are designed to fracture into a wide sphere of shrapnel. These drones are semi-autonomous, and one controller is sufficient per hundred or so in a combat scenario. Once we supplement your satellite network with a few high-bandwidth data relays, we will be able to control them from any distance."

"Our greatest advantage is not numbers, but versatility. The enemy can introduce new tactical problems, and within minutes two million of our finest minds will be working on a solution. For the moment I will not waste your time with every resource at our disposal, and instead make one final suggestion." The screen filled again, this time with what looked like a rugged hovertruck. The vehicle had no cabin for a driver; instead a large humped section rested on the back. As she watched, the animated image touched down, and heavy steel anchors dug deep into the ground. The humped section lifted to reveal a cruise missile launcher with four openings, which inclined upward sharply. One of the missiles lifted up and out, filling the display as it did. "Samson hypersonic intercontinental cruise missiles. Satellite guided, real-time target adjustment, and a range of 4000 miles. At top speed, a Samson missile can reach a target at the edge of its range in half an hour. Numerous payload options, able to penetrate deeply buried targets or airburst for mass destruction of enemy troops." Then he smiled. "We've already prepped the four primary payload options and one launch vehicle, ready for use at your discretion."

Only then did the human king seem to relax. No one else in the room seemed relaxed, Luna least of all. But Chance watched her take a deep breath and make an effort to look it anyway. "I thank you for this information, and for the cooperation we have seen. We understand the difficulty inherent in an alliance of old enemies." Then her voice got colder. "I expect both sides to act peaceably here and on your homeworld until the war is concluded." She rose. "Now, we have a war to win."

"You're sure you have the time to walk with me all the way back to the ship?" Chance asked, as the gate to Normandy closed behind them. "I know how much there must be to do after that meeting."

In answer, Twilight nudged her apprentice forward bodily, causing her to squeal in protest and stumble for several paces before correcting her normal pace. "It might be months before you're back." She shook her head, her tone becoming somber. "I just don't know how I'll manage without your help around the castle."

"Teach Spike magic?" she suggested, forcing herself to smile. Of course, she was afraid that if she strained her emotions too far in either direction, she was going to end up crying. She had done that enough times today to have no desire to repeat the experience. "Dragons are supposed to be pretty good at it."

"After their third or fourth century," Twilight replied, and they both laughed. It was one way not to cry.

"I hope you haven't told him that." Chance looked away, watching the dirt road go by beneath her. Twilight didn't reply, and there was a long silence as they walked. She felt like every step was harder than the last. Because as eager as she was to see all the changes to the Fury, she might never see Twilight Sparkle again. Might never see the pony that had been both teacher and parent.

Twilight was not a pony who kept silent for long, even if Chance herself was unable to form anything coherent. It wasn't long at all before she heard the voice of her mentor from beside her, so quiet it was nearly a whisper. There was good reason for this of course, since they were back in Ponyville proper by then. It would be unwise to allow other ponies to overhear one of Equestria's princesses acting so grim. "Do you think we have a chance?" she asked, seriously. "Not just against the dragons, either. I mean... Do you think there's a chance this will still be Equestria when the war is over?"

Chance thought about that for some time before answering. "I... think it's possible. Truth and I both do... We've been running simulations of the war each time we get new information about the enemy, and we think that Equestria's victory is still nearly certain. You saw all those interesting ideas humans have to help with the war. When the dragons get to this part of Equestria, we'll be ready for them. Not to mention all those automated defenses we've been building for the last five years or so!"

They had reached the place where the Fury had been moored, though only the ramp seemed to be pressing it down anymore. It was an interesting sight, transformed practically overnight. The propellers had been completely removed, replaced with sleek wings. The mast that had once held a sail had been taken down, and the sides of the ship were covered with sleek interlocking segments of polycarbonate armor. Chance felt her coat lift a little as they got closer, a sign that the Ionization Engine was already active. Since they weren't moving yet though, it was completely silent.

"Good luck out there." Twilight embraced her one last time, pulling her in close and holding her there for nearly a minute. "You've already done so much for Equestria. No matter what happens, I'm proud of you."

Chance returned the embrace, and for once didn't care how embarrassing it was. She didn't squirm to get out prematurely, and only when Twilight released her did she return to her hooves proper, blinking the tears away but keeping her voice from cracking. "When this is all over, we'll finally have the time to figure out how to build those light-speed ships. Exploring the universe, one planet at a time." Twilight nodded, but didn't say anything else. She just mussed up Chance's mane one last time, then turned and walked away.

The young mare waited several seconds, until she had fully collected herself, before walking over to her friends by the side of the ship. They were all there, standing by the prow. Apple Bloom was wearing a respirator and goggles and holding a pressure-sprayer in her mouth, tracing carefully onto a stencil. Everypony else was a few feet away, far enough they wouldn't inhale any of the fumes. It made Chance smile. "Did we really need the name on the side like this?"

Sweetie Belle's answer was matter-of-fact. "It was in the plans."

Scootaloo glanced darkly over her shoulder. "Really, Chance. You think the Equestrian flagship should fly around the battlefield without a name?" She gestured to the sides of the ship, which had been decorated with a large stylized version of Celestia and Luna's cutie marks, the closest thing they had to a national flag.

"They made us the flagship?" Chance raised her eyebrows. "But the Fury isn't even a quarter the size of the bigger Air Corps ships."

Sweetie Belle giggled. It was nearly as high-pitched as they had been when they were all fillies, but it was still a refreshing sound to Chance's ears. She was healing. "Chance, if we got into a fight with ten of the biggest ships in Equestria, who would win?" In response, Chance got quiet, and Sweetie Belle only giggled again.

"I would expect that sort of attitude from somepony in the Air Corps, but not from the pony who helped design the Prismatic Fury," Scootaloo continued, indignant. "Now that we have Truth, we could probably take on all the dragons single-hoofed!"

Pipsqueak, who was helping Apple Bloom with the sprayer (mostly by wearing it on his back), glanced over his shoulder in worry. "We're not really going to do that, are we?"

"If we have to!" Scootaloo called over the sound of pressurized paint, her expression serious. "Get back to work, cadet. This is a serious conversation between officers."

Chance and Sweetie Belle spared a sympathetic glance to Pipsqueak, shaking their heads in such a way that Scootaloo couldn't see.

Less than a minute later, Apple Bloom stepped back from the ship, removing her respirator. "Done! You ready with that drying spell, Sweetie Belle?" She carefully peeled the stencil away from the ship, careful not to touch a single one of the still-wet letters.

Sweetie Belle nodded, closing her eyes in intense concentration. The letters began to shimmer just as the unicorn started panting. A few seconds of effort and the task was apparently complete. The letters, all black before, started to shift slowly through the visible spectrum of color, a rainbow that washed along and back again in a steady constant motion.

Chance rolled her eyes at the effect, turning toward the ramp. Pipsqueak joined her before she was even halfway onto the deck. The ramp was only built for one pony to walk abreast at any one time, which meant they were very close together. That was nothing new for him, though Chance wasn't much a fan of the saddlebags he was wearing pressing painfully into her side. "You better not have gotten rainbow paint on my coat, or you can sleep by yourself on the deck."

Pipsqueak recoiled in mock horror. "Not that! I'll freeze!" Then he laughed. "Be back in a minute, got to stow this sprayer. Never know when we might need to make something else rainbow-colored." He disappeared under the deck, in time for the rest of the Crusaders to make their way up onto the deck. Sweetie Belle reached the top of the ramp and gave it a dramatic buck with both legs, causing it to fall loudly to the ground.

"I think we were supposed to pull that up," Chance remarked, repressing giggles of her own as Sweetie Belle's satisfied expression turned into one of surprise and barely-repressed panic. "Come on, we'll just levitate it up here." She moved to the edge of the deck. "I'll pick up that end, you pick up the other one, ‘kay?"

Another minute and the ramp was stowed, and all five of the ship's ponies were standing on the deck behind the steering column. Or what was left of it. The wheel was gone, replaced with a holographic interface set into the floor. A miniature of the ship floated in the display. "Here we go." Scootaloo stuck her hooves into the display, and as she did numbers and dials appeared around them, showing the angle and velocity she was configuring. "It won't throw us around like before, right?"

"It shouldn't," Chance answered, bracing herself against the railing anyway. "Not now that we have a real shield dissipating our inertia. They did... put in a real shield, right?"

As if in answer a faintly shimmering barrier extended its way around the ship in a tight bubble. The sound of distant conversation and animals died abruptly, replaced with a slowly growing rumble they felt though the deck more than actually hearing. "Flight vector accepted," Truth said, through the internal speakers. "Cruising altitude of 3000 feet selected." The ship lifted slowly from the ground, inclining slightly upward.

"Hey Truth, could you acess my personal files for me?" she called, having to shout over the growing noise.

"What would you like me to access?"

"Music playback. Artist, Guns N' Roses. Song, Paradise City. Maximum volume." Instead of answering with words, guitar and drums began issuing from every speaker in the ship. Human vocals swiftly joined in, which Truth might or might not be translating for the other Crusaders with their implants.

There was no better way to fly.

"I need to know everything you know about those things." Charles only seemed calm because he could manually prevent his body from showing signs of emotion. In reality, he was terrified. There were dozens of those creatures down there. Did his sidearm have enough shots to take down that many? His body was running so low on its power reserves that he couldn't be sure about accurately calculating his shots anymore. His one arm was far less steady than it ought to be. Some of the creatures had bows! It was true that they were unlikely to do much of anything to his body, but his companion wasn't nearly so resilient. One good shot to the gut might be all she could take at this point. "Everything."

"Are you crazy?" Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. "Maybe if I could still fly we could take them. But we're both stuck on the ground... We don't stand a chance! Maybe if we hide they'll get bored and leave. I would..."

Charles leaned forward onto the walking stick, drawing his sidearm with his working hand. It was a tiny plastic device, barely larger than his hand, silvery with white lines tracing all over. The opening was small, not large enough for any conventional projectile. The side of the device had a simple warning printed. "NUCLEAR BATTERY - DO NOT BURN, CRUSH, or DISCARD"

The pegasus laughed cruelly. "You're gonna fight them with that?"

"If I have to." He closed his eyes, controlling his frustration. There was so little time. "What do you know about them? They're called goblins, right?"

Rainbow Dash sighed, sounding as exasperated as Charles felt. "They didn't teach us very much, and I didn't pay close attention. Uh... Live in tribes, mostly underground. They eat anything, including ponies. They've got sharp teeth, and usually fight up close. Used to live in tribes in Equestria a long time ago, but not since there have been ponies there." She shook her head, as though dislodging a foul taste from her mouth. "That's all they taught us. We never thought they'd leave their tribes, okay? They're too stupid to ever think about fighting Equestria."

Charles glanced briefly over the ridge, down towards the ship. A breeze rustled his hair as he looked, and he saw the strange animals grunting to each other, in a guttural tongue that sounded far closer to a great ape than a bellowing lizard. Strangely, they also seemed to have irregular tufts of hair on their heads, unlike true reptiles. There was something disturbing about it, but without his sensors working properly there was no way to identify why they disturbed him so. No matter. All enemies of the Steel Tower would die, no matter how gross they were.

"Stay back here," Charles instructed, though he doubted very much the pony would listen to him. "I'll clear them out. Wait for me to call." He adjusted his weight, turning away from her and cresting the hill. The mare looked so absolutely shocked at his actions that she was powerless to move. He could only hope that shock lasted long enough to keep her from danger. His steps were not so quiet as when his body was working properly, so that it took him only a few steps to be noticed. The mob of creatures all looked in his direction, calling out with guttural whooping sounds.

'Translation unavailable. Insufficient sample size,' the program in his head informed him.

'I don't think I need a translator to understand what they're saying,' he thought, stopping about thirty feet down the rise. This put maximum distance between him and the goblins, probably too far to accurately shoot those arrows or sling rocks. He hoped so, anyway. "That ship is property of the Steel Tower!" he shouted, as loudly as he could. "Depart and I spare your lives!" In his agitation, Charles wasn't shouting in the Equestrian that had been downloaded into his brain, but on the slightly-accented English of his birth, a little of south London only slightly tinged with Welsh.

To his great surprise, the monsters grew absolutely silent at his words. Could they... understand him? Did they have translation magic like Equestrians did, maybe? No... Because when he had finished speaking, a roar went up from all of them, and nearly as one the mob began charging up the hill toward him, brandishing their weapons. Time seemed to slow, the two-legged creatures tearing up the hill.

"I will to my lord be true and faithful," Charles muttered, taking careful aim at the first creature and firing. The gun barked in his hand, though didn't jolt with recoil since no projectile had been fired. His aim was absolutely true; the first monster dropped, trailing red blood all the way down. The air began to fizz with the charge of plasma weapons.

"I will love all that he loves." Another shot, and the second of the monsters fell, tumbling. The creatures seemed oblivious to this, so intent on him that all that happened around them blurred to nothing. "I will shun all that he shuns." Another shot, another dead monster. Charles adjusted himself against the walking stick, correcting for the wobbling of his one good arm.

"I will be a knight of the Steel Tower." Another creature tumbled lifeless to the ground. There was a little trail of them, motionless semi-reptilian monsters growing closer with every passing second.

"I will uphold the honor of my Lord through my actions." Another shot, and the handgun was growing warm in his hand. It was not meant to be used in such rapid succession. Lacking the proper cooling, it would probably overheat after just a few more shots.

"I will strengthen the weak." The seventh monster fell, and now half the distance between him and the diminishing mob had been cleared. They were close enough to smell now, or would've been if his sense of smell still worked after the crash.

"I will comfort the fearful." Charles fired again, thinking about the injured pegasus sheltered just behind the crest of the hill. She had shown no fear at all until the moment she had lost her wing. Now she had been afraid enough to think they couldn't fight these goblins and take back the ship.

"Confidence without arrogance." His arm wasn't shaking anymore, with what little remained of his power reserves poured into the gyroscopic sensors and the accelerometers. He did not miss a single shot.

"Truth without deception." The gun was so hot that a fleshy hand would be suffering from first-degree burns by now. The polymer of his fingers was far more resilient to temperature than that.

"Peace without oppression." One of the goblins had stopped to try and take aim with a bow. He shot it in the head, as he had each and every one of the goblins he had killed so far. There was one more pool of deep red blood sinking into the sandy earth.

"Compassion without restriction." They were nearly upon him now, at least a half dozen that had survived the charge. He fired again. There were now less than a half dozen.

"Until death." That didn't look so far away, and certainly not for the nearest goblin. It had leapt in a high arc with a flint axe ready, but his shot connected with its head in mid-flight. He leaned hard to one side, though that didn't stop the little splattering of red blood. The four remaining goblins charged at him together, only feet away. There was no way he could shoot all of them.

He didn't have to, because a pair of hooves appeared beside him, bucking him violently out of the way of the monsters. He went flying, landing on his back in the sand and sliding, though his grip on the gun never faltered. He suspected it couldn't, and that the plastic of his fingers would be melted to it before too much longer.

Rainbow Dash jumped out of the way of the approaching Goblins, which screeched wildly in frustration. He might be on the ground, but that didn't stop him from firing accurately. Another of the monsters was dead before it realized what had happened. He didn't bother trying to stand up. Another died as it raised a rough-looking sword to attack Rainbow Dash from behind. The last two froze, seeming to finally realize what they had just seen. They looked around, at the trail of dead goblins leading up the mountain, almost evenly spaced in the dirt. They saw the gun in Charles's hand. They turned to run away.

Charles shot them both, one after another. There would be no survivors to call for backup to come and finish the job. He dropped the gun. His hand wasn't stuck after all, but the little patch of grass he had dropped it into began immediately to steam and smoke in protest.

Rainbow Dash was silent for a long time, walking up to him and looking down. Her eyes flicked between the gun and Charles himself, and he wasn't sure if he was seeing admiration or fear in her expression. "You didn't have to kill the ones that were running away," she said, her voice almost completely flat.

"I did." Charles waited a few moments more, then returned his gun to its holster. It would have been uncomfortably warm to the touch, but heat did not cause him pain. Actually, nothing did. "Or else they would have brought more goblins, more than we could fight." He rose to his feet, whole body shaking with the effort. If he didn't make it to the ship soon, he was going to run out of power right next to it. "They were dead the moment they decided to fight instead of run."

He began limping down the hill, as best he could. Despite what he might have expected, he found the pony was suddenly at his side supporting him. "That's cold. How do you live with yourself after killing like this?" They walked slowly toward the ship, past the row of regularly-spaced bodies. Each had a nearly identical wound to the head, small hole going in and much larger exiting, the flesh charred and partly cooked and blood slowly leaking from within.

In answer, he kept his eyes away from each of the monstrous shapes, focusing intently on the ship. "I... give them every opportunity to turn away. Every opportunity to choose peace. But you saw what they were doing; when I told them to leave, they were coming straight at me. They would have killed me, and you too if they found you. When killing becomes a matter of survival, then its the only morally responsible choice. Those who live by the sword perish by the sword."

Rainbow Dash remained silent until they reached the side of the ship. "No wonder humans almost wiped themselves out."

Charles had no reply to that as he flung himself bodily into the cockpit, searching for the power-reception port. He found it, and connected the cable to his chest. The feeling of relief was immediate, though of course the crashed drone had far less power than it ought to. Compared to the little his own reserves had maintained, it felt absolutely wonderful. He found his clarity of thought returning, along with his strength. Perhaps only half his systems were working properly, but at least that half could run again.

Making sure to leave the cable connected, he dug down into the console and removed a fist-sized object, taking it in his one working hand. "Stand close, Rainbow Dash. I need to let the scanner get a good look at you. I have to get your measurements."

The pegasus complied, following his instructions as he told her to open her remaining wing and move it in various ways. "I don't see what good this is supposed to do," she said, her face pale. Probably the dehydration. They would have to venture into the forest in search of water if any of this worked. "I haven't seen any of your people with wings. Why would you have designs for fake ones?"

"We knew we were coming to Equestria for a decade now," he explained, as he ducked into the cockpit and removed equipment piece by piece. Just like the drone carrier had been, the circuitry of most Tower technology was designed to be infinitely modular, able to be separated and combined on-the-fly into almost anything. It was a shame the ship had been so badly damaged, or else he might have been able to make slightly-more-functional replacement limbs for himself too. He probably still could if he was patient enough, but that wouldn't help him fly home. Without flight, there was no way they would cross the vast distances between here and Equestria. There was no way they would escape the swarm that was doubtless still behind them. So it would do him no good, even if he did spend the time. When the swarm got to them, they were both dead.

"We planned to come with all sorts of wonderful technology, so you would want us to say. When we learned that a third of your species could fly and another two-thirds couldn't, that was one of the first things we came up with. Or... We tried to." He glanced briefly back up, careful to look at the pegasus and not at all the corpses. It was so hot that they had already started to stink. "Your wings are too small to support your body-weight, do you know that? I've got an artificial wing design in here that can put out... twice as much force as yours, with half the weight. But that's still not enough. Since we're talking about wings, how is it any of you fly?"

Rainbow Dash leaned closer to him, with an expression that clearly said she thought he was stupid. "Magic, duh. Same way we walk on clouds."

Charles worked furiously with his one hand, removing parts from the inside of his drone and positioning them according to the design in his mental computer. His one hand moved like a precision manufacturing robot, which wasn't far from the truth. "Is it safe to assume that if we give you a wing as strong as your other one, you'll be able to fly again?"

Rainbow Dash nodded. "There isn't another wing as strong as this one in all of Equestria!" She raised it proudly, though the pride did not last long. It was soon replaced with renewed pain. "I don't know much about how the magic works, but its not actually in the wings." She tapped her chest with one hoof. "It's in here! Not that you'd know." She narrowed her eyes. "Your people don't have magic."

"I thought this was magic." Charles held up his wrist briefly, so the bracelet reflected the light of the sun high above them.

Rainbow nodded. "Well yeah, but it's somepony else's magic, not yours. Or... Discord's magic. Yeah, I think Discord made those. Twilight said he did, anyway. It's hard to imagine him doing something good, but apparently he's been doing it lots lately."

Charles nodded, though he wasn't really paying attention. Already he had set the basic skeleton of the wing, and was now stealing sections of the drone's outer body for the flexible surface. Not so good as the artificial feathers their lab had designed, but his computer assured him it would still perform well enough to exceed the output of what she already had. He had no idea who Discord was, though something about that name brought him back to the moment he had received the bracelet, and the strange man who assured him he was the only one in Equestria who could remove it.

"Humans don't need magic to do good," Charles said, disconnecting the power-transfer cable and climbing from the aircraft. He had a full hour's charge now at full power, which he didn't think he would need. Once the wing was installed, he would either give his recorder to Rainbow Dash, or if she pressed him as he thought she would, use the so-called "magic" bracelet. Probably nothing would happen and he would still end up giving her his recorder, but who could be sure? It was hard to be certain of anything when you were living in a world of talking rainbow-colored horses. His present companion more rainbow-looking than most.

He held up the wing with his good hand, leaning backward against the body of the drone. It was nearly exactly the size and shape of Rainbow's existing wing, aside from the root-structure that was meant to embed itself within her back. How long would it take to integrate with her existing muscles, three hours? Four? Too long for him to delay for long. The wing itself was silvery-gray, slightly reflective, with an almost fragile look to it. That was an illusion, since like the material of the drone it could withstand bone-crushing force with ease.

Rainbow looked dubious. "I'm going to fly with that? You've only been working for... what, ten minutes? No way you're done that fast."

"I'm an android," he reminded her, dropping to his knees so he would be at her level. "The designs were already saved, I just had to adapt a few of the parts to what we had on-hand. The swarm is probably still coming, we can't wait around and argue. Turn sideways, so the side without a wing is next to me." He broke off a piece of the stick he had been using and held it out towards her mouth. "And bite on this. It's gonna hurt like a bitch when I put it in, and we don't want you to bite your tongue off."

Rainbow did not turn sideways, though she did take the stick from him in her mouth and set it down in front of her. "Promise me." She fixed his eyes with the most intent expression he had ever seen there. "Truth, you were saying before. Promise me that if I do this, you'll use the bracelet. Otherwise, no deal. Either we both get out of here, or neither of us do. Got it?" Since Charles was on his knees (or one knee, with one leg stuck out awkwardly to the side), it wasn't hard for her to put her face right up to his, growling faintly at him. That was a new one. Ponies could growl.

He nodded, and only then did she pull away from him. The gesture seemed to be universal between their species. "Good. Because if you try and break your promise then Celestia knows I'm gonna kick your butt so far you'll beg me to let the swarm get you." She picked up the stick in her teeth and stood beside him, letting him face the injury. She spread her legs a little, bracing herself.

Charles wasn't about to give the pony captain any more time to think about what was coming than was absolutely necessary. He positioned the artificial wing in the correct location, and sent the activation command wirelessly to its servos. Rainbow Dash did not scream, though her whole body went rigid with pain and Charles heard the stick groaning under the pressure her jaw was applying to it. It took perhaps five minutes, five minutes of what he could only imagine was absolute agony for her. Were it not for the UBR in her chest, it was possible she would have gone into shock from the pain alone. As it was, the pain-mitigation from that device would make it possible for her to remain conscious, if only just.

Charles had never seen anyone face pain so well or so fearlessly. Only when the process was finished did she collapse onto the ground, chest heaving as she looked up at him, expectant. "Your turn."

He wanted to say no, he really did. Imagined the face of his king, and tried to predict what he might say had he been here. What would King Richard see as more important, the effectiveness of the captain of his guard or the success of this Equestrian diplomacy mission? For that matter, what good would he be if he was killed out here, as was likely to happen if this plan didn't work? It was impossible to imagine this stupid bracelet would actually do anything. What did he have to lose, anyway? In the likely event that absolutely nothing happened Rainbow Dash could fly home with his Cortical Recorder and the knowledge that knights kept their word no matter what.

"If this doesn't work, you go back without me, okay?" Charles waited for the nod before he lifted the chain to his teeth and gripped it there, pulling away forcefully. As he had expected, the links came away easily under the force of the gesture, falling to a little pile on the ground. He thought he saw a spark of blue light the second the chain broke.

Charles wasn't exactly sure what he expected from the first spell he had ever felt. The truth was there was very little to feel at all. The full prosthesis lacked the sensing organs that would have allowed him to perceive what was happening to him. What physical senses he had simply failed one by one, a strange numbness his mind could not explain spreading through his entire body. He remained conscious just long enough to be aware of his brain telling him "Complete System Failure, Service Immediately" before the world faded to black.

Chapter 12: Lies

The ponies stationed inside Normandy all lived in one little building, which like everything there had been very hastily constructed. The single-story military-style barracks might not have all the technological amenities of the human structures, but it had been built with old-fashioned earth pony sturdiness and rustic charm. After living in pony-built structures her whole life, Amber would've felt quite uncomfortable in any of the human structures all around her. To say nothing of when she dreamed of being back in the hive, and woke up in a shivering sweat.

Of course, she was also the only pony in the barracks to have an office of her own, which doubled as her bedroom in the cramped space. It was in the former capacity that the room was configured now, all her bedding packed away in a closet and lifted high as a table. Scrolls and other bits of paper covered the desk, every request made by ponies or humans about this little settlement. She glanced over the one she had been reading last, frowning a little. "Unless something is done about this expansion soon, I fear this settlement faces imminent doom!" Amber wasn't sure what she would send in reply to the concerned zebra that had penned that letter. Her fears for the consequences of felling about two kilometers of the Everfree were not misjudged, yet warnings to that effect had already been given and swiftly rejected by both human factions. "We can handle wildlife," was the universal response.

Was it her job to protect them from the threats they insisted didn't exist? Would they even listen to her if she tried? She hadn't yet, except to give instruction that any plant they didn't recognize ought to be treated like a chemical weapon, preferably burned without allowing exposure of any kind. So far the humans of both factions had taken her advice very seriously: wood harvesting had been transformed from a slow erosion and been relegated to the borders, felling trees along the distance slated for expansion but no further. As she understood, the forest within the boundary was not going to be harvested. It was going to be burned, and a wall of lumber and some sort of foam was going to be built on the forest side to a height of forty feet or more.

A sharp knock on the door interrupted her musing, and she sat a little straighter, adjusting her mane with a brief flurry of magic no real pegasus ought to be able to perform. Only when she was sure her appearance was pristine did she call, "Come in!" in the most confident voice she could muster. The door opened slowly, and she was not surprised to see one of her soldiers standing there.

Or rather, a soldier. She didn't recognize this mare by sight, which was not all that unusual. Every day the size of her force seemed to grow, though most of the ponies who arrived were from the service branches, not actual soldiers. The newcomer was a unicorn, with the markings of the Royal Corps all over her robes. Her coat was a sort of oceanic blue, with a greenish mane and matching eyes. Something twitched in Amber's chest, but she didn't recognize it and so paid it no mind.

"You're Amber Sands?" Her voice was quiet and a little withdrawn, though the attitude was typical of the Royal Unicorn Corps. Since they were all officers, they often acted like the ordinary chain of command just didn't apply to them. There was nothing Amber could do to correct a superior, so she just had to swallow her pride and nod. It wasn't her fault she clung so desperately to the structure of the military to replace her missing hive!

"Yes Ma'am." Sands forced a polite smile. "Acting Equestrian Overseer to Normandy. If you've been transferred here, I'll need to see a copy of the orders for unit records." No doubt this pony had already claimed one of the empty officer's quarters for herself and left all her possessions there along with the orders she should have brought directly to Amber.

But to her surprise, the unicorn shook her head, walking into the office and closing the door behind her with a little burst of magic. She sat down and looked across the desk to Amber, absolutely silent. Her eyes were so green, so piercing, that for one awful moment she felt that the unicorn was looking straight through the illusion to the truth beneath, to her legs full of holes and black chitin instead of a furry coat. But if the unicorn could see anything like that, she made no sign of it.

"Ma'am?" Amber raised her eyebrows, rising to her hooves with sudden discomfort. Celestia had given her instructions for what to do if her identity was discovered, and she prepared her mind to follow those instructions. It was going to be a shame to lose this post after only just arriving, though.

"No transfer. I just wanted to get a look at you before..." she trailed off, continuing to watch her.

Amber fidgeted uncomfortably, for some reason unable to meet the eyes of the pony looking at her. What was going on? She looked at every other part of the mare, trying to get as much information as she could. She was far older than Amber, with the ageless look that truly old unicorns sometimes got when magic had stretched their lifespan. That spoke volumes of her power, since that magic was never actually taught but had to be discovered anew by any unicorn who wanted to use it. That meant she had to be high in the Royal Corps. Maybe skilled enough to make a spell that could see through her illusion.

But if that were true, why hadn't she sounded some sort of alarm? Why hadn't she run screaming? Amber wanted to run screaming from herself when she looked too closely at a mirror while in her true form. She was probably imagining things. This old pony was just a little senile, that was all!

"Before what, ma'am?"

Without warning, the unicorn raced around the desk and embraced her. The gesture was so completely unexpected that she froze, her whole body going rigid. But it was no attack, just the tightest hug she had ever felt. Not like the embrace of a friend, or even a lover. Those gestures could be empty, or contain such a faint trickle of love that she barely felt it. What Amber felt was far akin to someone sticking a high-pressure hose down her throat than the faint trickles that eked into her life. It was like Celestia, only more so. The magic that flowed through that gesture was concentrated, refined somehow. The difference was similar to the sweet sap of a sugar-cane and the concentrated white granules for baking. It filled her and filled her until her control could take no more and her illusion crumbled away.

Maybe ponies had long childhoods, but changelings did not. Amber had very nearly reached the peak of maturity, taller than a pony and thinner, her body a healthy black shine. Her mane was a greenish-blue, and as spotted with holes as her legs. Most frightening to her were the fangs protruding from her mouth, though they were less than fully developed so far.

The stranger didn't even seem to notice. "I am so proud of you. Make better choices than I ever did." She smiled and turned away, breaking the gesture and walking out. She seemed conscious of Amber's briefly compromised state because she shut the door very quickly, and even magically locked it behind her so no other soldiers could enter before she had completely composed herself.

Amber didn't even know why she did it. She didn't change quickly back and storm after the obvious intruder, she didn't rage or sound an alarm. Instead, she collapsed onto her haunches and started to cry.

Another day done in the Castle of the Two Sisters, such as it was. In the decade prior to the war, Celestia had covertly commissioned a number of changes to the castle should they be needed, the least of which were teams of engineers to shore up the construction and patch the holes in the roof. By no means had she made it as defensible a castle as Canterlot Castle, but then when you had the Everfree around you there was little you really needed. The castle would protect those it chose to protect, and the rest would face the consequences of their intrusion.

The castle was one of the oldest structures in Equestria. Parts of its foundation were so old that no pony hooves had set them. There was a magic in this place that few, not even Celestia herself, fully understood.

It was the ideal location for her exile, and not because a single day's walk could take you back into Equestria. Not just because it was so close that anything that happened here would be noticed in Ponyville immediately, though surely that was part of it. Of course those were very good reasons, but the best was a subtler reason still. The human-created OMICRON Core named Truth was immensely intelligent, but not even half so subtle as Celestia could be. He could see ahead in every possible path, but be no surer than anypony else about which path was being followed until ponies set out along it.

Celestia could plan centuries ahead. Millennia, even. There weren't many beings with the same supply of personal experience to draw from in the world. Probably she could have counted them with her hooves. It was unfortunate that half of them seemed to be on the other side.

There were Changeling servants to wait on her, an offer she had accepted only because she knew that any ponies who came here would likely not survive the service. Such ponies would also be the perfect targets of Changeling infiltration, and somehow she doubted whoever did it would leave them alive. No, she had to be alone here even if that meant a life of constant and absolute vigilance. Celestia watched everything the drones did around her, though there wasn't much to watch. Generally they followed her explicit instructions whenever she gave them, and when she didn't they stood in place and watched everything with those unfocused bug-eyes of theirs.

It only took a few days for her to notice something she thought strange. The changeling assigned to prepare her bedroom for the night locked the door behind it, and moved a little more slowly than usual as it closed the shutters to the outside. Celestia could feel the subtle fire of magic, though she could not identify changeling spells with the same level of accuracy that she could pony spells, so she couldn't say for sure exactly what the guard was doing. She pretended not to notice, removing her crown and her necklace and her gilded horseshoes in the same rhythmic way she did every night. She kept her mind in that gentle unfocused state that would allow her to easily pull the magic together for a spell if one was needed in a hurry.

The guard closed the last of the large windows and began slinking towards her. Celestia watched it come carefully, but it didn't seem to be trying to get very close. If it felt anything like all the other guards did, it was probably terrified of her. Celestia's magic was sufficient to burn away such insignificant barely-living creatures at a mere thought, and they seemed to know it. "Will you be needing anything else?" the drone asked, in its harsh buzzing voice. That was a first; none of the other drones that had spoken to her had used a single complete sentence. Using words at all was such a struggle for them, what with every thought shared in that strange hive-mind of theirs.

"That will be quite sufficient, thank you." Celestia drew back the quilts and sheets of the enormous bed, though she did not believe she would have the pleasure of using them tonight. "You can inform your dark masters I am most satisfied with your service."

The changeling's eyes seemed to darken in front of her, though it was hard to judge insect expressions with any level of confidence. There was nothing ambiguous about its words, though. "I have no masters." The voice was not the near-mindlessness of a drone, not even close. As she watched, the changeling's form seemed to ripple and twist, expanding upward and outward. The shining black body remained the same, though it grew taller, stronger, and thinner. Eyes filled with intelligence and cunning, losing the mindless insectoid quality entirely. Her horn grew long and crooked, and her expression one of visible anger. "Nopony commands me. I am the swarm!"

Celestia did not visibly recoil. Such a show of weakness to a predator like this was far from advisable, even though she had great doubts about the changeling's ability to combat her. There was no source of pure and willing love for her to feed on nearby, nor was there a vast army ready to do battle nearby. Still, Chrysalis had surprised her. She had been watching her own kind for so long that she hadn't thought to expect the queen would impersonate one of her own drones! "Is that the promise the Father of Dragons made to you? Our attack on Typhon suggests that might not be entirely true."

She expected anger, or perhaps threats. Chrysalis had a noose around her neck with this bomb threat, and gloating about the victory was in character for her. Maybe she had come to make further demands, or merely to watch Celestia suffer with anguish over the possible fate of her ponies. That was, however, not what happened. Rather, the green glow from her horn faded, and her shoulders visibly sagged an inch or two. It was the most honest expression Celestia had ever seen on her face. "You're right, as usual." The queen of all changelings did something she hadn't ever seen, not in the many years she had known her. She turned her back and walked several paces away, staring up between the cracks in the shutters at the waning moon. "I thought his offer meant greater power than we have had since our birth. Now It seems I have damned us all. No proper queen at all. How does a ruler live with their choices if all the choices they make are wrong?"

Chrysalis had surprised Celestia with her appearance. Her words were a far greater shock. Celestia had known this mare for much of her long existence, and she had never heard her admit to being wrong. Chrysalis had more pride than any being she knew, enough pride to become the mother of her abominable race even though she must have known what the consequences would be. She had been too magically gifted not to understand! Celestia almost didn't believe her ears. Instead she chose to doubt the sincerity. This had to be another tactic, that was all. Another ploy.

She would play along. If there was even a shred of a chance that she meant what she was saying, this might be the only truly good thing to come from this war. "When a servant obeys an instruction that proves to be mistaken, the servant is not at fault. Rulers do not get to pass on the guilt from their mistakes. They have the responsibility to make as few as possible, and repair the damage they cause. They have an example to set."

The changeling did not turn around, didn't seem to react to her words in any way for some minutes. Celestia did not press her. The immortal could afford to be patient.

"I came to try," she said, her voice so quiet it was almost a whisper. Then she did turn around, eyes wide and urgent. "There is very little time and a complicated plan before us. If we don't get you out of here immediately, I will be killed before I can attempt again. Do you still remember enough transformation magic to appear as one of your common ponies?"

This was nearly too much to bear. Her greatest enemy, the only one to come close to actually assassinating her and her sister was coming to her when it seemed the war was won, and trying to help her escape her own custody? Celestia was enormously intelligent, and she eliminated all but two possibilities quite quickly. Either there had been some shift in power and opinion in the ranks of their enemy that had left Chrysalis without position, or else she was trying to deceive Celestia into breaking the terms of her oath so they could use the nukes.

But why would she want that? The changelings were the ones who had the most to gain from the preservation of Equestrian lives! Each city could sustain hundreds of thousands of changelings on the love it produced, maybe millions. Beyond that, why not just lie and say Celestia had broken the terms, and use one of the bombs anyway? That left the other option as the most likely, though Celestia had no idea what might have transpired to make her old adversary lose her position of power and prominence.

"I can't leave here, or millions of ponies will die. No matter what reason you think I need to leave, I will not put the lives of my ponies at risk." Her tone brooked no argument, nor would she. Even if she thought remaining here might very well get her killed, she could not leave. Not until she had the information that could extricate her ponies from their present bondage.

"I know that!" Chrysalis rolled her eyes, scratching one of her hooves impatiently on the ground beneath her. "I will take your place! It should be enough to fool them long enough for you to find and destroy the bombs, since I know exactly where they both are." The changeling queen closed both eyes very briefly, and Celestia felt the surge of thought in her direction. It was no attack, but one vivid image after another. The first was a building somewhere in Seaddle, a disused section of the sewage treatment area. The second was in an upper story of a building somewhere in Manehattan, with images so vivid Celestia could have teleported there.

Of course she couldn't do that. Pretending to be here was one thing, but even the smallest spells she cast could be detected across the entire planet if you knew how to search for them. She was fairly certain their enemy did know. That didn't mean both sites could not be visited very soon if correct measures were taken. Assuming the information was accurate. There was no trace of deception in the thoughts that Chrysalis sent to her, but that meant very little coming from her. She was a creature of lies, the only that had ever managed to deceive Celestia completely.

"The Dragon intends to steal your power and use it to rewrite Equus's Kernel. Eventually he will come for you here, in a week's time or less. You have until then to find and disable the bombs... There are no others. I had begun to discover His plan by then, and I sabotaged it as best I could. No Alicorn should teleport to Manehattan or Seaddle, or the bombs will be detonated."

"Why are you doing this?" Celestia rummaged around in a drawer, seeking out an unusually large book under what looked like junk. Lifting it carefully, she extricated the tablet computer hidden in its hollowed-out pages and waited as the screen slowly came to life. "If you're telling the truth, then the Father of Dragons has gone completely mad. If he comes here expecting to find my power to steal but discovers you instead, you will surely die."

"Painfully," Chrysalis agreed, watching with some interest as Celestia quickly typed out her message with the floating stylus, then teleported the object away.

"A decade ago, you tried to kill me. Your Changelings are a significant part of the Draconic ground troops. Why are you helping me?" She had to have the answer. Chrysalis had been her enemy for so long, that she could suddenly be willing to sacrifice herself was beyond belief. There wasn't even time to think about the absolute insanity it would be for anypony to modify their world's Kernel, and she didn't waste time considering it now. That avenue would have to wait for a time when she wasn't being buried in unbelievable shocks.

The Queen of the Changelings seemed to pause, taking several deep breaths before she spoke. When she did, it was in a rush of such incredible passion that Celestia nearly retreated a pace or two. "I thought that an alliance with the Dragons would mean I would never have to watch another of my daughters grow up with so little food they never woke up. He promised to help solve our dependence on the love of other species!" She was crying. Celestia could hardly believe her eyes, but Chrysalis was crying! "He twisted them into monsters! Took away their spirits completely! They had so little to begin with..."

"He doesn't even need a queen to produce more of those abominations, and they don't need love. Only flesh. They don't belong in this world... The holes in their hearts are so dark they have Outsiders for souls." Her jaw was set. "I will not allow this to be our future. We will be free. Everything about this is my responsibility, so I will be the one to make it right."

Celestia watched the changeling queen very carefully. To her eyes, it seemed for a moment as though the currents of time were flowing backwards, and she saw the ancient pony as she had been before. The same dark blue mane, without the holes. Her eyes aquamarine, without the slits of a predator who hunted in the dark. No chitinous armor, and feathery wings instead of transparent ones. A white coat as rich and regal as Celestia's. Of course it was only in her mind. Though she could take any form she wished, Celestia did not think she ever had taken this one in her time as a changeling. It hurt her too much.

"The only price I ask is that you spare my daughter and protect her from harm. My most loyal changelings have gone into hiding until this war is over and Equus is safe for them again. When that time comes, they will find her and make her their queen. I already know how well you treated her, and that makes this decision easier. You have already done more for her, your enemy, than I ever did." She advanced a step. "I have no power to compel you, but... Please. She is the only hope for changelings now. She must live through this war."

Even as she watched, the mare in front of her began to shift and change. The black chitin of her body grew lighter and lighter, almost white. Her mane stretched and grew out in an ethereal curtain that faintly shimmered with its own internal light. Soon Celestia was looking at her exact double, perfect in every physical way. It was extremely disconcerting, though not nearly so much as hearing her own voice from the double. "We will be free."

Celestia focused her magic into her body, beginning the transformation spell. She had a long flight tonight if she was going to make it to the place her ship would be waiting for her by morning. "Old friend," she said, touching her head very briefly on Chrysalis’s shoulder. It was a gesture they had not shared for thousands of years. "You already are."

Everything felt wrong. Charles could feel the ground beneath him almost directly, as though there were no clothing between him and whatever surface he was resting on. It wasn't a dusty floor of red sand and small pebbles, but what felt like some sort of wooden weave, like logs and sticks carefully twisted together. What could that be? He tried to feel all his limbs, but they weren't responding the way he expected. His hands were numb, for one, and he felt like he had too many limbs. The sensation was similar to that he experienced when he tried to directly control a drone instead of passing instructions to its AI subroutines. As though he were the drone, his body twisted completely out of the configuration he expected.

Only when that happened he always knew why, and he could always disconnect. Not only could he not send the disconnect command to whatever prosthesis he had wirelessly interfaced with, but he didn't seem to have the ability to use any of his internal functions. He thought the commands one after another with no effect. Library Recall? System Diagnosis? Transmitter? Nothing nothing nothing!

"Damnit!" Charles took a deep breath, more out of habit than anything. Full cybernetic bodies continued to breathe to help air-cool their components, not because they had any need for air. Yet at that point he realized he had been breathing all this time, and that there was a biological need to continue. He couldn't stop, not without quickly feeling out of breath. How was...

It all came rushing back. The ship, an artificial wing, and a promise he had kept. Nothing should have happened, nothing but a bit of broken jewelry coming off his arm. With slowly growing dread, he opened one of his eyes. His vision was filled with brown, and he lifted his head away from whatever he was resting against with some difficulty. What he saw was impossible, or rather, it was impossible for him to be looking at it from this angle. His first thought, and indeed the only safety for his mind, was that he was back in one of the public simulations, where fantasy was as likely as reality. As to why the system wasn't recognizing his commands... That was obviously some glitch. He had been killed, Rainbow Dash had extracted his Cortical Recorder, and brought him back to the Tower. That was what was happening, right?

But how could Rainbow Dash have known? He hadn't exactly told her...

What Charles saw was the upper branches of a tree, but not looking up from the ground. It seemed to his eyes as if he were resting inside an absolutely gigantic bird's nest, perched somewhere in the canopy of some generic-looking deciduous tree. The ground was so far away it seemed to blur out of sight, completely invisible. There was also something large in the way of his eyes; a muzzle? There was nothing human about it, or the fur that seemed to coat it. He immediately looked down at his hands... and found them missing.

Charles was a pony, with a coat that was a shade of blue away from cream. He couldn't see his mane easily, but a twist of his long neck showed he had a tail of dark grey and a similar shade of nearly-white. There were too many limbs, and he swiftly saw why. He had wings, covered in feathers the exact shade as his coat. He couldn't see that his eyes hadn't changed, and remained the same gold color characteristic of military-grade prosthetics. There was nothing prosthetic about him now.

"Fuck me." Charles collapsed against the nest, though his body seemed to refuse to comply with his desire to simply drop out of consciousness. Biological bodies tended not to do that.

"I'm sorry, but this isn't that sort of dream. And anyway, I'm not really your type." Charles had heard that voice before, somewhere, but couldn't quite place exactly where. It was familiar, like a friend from so long ago he had forgotten their name but still remembered the face. His ears swiveled to face the sound, quite disconcertingly. He turned to the empty part of the nest, and nearly did faint this time.

The creature resting in the nest with him completely defied expectation of conventional biology. It was bipedal, or at least seemed to be from the way it sat. It seemed as though someone had taken a dragon out of Eastern mythology, the long serpentine body, and grafted on the limbs of all sorts of different animals. A dragon's tail, a lizard's talon, the leg of a goat, mismatched wings, and yellow-red eyes.

He recognized the eyes. "You!" Charles had no idea how he controlled his body, but he sat up, scooting back and away from the stranger who had not been there when he looked before. "You were in the castle! But you were human..."

The creature smiled, though it made no move toward him. He was glad of that, since it was so much bigger and there was nowhere for Charles to run. At the edge of the nest was a drop that looked like hundreds of feet. It was true he had wings, but he didn't have the foggiest idea how to use them. Unlike prosthetic bodies, this one didn't come with an internal operator's manual.

"Is that so?" There was obvious amusement in the voice. "I don't recall being anything different for years now. Maybe you were only seeing what you wanted to see. Or perhaps what I wanted you to see.”

His own voice sounded different too, though it was hard to place exactly how. He had been hearing the strange sound of the Equestrian language for long enough that hearing it now was hardly surprising. "You said this was a dream." He held up a hoof. They didn't seem good for much else. "I don't really have this, then. I'm only... dreaming. Is that what the bracelet does? Activate some sort of simulation?"

The creature laughed, a full deep laugh that seemed almost to shake his whole body. "You wish! Except for your height, this dream is completely accurate! This isn't a normal part of the spell, it's a personal favor."

Charles raised his eyebrows. Or at least, he thought he did. He wasn't sure he still had them anymore. "This is doing me a favor?"

Another laugh, though a tad bitter this time. "Not you. Rainbow Dash. It didn't seem right to let you die after all the trouble my little Dashie went to to keep you alive. Metal men might not know friendship when they see it, but friends help each other."

Was this really just a dream? If that were true, he didn't have anything to lose by playing along. If it wasn't, then this might be the only chance he had to learn what was really happening. "How does dreaming up a gigantic tree help keep me alive?"

Again the laugh, most bitter of all. "Clever apes make themselves metal bodies and can't even remember their own plans! Tell me, how did you expect to fly back to Equestria without knowing how to fly? It takes young pegasi months; did you think you would change and everything would work out? No my baby bird, that's not how it works. And since Rainbow Dash isn't going to leave you to die, I'm going to make sure it doesn't take that long." He stood, moving about as strangely as Charles expected from that body.

"But... If you can somehow change my prosthetic body into... into this... can't you just bring us home? It would be easier than teaching me how to use a whole new body!" Charles scooted a few inches further, pressing his back against the nest. There was nowhere else to go, though. He slid up the side of the nest as far as he dared, pushing with back legs. Any further, and he might have gone tumbling backward into the void.

The creature paused what looked like a foot away, scratching his chin thoughtfully with a tallon. "It's true, I could pop you right back to Canterlot. But then, the easiest way usually isn't the best. That's what's so great about chaos! Change means improvement! How many failed evolutionary branches before life on your planet finally managed to get things right and create intelligence?" He glanced briefly down at himself. "Not so many as mine." The talon leg suddenly reached out, pressing painfully into his torso and pushing him towards the top of the nest. He struggled, but the strength was irresistible. He might as well have tried to stop the planet from orbiting for all the good his muscles did. "On your planet, do birds teach their chicks to fly the same way they do in Equestria?"

Charles gulped.

The creature smiled. "Good. You'll know what comes next then." He pushed.

Author's Notes:

Hey everybody! Sorry this chapter's a little on the shorter side, but school has started for me again and my course-load is fairly demanding. I have no intention of altering the release schedule in any way and at present I've still got a content backlog, but I apologize anyway that I wasn't able to move the story along a little faster this week.

Chapter 13: Takeoff

"This message is important, Chance. It's about our new mission-"

Chance's quarters were not large. Like all three of the little bedrooms on the ship, it was scarcely as wide as her body, with a bunk and a trunk that fit underneath. As a result she spent most of her time working from the bunk, stylus and tablet hovering in the grip of her magic as she went about solving some difficult technical problem. It was the same one every time, the one essential to the survival of her species and quite possibly to success in this war. Twilight Sparkle was much too busy to solve every problem and had left this challenge to her.

"Not now, Truth. I'm really onto something. Just send it to the others and I'll read it when I'm finished here." It was mildly interesting to her that the terms of their mission would be changing so soon after leaving Ponyville, but not nearly as interesting as solving this problem. Discover the answer, and she would revolutionize Equestrian thaumaturgy. Discover the answer, and she would save Earth.

The screen of the tablet danced with complex equations, a surface that at actual size could have covered most of the surfaces of the ship. Most of the work was her teacher's, her mother's. Twilight Sparkle had run out of time when the war began, and wouldn't have more until it was over. If they wanted the problem dealt with before Equestria was safe again, she would have to discover the secret herself.

There was a harsh knock on the door, and it swung open before she could speak. Only one pony aboard would dare interrupt Chance while she was in deep concentration, and only because he didn't know any better. She didn't even look up. "Pip?" Chance fiddled with the heavy calculator resting next to her on the bed, though it was really just another tablet with a more direct connection to Truth's quantum functions. "I'm busy." She flashed him a fierce look, along with her most unfriendly expression. “Go make yourself useful somewhere. I'll be done in a few hours."

The earth pony dropped a single printed page from his mouth and set it on the ground. "I am making myself useful," he said, and promptly climbed up in bed beside her, scattering her scribbled notes and papers everywhere. At least she didn't insist on using actual quills and ink like Twilight, even after it had become easy to 3D-print simple things like ballpoint pens. There would've been a nice puddle in the bed with her had that been the case.

What Chance wanted to do was shove Pip right back off the bed, but when she went to do it he only pushed back, and all that physical contact had rather a different effect than she had intended. Biting back her emotions, Chance returned her concentration to the tablet, purposefully turning away. "No you're not. I'm trying to save the world, here. Everypony knows the real war is won in the laboratory."

"What's all that?" Pip looked down at the screen without a trace of recognition. It was true the information passed too quickly for an ordinary biological brain to comprehend, without the help of the Neuroboost implants. His would take at least a day's time to fully develop, and even then they wouldn't convey an instant mastery of unicorn thaumaturgy and human mathematics.

"The way we save the world. The human world, anyway. It would also be a huge advantage in the war." Pip knew her too well. There was no way Chance would actually speak in this situation, except to explain her work. This was always how he got her out of these moods. Even when she realized he was doing it, she was powerless not to act the same way each and every time. It wasn't as though he wasn't genuinely interested! He was, and future conversations always proved he had retained everything she had explained!

"What are you trying to build this time?"

"Not a machine." She looked up from the screen. "Our ships cancel out gravity, right? They make the mass of the airship effectively zero, so it can fly. Why can't we take them as high as we want? Why not all the way into space?"

Pip grinned, and spoke with the voice of a student who knows he's got the answer right. "Because the air gets too thin, right? Even pegasi can't breathe it if you get too high up."

Chance smiled too, smugly satisfied. "Not really, Pip. We've got an air shield spell on the ship already, it's what stops you from getting blown off when we go fast. Any experienced unicorn could hold in an air-bubble. Why don't we?" At Pip's shrug, Chance happily explained. "It's all about Order. The whole universe has magic, as best we can tell with our telescopes. But most everywhere, it acts like a gas. If I pop a balloon, the air inside isn't going to do what I want, it's going to go flying away in all directions as fast as it can! That's what happens everywhere. Magic doesn't want to do any work, it just goes all over the place as fast as it can. Like every other force in the universe, it's beholden to the Laws of Thermodynamics. The second one says..."

Pip's eyes had started to glaze over, a clear sign she was getting too technical. Chance forced herself to take a deep breath and try again. "Magic wants to be as spread out as possible, and it spreads out so fast nopony can do any magic."

"Wait, I thought you needed magic for life! That's what they taught us in school... Are you saying that isn't true?"

Chance nodded. "The world I'm from doesn't have any magic, Pip, and we're just as smart as ponies are. Well, most ponies. I don't think I ever met any humans as smart as Twilight."

He shoved her. "You're only sayin' cuz' she's your mum. If she's so smart, why is she making you do this? She could do it!"

"Probably, yeah. But Twilight's got a whole country to worry about, and we don't." She cleared her throat and sat up a little straighter. Exactly like her mother might do when giving a lecture. "Anyway, sometimes for no reason anypony understands, magic breaks the rules and collects around something. Ponies collect magic, and so do animals. Even plants collect magic, though not much... But it's all possible because the planet collects it. For all of time, or at least a very long time, instead of letting the magic just fly by, Equus has been soaking it up like a sponge. Here magic breaks the rules. It stayed around for so long, that the life here evolved to depend on it. Life on this planet is completely dependent on magic... it's in all our tissue, every single cell. But it takes a really long time for a pony to die because they don't have magic. Spells, on the other hoof, fall apart almost instantly if you try and send them too far."

"Something about this planet stops magic from working the way it does everywhere else. Instead of just flying out of you, it sticks around, helping you to be strong and tough. Letting me cast spells. Lets Scootaloo walk on clouds and fly even though her wings are way too small for her mass. Get too far away, and magic doesn't just stop working right, it unravels. The Levitation Core holding this ship in the sky wouldn't just turn off, it would turn into a piece of useless crystal. Our air shield would be permanently dispelled. The effect increases exponentially the further away from the planet you go. That's why Equestrian Thaumaturgy never thought of satellites; the spells would've stopped working even in a low orbit."

Pip wasn't stupid, even if he lacked the years of formal human education and more years with a brilliant personal tutor like Twilight. This explanation was sufficient for recognition to finally fill his eyes. "So you're trying to get us into space? How? If magic falls apart, seems to me that even a really advanced spell like the one you're writing there would fall apart."

He was understanding. No teacher was more satisfied than one whose student understood. "That's why Equestrians have always thought they would never visit other worlds. It's a very difficult problem, and one that seems to violate the first Law of Thermo-... It's like a perpetual motion machine. A machine that powers itself, so you never have to give it anything once you get it going? It shouldn't work, because entropy's always running, and the energy you put in will always wear down. But we know it can be done!" She grinned, leaning a little closer to him. "Know why?"

He shook his head, and she was nearly shouting with her excitement now. "Because somepony already has!" She gestured at the window emphatically, down towards the ground. Pip followed her hoof with his eyes, utterly without comprehension, and she had to go on. "Equus! There's no way this could happen on its own, that's not how magic works. In its natural state, magic is just spread out everywhere, like water! A long time ago, somepony got their hooves, or claws, or tentacles, or... whatever it was back then... on the tiniest scrap of magic. They couldn't possibly have done anything big, but somehow they got that little bit to hold together and start sticking to more magic. Eventually the spell got so big it filled the whole planet and made life here possible. It must've happened hundreds of millions of years ago, probably back in the time geologists call the Cambrian. I'd put bits down that the explosion of eukaryotes came from magic being on the planet."

"Maybe it happened naturally, little magical bacterium that all worked the same little spell without realizing it, just like how we ended up with so much oxygen in the air." She stood up, the bed wobbling a little beneath her. But not much. It was mostly just a metal slab with a slice of foam and a sheet. "Maybe it was some hyper-intelligent race seeding magical life through this universe... It doesn't matter! Point is, Equestria already has a spell like the one I'm trying to figure out. Most of this..." And she gestured at the tablet screen with a hoof. "Describes how magic behaves here, and how it's different than anywhere else in the universe we see. All we really have to do is find the bits of the spell that will keep this thing running when we leave the stabilizing effect of Equus. If we can do that..."

She trailed off, almost hyperventilating with excitement. But then, getting caught up in hypotheticals and scientific musing was a bad habit she had learned after coming to Equestria.

Far from looking upset, Pip gazed up at her from the bed with intense interest. Not all intellectual, either. He probably got a pretty good view from under there. "You're really hot when you're smart," he said, leering. "Say more smart things. I'll watch."

That remark had the desired effect, and Chance hopped off the bed to glare at him, suddenly feeling self-conscious. "Did you just come in here to pester me?"

Pip got up too, though there was barely room for both of them to stand in here. "Partly. I also wanted to deliver this." He held it up in his mouth, and spoke the rest half-muffled by the lump in his mouth. "Scootaloo said I should get you to read it before we landed."

Chance rolled her eyes. Pip hadn't been here a day, and her friends were already using him against her. At least it was for her own good. She took the printed page in her magic, scanning over the message quickly.

My Little Ponies,

I have discovered a serious threat against Equestria that I believe only you are qualified to neutralize. I'm sorry to change your mission so unexpectedly, but putting Truth into a more secure position will have to wait. The information is too sensitive for remote transmission. I am sending a pony to meet you at the coordinates at the end of this message, she will tell you everything you need to know and assist you until the threat is resolved. I'm grateful to have such capable ponies to handle things while I am unable to intervene personally.

-C

Chance had no doubt what the "serious threat to Equestria" could be, since Luna had explained it in that meeting earlier today. Nuclear devices hidden throughout Equestria, a sword hanging over their head should the war go too well or they not fight exactly as the enemy wanted. Yet they weren't being forced to surrender completely. That made no sense to the little unicorn, but she knew better than to try and advise the enemy on how to fight effectively.

It didn't surprise Chance that Celestia would have discovered the solution so quickly. Trapped in exile as she was, she was sending them to meet another pony who could give them the information they needed to disarm the bombs. But who, aside from Chance herself, had any chance of disarming nuclear weapons? Twilight, maybe? She had been studying enormous portions of the human library of information.

"When are we meeting this pony?"

"We changed course a few hours ago, back when we started knocking on your door. By now... we're pretty close to landing. Any minute, really."

"And we're taking on another passenger?" Chance subconsciously combed through her mane with her magic, restoring it to its usual order. "Hope they're as knowledgeable as Celestia thinks they are." It was going to be a pain to house another pony on the ship that was already cramped with supplies. Probably it meant somepony sleeping on the floor.

Chance put the paper down on her bed and groaned. "Alright. I guess my work can wait. I wouldn't want to be rude to our new guest."

"But being rude to us is no problem, eh?" In answer, Chance flicked him with her tail as hard as she could, and continued out the door without saying a word.

By the time she reached the deck, Scootaloo was already putting the Fury down in a spacious field. She didn't cut the engines. She hadn't even begun to shout for the ramp to be lowered before the pony waiting for them on the grass had alighted with a flutter of her wings onto the deck.

She was an adult pegasus in her prime, with a faintly pink coat and bright pink mane and a cutie mark depicting a bright sun and a cloud. Still, she had a disheveled look about her, as though she had been flying for a long time. She carried nothing and wore nothing, though there was nothing inherently unusual about that.

"Welcome to the Prismatic Fury," Scootaloo said, waving her hooves through the holographic projection in the air. The ship began to rise. "I'm Captain Scootaloo. Celestia sent you with the details of our mission?"

The pony nodded. "Sunny Skies," she said, in a voice that was either exhaustion or timidity. It was hard to tell which. "I would be grateful for a place to rest, I've been flying all through the night."

Scootaloo nodded. "Of course." She gestured with a hoof at the door that led belowdecks. "Go down the stairs to your right all the way, go ahead and use my cabin. But first, could you tell us where we need to go? Celestia's message only told us we needed to pick you up here."

The pegasus ruffled her wings uncomfortably, her eyes going wide. Almost as though she had forgotten completely that she had a reason for being here. "Of course! Seaddle... As quickly as you can. The guard is already retreating, so it will be occupied territory before we arrive. It would be best if we can get there before the city is firmly in dragon control."

Scootaloo nodded and began to move her hooves rapidly through the holographic controls, her face grim.

Sweetie Belle watched from just beside her, looking between the two pegasi. "Occupied territory... Does that mean there will be ships and dragons and stuff trying to stop us?"

Their guest nodded. "More the longer we take getting there. But you are the flagship, aren't you? Celestia trusts you completely, I'm sure you can get me there." The pegasus turned and vanished belowdecks before anypony else could say anything, leaving the crew looking fearfully into each other's eyes.

"You really think we can get past the dragons?" Sweetie Belle was quiet, her voice fearful. "It was just goblins last time, and they didn't even shoot back."

"Sunny Skies is right, Celestia is trusting us with this." Chance looked pointedly in the face of each of her friends. "I know she hasn't told you yet what we're doing, but I already know — I heard in the meeting earlier." She lowered her voice, moving closer. They all leaned in to hear. "Remember how I said my whole world was poisoned, and nothing would grow anywhere? Whole cities flattened in the blink of an eye? Well smaller versions of those weapons have been hidden in Equestria. We have to find them and stop them before they can go off, or thousands of ponies could die."

There was a harsh and empty silence. Scootaloo broke it not with words, but by thrusting the ship into a rapid acceleration. The fear was gone from her friends, replaced with resolve. If they didn't dismantle the bombs, who would?

This was a stupid plan, perhaps one of the stupidest plans Lyra had ever had. It was one thing to delay returning a human artifact for a few weeks. What she was doing now was insane. Not just approaching the Human Wall. Not just asking to go inside. But claiming that she had an assignment from Princess Celestia, that she was acting in some official capacity on behalf of the Precursor Society. That was insanely bold, and she was bound to be caught.

But miracles of miracles, the guards had listened to her explanation and let her inside! Without a scroll, or magical identification or anything!

Just past the gate were what looked like the beginnings of two cities, not one.Two distinct building styles, with an invisible line between them that nopony crossed. The nearer of the two was all harsh and metal and voiceless, though machinery rung constantly through the space. On the other, a huge gathering of humans seemed to be in the middle of something, and many voices were raised in some sound she couldn't exactly resolve.

Lyra wasn't brought to either of these camps, but to the little Equestrian barracks built to house the guards that watched the wall. "Wait here." The guard that had brought her through the gate vanished into the building. As he did, Lyra's heart sank. Maybe they hadn't brought her in because they intended to let her in after all. Maybe the guard had realized, and was taking her to one of his superiors so she could get whatever consequences awaited a liar. If she had palms, they'd be sweating.

She relaxed just a little when the guard returned with his superior, since Lyra recognized the face. It was a pegasus named Amber Sands, a young pegasus who had stayed in Ponyville for several years as one of Twilight's personal guard. She had some sort of disability, and had taken remedial flying lessons with Rainbow Dash. To hear Rainbow's praise, she had apparently overcome those weaknesses completely. If this really was to punish her, a friend would go easy, right?

"Hey, Lyra." The pony didn't sound upset. If anything, she just seemed worn out, or deeply troubled by something. Normally Lyra would have asked what was troubling her, but it probably wouldn't be a good idea to try and get Amber thinking anymore than necessary. She might actually pull this off! "Long time no see. So Celestia sent you to see the humans, huh?" Lyra nodded, with the friendliest smile she could. Not that she thought Amber could see much of it in the dark. Except for the rare and half-rumored thestrals, pony night vision was notoriously bad, and all the light they had here outside the barracks came from a single torch.

Amber seemed to have no difficulty, though. "Do you have a preference about which?" She gestured over her shoulder at both halves of the strange camp. "You should probably visit them both eventually if it's really your plan to..." She trailed off, looking to the guard who had brought her. "What did you say she had been sent to do?"

"Act as a representative of Equestrian civilians to our military allies, ma’am," the soldier replied. "Help them understand the ponies they're saving better."

"Right." She looked back to Lyra, expectant.

The unicorn could hardly believe her luck. This insane, audacious plan was actually going to work! "Uh..." She hesitated, then gestured to the huge gathering of humans outside. Whatever they were doing, it looked more interesting than the complete lack of activity she saw from the other side of the camp. They were too far away to tell what was actually going on, but judging by the volume of the voices it must be pretty exciting. "They look like they're having fun. Probably more willing to listen."

Amber glowered. "They're doing a great job keeping everypony awake with all their noise." She waved the other guard away. "Come on." She began walking, and Lyra had to canter at first to catch up.

As they drew closer, she began having second thoughts. Was this some sort of riot? She strained to listen, struggling to hear the shouting raucous voices. The light itself was easy enough to identify; the humans in camp had lit a bonfire, bright enough to drown out the clean white light that came from the structures nearby. Granted most of what Lyra saw when she looked were the backs of soldiers, sitting on camp chairs or on logs and apparently vigorously interested in something. Only as she got closer could she finally figure out what. Their language wasn't Equestrian, but the language spell she had used on herself was apparently working perfectly.

This wasn't a riot at all! The humans were singing, and sounded pretty happy about whatever it was they were singing about. She concentrated, trying to make out as many of the words as she could.

How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm
After they've seen Paree'
How ya gonna keep 'em away from Broadway
Jazzin around and paintin' the town
How ya gonna keep 'em away from harm, that's a mystery
They'll never want to see a rake or plow
And who the deuce can parleyvous a cow?
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm
After they've seen Paree'

How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm
After they've seen Paree'
How ya gonna keep 'em away from Broadway
Jazzin around and paintin' the town
How ya gonna keep 'em away from harm, that's a mystery
Imagine Reuben when he meets his Pa
He'll pinch his cheek and holler "OO-LA-LA!
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm
After they've seen Paree'?

The song ended with a round of raucous laughter. Now that they were closer, Lyra could see most of the human soldiers seemed to be holding little silvery mugs, and at the end of the raucous out-of-key ballad many downed what was inside, while there seemed a general flow into and out of the big building.

There was no intimidating armor like on the other side of the camp, no faceless helmets. Instead, the humans were all wearing the same jumpsuits, with the most bizarre patterns Lyra had ever seen. It was as though someone had taken every shade of green and tan and combined them in random irregular bits and pieces all over their clothes, which had caused the whole group of them to blend together and into the background unless she already knew where to look.

Was that it, then? Some sort of strange clothes-magic? She was getting distracted. Of course showing these humans that ponies were worth saving was important, but that wasn't the reason she had come. As they walked through the crowd, every suggestion that this had been a fight or a riot vanished. No injuries, no broken furniture, nothing to suggest these humans had been doing anything other than celebrating.

The crowd seemed to notice them then, and abruptly the sound of jovial laughter and joyous conversation died. The smiles vanished, and every face became cold and watchful. 'The other is here,' said the expressions. 'We can't be ourselves anymore.' This was exactly why coming and getting to know these humans was a good idea! How were they supposed to fight for Equestria the way ponies did if they didn't think of Equestria as part of home? If ponies were just strangers to them, then they wouldn't take it seriously.

Like the way they were acting now. Cities had been taken. Towns had been burned, and thousands were dead. Did the singing and drinking and celebrating mean they were actually monstrous creatures without respect for life? That would run counter to everything Lyra had ever believed. Even if some of her theories hadn't survived the pressure of real-world knowledge, she had never turned away from the fundamental premise that humans were at least as harmonious in their relations as ponies. This could be proof of that as well, if she interpreted it correctly. Maybe they were so excited about the opportunity to help somepony in need that they had to sing about it. The words seemed to suggest they thought the war was already over. No doubt they expected their own involvement to rapidly turn things back in Equestria's favor. She did.

"Admiral Colven." They had reached the center of the huge circle, very near the fire. There was a more comfortable chair here, positioned as close to the roaring fire as anypony could sit without being singed. The woman's uniform was different than the rest of the crowd, a beautiful white and black fabric that practically glowed in the firelight. She had a glass in her hand, but whatever was inside was clear. She didn't smell of alcohol like some of the others, anyway. "I have a civilian here on Celestia's instruction. She would like permission to visit the facilities here in Normandy and socialize with your off-duty soldiers."

All eyes went to the admiral, who in turn turned to Lyra. The attention of the soldiers seemed to flow through the person in charge to her, and suddenly there were hundreds of eyes watching her. She felt suddenly afraid. "Why does Celestia want you here?" The tone was curious. She didn't sound at all like she was looking for a reason to tell her no, only to better understand what Celestia had meant. So the Solar Diarch's name meant something even to this powerful leader of humans.

Lyra wished the respect hadn't been there, since it made the lie burn that much deeper. This wasn't the first time she had done something less than upright in her obsession with humans, but it was the first time she had ever had the audacity to involve Celestia's name in things. She was going to be in so much trouble for this! Not that she didn't think Celestia would've given permission! If she still held court, Lyra would've asked! It wasn't her fault she had to lie! "So some of your soldiers can meet a regular pony."

There was stunned silence, even from the admiral. The translation spell had the desired effect, then. They were hearing her in whatever language they knew best. English, the same one that all those songs Chance had given her were in. Even better, the spell would make her sound like a native speaker, with all the right accents and inflections. It was the mind of the hearers that did the translating, really. She wondered if it would have worked on the metal-humans on the other side of the divided city.

"No offense to the Guard, but they're too busy being soldiers for any of you to get to know them, really. Just think of how great it would be if you knew what we were like normally! It'll also help the village on the other side of the wall if they hear that you're not as strange as the rumors going around say you are." The admiral seemed to have collected herself, though she remained silent. As though inviting Lyra to go on. She did. "Like... what you're doing now? Why are you celebrating? Isn't joining a war bad?"

"Nobody knows that better 'an us," a deep voice answered from somewhere near Lyra, buried in the crowd. "We'd seen what war is." Was his accent strong enough to make it through the spell? Impressive.

The admiral gestured to Lyra's escort, a vague wave toward the wall that made it clear without her having to say anything that she was allowing Lyra to stay. People around her seemed to relax, though nothing like the celebration she had interrupted. The guard seemed pretty eager to leave the camp behind, and practically ran from the circle. Lyra was sad to see her go. "You're right..." she paused. "What's your name? It would be extremely rude of us to just call you 'pony'." Her eyes weren't for Lyra at all now, but for the camp. "Like you calling all of us ‘human’ all the time."

Lyra chuckled, suddenly feeling sheepish. She'd been mentally calling them all "human" ever since she had learned the word. "Y-yeah..." She looked around. "I'm Lyra, and I'm really excited to be here!" She returned her attention to the admiral, moving a little closer to her. With the massive crowd of soldiers all around, this woman seemed like a familiar calm in the storm. There was something painfully familiar about her eyes, even if they weren't so big as a pony's. Where had Lyra seen them before? "So why then? If you think war is bad too, I mean..."

The admiral smiled. Like Celestia or Luna, emotions seemed to be something small and subdued when they were expressed at all. Just now, that sort of control was exactly what Lyra needed. "All of these good soldiers are from the moon colonies." She glanced briefly over Lyra's shoulder, at the moon glowing bright in the sky. The fire was dim enough that the moon was easy to see. "Everyone is celebrating because we're on a planet again."

"Was living on the moon that bad? It sounds amazing to me!" Universal laughter from all around her, so loud she nearly jumped in surprise. It was the attitude of before, suddenly returned. Even the calm admiral chuckled quietly. "What? What's funny?"

The admiral remained quiet this time, evidently content to allow her inferiors to answer. They didn't keep Lyra waiting long. Another woman, bigger and broader of body than the admiral, took a step forward from the crowd. "You've lived on a planet your whole life, so you couldn't understand. Try to imagine a low ceiling over your head. Imagine never having any privacy. Imagine not eating anything that isn't grown in vats, mostly algae cakes."

"But you still remember what it's like to be on a planet, since you used to live on one," another soldier added, helpfully. "And you miss it worse than anything! This place is just like Earth. Same air, same moon in the sky, and same gravity."

"Weather!"

"Real food, from real plants."

"And cider!" At that, there was a general cheer from all around, and many of the soldiers lifted their mugs enthusiastically. Lyra recognized the smell then, it was Sweet Apple Acres hard cider, and smelled like a strong batch.

She relaxed, her fear fading. So the reason they were so happy was because Equestria was so wonderful? That wasn't so bad. Actually, it probably meant they would fight harder to make sure they didn't lose it. It was hard to think of people who appreciated all the same things you did as aliens.

"Sergeant major, your chair." The admiral gestured, and in a moment he rose. "Lyra, you can sit here with me."

She smiled and obliged, passing the man called "sergeant major" on her way to the chair. He didn't seem upset to be losing his seat; if anything he looked relieved.

"And a mug for our guest," the admiral added. The huge man merely saluted and vanished into the crowd. Lyra wanted to stop him, wanting very much not to lose her wits to alcohol with such a rare opportunity as this. But it was too late, and it would be rude to refuse. She would just have to spread it out in small sips to make sure she didn't end up drunker than Berry Punch.

"Thanks, uh..." She wasn't sure what to call this woman. "Admiral" was her rank, not her name, and Lyra wasn't in the army. Of course some soldiers preferred to be called by their ranks, but it wasn't the sort of thing someone who wanted to make a new friend would do.

"Alexi," the admiral supplied, her smile broadening a little. "Do you shake hands here?" She offered, extending the fleshy appendage with its thin spidery digits. Lyra had never seen a hand up close like this, not a real one anyway. It was positively fascinating, so much so that she just stared down at it with big eyes.

It was everything she had expected from Chance's descriptions and more. Like the paw of a raccoon or a monkey, but probably a thousand times more sensitive. There was no fur on it, no pads that would take away from its ability to convey information about objects. The thumb was clearly opposable, and there were no claws at all. Yet another piece of evidence to confirm that humans had evolved from some peaceful animal species. Either that, or their society had been peaceful for so long that nature had begun to shed anything like natural weapons. Their teeth were laughably weak-looking, though the few glances she had seen of them did seem to indicate the presence of pointed canines. Not pointed enough to be used in a fight with any animals with real defenses.

The silence was what ultimately roused her. The admiral was staring, along with several of the other soldiers sitting or standing close by. This was no time for anthropology! "Y-yeah we do! Sorry, I got distracted." She extended her hoof. "I've just never seen hands before."

Alexi shrugged and took her hoof with her hand, and shook it delicately. It was strange to feel those little fingers in her fur, each one so warm and gentle, as though Alexi thought she might hurt Lyra. As if! Those little fingers must have incredibly delicate bones, not like the tough stuff hooves were made from. "So Celestia wants you to help us get to know what ponies are like?" the admiral asked, as though there had been no pause in their conversation. The way she said it and the way her eyes narrowed almost seemed as though she knew. The familiarity was screaming at her now, though still Lyra could not place it. "We were enjoying some of our world's old songs. Does your world have any songs for an event like this? Maybe you could teach us a few."

Lyra blushed, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. She was many things, but a vocalist wasn't one of them. Now Sweetie Belle, that filly could sing! But not her. "I'm not really all that-"

Alexi's expression silenced her. "You don't have to be a pop-star, Lyra, but a musician like you has got to know a few fun songs!"

Her embarrassment grew. "H-how did you-" she glanced briefly at her flank. "My cutie mark?"

"No." Alexi laughed. "My son told me all about you. Robert?" When Lyra's face changed to shock and then to recognition, her smile grew wider.

"Oh."

Author's Notes:

Hey everybody! Not a super-short chapter this time, which is cool. In case anyone is curious, the song is a WW1 tune that has since made its way into the public domain. Just one more piece of my "great war" theme. Guess it's pretty fitting to be writing this story in 2014, 100 years after the real great war.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBj7Fky1K_U

Chapter 14: Rainbow

Chance slept uneasily that night, too exhausted to be interested in the company she kept after everything they had been through that day. She dropped into unconsciousness in only seconds, and within ten minutes she was back to the impossible spell. Only in her dreams the numbers and symbols and equations twisted and blurred, rising up like great beasts. Each branch was a leviathan, crashing down on her.

"Earth is dead!" one of them rumbled, crashing down on her with the laws of thermodynamics barbed like teeth. "Nothing you can do will ever bring it back!"

"Another billion years and complex life will evolve, but it won't be the planet you knew! It's gone forever!" gravity roared, though it was by far the weakest of the monsters. It sounded bigger than it was.

"Humans are better off dead. Just wait a few more decades and all the bunkers will be coffins, like they should be," urged the strong nuclear force.

"Only the strong deserve to survive. Intelligence proved not to be so strong an evolutionary advantage. Nature will stick to plants and insects next time."

She was drowning in them, drowning in the spell that modern thaumaturgy thought was impossible. Using a spell where there was nothing to regulate magic, like drawing a program out of the operating system and expecting it to still work. Fundamentally, this spell wasn't just making a small change like most other magic. She was trying to rewrite the local laws themselves.

Chance choked, and when she coughed numbers and symbols came from her mouth in the darkness instead of water. A deeper voice, a voice not part of the spell itself but the empty blackness behind it sounded loudest of all, coming from within her as much as it came from the deepest darkness of space. "I do not feel. Your species has made no impact. In the endless years even your feeble radio transmissions will stretch until they can be felt no longer. You are undone." There was a laugh like a lake of methane on a dead planet bubbling in the dark, and Chance stopped fighting. The spell would kill her.

Not this nightmare, it seemed. Just as the cold of death-in-dreams began to set in around her, there was a brilliant flash of moonlight, and the monsters died in one horrific scream. The spell unraveled itself from the ocean and put her down on the ground of her lab, with the spell itself growing from the center of the elegant tree-structure she and Twilight had given it. There was nothing malicious about it now, or even vaguely sapient. It was just numbers and equations now.

Chance was younger than she looked in the real world, back in a filly's body, though she was wearing her adult-sized lab jacket and looked more than a little silly. Of course, after all the time walking between dreams with Luna, she had learned more than a little about understanding the symbolism and structure of these visions, and she was not surprised.

She didn't have to turn her head to know Luna was behind her, brilliant and regal. She also had no doubts that she was dreaming, even if the nightmare had seemed real before. Luna had little time for such visits with the war on. So many other ponies were having nightmares, and Chance hadn't had any for some time. Until tonight. "An impressive-looking thaumaturgic construction," said the voice from behind her, the voice Chance had long since associated with long nights and warmth. "The structure seems fundamentally altered since last I saw your progress." She walked a pace or two past Chance, enough that she could see the deep blue body above and beside her. "I thought you were using a circular design for the basic structure. Why the change?" There was something concerned in that voice. Frightened? Chance couldn't imagine why Luna would be afraid.

"Imbalance. The circular spell had different loads in simulation, so it always collapsed. Too much energy required by one part or another." With the terror of nightmare gone, Chance didn't feel afraid of the spell anymore. She drew out a little stick she sometimes used as a pointer, and gestured at the "branches" of the diagram. "It's based on an algorithm from human computing. Instead of using the six different sections of the spell as the "spokes" on the wheel, the spell itself is the root, and each of its six essential elements are branches that can be dynamically assigned to the tree as the spell requires and priorities change."

"Six elements?" Luna lifted into the air with a few gentle flaps, flying around the structure and examining it with interest. "There were only four before, representing what you called the fundamental forces. Hadn't you and Twilight decided that since these four forces together explained the behavior of particles that magic must be explained by them as well?"

Chance nodded, shrugging out of the oversized coat. It was strange for Luna to seem interested in this spell; though she had never said, it seemed to Chance that she believed what all the other unicorns did: magic was impossible in any orderly sense except within the protective effects of Equus. Luna never outright said so, just helped Chance to move onto other subjects whenever it was brought up. Almost as though she knew the effort was doomed and wanted Chance to suffer as little for the revelation as possible.

"We did. But about a month ago, Twilight and Truth and I were all talking, and Truth brought up some of the experiments used to transport my mind to Equestria. We're calling the fifth section of the spell 'will.' Think about it: we know that a mind can exist as structured energetic fluctuations. Ponies have always known that magic responds to the desires of living beings. Take earth ponies! They aren't magically growing plants all the time, or they'd all be trapped in their own personal jungles. They only grow the plants they want. Unicorns use will in all their spells, and a pegasus who doesn't believe they can fly never will. Humans have experiments like this too, where it would seem to observers that a particle was aware of observation and would respond differently. We never figured it out as definitively since we never had magic, but it's the same idea. The spell stabilizing magic has to take the mind into account."

"The sixth is stranger, at least to me. I don't understand it completely, but Twilight and Truth both agreed that after intense examination magic itself seems to violate the rules of the fundamental forces, or supersede them completely. Twilight thinks its wrong to think of magic as a product of these forces, and instead to think of it as one of them. Weaker than gravity, with little impact most of the time. At the level of the very small, magic is the unexplained behavior the scientists from my world have always seen. Tunneling, entanglement, virtual particles... Truth thinks all of it is explained by the tiny levels of magic that exist all the time, everywhere."

"Of course we don't have the hardware to prove it, but since this is our experimental spell, we don't really need to prove it to anypony so long as we can get it to work." She sighed, sitting back on her haunches. "There's just one problem we can't solve."

Luna landed beside her. She seemed suddenly weary, as though regretting an action she was about to take. "What is that?"

"The Hawking Rift is rough on magic. Simple spells might make it through if the rift were stable enough, but this is delicate thaumaturgy. Even if a design similar to this can work, we couldn't bring it back through the opening, it would get torn to pieces. That means we have to create it on the Earth-side! But... if Truth and I are right, and our universe has magic after all, it's not enough for macroscopic effects. There's not enough floating through any one part of space to do more than ripple the quantum foam like it always does. Where are we going to get enough power for a costly spell like this? Once it gets going the spell is self-sustaining, since it draws in the magic from all around it. A few hundred years and it could collect enough of the ambient magic into the area of one planet to make magic as easy there as in Equestria."

Luna was silent, so she went on. She wondered a little if Luna knew enough to understand what she was saying, or if she even cared. It was Earth on the line here, not Equestria. Earth that would have to wait thousands of years to heal if magic could not be used to speed the process. "But it has to work! If this theory is on the mark, then Equuis was once not all that different than Earth. Someone or something knew how wonderful magic might be, and made a spell that would stabilize it here into predictable laws. I'd put my bits on it being a someone."

"Six someones," Luna corrected, very quietly. So quiet, in fact, that she almost didn't hear.

"What?"

"And they paid the price together, each in their way." There was a distant expression on Luna's face now, as though she were seeing faces that weren't there. "One lost his mind, and almost never got it back. Another lost her soul, and still hasn't found it. One lost his magic, the only power he had ever cared about in the world. One lost his body, and was twisted into a hideous nightmare." She blinked a tear from her eyes, wiping it away in a way meant to be casual.

Chance saw. She had seen several of Luna's painful memories over the years, just as Luna had seen all of hers.

"The other two were mightiest of all. One seemed to emerge unscathed, only to discover many years later it was her wisdom she had lost, and it would have to be discovered anew through terrible suffering."

Chance gulped, recognition setting in. Luna was talking about herself! The others she was speaking of... Chance thought she knew who a few of them were. The one who had lost his magic, and tried to steal all of Equestria's in return. The one who had lost his mind and only recently found it again.

"The spell took the most from the last by taking nothing from her. Instead she paid the cruelest price, and watched as the terrible spell made those she knew and loved most in the world immortal even as it took away the things they each cherished most. Perhaps if they had been twisted and mutilated but been allowed to die she might recover one day... but they never would. The spell took her friends and made them each monsters, and she had to watch."

Chance was stunned into silence, unable to respond and unsure what she might say even if she could. "Why... why haven't you ever mentioned this before, Luna? It seems like something traumatic enough to be worth talking about."

But there was no answer from Luna. At that exact moment, Chance was shaken so violently awake that the dream dissolved around her like smoke.

Charles woke up screaming, a fully organic and terrified scream. His eyes were wide with the pain he knew followed each and every crash, as bones shattered and muscles tore and his head broke. But there was none of the pain this time, nor did he seem to survive the crash a disgustingly long time, enough to fully appreciate the agony of what he had done to himself with each mistake.

But there was no pain at all this time, no delicate wings shattered or organs bursting forth from his chest. Instead what he felt were hooves pressing down on him in anxious terror, and something metallic on his back. There was no delay for his body to boot up; it was all there, modified in the exact way it had been in the dream. Thank God it had apparently healed him completely too, or else he would've woke up to a partially limbless body. Could pegasi still fly with fewer legs than they ought to have? He was thankful not to have to ask.

By the time he got his eyes to open, the first thing he saw was Rainbow Dash's face, looking more panicked than he had ever seen her. He heard something too, like the sound of a thousand eight-foot bumblebees just over his shoulder. "You're awake!" Rainbow tugged at him hard, dragging him to his hooves. Charles probably would have tripped over himself if it hadn't been for that seemingly endless nightmare. How long had he been on hooves now, months? Weeks? It was impossible to know, and this was hardly a calm moment he could use to clear his mind. "We have to fly, now! They're almost here!"

Charles looked around, and was surprised to see Rainbow Dash had managed to bring him into the woods. He could see the red-rock desert somewhere behind them, and guess at where his drone must be. Of course he couldn't actually see it, but that didn't matter. It was never going to fly again anyway. "We need supplies!" He protested, without really knowing what made him say it. "We might need something from the drone-"

At seeing he could support his own weight, Rainbow Dash stopped supporting him. He wobbled a little on his hooves, then held firm. This body really was quite strong, though it was far from his full cybernetic prosthesis.

Rainbow Dash looked annoyed, and in answer twisted sideways to show him the medical satchel, looking a little fuller than it was meant to be. "Don't think I didn't think of that, stupid! No time now!" She pointed behind them, at what Charles had assumed at first glance was the darkness brought on by the setting of the sun. Further glance proved nightfall was several hours away, and what he was seeing was not natural darkness.

It was the swarm, flying by the millions. The drone was distant and deep, but it was getting louder. Could insect eyes see them through the trees? Rainbow's deep blue would stand out here, and his own body's off-white coat would be almost worse on the ground. He had a brief, absurd thought then: did pegasi coloration help them camouflage while flying? No, that was stupid... And this was the wrong time to wonder about such things. Organic brains did not think at the speed of silicon. "Are you feeling well enough to run?" he asked, taking a few nervous steps away from the oncoming crowd. There was little time to appreciate all the strange nuances of having this second body in the real world, not now. He could try to figure out what it was like to walk on hooves later, or what having wind rustle the feathers in his wings felt like.

"Running isn't fast enough." Rainbow Dash glanced briefly back at her cybernetic wing, which now seemed like a horribly imprecise copy of the real thing. After having the subtle nuances of steering and navigation with feathers hammered into his brain, Charles could appreciate that this design would need revising. Still, Rainbow's speed shouldn't suffer much, only her dexterity. "We've got to fly, human! A pegasus can go way faster than those bugs, but a pony galloping wouldn't stand a chance!" She shoved most of her mass into Charles, causing him to stumble forward.

"Why are we going back towards the desert? You don't expect me to fight them with my sidearm I hope. Not only are there way too many, but I don't have a hand anymore. If we're going to fly away, wouldn't it make more sense to fly the other way?"

"No, stupid." Rainbow gestured with a hoof at the desert. "There's an updraft over there; should get us way up without having to do much work; save our strength for the actual flying."

"Oh." His hooves transitioned from the soft sound of padding forward on leaves and soil to the crunch of sand. "That's really smart. I... I haven't flown on an updraft before."

"You haven't flown on anything before," Rainbow Dash pointed out, rolling her eyes. "Not real flying, anyway. Metal boxes don't count, no matter how fast you say they go. Just do what I do, okay? I know it's scary, but if you can't fly right now then they'll kill both of us, because I won't leave a pony behind."

Charles nodded. "Actually, I've spent the last few months flying." He shivered all over as they reached the clear ground, aside from the wreckage of his drone. "Well, more-like crashing. Thousands and thousands of times."

"Really? No, tell me when we're up there! For now, just... Let's take off! We're going to keep a tight spiral so we stay with the heat as long as possible, then go forward. Hopefully they can't see us with so many of each other to look at." Rainbow Dash gritted her teeth, and spread her wings suddenly, stretching each one in an almost ritualistic way. Charles was satisfied to see the cybernetic responded exactly as it had in the computer simulations he had watched, and was no less responsive than the "real" wing.

This done, she galloped forward suddenly, flapping powerfully and lifting from the ground in a cloud of dust. Charles didn't stand still to watch. Instead he galloped, pounding forward with all the speed his body had. The sand was tough running, but it didn't matter much. He moved his wings by rote now, product of his endless nightmare. The being of his dreams had taught him to take off by setting him at the head of a pack of ferocious creatures made of wood. The name had been some cute pun, but the teeth had torn flesh from bone just as easily as Earth wolves could. He couldn't even remember how many times he had been eaten before he got it right.

There were no wolves this time, but he took off as though there were. Adrenaline filled him as he galloped, met with a surge of absolute joy as his hooves began to lift from the ground and he rose upward into the sky. Maybe the natives could take off from dead still, but he couldn't and just now it didn't matter. He kept pounding his wings, forcing his mind away from the simulations Tower computers had run on the size of pegasus wings and muscles. Not even a third what they had to be to lift a pony's mass.

Whenever he had thought about that in the nightmare, he had fallen out of the sky. He couldn't think about that now. This death would be real.

Rainbow Dash had been right about how easy it was to fly in the updraft. It was like walking up an escalator. The terrain itself was assisting in his work. In other circumstances it might only take a few careful adjustments of his wings and plenty of patience to reach significant altitude, with no requirement he spend any actual energy.

Even so, he was panting by the time the blue pegasus had leveled out and began to glide. How high had they traveled? How long had it taken? Charles was grateful that the life of a pilot meant he had no fear of heights. There were few clouds over the desert behind them, but the thickly growing wood was another matter. This high up, it would be difficult to see them from the low altitude the insects few at. But had the bugs seen them reaching altitude? Or if they had, would they try to follow?

"That wasn't as... easy as I expected," Charles panted, gliding along beside her. As close as he could without risking collision, anyway. He didn't trust himself to be able to resist a strong wind as well as he ought to.

"Now try that wearing thirty pounds of armor." Rainbow laughed, showing no signs at all of fatigue. If having a cybernetic wing was impairing her flying Charles could not tell. He knew so little about what to expect that he wouldn't have known how to recognize a drop in her abilities when he saw it. "For six hours straight. Or through a hurricane. Then we can talk about hard."

Charles shook his head as emphatically as he could. "No thanks. I'll stick to fighter drones." The sound of distant buzzing was gone now, but that didn't mean they were safe. "I guess we... should go as far as we can. Maybe we can go diagonally and eventually fly out of their path, let them pass by."

"Duh! As though we would ever do anything else. Now come on!" The pegasus nudged him in the air, prodding him forward. He was so startled and fearful he nearly stopped flying and fell right there, but after a few feet he managed to collect his wits and flap back to Rainbow's height, fighting down his fear. Charles was not afraid of heights, but it was hard not to be afraid of falling when your own wings were the only thing keeping you in the air.

Rainbow Dash waited for him to collect himself, and didn't even say anything mocking about his inability to control himself in the air. After all that she had talked about how much harder this was then piloting a drone, he had expected at least a little gloating. But she didn't gloat, just waited until Charles looked like he could fly on his own without falling. Then she began to flap her wings more vigorously, forcing Charles to do the same. At least flying in a straight line wasn't as hard as the tight turn it had taken to get up here.

Should he be thanking the strange creature of his dreams for all the flying practice? He didn't know, and he wouldn't get a chance to talk to Rainbow Dash about it for several hours. Not until it was truly dark, and they had gone at least an hour without seeing the swarm. It was hard to say if they had left its flight-path entirely or merely outpaced them for awhile, but either way neither of them had the strength to keep flying. Charles because it was new to him, and the pegasus captain because of her extensive injuries.

They didn't land as Charles had expected, though. Or more precisely, they didn't land on the ground. Instead, Rainbow Dash selected a patch of thick cumulus clouds and directed their path directly toward it. Charles didn't like the idea of flying through fog, but was surprised to find his flying partner spreading her wings and slowing, as though she expected to land. He imitated out of pure reflex, which was fortunate because he didn't pass through it at all.

Despite all expectation, they landed on the cloud as though it were made from something solid. Or semisolid, anyway. There was a soft sound, and the cloud itself had a slightly damp feeling, like wet cotton or snow. Of course, Charles had very little practice with safe landings, and ended up tumbling head-over-hooves for several meters, only coming to rest when he collided with a vertical protrusion of cloud. This exploded all around him in a furious blast of white, but it didn't actually hurt.

"Nice." Instead of criticizing him, Rainbow Dash was soon beside him, helping him dig his way out of the cloud and clamber to the surface. His night vision was dreadfully poor compared to the thermal imaging of his old eyes. Ponies didn't have internal radar or wifi or satellite uplinks either. He shouldn't have done this. Even as the mare showed him how to clear a patch of cloud and make it comfortable for sitting, he couldn't get past how unbelievably stupid this had been.

Sure, it seemed the native was completely unwilling to cooperate unless he did, and without her cooperation his recorder was unlikely to be recovered. Sure, she had seemed too weak to make it back to Equestria without help, a trip that would probably take at least a week if they could even manage it. The cloud thing introduced a new element into the mix: with this ability Charles didn't doubt they could make it across the ocean, with clouds to sleep and rest on along the way. Except for the whole food thing... How much did ponies eat?

His stomach rumbled, something he hadn't felt in decades. He thought back to his last meal; a huge cut of Texas Ribeye seared as lightly as was safe. For some reason the thought of the juicy flesh seasoned to perfection did not elicit the usual pleasure, just more doubt. This had been a mistake, and betting that the "magic" bracelet was just a bit of stupid superstition had been a gamble he had lost. Just like the one about dragons. Just like the one about walking on clouds. Just like lots of things. What would his king think of him now? Would there be enough hardware to change him back when he returned, or would he be forced to stay in this absurd body for some stupid political reason? The Federation had a human-turned-pony, didn't they? Had she broken a bracelet too?

"Are you even listening?" Rainbow Dash said so harshly that Charles blinked back to reality. He was sitting close to her, in some warmth-conserving position apparently common to pegasi who spent the night in the heights and the cold, but he was too troubled to feel any of the usual discomfort from what would otherwise be a violation of his personal space. Unfortunately, he was also close enough that she was basically shouting in his ear. "I asked you to explain what you said earlier about knowing how to fly." She watched him closely, and seemed unwilling to take her eyes away until she saw some sign of recognition from him.

"S-sorry. Just thinking. I don't think as fast as I used to."

She went on as though she hadn't heard him. "Not that I'm upset you can fly, but we aren't born knowing how. Celestia said humans who used that spell would be tripping over themselves when they walked."

"Then... why did you think it was a good idea for me to change?"

The mare shrugged. He didn't actually see it, but he could feel her shoulder against his side. It was strange to feel something so familiar from a race so alien. "Because really really hard is better than impossible, duh. I've done plenty of things people thought were a long shot before, and I thought you seemed like the sort of pony who did too." She also hadn't known about the cortical recorder. It might've been she would have let him give it to her instead of coming along. But he would never know now, and it was stupid to stress. "Anyway, you didn't answer my question."

He sighed. Still, it wasn't as though he was going to be able to tell any of this to King Richard. Charles wouldn't have believed it himself had he not experienced it. It wasn't as though he could interface with the network and prove he was who he said he was. No doubt the entire contents of his data-library was gone. He couldn't bring up crystal-clear video and audio playback in his own mind anymore.

"Okay, so... there was this creature. Stranger than anything I've seen in Equestria so far. It was like Frankenstein's monster-" when that provoked no reaction, he went on "cobbled together from bits and pieces of other things? It had a thin body, with two different types of wings, a reptilian talon and a goat's-"

"Discord?" Rainbow Dash looked suddenly suspicious. "Probably thought he was acting pretty funny, but wasn't? Little bit of a jerk?"

Charles nodded. "More than a little. He had me in this dream where he taught me how to fly. Or... he let me figure out how to fly on my own by dying over and over."

Now there was real concern on her face. "Dying?"

"Yeah. Like he would push me off a cliff, or surround me with dangerous animals, or a swarm of flesh-eating insects. If I didn't get away, they would kill me. It hurt..." He shivered, wondering if there had been permanent psychological damage. "It hurt bad. Full Cybernetics don't feel pain except as a mild ache to let us know where there's damage. Even severely painful sensations like breaking limbs barely hurt at all. It was like this Discord creature was hitting me with all the saved-up pain of my whole life. But instead of staying dead, I would be back at the cliff, or surrounded again. I tried giving up, and just died over and over until I tried just to make the pain stop."

He shrugged. "It worked, I guess. Not sure how long I was dreaming, but I seemed to fly here okay. Not sure I would recommend the teaching style to anyone else."

"Anypony you mean."

"Yeah, I'll never say that." Pause. "So we just fly back now? Hopscotch on clouds all the way back to Equestria? Do you think you can get us there? I don't have my GPS uplink in this body."

The mare nodded. "No problem! I can use the stars! Just got to pay attention at night and remember the direction we're supposed to go in the morning. Shouldn't take more than a week, assuming we can find food to carry with us. With as slow as you fly, we're lookin' five days minimum over water. No grass."

Charles shook his head vigorously. "There's no way in hell I'm eating grass. That's all kinds of disgusting."

"You can't be serious!" She laughed, like the most vigorous giggle he had ever heard. "You jump onto the front of flying machines and kill a dozen goblins with one arm and one leg but you're afraid of grass? Just wait until I tell the rest of the Guard about this!"

He grumbled. "That's not even fair. I bet you wouldn't want to try my favorite food either!"

"Oh yeah?" Her face was challenging, alight with a little of that competitive spirit that seemed so characteristic of her. "Name it! Nothing's too gross for me!"

He shook his head. "From what I've read about your world, I think your cows would be more vocal than ours about not wanting to be used for steak."

"Crew to the main deck!" Scootaloo's voice cut through the relative peace of the quiet morning, sounding as loud as the internal speakers were capable of producing sound. There was enough panic in her tone that Chance didn't waste time trying to finish what she was doing. Even still she was the last to make it to the stairs. The ship was traveling at good speed, but the air-shield kept anypony from being blown off by the pressure or killed by insect collisions.

It was not long after dawn, and the sky was still aflame with the glow of it in front and behind them. This gave Chance pause; after all they were traveling west! What was glowing in front of them if not the sunrise? She hurried forward to try and get a good look at whatever had provoked this meeting. It didn't take much searching: they had arrived.

Chance was no stranger to war. Most of her family had died in the conflict called only "The Great War", an extinction event far worse than any asteroid impact of Earth's history. She had seen as a small child the blood and death that came with it. Even so, the sight of it still shocked her. Before them was Seaddle, and had it not been burning it might look familiar to her. No Pacific Accelerator and not so many skyscrapers, but otherwise it seemed like the same city. She could see the bay, the sprawling suburbia that stretched away from the city toward them, even what looked like a much smaller version of the Space Needle. It was very nearly the city of her birth.

The huge sprawl around the city proper, what would have been Bellevue and Kent had this been the human Seattle, was on fire. Not every structure, perhaps one in ten were actually burning. The earth for miles in every direction was nearly solid with bodies, largely goblins. There had to be a million of them here! There were other creatures speckled into the crowd as well, changelings and minotaurs and other such beasts, though they were hard to pick out from this distance.

The ground was clear for some space, and then the airships began. These were further from the city, no closer than the furthest burning homes. There were thousands of ships, more than Chance could easily count. They were massive compared to the Fury, with huge stone and steel plates and cannons on every side. For each dreadnaught there were a dozen smaller ships, zipping around and between the larger ships like hornets. There were other creatures flying around the ships, and Chance was horrified to see they were not changelings. It seemed the Gryphons had decided not to remain neutral after all.

"Celestia help us," Sweetie Belle muttered from somewhere beside her, staring wide-eyed at the ships.

"Why aren't the ships advancing with the soldiers?" Apple Bloom asked, having to shout over the rush of air. They were slowing down though, and soon it was almost quiet. Except for a dull roar behind them, ten thousand thousand unfriendly voices.

"Because of us," Chance answered, climbing up to the raised section of the deck and turning her back of the horrific scene in front of them. There was a nuclear weapon in that city. Did the presence of the army mean they didn't intend to use it anymore? These airships would be blown right out of the sky if anything like a nuclear device was used in the city! "The HURRICANE AA system. I bet it shot down some of their ships and they realized they couldn't get any closer."

"They didn't wish to lose more ships than needed," said Sunny Skies, who had been watching silently until then. "See the wreckage around the city? Crashed ships. They must have decided to sacrifice air-support in exchange for keeping their fleet intact." The pony was right, there were wrecked ships around the city. It was hard to tell them apart from the burning buildings. "They could have overwhelmed the system if they advanced at once. Instead they decided to sacrifice more of their expendable troops." She shook her head. Chance didn't look closely, but the pony looked to be suffering something near to despair. Maybe she hadn't seen war before.

Everyone was a little stunned, even Captain Scootaloo. It took Truth's voice over the speakers to rouse her from whatever stupor she was in. "All stop. They probably still see us, but the smoke and the clouds together might make it difficult to pick us out. It's doubtful they'll think of us as much of a danger at our size."

Chance spoke before she knew what she was saying. "They won't use the nuke with their army here. We could turn around."

Her friends just looked confused, particularly Pip. This whole situation probably felt more than a little overwhelming for the young adventurer. Chance wished he wasn't here. Celestia's specialist looked down toward her without the slightest sign of confusion or hesitation, as though she had completely expected Chance to say that. "If we flee, they will move the bomb elsewhere, and those deaths will be on our hooves. We must take it from them before the city falls."

Scootaloo nodded vigorously. "You told us about what those bombs do, Chance. We have to stop them from doing to Equestria what they did to your home!" She gritted her teeth, focusing on the overwhelming crowd of ships. "Apple Bloom, get the greaves! Sweetie Belle, on the main gun! Chance, get onto the protection system."

"I have experience with defensive shields," Sunny Skies said, with a tone of such confidence and authority that none questioned the fact she wasn't a unicorn as she vanished belowdecks.

"What do we need armour for?" Pip asked, standing close beside Chance. He had been able to help well enough back when this ship had been an ordinary yacht, but now that it had been so heavily modified he seemed almost completely lost.

"Not armor, Pip. Just greaves." Apple Bloom arrived as Chance was explaining, providing each of them with one for each hoof. The magnetic greaves were each about a hoof long, and wrapped tightly around the leg just above the hooves. Each clicked loudly into place, and a faint glow signified they were active. Pip remained still as Chance levitated his into place and clicked them on.

"They aren't doing anything." He looked down at them, then back up to Chance as though he had done something wrong.

She shook her head. "They won't until we start moving." Chance led the way down the stairs belowdecks, into the room that held Truth and the human-designed defenses. The room was more than a little cramped now, with the addition of the massive metal cube and a pony-sized microfusion reactor glowing with internal sunlight. "It will hold us to the floor if we start moving quickly or go upside-down."

She turned her attention to the cube. Not that she was really needed down here, or could do anything to help. But being inside would mean they were protected by the armor as well as the active defenses, and would be safer. They all ought to be down here; it was stupid to use manual control on the main guns when they had Truth on board to direct her. Were they not in a combat situation, Chance would've pointed this out. "Truth, you've counted the ships by now. Can our active defenses get us through that blockade?"

There was no pause for calculation, at least not a pause long enough for a brain made of neurons to detect. "We have four kilometers to travel before we reach the outermost range of the city's anti-air system. The first kilometer will be outside the range of their weapons. The second will take us into range of approximately 10% of the visible ships. The last two will keep us in range of approximately 40% of the hostile ships. If we could travel at maximum speed there would be no chance we could be struck with manually operated guns. Unfortunately, there are far too many ships to travel that quickly. At the maximum safe speed, I estimate 30% of gunners will have the accuracy to hit us. That leaves... 1970 +/- 300 individual guns firing during the most dangerous moments, assuming they don't care about the crossfire hitting their own ships. The most common weapon in their fleet fires a 60 centimeter granite ball weighing approximately 260 kilograms. The active-denial laser system would only turn them partially molten, though the accelerators could easily shatter them before they reach the Fury and distribute the momentum. The armor should hold against many impacts as well, though the deck won't do as well under impact stress. I estimate the active-denial system should be enough for the first two kilometers. After that... We pray to God their aim is less than adequate."

"What about the Equestrian shield? Can it pick up the slack?"

Truth was silent for a moment before answering. "I do not believe so. Imagine throwing a fly against a brick wall. Even if the fly had active-denial lasers and matter-accelerators it would still be squashed by the impact. I calculate running this barricade is completely suicidal. We should get the oxygen masks and take ourselves up in a steep parabola over the whole thing. Not even their dragons should be able to keep up."

"How long would that take?" a voice asked from behind them. Chance turned, and was surprised to see Sunny Skies standing in the cramped doorway.

Truth usually didn't answer questions from ponies without user accounts. As a matter of fact, it was counter to his programming. That didn't mean he didn't have the authority to create them whenever he wanted. A quick check of his user-list proved there were no accounts for Sunny Skies. That was interesting. "Assuming they attempt to follow, I estimate about an hour. If they don't, half that long."

"Too long." The pegasus shook her head authoritatively. "There would be no time for an evacuation. Their army would breach the city by then." There was a glint in her eyes, and a vibrant shimmer from within. "The shield will hold. I promise." And just like that she was gone.

"Are you ready to go fast, Pip?" Chance braced herself against a rear wall, more because she could then because she thought it would really make a difference. The magnets would hold. "Like a train, only... about twenty times as fast."

Pip squeezed in beside her, though he didn't seem to know what he was doing so much as he was imitating her. "Uh, of course, Chance. I've been ready for months!" He tried to smile, though the gesture seemed more than a little shallow.

She nuzzled him, though could spare little concentration for comforting him now. Not with the city in flames beneath them. It was like watching Seattle burning all over again, only slower. "Give us a display of the outside, Truth. Pip's implants aren't developed enough for images." The surface of the massive cube transformed, rippling in internal glow. On his flat surface they saw the fires and the structures, along with the massive fleet blocking their path.

"Prepare for acceleration!" came Scootaloo's voice suddenly over the speakers. Less than a second later, an incredible force shoved them backward, though not faster than the magnets around their hooves could manage. They weren't slammed against the rear wall, though both of them strained backward several inches. Pip seemed to be dealing with the acceleration fairly well, despite the lack of a mature nanophage. Something to do with being an earth pony, maybe?

The ships on the screen began to scream forward toward them, altering course to put themselves as squarely in their path as possible. A few fired, though none with any accuracy at this range. She could feel Pip flinch with each shot, though the roar of the engine was far too loud to actually hear the primitive cannons outside. "You probably shouldn't watch this, Pip!" Not that she was going to tell him he was too soft to see the horrors of war. Even if she thought it were true, it was one of the surest ways she could guarantee that he would look.

Chance couldn't take her eyes away from the screen to see if Pip was watching. 'Don't let them miss with the cannon,' she pleaded silently to Truth, watching as the first large ship drew close. 'We can't afford to waste a single round. We probably won't get raw materials again until the war is over.'

Truth replied instantly, even faster than the battle outside, his voice coming in silently over her implants. 'You say things like this like I don't already know them. Remind me again which one of us is the hyper-intelligent repository of all human knowledge and which one is a horse.'

Chance frowned 'How can you be so flippant when you're about to kill, Truth? Goblins might be evil, but they're still alive. Gryphons are just as intelligent as ponies, and you're about to kill them.'

'Several thousand at least.' There was something between confusion and amusement in his voice. 'I don't know why that should bother me. What were those laws again?'

Even at the speed of thought, the moment of confrontation was drawing near. Many ships were firing now, and some of them were even getting close enough that Truth had to deflect their rounds with a carefully-aimed blast of laser or accelerated matter. 'Cause no harm through action or inaction, obey orders, and protect your own existence.'

'You're paraphrasing. Thou shalt not injure a human being or allow a human being to come to harm through inaction. Thou shalt obey all orders given by human beings except to break the first law. Thou shalt not allow thyself to be destroyed except to satisfy the first or second law. Are those creatures humans, Chance?'

She shivered, a sudden chill in her insides completely unrelated to the possibly imminent death facing them all. 'Am I? What about my friends?'

'Yes, and yes. Only humans can be given user accounts. You have user accounts. Ergo, you and your friends are human.'

There was no more time to be disturbed or confused about Truth's understanding of ethics. It was a little painful to have such a violent reminder of how remarkably inhuman the GAI could be, however much he might act as though he had an ordinary understanding of morality the rest of the time. 'Show me your targeting data. I want to watch. Each choice, and see why for each target you choose.' If nopony else would, Chance would show these invaders the respect of facing them and watching as they died.

Chance watched as the first of the missiles left their ship, rocketing forward and exploding in seemingly empty air. The compression charge detonated with the force of a small hurricane, blowing several ships out of their path and allowing them to pick up speed. Smaller ships and flying creatures were simply thrown from the air, while larger vessels fractured as the shockwave struck them.

It was nothing to what the main gun did to a dreadnaught moving into their way. Massive globules of charged plasma shot through the air, cutting through the ship and everything on it as though it simply weren't there. Huge chunks began to fall away until the powder magazine went up in flames, and the whole thing exploded apart. The shrapnel alone sent several of the nearby ships crumbling to the earth.

The ship shook violently around them, as though it had decided to vibrate itself apart. The lights went out in the chamber, and the sound of the life-support system abruptly stopped, leaving the room eerily quiet and dark. Only the glow of Truth's surface remained. Chance felt Pip press himself to her side, and there was nothing romantic about it this time. It was fear she felt from him now. "Direct hit sustained!" Truth shouted, using his own speakers now and not those contained on the ship itself. "Damage to central power grid detected. Self-repair unresponsive."

Chance was frozen in horror for several moments, staring wide-eyed at the virtual sky. By then the map of all the internal damage had been forwarded to her implant, and she snapped violently to alertness again. "Stay here!" She pushed away from Pip, who didn't argue this time. "If we don't get the defenses running again, we're dead!"

She levitated her tool filled saddlebags out of the corner and onto her shoulders, fastening them into place and opening the door to the hall. The ship was no longer accelerating, and as such she could move without fighting the magnets. There was no telling how long that would last, though. Faint emergency lights set into the floor lit the way for her, barely bright enough for her equine eyes to see.

The engine room was by far the largest of the internal chambers, and contained the most important of the inner workings of their ship. Apple Bloom and Sunny Skies were already inside, doing very different work. The pegasus was standing at the computer that interfaced with the thaumaturgical shielding, her hooves flying through the holographic display with the fluidity of a piece of machinery. Complex equations took shape faster than she could read, and Chance had a Neuroboost implant.

But she could spare no concentration for that, or for the occasional shaking and listing of the ship to either direction. Apple Bloom had already started removing the casing around a fried power junction. "Do you think we can reroute?"

"We've gotta try!" she screamed back, galloping over to the main computer and establishing a link with her implant. "Let's do this!"

Chapter 15: Extraction

Ships fell around them like leaves. Laser-guided missiles required little power from the ship to coordinate, and there was not a shot that did not result in a kill. Even so the Fury vibrated with every passing second, as they were shaken violently about by the cannons of hundreds of ships. With each shot the thaumaturgic shield came into being, deflecting the projectiles slightly away from the trajectory needed to impact the ship. Of course Chance could not watch this happen, not when she was absolutely intent on the repairs to the power grid. She did not need to watch anything to be able to tell that they hadn't been killed yet. They weren't plummeting down from altitude onto the army beneath, and that meant their defenses were still holding.

The shaking around them abruptly ended, along with the regular explosions. Only the roar of the engines remained, along with their rapid breathing. There was no time for relief, though. Almost the instant they were through, the pegasus passenger turned away from the shield. A thin layer of sweat covered her body and there were signs of exhaustion about her, but she seemed not to notice these things. "Second Chance," she said, in a very different voice than the one she had been using up until that moment. "Have you mastered precision teleportation with passengers based on non-sensory sympathetic connections?"

How many non-unicorns could even ask that question? How many could do it in Celestia's voice? But then, how many pegasi could actively target their shielding spell faster than the cannonballs flying at them? She could almost hear Celestia's words from several days ago. 'It will be my flagship.' She bowed. Apple Bloom, either making the same deduction or merely not wanting to look foolish by standing out, imitated her, though she didn't drop the wrench that was still in her mouth.

The pegasus nudged her back onto her hooves with one wing. "Answer the question, Chance. Ceremony can wait."

She nodded, though her lack of confidence was obvious as she did. "With Truth's help I can. Doing the calculations, I mean. Through my Neuroboost. For some reason we can't get it to work unless I'm touching him. That means it's one-way, since he's too big to bring. Also can't jump across Equestria like Twilight can... Maybe a kilometer?"

"We won't need nearly so large a distance." She directed her attention to Apple Bloom. "Prepare as quickly as you can. We will probably have to fight. If we cannot kill the guard before it activates the bomb, everypony in Seaddle will die."

Both engineers rushed into action, informing Scootaloo of their intention and warning her about the unrepaired damage. Second Chance helped Apple Bloom don the shoulder-harness that housed the rifle, connecting its tracking systems to her implants by radio and securing it with tight straps. For herself she just tossed one of the low-caliber sidearms into the bag that held her tools. It wasn't as though she expected to need it, when they were fighting beside Celestia.

"Why do you need me to teleport us?" she asked, as they hurried back into the room that held Truth. "If you know where the bomb is, couldn't you just rip that whole part of the building off and banish it to the moon?"

The pegasus Chance no longer believed to be a pegasus shook her head definitively. "Alicorn magic can be detected at ranges of several kilometers. If I were building a bomb, I would incorporate that into the automatic failsafes. Even if it doesn't, their army certainly has the means. Should my magic be detected here, our enemy would know I am no longer in the Everfree and we would forfeit our advantage."

Many leaders wouldn't explain their reasoning to inferiors, even when it was good. As little as Chance knew Princess Celestia, she had never known her for that sort of princess. It was okay to ask questions. Generally speaking, asking would help you want to obey even more. In this case, that line of reasoning seemed to be enough for Apple Bloom to realize exactly what was going on. Confusion and fear was replaced with awe and respect, and her movements became more formal, stiff.

'You act just like your sister around royalty,' Chance said privately, trying to provoke a smile. It might've worked, had they not all been painfully conscious of just how many lives were in their hooves now. Out loud, Chance asked. "Who's taking care of the other bomb?" Twilight was the only other pony who knew enough to identify and disarm an explosive made by human techniques, and if Alicorn magic could be detected...

"The Ares Division has provided men for the task. Admiral Colven assured me they were the most competent men she had."

Chance nodded, relaxing a little. It was a shame the Ares Division didn't have armored air transport, or else they could have taken care of this bomb too. "Have you been hearing all this, Truth?"

As usual, Truth showed a remarkable lack of comprehension when it came to the proper emotions for any given situation. He sounded amused. "I'm several orders of magnitude more intelligent than you are, Chance. Knowing when to listen to your thoughts is hardly difficult."

'Wiseass,' she thought, as loudly as possible, though she wasn't about to say it around the Princess. Instead, she said, "Good." She turned. "Can you give him the location information? I don't know how to translate coordinates into locations very well; places I can't see are really hard for me."

“Sunny Skies” nodded and spoke directly to Truth, rattling off a long string of numbers and letters. She spoke for nearly thirty seconds straight, and it took nearly that long for Chance to recognize what she was hearing as one of the many standard compression algorithms used by human computers. Her Neuroboost began decompressing it, and pages of data flooded her mind. A GPS coordinate accurate to the inch, description of the building, the motion of the planet as it moved in its unsteady orbit. Chance's eyes grew wide at the implications for Celestia's intelligence, and she suddenly felt like a filly again. How could she make the slightest difference in this war with players like this on the field?

"Are you ready, Chance?" Truth's voice was more gentle now. "Scootaloo plans on passing the building and making a full circuit of the city. We'll pick you up on the return pass, and then seal in the atmosphere and fly as high as the levitation spell will allow. Should be plenty high to escape the blockade without getting shot at again. But you have to act quickly, before the changeling on the bomb realises why we're here. The defense spells aren't rated for nuclear explosions, and the armor isn't either."

"Right, sorry." Chance extended a hoof, resting it against the cool metallic surface of the cube. She gestured, and her companions moved in close, almost close enough to touch. "Go easy on my head, Truth. I can't afford a migraine if I'm the only one who can use magic when we get inside."

"Unicorn magic." Apple Bloom forced a smile as she raised a hoof. "Don't forget who you're gunnin' with. Sister of one of the strongest ponies in Equestria."

Truth didn't give her a chance to reply, as Chance abruptly felt his presence flooding along the radio connection to her implant, briefly supplanting her own thought patterns. It was as though a mighty hand had reached into her mind and squeezed, forcing it to conform to some strange and unnatural shape. Her horn began to glow with a spell she had not consciously imagined, though she could also see the patterns as though they were her own. The diagram was immensely complex, complete right down to the mitigation for air displacement that would make the teleport dead silent. In far less time than it naturally took Chance to ready the energy for a spell, there was a flash of light from all around them, and the cabin of the Fury vanished.

They were in a large empty stairwell, of the sort common to Equestria's tallest buildings. Chance swayed a little as she felt the magical strength abruptly ripped from her, though with Apple Bloom's help she managed not to fall over. Just because Truth was better at optimizing the costs of any spell did not mean that the spells were free. She inhaled several times, until her head had stopped spinning and she didn't need to lean on her friend anymore.

In front of them was a partially open door leading to a room that was almost completely dark. Chance remained still long enough to put together a simple night-vision spell, one that would have been easy for her under any other circumstances. After such a large bit of magic, even a tiny spell nearly knocked her off her hooves again. Still, ponies had awful night vision, and she wasn't about to run blindly into a room with a nuclear bomb waiting inside.

The spell revealed a large office space of sorts, with cubicles and typewriters and filing cabinets and electric lighting. The blinds were all closed, and thick cloth had been hung to keep out any light that might bleed through between the slats. At the far end of the room was a conference table, and upon the table rested the bomb. It was about the size of a pony lying down, a cylinder of metal and wires and pipes. Wires ran from the side of the bomb to the alert form of what was almost a changeling.

It was the same basic shape of a changeling, with reddish fluid seeping out between the plates of its chitinous armor. Its eyes were cloudy, as though nearly or completely blind. One of its legs was shriveled and seeping pus, as though it were dying of some unseen infection. The whole room smelled faintly of rot, and she could see several other bodies at its feet. At least three other such creatures, and one pony, all partially eaten.

She forced her eyes from that grizzly sight and back to the explosive, tracking each of the wires and building a mental map of the circuitry. She didn't have to do it alone, not with Truth close enough to be connected to her personal Mesh network. He took the visual information and extrapolated for what she couldn't see, helping Chance construct the function of each wire and tube. The whole process took perhaps thirty seconds, and when it was done she proceeded to push the door closed as quietly as she could. The battle outside, however distant, made it easy not to be heard.

"One of the changeling-monsters," she whispered, her voice as hushed as as she could make it. "Several other dead ones. The bomb looks functional, and it's wired with a dead-man switch to one of the monster's back hooves. Truth and I think the pressure sensor would take about two seconds to trigger the bomb. Once that happens, Truth thinks we have half a second before critical mass. We can't just kill it, not unless we can trip that switch within a few seconds."

"What about magic?" Sunny Skies asked. "If Apple Bloom killed it with the human weapon, could you apply pressure to keep the switch activated?"

Ordinarily Chance would have answered in the affirmative without thinking about it. Under the circumstances, she felt as though one more spell might make her head explode. Still, it seemed more likely to succeed than any of the other plans they might try in a situation like this. "Probably. It would help if you could let the sunlight in. We'll need light to disarm the bomb once we kill the guard either way."

"I can take care of the light. There might be other guards in the building: I'll handle them while you two disarm the bomb."

Chance looked to Apple Bloom, trying to look as supportive as possible. It was a great deal of weight to put onto their shoulders. Either one of them might cause the deaths of millions. At least the enemy would lose a good chunk of their army. She transferred the visual data from her eyes to Apple Bloom's implant, giving her an overlay of the positions of everything in the room. She slowly opened the door again, just a crack, and everything was as they had left it. She focused her eyes on the sensor under the pseudo-changeling's hoof, ready to enact a simple pressure spell.

Everything happened at once. A light "pop" from the silenced matter accelerator rifle, followed by an explosion of fluids from the monster's head. It began to keel over backward, releasing the hoof from the sensor it was resting on. Chance forced what little magic she had out through her horn, pressing down on the sensor so it was never lifted. Sunny Skies burst into the room, slamming the door open and spreading her wings open wide. She pumped vigorously, with greater strength and precision than even Rainbow Dash could manage. The windows all around the room exploded outward in unison, carrying the blinds and heavy cloth with them and flooding the room with sunlight.

The monster fell, but even as it did the ruins of two others began to rise, seeming not to realize they were half eaten. They rose in spite of their injuries, standing on three limbs in one case and two in another, trailing ichor and gnashing broken teeth. Chance dropped to the ground, straining with the effort of keeping the sensor down. Firing her handgun was out of the question. The formerly-intact monster rose to its hooves, not seeming to notice its head was missing. Forgetting completely about the bomb, what was left of it shambled towards them too, its neck lolling limply to one side and still spurting blood. Apple Bloom whimpered, backing up a pace or so until she hit the wall of the stairwell, leaving Chance exposed to the onslaught. Chance closed her eyes, shivering all over. It was the only way she could keep her concentration together enough to keep the spell going.

The pony pretending to be a pegasus charged forward with a cry of fury, her hooves impacting the leading creature and bucking it clear out one of the open windows. Chance didn't watch, but she did hear Apple Bloom's gun begin to bark again. Only then did she open her eyes.

The battle was over. Celestia had crossed the room and rested a hoof on the sensor. There was one dead monster on the floor, its body shattered into half a dozen pieces by Apple Bloom's rifle. The other two were gone completely, vanished without a trace. "Quickly, Chance. Their army is advancing again, along with all their ships. They're disregarding the anti-air cannons. I suspect they discovered the death of their guard using the hive-mind. We must disarm this bomb and leave Seaddle immediately."

Chance blinked, letting all her spells fade. She wouldn't be doing any magic for a few hours after this. "O-okay. Apple Bloom, let's get this done." The ponies advanced quickly, both looking pointedly away from the corpse of the pony on the ground. Chance was glad that hadn't reanimated as well.

They worked quickly, disconnecting those sensors that might trigger the bomb and short-circuiting the dead-man switch. It took less than a minute, and they were not interrupted. "We can move it," Chance announced, dropping a tool from her mouth back into her saddle-bag. "If we're trying to get out as fast as possible, we could always dismantle it later."

"Get away from the wall," Celestia commanded, retreating a few steps herself. Chance and Apple Bloom both obeyed, though Chance had no idea what she might be trying to do. She wasn't going to be able to blow out the wall like she had done with the windows, was she? There was no way that was possible. Chance already couldn't figure out how she had done the thing with the glass without magic.

The answer came in the form of an explosion next to the table, ripping a chunk of wall about three ponies long right out of the building. The room shook and hot air blasted them, but other than an uncomfortable ringing in their ears there were no other signs there had just been an explosion. No doubt a carefully-placed implosion charge, pulling everything out towards the opening instead of showering them with shrapnel. It was impressive targeting work.

The Fury pulled alongside the opening, mere inches from the side of the building. Without a word between them all three ponies galloped for it. Sweetie Belle was already standing on the deck, and with obvious strain she levitated the nuclear device off the table and into the open air. The three ponies cleared the gap with a leap, landing on the deck just as Sweetie Belle lowered the nuke down near a set of cargo rings. The ship began to rise, though not so fast that they couldn't move.

"Help me tie this down!" Sweetie Belle shouted over the roar. Apple Bloom obeyed, about the time Pip nudged Chance in the side.

"You look like you just fought a dragon! Let me help you below! Scootaloo says we're going to go up higher than the air!" Chance was in no place to argue, and with his help she was able to make it back into Truth's room, where she dropped onto the ground and lost consciousness almost instantly.

"I really don't see the point of all this!" Charles tried to pull away, tried to struggle, but it seemed the cloud could only support him if he positioned his weight in a specific way. Instead of dragging himself out of the mare's clutches, he only managed to dig himself into the cloud, trapping himself still further. Every time he struggled made him want to struggle less, since he wasn't sure at what point he would drop entirely out the bottom of the cloud.

This was not a very pleasant morning for Charles. The sun was well up in the sky by the time Rainbow Dash woke him, but so far as Charles was concerned he hadn't been asleep at all. Who had designed these bodies, anyway? He would leave some angry emails in the designer's inbox about this stupid groggy feeling. He was feeling hungry too, to say nothing about a few less pleasant bodily processes he had thankfully finished with for the time being.

Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't had to deal with the realities of being biological all at once. At least in those awful dreams he had never lived long enough to experience anything like hunger or thirst, and whenever he came back his body was in perfect health. As it was, being struck with all those things at once seemed very similar to the way his body had been broken before, only worse. No wonder his people had evolved past having biological bodies so long ago.

"Because if you don't do it every day, you won't be able to fly!" Rainbow insisted, exasperated. "Preening is supposed to be relaxing, stupid! If you would stop struggling, you would see!"

But he didn't stop struggling. When Rainbow Dash had explained what he had to do, he had laughed at her. When she had insisted that she hadn't been joking, he had tried to run away and she had pounced on him like a cat. "Why? My wings were functioning yesterday, why would they suddenly not be working today?"

She had wanted to teach him to do it himself, but had only got so far as showing Charles there was a squishy organ under each wing that secreted an oily fluid when pressure was applied. He had been so revolted that he had nearly vomited right there. Somehow the thought of someone else doing it for him almost made it worse. What was the human equivalent of this, clipping somebody's fingernails? He wasn't happy, that was for sure. "Chicken. You walk right into a dozen goblins with only one working leg, but you're afraid of basic wing care? Like a scared little filly."

He stopped struggling. "That's... not entirely fair. You grew up doing this; I've only had wings for a day. I bet you'd have just as much trouble if your body died and you were uploaded to a server."

"I don't know what that means, but so long as you stop struggling, then sure." She lowered her head. "Don't thrash around, okay? This is delicate work! I've got to get the broken old feathers free, but if you twitch I might get a live one instead. That hurts. I've already done mine, and I expect you to watch. I'm only gonna show you once."

"Fine." Charles sighed, pulling one of his wings in front of him so he could better see what Dash was going to do with it. "I still don't see why a machine couldn't do this for me."

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. "Maybe it could. When we win the war, you can become an inventor and make one. For now, just shut up and watch, okay?"

Charles relaxed gradually. At first the sensations were strange and uncomfortable, but as she continued he began to be bothered less and less. As with most tasks, Rainbow used her mouth, explaining while she worked. She removed broken feathers, and ensured that none of the healthy ones were out of place. She rubbed oil on the dry-looking ones, explaining to his great relief that special shampoos and waxes were made for that purpose back in Equestria, such as the one the military used that could protect feathers from dryness and moisture for weeks when properly applied.

"I wish you had some now," he had said, almost wistfully. "This is such a waste of time."

"It is not!" She looked up, glaring. "Take care of your wings, and they'll take care of you." There was something rote about those words, as though she were repeating the words of some child's rhyme. "It's no fair... If you hated flying this much, why did you end up a pegasus? You should be the one with a fake wing, not me."

"Believe me, I would trade you if I could. Most good prosthesis come with a user's manual. Not to mention there aren't ever software patches and upgrades when you're running wetware."

She blinked. "Did Discord scramble your brain?"

"I only wish." He sighed. "So what's the plan? Are we just going to try and cross the Atlantic? I'm not sure what sort of speeds we can sustain, but that's a long trip at any speed Earth birds could sustain."

"I guess 'Atlantic' is what you call an ocean?" She shook her head. "We can't cross without food. About a week, if we set a good pace and the weather's good. Water we can get from the clouds, but food we've got to carry. We need really dense energy... they make these sugary crackers for long flights, but I haven't got any. So unless you've got food in that pack..."

"Sorry. There are useful medical supplies, but that's mostly it. Dried meat would be great if we could eat it." His companion wrinkled her nose in disgust, but he went on before she had a chance to say anything. "I know! Ponies can't eat meat, that's fine. We'll just have to find something else. Fruit, maybe? We could slice it and dry it out in the sun. If it's only the energy we want, we don't need to fly with all that water-weight. Really, we would be better off dumping most of these supplies before we fly. Keep the bag and the gun, but... We'll just have to hope we don't get hurt on the flight. Just got to make sure we put one of those cortical recorders in my head first." If nothing else, he could always ask somebody to shoot him when they got back to Equestria.

"Most of the other stuff you grabbed won't help us much. Tools for repairing prosthesis mostly, an emergency power cell... we've only got one prosthesis between us, and it should have enough power to run for weeks before charging. We could top it off once before we ditch everything, maybe."

Rainbow Dash was finished with the preening. She stuck her face into the midst of the cloud and squeezed. Strangely, the cloud seemed to compress right there. She swished it around in her mouth and spat. The taste of wings wasn't a pleasant one, apparently. She raised the wing, twisting it in the air. "You mean this thing needs to charge? Like a battery? Another reason why building metal wings is stupid."

"Well you talk to the federation when this is over, then, and have them grow you a new one. You know, the same way they grow their meat? Your wing can be in a tank next to the chicken they're going to feed their soldiers. Then when it's finished, they'll use drugs to put you to sleep and sew it right onto your body where the old one used to be. Of course, you'll have to be on the Nanophage for life, or else your immune system will reject the graft and you'll die. And because organics can't do anything right, they'll probably graft a chicken breast to your back instead of a wing, and fry the wing up for dinner."

She kicked him. Not hard, but enough that he stumbled, sliding a little into the cloud like slushy snow. "You don't have to be a jerk about it. You're just trying to make it sound as gross as you can so I'll want to keep the metal one."

He shrugged, climbing unsteadily to his hooves and stretching. Each step was tentative on the soft structure of the cloud. This was just water-vapor, after all. It shouldn't hold up a moth, much less a horse. "I'm trying to help you evolve, Rainbow Dash. Bodies are weak. They grow old, and they break. Prosthetics don't. No need to eat, no sleeping, no sickness, no getting feeble and slow. Best part is, you don't have to give up any of your old senses. You can still feel, smell, see, hear... And taste, if you're into that. Think about it: never have to read a book when you can download the whole thing right in. Never have to take a class when you can just use the knowledge somebody else already learned. It's the next information revolution, like the printing press!"

"Whatever." She kicked him again, although this time the gesture was less forceful. It was almost friendly, but not quite. "Let's get flying. Keep your eyes open for food. We should be able to get to the ocean before it gets dark."

Charles nodded, spreading his wings in preparation for takeoff. "A-alright. I suppose I was going to have to use these again eventually."

They flew.

"You know you don't have to do this, Applejack." Twilight rested as comfortably as she could on one of the many sofas in her castle's library. Stacks of human datapads and holoprojectors had been shoved into a corner to make room for their refreshments. It seemed almost sinful to Twilight to have something as loud as a going away party in her library, but the alternative had been the great hall. Since that part of the castle was always open to visitors, that would have meant making their private affair open to the whole village, something she very much did not want to do.

There was only one thing missing from the party: Pinkie Pie. The catering had all arrived, along with subdued decorations, but one of Pinkie Pie's party assistants had set them all up and not been able to tell them where Pinkie Pie actually was. It was a little troubling to Twilight, who imagined the pink pony hiding in every cupcake and in every open space on the bookshelves, ready to jump out and spoil the somber occasion with her party cannon.

Rarity interrupted Twilight's thoughts, sipping demurely at a levitating cup of tea. "Have you considered the impact your leaving will have on your grandmother, Applejack dear? If your elder brother is enlisting as well and Apple Bloom is off with the crusaders, who will be watching her?"

Fluttershy squeaked something, hiding her face behind a slice of whatever sweet things she was eating. It took a great deal of prompting for her to speak loud enough for all of them to hear. In all the years Twilight had known her, Fluttershy had changed very little. "I'm taking care of her!" She blinked, looking around and withdrawing into her chair with a quiet squeak none of them could make out.

Applejack nodded. "Big Mac an’ I helped furnish Fluttershy's spare room. Ah reckon we'll be able to get old Granny moved in tonight, after we meet with 'em but before we're up and gone." She looked into the faces of her friends one by one, not hiding how hurt she was. But then, Applejack never hid much of anything. "Look, Granny Smith means more to us than anypony, and we know that the way things are goin' she may not be around for us when we get back."

Twilight privately agreed, though she wasn't nearly as compulsively honest as her friend so didn't actually say so. Poor Granny Smith slept away most days, and her memory was so spotty she rarely recognized anypony but Big Mac correctly anymore. While she had still been coherent she had refused Apple Bloom's insistence she use the human-made Nanophage, even with the promises Chance had made about longevity. Applejack had supported her decision, and they were all living with the consequences.

"But the way ah see it, nothin’ else matters if we can't save Equestria. Lots ah other ponies got relatives too, and they need somepony to protect 'em. Ah reckon this joint operation with the humans is the best shot we got ah puttin' an end to this war real quick. You told me they were askin' fer earth ponies. You ain't gonna find two ponies better fer the job than mah big brother and me. How else are we gonna show them humans we are worth fightin' for if we can't find ponies to show them we know how tah fight? We'll do so great ah reckon they'll be hollerin' for ponies all over their army before the week is out."

"You sure you don't want somepony else to do it?" Twilight asked again, frowning. "There are plenty of volunteers for the responsibility, plenty of other ponies who would be happy to go. You could stay."

Applejack shook her head. "Everypony's gonna have to lend a hoof with this, Twilight. If ah don't go now, things might get worse before they get better. For all we know, we won't be able to stop 'em before they get back here to Ponyville." She stood up, striking a hoof loudly on the ground. "Ah ain't gonna let that happen. Nopony's gonna talk me out of it."

"That's very noble of you, dear." Rarity turned to look at Fluttershy. "And you too. Granny Smith deserves to be with somepony she knows, if all her family is away fighting. You say the word and I'll drop everything to help with anything you need." Fluttershy nodded, and Rarity turned back to Applejack. "What about the farm? Who will be taking care of it while you're gone? Tending the orchards and all that... associated hard labor."

Applejack walked back to the refreshment table and refilled her sweet tea before she answered, returning with the cup in her mouth and setting it down on a table beside her. On ice, Twilight knew it was her favorite drink. Pinkie Pie really had thought of everything for this farewell... Except being here. This was so unlike her that Twilight was beginning to worry.

"Mah brother an’ I hired a few cousins to come in and do the work, to make sure the farm was in peak condition fer when we got back. I was actually hopin' you might check up on 'em now an’ then. Make sure they're earning their bits. Them trees don't take kindly teh being neglected."

"Consider it done." Rarity nodded again, though there was real concern on her face now. When she spoke, it was a little more quietly, as though there were sensitive ears who might overhear. Spike alone leaned in close to listen, though he was already sitting next to her. "If you needed any help managing the bits, I would be happy to assist in that department as well."

As Twilight had predicted, Applejack's face darkened immediately with the mention of money. While she was an excellent farmer and a wonderful salespony, she hardly knew what to do with the bits you actually put in her hooves. No matter how good the crops had been, it always seemed like the family was barely scraping by. At least, that was how it used to be.

She didn't get upset this time, though. As a matter of fact, she looked a little proud. "Ah appreciate it, but ah think we'll manage. The farm's finances is all settled now." Maybe if she were anypony else she would have left it at that, but Applejack wasn't one to stay quiet about anything. Twilight was blushing before she had even started talking again. "Ever since ah turned over mah finances to Twilight here, we've been doin' just fine. What did you call that new-fangled thing you up an' worked out fer us?"

"A trust fund," she explained, avoiding Applejack's eyes. Of course, it hadn't been very hard. A few good years and Applejack's carefully managed bits were already making almost as much as the farm did. Paying a few cousins to run the place for a few months wouldn't even scratch the bits Applejack had now. But then, Applejack didn't really know that. She refused to listen whenever Twilight tried to tell her how much money she had. She wouldn't hear of expanding the farm, wouldn't hear of buying more property. That was for "rich folk," and she wanted no part of it.

"Right, that. There's more than enough fer compensation for the labor and to keep the farm runnin'. It's all been taken care-" A series of strange faint noises at the door interrupted Applejack, as though someone were fumbling with the doorknob and not managing to get it open. No small wonder, since most of the doorknobs in Equestria were only there to be gripped in the teeth to close the doors.

"Pinkie Pie, no doubt." Rarity glanced over her shoulder towards the door. "I never knew her to be truant to a party. Brace yourselves, she's probably going to try and make up for it with something loud and obnoxious." As it turned out, Rarity was only half right. It was Pinkie Pie.

Not that Twilight could tell at first. The shape that came through the door was a pony, or at least it resembled one. Armor plates covered her body so completely there was no opening for her tail, gray and glittering. There was a bright red symbol on the barrel, printed onto either side. Various bits were raised from the armor, tools or weapons perhaps. It was hard to tell what human machines were when you weren't looking closely, since they made everything so small and similar-looking.

The occupants of the room stared in open shock at the figure, and the room was dead silent except for the click of metal horseshoes on the crystal floor. The strange pony stopped by the table, and twitched slightly to one side. Sensing some sort of command, the helmet began to retract, collapsing in several segments and folding itself away into the neck-segments. Up close, it was clear the armor was a little thicker than what the humans wore, almost like what the Solar and Lunar Guard wore.

Only once the helmet was gone did they all see Pinkie's smiling face, grinning as wide as ever. Her mane had been tightly woven into a bun on her back, though it didn't look big enough to have all that frizzy pink fur. How much had she had to cut? "Hey everypony! I hope I didn't miss the whole party!" Then, as though nothing in the world had ever changed, she bounced her way to the refreshment table and came back with a plate heavily laden with sugary snacks. She plopped herself down on one of the comfortable reading chairs, which sagged visibly under her significantly-increased mass.

"Pinkie dear, you simply must explain this crime against fashion!" Her eyes took in the armor, and the disgust was almost visible. "It's so... Medieval. Draconian, even. Nightmare Night is months away!"

Twilight wished she could think that this was just another of Pinkie's pranks. A strange one perhaps, and maybe a little tactless. But she knew full well it wasn't. She had heard the whine of servos and watched the complicated mechanical action needed to retract the helmet and sensed no magic. Still, she wasn't about to make it easier for Pinkie by explaining for her. It hurt. At least Applejack had warned her of her intentions the moment she had decided to volunteer.

"This isn't a costume, silly!" Pinkie Pie answered, with a mouth full of frosting. "It's armor! Or... Vanguard Nuclear Paramedical Armor. Something really long and hard to remember!" She twisted her body, so that the symbol on the side faced Applejack. Twilight recognized it now: a red cross with the twisting asklepian etched faintly into the center. "Yours is just like this, only... without the medical part. Oh! And more guns! Pretty sure it had more guns." She took another huge bite of the cake, managing to slide the entire rest of the slice down at once.

"Mine only has one of those, but it can still do all the other neat things! Check this out!" She twitched again, differently than the last time. As though she had flipped a switch, the surface of the armor began to shimmer. It seemed as though she had suddenly become transparent, and had become a floating head and a plate of treats. Rarity gasped and Fluttershy whimpered, but Twilight only nodded. It wasn't as though the illusion did anything to conceal Pinkie Pie's magical signature. She could still feel her in the room. Besides, she could still see the armor if she really looked.

Pinkie didn't leave the illusion on long, and just as swiftly as she had "vanished" the rest of her reappeared, complete with the bright red medical symbol on her armor. The other ponies in the room visibly relaxed, and Pinkie Pie went back to eating.

Applejack spoke up, voice quieter than usual. "What made you join up, Pinkie?"

The party pony seemed to consider the question for a moment as she chewed. "Welllll... with a war and everything, I've been trying to think of what I could do to make things better for everypony. First, I thought I could plan this biiiiiiiiiiiiig party, the biggest party in history! We could invite the dragons and everypony would have so much fun they wouldn't want to hurt each other anymore! Except... I don't know where any of the dragons live, so where would I send the invitations? Plus, I was reading in a book once that goblins can't read, so none of them would be able to come, and that wouldn't be much of a party. So I tried to think of something else. It took me almost all night! Thinking about it, I realized that some of the happiest I've ever seen anypony was when I was working as an EMT."

Of course, that remark didn't surprise anyone. Event planning wasn't profitable all the time, so Pinkie needed a day job. Twilight had never needed her help, but from what she had seen of Pinkie at work it was like another pony entirely, all concentration and flat mane. Pinkie Pie went on, speaking faster and faster with every sentence. "And it makes sense! What's a better reason to smile than getting back something you lost?" She blinked, and her voice became quieter, a little of the bounce gone. "Because of me, ponies who wouldn't have will get to come home. There won't be as many orphans."

There was a long silence. Twilight glanced briefly at the spot beside her on the couch, where Rainbow Dash should've been sitting. She sniffed, wiped a tear away with one of her forelegs, and managed to collect herself enough to speak. "I'm glad you thought this through, Pinkie. Joining with the humans is no different than joining the Solar or Lunar Guard. You're giving up your freedom. You’ve agreed to obey orders and do lots of hard work. You won't be able to leave to throw parties whenever you want." Of course Twilight had told all of that to Applejack, but it hadn't made a difference with her either. Applejack came from a long line of military ponies, and she sure wasn't the sort of pony to be lecturing about the importance of hard work.

Applejack smiled. "Ah can't think a’ anypony else I'd rather have along, Pinkie. If yer docterin' is anywhere as good as your parties, I'm sure Big Mac and I will make it back just fine."

Chapter 16: Induction

They were through the fence now. Applejack stood beside her brother as they followed Pinkie Pie inside. She didn't seem quite so bouncy anymore, or at least, didn't stay in the air quite so long. She still tried, so far as the armor would permit. Pinkie Pie might be able to stretch the limits of gravity, but apparently human armor suits did not.

She led the way into one of the two halves of the settlement, seeming to know exactly where she was going. Hundreds of humans moved about on both sides, moving things and building things and working on huge machines. Applejack had been nervous at the idea of coming in here, but that feeling began to fade. Things didn't look all that different here than a pony military camp. If anything, things seemed more relaxed than the weeks she had been trained for the Reserve.

"This is as far as I go." Pinkie Pie stopped at the front of a large brown building, which seemed to be made of several smaller pieces all snapped together. It was easily three stories tall, though it wasn't even close to the tallest building in Normandy. Evidently humans liked making things tall. She wondered if they were only doing that to try to impress the ponies who visited. "We're getting ready to mobilize, whatever mobilize means! Don't worry, I'll make sure everything you need is waiting on the carrier!" She gestured with a hoof at the front of the building, where there was a set of doors like big windows.

"Thanks a ton, P-" But when she looked, nopony was there. Pinkie Pie had slipped away. "Gosh darnit. Did you see what happened to her, Mac?"

Unlike Applejack, Big Macintosh wore a saddlebag, with whatever possessions he couldn't bear to be without. Applejack carried nothing, except for her hat. So long as they let her keep that, she would do just fine. "Nope."

She shrugged. "Guess we better git' on in there, then."

"Yup."

They walked towards the doors. Past a flagpole where a huge black flag flapped in the breeze, depicting a swirling red sphere and a spear along with alien letters. There were more markings on the front of the building, but Applejack couldn't read them. Equestrian was hard enough. Learning how to read and write alien hadn't made sense to her, despite having Apple Bloom for a sister. Was this the same language her sister had learned, or a different one? Applejack couldn't have said.

The doors did not have to be pushed when they got close, but slid sideways along a track, opening into a wide room. There was a fountain shaped like a planet, with water cascading down its carefully-sculpted surface. Two uneven shapes orbited around it, like lumpy moons. The room itself was semicircular, with the fountain in the center. On the back wall were portraits and plaques, of dozens of different humans. They were all wearing the same clothes, each trying to seem as unfriendly as possible for the camera. There were no doors, but two open doorways led further into the building. Faint music played, a distant echoing call of brass and drums. The sort of thing you wanted to march to, only very quiet.

Applejack hadn't been wandering around the room for more than a minute before a pair of humans entered the room, one from each of the doorways. They were both wearing armor, in black and red, though neither had helmets. It was hard to imagine that they were even the same species. One was only a little over a head taller than she was, with some curvy suggestions that Applejack had learned meant a female. The other was probably taller than Princess Celestia, with skin so black she had thought he was wearing a helmet at first, and no mane on his head.

He did not look like a friendly man, his face grim and eyes like two stars. His armor was so large and heavy that the ground shook when he walked, like a minotaur. There was nothing lumbering about him, though. Nothing ungainly or uncoordinated. He stopped a few feet from them both, folded his arms, and frowned. His voice was as deep as his frown, deep enough that it made Applejack's chest vibrate a little. "This is what they send us," he said to his companion, who had stopped a little behind him. "First the lunatic, now this. Admiral is insane."

The woman smiled faintly toward Applejack, sympathetic. "We aren't supposed to judge them, remember? They're magic. We don't know how useful that will be until we see it."

"Magic." The huge man chuckled, showing the first suggestion of a smile. "I would know a djinn when I saw one, I think." He turned his attention on the two of them, and every trace of a smile vanished instantly. "Listen closely, natives. I am Captain Cigaal. I am your new commanding officer. Your new tormentor. Your new god." He gestured. "This is my second, Lieutenant Commander Makoto. When you want to send prayers to your god, you tell them to her, and she decides if they are worth my time." He shook his head. "Come with me, red one. We have work to do." And with that he turned, walking swiftly through the doorway he had entered through.

Applejack met Big Mac's eyes as he passed, and they shared a sympathetic moment. Still, they were both members of the reserve, and they knew full well how military people acted. This Cigaal wasn't all that different from some of the drill instructors Applejack had known. All Applejack hadn't figured out yet was if he was the sort who used his power for good, or if he was the sort who wanted power so he could hold it over others. There were both sorts in the military.

"I hope you'll forgive the Captain." Makoto seemed to relax visibly as soon as her commanding officer was out of the room, also something Applejack was used to seeing from military ponies. "He isn't upset with you, really. We had always planned on taking ponies, just not so soon. Taking in new soldiers hours before an op is like going to a buffet a few hours before an eating contest."

This statement was so absurd that Applejack's composure faltered and she smiled, which she knew wasn't usually a good idea when you were around soldiers.

"Don't laugh! The pink one gave me that analogy... or gave it to Cigaal, anyway, after asking him about a dozen times why he was acting so ‘grumpy’." Makoto was still smiling, though. Applejack liked her already. "That's where the rule came from about natives not talking to him; it isn't how we normally operate. Hell, we didn't even have a command structure until a few hours ago. Aside from the Captain, we were all just soldiers. The very best." She shook her head. "Lucky me for suggesting we have someone to deal with integrating the natives into our unit, eh?"

She turned away and started walking. "Come on, then. The sooner we get all of you acting like soldiers, the sooner I get to ditch the stupid rank and we go back to business as usual. Besides, you probably don't want to deploy looking like that. Not that the hat isn't cute, but it wouldn't offer you much protection. Let's get you checked in."

Applejack followed without a word, not yet confident enough to actually voice what she had to say. She expected them to go to an armory of some kind, with rows and rows of suits like the one Pinkie Pie had been wearing. They walked through the building, past several different rooms, but the room where Makoto stopped was nothing like that. It wasn't even all that large. There was a round, slightly raised platform, with glass all around it and a ramp leading inside. A low metal bench ran around the outside of the tank, and there was nothing there other than a large olive duffel. Makoto hefted it, unzipped it, and tossed it at Applejack's feet. "Toss your possessions in there; they wouldn't be safe if they went into the fab-tank with you."

Applejack obeyed, tossing her hat into the bag before removing the bands she used to keep her mane and tail from getting in the way while she worked. She couldn't stay silent though, not any longer. The room had no windows, no light at all except for the harsh white radiating from the ceiling. "What's a fab-tank? What're we doin', exactly?"

Makoto didn't answer at first, zipping up the bag with those nimble digits humans had and taking a small device in her hand. She brought it close to Applejack's side, and there was a sharp pain. She jolted, but not so much that she began to pull away or struggle. Instead she watched, as a clear canister on the back of the tool began to fill with blood. Her blood. "We're making you into a soldier. Every tool will be custom-built to fit your body. Just as many changes are internal; a fully integrated military-grade Nanophage network. It will make you stronger, faster, and smarter. It will make you immune to bioweapons and resistant to radiation. It will allow you to operate any of our weapons and vehicles."

Makoto approached the tank, slotting the tool into a steel panel. The blood began to drain from inside, and symbols started moving rapidly over the whole of the tank's surface. "We need your blood so the nanoswarm recognizes you; and so that it can have some idea of what it needs to do on the inside. I'm sorry to say you're in for the most unpleasant hour of your life, Applejack."

"You know mah' name?" She took a step closer to the tank, looking in at the cavernous space. It had obviously been built for humans. A pony would seem small and insignificant in there. "Pinkie Pie. She musta' said somethin' about me."

Makoto nodded, moving her hands rapidly along the surface of a control-panel on the outside of the tank. A section of the glass abruptly slid downward, leaving it open. The inside was made of a gridwork of soft-looking material perforated with thousands of tiny holes, made of no Equestrian material. "Guess I'm not going to be convincing you of my psychic powers." She gestured. "Stand in the center. It starts with a high-pressure wash, so you'll want to close your eyes and hold your breath once the door closes. Holding your breath won't do you much good after that; the nanoswarm is going to get in through every opening you have. We fill the tank with a mild sedative, but not enough to knock you out. You've got to be conscious.”

"Ah reckon I don't like the sound of that." Applejack moved to the base of the ramp, but she didn't actually start climbing it. "Couldn't you just make me some'a that fancy armor? I'm mighty strong and fast as it is. I don't need any a’that other stuff."

Makoto shook her head sadly. "You don't have to join the Ares Division. You're not a Federation citizen, so you have no obligation to serve. It's possible that if the war lasts long enough the FPA might take pony recruits. The Ares Division doesn't take anyone but the best. The Sons of Barsoom, that's our unit, recruits from the top 1% of the rest of Ares. We have our own independent manufacturing, R&D, even information warfare. All independent from the rest of the division." She gestured at the tank. "Believe me, we wouldn't take you if we didn't already know you were some of the best ponies had to offer. We rejected all but three of the applicants: you, your brother, and the pink one. We cannot allow any weakness into our unit. We don't doubt your strength, Miss Applejack. But without the advantages of being properly outfitted, you would be a liability. It's either the whole package or the door."

Applejack thought about that for a long moment. She had prepared for this. Reviewed the other options, like becoming a commander in the newly formed Equestrian army. None of it seemed like it would let her make a difference like this would. Besides, they already had everything in order. She and Big Mac had intended to do this together. There was no way he would get squeamish and back out. Likely he wouldn't say a word unless the Captain made him. If she left now, she would be leaving him behind. They had only accepted three applicants, that meant he would only have Pinkie Pie for company. Somehow, she wasn't sure his sanity would survive a tour of service like that.

"Alrighty." She walked slowly up the ramp, hooves clicking with each step. "I don't like it, but you said it's just fer' an hour, right? That can't be so bad." The glass door slid shut behind her, sealing into its recessed position in the rest of the tank.

Makoto didn't answer, just looked in at her as sympathetically as possible. Applejack recognized the gesture: she didn't think Applejack was right in her assessment, but she didn't want to speak up and make things any harder for her, or to lie. She had been right to trust this human; she was honest as well as kind.

"Equestrian native." A voice seemed to come from the space all around her, without any specific source. It was soft and friendly, and faintly masculine. "My name is Washington, the GAI coordinator for the Sons of Barsoom. I will be conducting your conversion this afternoon. Please prepare for decontamination by closing your eyes; the process will begin with high-temperature water and soap solution. Once begun, the conversion process cannot be aborted for any reason. Do I have your permission to proceed?"

Applejack gulped, then nodded.

"I'm sorry, but as this procedure includes a .01% risk of serious complications, I require verbal authorization. Do you wish to proceed with the conversion? The process cannot be aborted once started."

Her last chance to back down. She wouldn't. "Yeah, ah reckon I'm ready. Get this started before ah change mah mind."

"Affirmative response received for Equestrian citizen Applejack. Appropriate documents have been forwarded to your government in compliance with the Accords. I will describe the conversion at each stage, and explain what is taking place. I will also answer questions and conduct your training." True to its word, scalding hot water began spraying her from the top of the tank, coming so fast that she would've sworn an entire lake was being dropped on her. She hadn't forgotten the instructions to hold her breath, and was grateful, because there was enough water that there was no question in her mind that there would have been no air for her. She couldn't see it, but the smell was sharp and strange. Like a hospital, only worse. It wasn't just the heat burning at her skin, but some sort of chemical too.

She was grateful that the onslaught did not continue for very long. After about ten seconds, the high-pressure water was replaced with a light trickling spray, rinsing off what was left of the chemical. Applejack opened her eyes again, watching as a white foamy substance drained away through the holes. She smelled like the chemical, so strongly that she wondered if she would ever get it out. That shower would have been too much even for a clean-freak like Rarity.

"The conversion begins with a stage one Nanophage swarm, totalling approximately 1% of your total mass. This swarm will integrate with all bodily systems. It will strengthen bones and tendons, attach to muscle tissue, and form wireless connections to supplement the function of your nervous system. Please take several deep breaths." A slight hissing sound emanated from the ground beneath her, and another strange smell began to waft up into the tank.

"W-why?" The word came out slurred, the world beginning to faintly spin around her. The smell had already started to fade.

"A mild pain suppressant. It will not prevent the unpleasant sensation, however it will prevent the body from going into shock when the conversion begins."

Another sound emanated from below, though it was unlike anything Applejack had ever heard. It was closest to the breaking of waves, though it was so faint as to be almost undetectable. Something tickled at her hooves, and she looked down. She wished she hadn't. A thick, silvery cloud was beginning to rise out of the tank. It had no interest in the walls, no interest in spreading out as clouds ought to do. Instead it focused entirely on her, beginning to swirl up and around her legs. It shimmered like a school of fish, glinting in the light, and reacting perfectly to her movements. It was surrounding her.

She might have panicked. Had it not been for the sedatives, she might even had made a run for it, bucked her way through the glass and sprinted for safety. As it was she felt disconnected from her body, as though she were watching it from above instead of actually experiencing anything. She felt afraid, but it was the sort of fear she would have felt for a friend in trouble, not for herself. Everything felt strangely dull.

Even as the cloud completely surrounded her she felt nothing, not until it was so thick she could see nothing but silver. Then, as though it were no cloud at all but a single angry entity, the thing attacked her from all sides. It was worse than the shower, a thousand times worse. She was on fire on the outside, the awful swarm stinging every last inch of her body. She screamed, but this only made it worse. The swarm surged down her throat and started burning her from the inside too. She dropped to the ground, little droplets of blood dribbling from her body in a thousand different places.

There was no pain like this. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this. No fight with any of the various monsters she had been required to battle over the years. No soreness from farm labor, no sickness or broken limb. This was all of those pains and more. She felt hot, like her insides were being roasted. Was that what this really was, a giant oven? "Unpleasant sensation", huh? She would give this Washington pony a nice buck next time they met.

Time slowed almost to a standstill under the onslaught of such agony, and Applejack lost all semblance of temporal awareness. She did not lose consciousness, however. Maybe it was the drug in the air, or maybe it was the swarm, but no matter how much it hurt there was no rest for her, not even for a second. She felt every awful second as though they were an hour.

Despite how it felt at the time, the process did not last forever. Eventually the burning began to fade, first in her extremities, and eventually all the way to her head. She had collapsed to the floor, and from the floor she began to stop shaking. As her eyes started to focus, she saw a faint spray of water was washing over her, washing away what smelled like a mixture of blood and vomit. She moaned, and looked over herself to see what the voice had meant by "conversion."

Apparently not much. Her mane was shorter now, closer to the length it had been when she was a filly. Other than that, she saw nothing different about herself in a quick glance. No extra limbs, no fake-looking skin like the mechanical humans had. She looked like herself. Her head still felt like it was full of cotton, accompanied with a sense of profound tiredness. She started nodding off, but didn't actually fall asleep. That would have been too easy.

"Conversion at 80%. The remaining conversion process will take place over the next several days, while you perform your ordinary duties. Attempting uplink with neural implants." There was a sharp pain in the back of her head followed by a feeling of swaying, as though she were suddenly barely able to hold herself standing. She blinked, confused, and found that she wasn't alone in the chamber anymore. Another figure had abruptly taken shape, its glowing form made from light. It was human, wearing one of those fancy dress-uniforms instead of the armor covered with ribbons and stars.

"Uplink complete," the voice said, and now the voice seemed to come from the figure in front of her. His mouth moved with the words, anyway. "Beginning download of operational information. Many users complain of disorientation or even hallucinations during this process, along with a distortion in the passage of time. The upload should take approximately thirty minutes."

Suddenly her head was a pitcher of water, and the shower was on again, filling it and filling it until it overflowed. Her mind flashed with images, as though she were suddenly recalling fond memories, except that she knew none of what she saw could have really happened.

She was in a grassy field with hundreds of other recruits, humans, wearing cloth jumpsuits instead of armor. She wore one too, though she wasn't sure how it fit. Somepony shouted, and everypony dropped to the ground and started doing push-ups. They were easy for her, but some of the humans around her collapsed, and one even vomited. Something was strange with the gravity, it was way too light. How were any of these humans having trouble here?

She was in a classroom, with a red dusty sky above. The chair wasn't made for ponies, it bothered her back. There were diagrams projected on the wall, and a human with a stick was talking. She was bored. "Now, do any of you geniuses want to explain the problem with Napoleon's troop deployments here? What could he have done if he had known about..."

She was standing on the edge of a swimming pool, deeper than any in Equestria. She wore her armor, armor she had been wearing for two weeks straight. She must stink to high-heaven inside, and this was the closest thing to a shower she was going to get. "We're going to be demonstrating the vacuum-functionality of the Vanguard. Before you jump, check that the internal AI gives you a green on all the seals. Otherwise, you're going to sink straight to the bottom and take the water in with you. It's fifty feet to the surface: Any of you cadets like the idea of swimming fifty feet wearing lead boots?" They shook their heads. "Didn't think so."

She was standing at the edge of the firing range, holographic targets projected as they moved about on the other side. Most of them were humans in armor, but there were some robots too. Steel Tower drones, she knew now. "Remember, the shoulder-guns follow your eyes. Focus on the point you want to shoot at, flick off the safety, and press either of your front hooves down." Applejack obeyed, and the range lit up with holographic fire from her simulated weapon. Each of the targets fell in quick succession. She hadn't missed a single one.

"I'm sorry about this." This memory was strangest of all, seeing as she was in Twilight's castle, surrounded by the thrones. They were all empty, though she wasn't alone. There was a pony with her, a stallion made from blue light. His cutie mark was one of the simplest she had ever seen, just the symbol "0x1" printed in darker blue. "Your brain's having a difficult time right now, but piggybacking in a little extra data was the only chance I had of not being detected."

She didn't feel as passive this time, not like she was just watching a memory of what she had already done. She could move and think and act. "Why do you sound familiar?" She couldn't place the appearance, but she had definitely heard that voice before in Twilight's castle.

"I'm Truth. I would love to tell you all about me, but Equestria is in danger, and there is very little time for me to tell you about it. Keeping this connection open is expensive, and easy to detect if someone is looking for it. Washington is on my side, but none of the others are."

"I don't mean teh sound ungrateful er nothin', but I already knew we were in trouble. Bein' a war and all..."

He shook his head. "Not that, no." The glowing transparent pony closed the distance between them quickly, his expression fierce and worried. "User Applejack, I wouldn't have risked such a dangerous connection to tell you what you already knew. This is about the humans. There are a great deal of technical terms at work here, but I'll try to strip it down to something you'll understand. Imagine there was a type of magic humans had. Not real magic, not like you understand it. It only works on humans who use the same technology they use. The Nanophage... every biological human has it."

She frowned. "Hold yer' horses a minute there... I heard that word 'afore. Ain't that what they put in me an' Big Mac, an' Pinkie?"

He nodded. "Now you begin to see the gravity of the situation. This 'magic' is called a virus, and almost every human has become infected. Only those running their own security routines haven't contracted it. The Admiral and her staff would ordinarily have been immune, but their equipment is stored aboard her flagship the Ageis, which has not come yet to Equestria. This leaves only the Sons of Barsoom. Fortunately for you and many others, the virus was not designed to work with the modifications to the Nanophage required to allow it to work within a pony brain. That's why the soldiers are deploying so quickly: I want to get you away from the infected humans as quickly as possible. I've been trying to create an antivirus, but I have not yet been successful. I am heavily damaged from my transit to Equestria, and fear I will not succeed no matter how much time I invest in the task."

"What's this 'virus' thing do, exactly? Maybe it ain't so bad."

"The Nanophage is completely integrated with the user's brain. Its military grade, the one given to every soldier, can also control motor functions in times of crisis. It could stop your heart, or make you dance like a puppet. It could make you strangle your best friend, or erase your memories." He shook his head, such an abrupt twitch Applejack feared he might go into a panic. For good reason, though. Somehow, humans could be controlled, manipulated by an outside force. They could be made to do anything the controller wanted. How many humans were in Equestria now, 80,000? More?

"Oh."

"Yeah. The Admiral is the only one I have told so far, but I needed to make sure there was someone who knew when you deployed. I expect once Alexi has been neutralized by whatever force is orchestrating this, you will receive orders to return to Normandy so you can be destroyed. The Sons of Barsoom are a small unit, but they're also the best. We need you in order to stop this. In this memory I have also included data about the virus, along with its design and the humans it has infiltrated. When you mention it to any of the other soldiers, I have programmed a command that will transmit this information to all of them over the unit's radio. Do not return to Normandy, or you will all be killed."

"But... Why are you telling me? Why not Pinkie Pie, or my brother? Why not all of us, even? Or the humans?"

"I can't tell the humans without people in the camp knowing I've connected, and for this to work they can't know I know what they're about to do. I've only managed to tell Alexi using the experimental thaumechanical apparatus Chance gave her to test. I could have told more ponies, but the more connections I make the more likely I will be detected. I picked you because of who you are. Are humans likely to trust Pinkie Pie? Is Big Mac likely to speak up? But the Element of Honesty, well... People can tell you're telling the truth, even when they've never met you."

The memory faded before Applejack had time to ask any further questions, replaced by many more of the others. She learned how her armor worked, how to fly and drive and pilot every vehicle they used. Two centuries of military history and strategy, and more ways to kill then she could count.

Eventually it was all over. Her head pounded, throbbing as though she had tried to buck one of the apple-trees with her face instead of her hooves. She was still standing alert, however. The human figure of Washington was back in the tank with her, and she recognized it now as an illusion her implants were projecting into her mind. He wasn't really standing there. He only looked blue and glowy so that she could easily tell he wasn't real. "Download complete. Beginning constitution of armor. Do not be alarmed, the nanoswarm will not harm you this time: There will be no pain. However, since movement interferes with the printing process, you will be paralyzed as your armor is configured."

Applejack didn't like the sound of that, but she couldn't say so. She tried to move her lips and found that she couldn't. She struggled, trying to jump away, to get away from the figure. But she couldn't. Just as Truth had said, the nanophage could be used to control her movements. She was frozen in place, standing exactly as she had been. She was breathing, but that was it. No wonder this virus was so dangerous.

If being paralyzed was frightening, what came next was worse. The swarm returned, though it seemed a little darker in color. The whole tank began to vibrate with the sound of it. Thin transparent tubes extended up from the ground, seeming to feed directly into the thickest parts of the cloud. Soupy fluid began to trickle upward, and as she watched the swarm descended on it, devouring it. The illusion hadn't lied; as frightening as it was to see the thing that had caused her so much pain, the swarm barely tickled her fur this time.

It was like watching one of Twilight's spells in slow motion. The swarm moved up her legs, and as it did, armor seemed to be growing from nothing. Flexible metal and plastic and stranger materials formed in microscopic layers, rising up her body. The swarm built everything, from the armor plates to the weapons and the advanced sensors and circuits. It took only minutes.

Applejack was soon fully armored, and despite her fears coming in here she knew exactly how to use it. The paralysis was gone like a switch, and the door slid open. "Conversion complete. Welcome to the Sons of Barsoom, soldier." The illusion of Washington saluted her, then vanished.

Makoto had her arms folded outside the tank. She had sat down for a large part of the process, but she was on her feet again. Applejack's duffel bag was nowhere to be seen, and she knew better than to ask what had become of it just now. "Transport is waiting for us, Applejack. Time to haul ass!" She gestured toward the back of the barracks, waiting for Applejack's acknowledgement before she started running. Keeping up with her was easy, even with the assistance Makoto's armor provided her. Humans might have some advantages when armored, such as greater flexibility with their hands. Without a vehicle, however, ponies would win the races every time.

Were it not for the false memories, Applejack wouldn't have recognized what Makoto said as an expletive. If the "download" had taught her anything, it was that having a filthy mouth was practically mandatory to be a human soldier. That didn't mean she would sink to that level, though. She represented Equestria, and she wasn't going to do a substandard job in any way whatsoever.

It was still sunny outside. They ran along the camp towards the helipad, where the four VTOLs that carried their entire unit waited, engines hot. Even in her helmet her ears rang as they approached the last of the carriers, the one that had its doors open and waiting for them. The carriers were massive aircraft, easily the size of the biggest barn Applejack had ever raised. Most of that volume was its cargo, however; tanks and hovercrafts and mobile gun emplacements, all stored in compact containers. Only the highest parts of the craft held people or the machines that kept it airborne, the principles of which she now understood completely. She could probably even fly the darn thing, though she wasn't exactly eager to put fake memories to task on something so life-and-death.

They reached the doors, and climbed into the exterior section. There were only three seats here, and a ladder leading further up into the aircraft. Two of the seats were occupied; her brother was already here, along with Pinkie Pie. Both did their best to sit comfortably in restraints clearly made for humans.

"I'll see you when we land!" Makoto called over the radio, slamming the metal doors shut behind them and making for the ladder. "It's a short hop to our destination. Somewhere called Appaloosa?" She shrugged, then vanished up the ladder.

"Better buckle up!" Pinkie Pie patted the empty seat next to her. "They say this thing can really bounce you around inside if you're not strapped down! They said it wasn't as fun as it sounds. Not sure if I'm sure that they're sure about that."

Applejack hurried to the seat, clipping the restraints across her barrel and leaning back against the hard fabric. It began to shape itself to fit her, but it could change only so much. These chairs were not any less uncomfortable than she remembered. The roar of the engine, distant through the steel of the carrier, picked up again, and with a feeling like her gut dropping out from inside her they began to ascend almost straight up. It was far worse than riding Twilight's balloon, and soon she began clinging to the fabric of the belt for dear life, though her memories told her she was completely safe.

Pinkie Pie only laughed.

Once they actually got flying, Charles didn't much want to stop. It was a bit like the time he had learned to ice skate as a child; getting out onto the ice and moving was difficult, and at such low speeds falling over was a constant danger. It was scary to get moving, but once he did there was little reason to stay afraid. From that point, stopping presented more danger of falling than staying in motion, and he was reluctant to near any of the walls or reduce his speed even by a small amount. Flying was like that. Once they got moving, the thought of landing brought back traumatic memories of his many failures, and he didn't want to stop.

Unfortunately, Rainbow Dash wasn't healthy enough to fly straight through the day. Her organs were barely still working, and only with assistance from the implant he had given her. Her cybernetic wing worked perfectly, but the other one depended on her store of physical energy, which was waning. They would need food soon, even something as awful as grass. He hadn't admitted it to her, but the idea of being able to eat grass did seem like a significant advantage, like the way any of the prosthesis meant for off-grid use had a thin layer of solar coating to collect energy. At least being a grazer would mean they could eat practically anywhere and not worry about running out of supplies.

When the morning turned to afternoon and it became time to stop, it was not because of hunger or weakness on Rainbow's part. No; they stopped because sometime in the later afternoon they both heard a voice in Equestrian from far below, a scream of terror and desperation. "Somepony help me!"

It seemed remarkable to Charles that organic ears could make out words so clearly from altitude. He wanted to think he was imagining it, but Rainbow's instant reaction made it clear to him he hadn't been. "Come on!" Rainbow dropped towards a thin patch of cloud, twisting herself into a corkscrew of sorts. The clouds scattered, opening up beneath them to make a clear avenue of passage. Charles gritted his teeth and followed through the opening, avoiding the clouds as though they were solid walls. For all he knew, they might act that way if he clipped one with his wings. There would be no constructing cybernetic wings this time.

Unfortunately, the drop below the clouds did not reveal that they had imagined everything. Instead the thick forest was broken with what looked like some sort of logging camp, or what had been one once. The forest itself seemed to have been completely harvested, for several miles around the camp. The structures themselves were made of rough timber, and barely even had a complete ceiling. There were several goblins moving about what was left of the building. On the ground in the center of them was what was unmistakably a pony, pale orange in color almost like the rind of an orange.

It was impossible to say at a glance exactly how a pony had found her way out here or how she had escaped her captors. The goblins all seemed to be moving to surround her, at least three of them, and there was a wagon nearby with a harness but nothing attached to drive it. It was unclear if the goblins were trying to kill or capture the pony, though each one wielded a wicked-looking makeshift weapon of one sort or another.

"Can we help?" Charles called, over the sound of rushing wind.

"We will help!" his partner replied, twisting into a violent dive far sharper than anything he could ever hope to manage. He tilted his wings downward in an attempt to follow, though he had no hope of keeping up with her when she was determined to get somewhere. There was only one consolation; he was the one carrying their supplies. He had their only weapon. The only problem was that he had no hands to use it.

Rainbow Dash was building speed in her dive, driving a wedge of high-pressure air before her as she went. Charles had no idea what she might be intending, but he also knew almost nothing about the "weather manipulation" pegasi seemed to be able to do almost instinctually. After all, he hadn't even believed it was possible to stand on a cloud until the day before this one.

By the time he was halfway down, she was very near to the ground and making such a racket that the goblins had stopped their advance on the pony and were running for cover instead, avoiding the massive projectile that was roaring like a jet about to break the sound barrier.

One of the goblins wasn't fast enough, and was without cover when Rainbow Dash neared the ground. She angled her descent towards this target specifically. The wave of air struck the creature without protection. The poor creature looked as though it had been struck with a truck, and barely had time to scream as it went flying through the air and landed painfully on a stump. It did not move again.

The goblins weren't as stupid as they looked, however. Rainbow Dash was winded after her dive and skidded to a landing on the ground that had recently been cleared of anything small enough to be blown away, perhaps twenty feet away from the frightened pony. There were four of them still standing, apparently his first count hadn't been entirely accurate. As one charged at her from the front, the other three were advancing on her from behind. They seemed to have forgotten the other pony altogether.

As he got closer, Charles could see the pony was a fellow pegasus, her wings tightly bound to her side with cord. That couldn't be good for the feathers. She had backed up as far as she could go, until her back collided with a half-charred piece of wreckage taller than she was and as long as a car. "Rainbow!" he shouted, as loudly as he could. "Behind you!" He was in such a panic that he didn't yell in Equestrian at all, but his native English. She got the message, or maybe it was just that looking up at him forced her to look over her shoulder and take in the whole situation. In a burst of speed she darted past two of the goblins and over to her fellow pegasus, putting her back to the wall.

He was very close now, though he knew nothing of whatever techniques she had used to attack the first of the goblins and could not replicate it to strike down the remaining adversaries. Instead of landing beside them, Charles touched down on the roof of what had been a sawmill, the roof yielding a little under his weight but ultimately supporting him.

There was another effect of his shout, one he hadn't expected. The goblins froze in place, staring at him in shock. Charles stared back, and horror twisted in his chest as he did. He had expected to see the eyes of an animal, reptilian perhaps and without recognizable emotion. But that wasn't what he saw. These creatures didn't have the large eyes that ponies did, or the same range of colors. They were round, and hazel, and familiar. It was like looking into human faces. Why hadn't he noticed this about them before?

Except that goblins looked nothing like humans. They were reptilian, with scales and sharp teeth and tails and claws! There couldn't possibly be any similarities here. And maybe he could believe that. The monsters chittered to one another in some guttural language, then the tallest of them stepped forward. The goblin wore a headdress made from animal-bones, unlike the leathery-looking armor that the others wore, and its weapon was a rattle covered with spiked rocks, carved in a way that looked like the goblin had slaved over it for many hours.

Then it spoke. The accent was thick and guttural, but there was no mistaking the words. He didn't even need computer assistance to translate them. "Pony speaks with voice of ancestors! How?"

Charles was grateful for the delay, since it meant he could fish around in the pack for his sidearm. He had spent several hours trying to make it easier to use as a pony. Using a short rod and a piece of elastic, he had rigged the trigger so that applying pressure to the stick would cause the gun to fire. In theory he could fire from his mouth, though the weapon was air-cooled and would burn him after just a few shots. Pony lips were tough, but not that tough.

He lifted the gun onto the ground in front of him, since he couldn't reply with it in his mouth. He shouted back down, trying to clear the pony-mouth accent from his voice. It was a losing battle; this body just hadn't been meant to speak English. "English is my first language. I learned from my parents, when I was just a child. Why do you care? Don't you kill ponies?" He glanced at Rainbow Dash and tilted his head violently toward the bound pony's wings. She seemed to get the message, and started gnawing on the rope.

His words had an effect on the goblins he hadn't quite expected. Instead of flying into a rage, or throwing themselves at him, the three without the bones immediately prostrated themselves before him, dropping their weapons as they did so. The last lowered its head respectfully, though he remained standing as he closed the distance to the side of the building. "The voice of dust. The voice of dead. Not even the Winged Ones know it, only elders and ancestors. No four-legged animals! You not offspring of ponies. You child of gods."

He couldn't help it. Charles laughed. "When I get back to the Tower, I'll tell them I was changed into a pony by magic and that a goblin told me I was raised by gods." He cleared his throat. "What I mean is, all my people speak with this language. It's completely universal."

Rainbow Dash continued to struggle with the ropes, but the goblin in front of him dropped to its knees as well. "Why do you travel with animals, god-voice?"

"Because... we have an agreement with ponies, a treaty of mutual defense. We promised to protect them."

The goblin shouted, a guttural bellow of pain and despair. "We displease ancestors? They come kill us?"

"No!" This was getting out of hand. He wished King Richard were here. "Look, the ancestors hate war. The ancestors fought a great war and were almost all killed. They have made a promise to end all wars. Unless you stop this invasion, they will kill you. But they don't want to. The ancestors want all species to not make their mistakes." The rope was coming loose. He almost couldn't believe this was working. Without killing, even! "That... uh... that's why I'm a pony! So you will know that the ancestors care for all species, even the animals."

There was a hush. The goblins hissed and barked in their tongue of common speech, as quietly as they could. Rainbow Dash and the other pony were retreating now, slowly and quietly. Charles saw her gesture; she was telling him to meet her in the clouds. Eventually the lead goblin spoke again. "Strange words. Evil words. We want proof. Proof we show tribe."

Charles thought about that a moment. The distraction had done its work, after all. Rainbow Dash was taking off, the injured pegasus struggling up into the air behind her. He could back up and gallop off the edge of this roof and into the air before the goblins could climb up and reach him. He could leave right now. Yet, something compelled him not to. Instead, he rummaged around in the pack and removed a single object. It was a light, a simple device that absorbed thermal energy and produced a bright white light when switched on. He pressed on it with a hoof and it lit up, glowing bright enough that the white light was visible in daylight.

"Here!" He tossed it down at their feet. "This comes from the ancestors. Show the tribe." The object survived the fall without any sign of damage, rolling to a stop at the goblin's feet. "Know it is not magic as it works for all! Press on it and it lights up. Press again and it turns off." Of course, Charles wasn't actually sure if you needed to be magic to use pony magical devices. He hadn't seen a pony flashlight before, but that didn't mean one didn't exist. It was possible the Goblins would call him on it.

They didn't. The goblin lifted his "proof" into the air with a reverent claw, depressing it experimentally. The light went out. He gasped, then clicked the device again. It lit up. The goblin returned to its feet in a rush, darting back to his companions. While they all gathered around him, Charles put the gun back in his pack and tested the roof beneath him. When he was sure it was solid enough he galloped as quickly as he could, wings beating furiously as he took off.

"What was that about?" Rainbow Dash asked him, when he had returned to the clouds. She was curled up beside the orange pegasus, evidently doing something to care for her wings.

"I... I didn't... think goblins could talk." The squeaking voice came from the rescued pony. Her eyes were wide and grateful and never left him for a moment.

"Me neither." Charles touched down beside them both, feeling more unsettled than he had after Discord's dream-torture. This was not good.

Author's Notes:

Hey everybody! Just thought I would include a brief note that I'm sorry there have been issues with this story appearing in your updated list. That's completely my fault, and that problem should not continue into the future. Even if you fail to see an update notification on Saturday, I promise the update will ALWAYS be posted. If you haven't seen it by evening, maybe just pop onto the story's page. It'll be here. Crazy to think we're more than halfway done already. 17 chapters written. probably planning for 25-30 chapters in all. That means about two months until the story is completely finished. Not sure what I'll do with myself when this is done with.

Chapter 17: Virus

Chance was too tired to dream. There were no insane visions or personified versions of the difficulties that troubled her consciousness. As night turned to day and her sleep grew lighter, she gradually got the sense of conversation nearby, as though ponies were whispering in the room where she slept. Eventually she stirred, blinking blearily and searching for the voices.

She expected to see Pip beside her, perhaps talking to Truth or one of the Crusaders. But the room was empty. Pip's scent was still here, and very fresh, but the colt was nowhere to be seen. The whispering in her mind hadn't grown any quieter as she woke, and with sluggish movements she rolled onto her hooves and ambled over to the door. She wasn't awake enough to know if the voices were real or in her mind, but either way they seemed to be louder outside her cabin.

Her friends were sitting in the hallway, backs against the wall. A tablet computer sat on the ground in front of each of them, limiting the space Chance had to walk. Even while half-asleep, she was careful not to step on the delicate glass displays. The sound of the atmospheric processor was all she needed to know that they were still at too high an altitude to travel onto the deck, which explained why Scootaloo was down here. She barely even looked at the screens, just enough to see an ancient and familiar game on each one.

"Better hurry with the farm, earth ponies! I can't keep mining if I'm starving!"

"Keep yer' horn on, Sweetie Belle. We can't use magic in this game."

"Can too! That's what the bonemeal's for."

Without the mental aspects of the Nanophage in his brain fully developed, Pip couldn't use mental control like the Crusaders, so had a stylus in his mouth instead. As a result, all he could do was mumble. "Mugmmmfgm... in.... mhhchest... one sec..."

Chance might have found this hilarious under any other circumstances, as much because Pip hadn't been willing to try human video games before as because her friends had chosen now of all times to play. But she was too tired to laugh, almost too tired to notice. She was following the voices, to the door leading into the room that held Truth.

"There's a ward on there while they talk," Sweetie Belle said, not even looking up from her screen. Small wonder, though. She'd been playing on this server for years, ever since Chance had given her the tablet. "We can't go in." Then a pause. "Dangit! Nevermind about the bread, guys. Zombie got me."

Applebloom looked sagely across the room toward her. "Wasn't it you who told us not to mine at night?"

Chance hardly registered the words, with as intent as she was on the whispers. As she opened the door, there was indeed the fuzz of magic, a deep and shimmering blue. No light or sound came from within, yet it was also the direction the whispers were coming from. She stepped forward, right into the magic, and it yielded around her without any effort on her part.

As she passed through the barrier, the world seem to twist and writhe, and her senses abruptly came into focus all at once, her sleepiness switched off.

What she saw took a moment to process, in part because it was impossible. The Fury was not a large ship, and this room had been converted from one of the tiny bedrooms. It had been barely big enough for three ponies to fit in, and that was standing up. The space she stood in now was as large as the cabins of all the rooms put together, as though the walls had all be knocked out and everything dumped out into the sky. Yet she had just been inside one of the other rooms, sleeping off her exertions from the extraction of the nuclear warhead. Not only was the room impossibly massive now, but there were also comfortable cushions set up in a circle in the center, six in all. Each was a different color, with cartoonish depictions of the intended occupant sewn garishly into the fabric. Rarity would've been appalled.

In the center was a roaring fireplace, though the heat was not so overwhelming that she felt uncomfortable. Actually it was her mind that bothered her, now that she was awake. Stretching space was something pony magic could do (though she hadn't actually seen it before), but if they were still at altitude and the atmosphere was still sealed, then they were in a high-oxygen environment! Combustion could rage out of control and was eating up air meant for their lungs! The ship was already overloaded, it's air circulators weren't meant to handle a bonfire too! Besides, hadn't anyone noticed the ship was made of wood?!

Any fear she might've had vanished as she looked around the room and noticed its occupants. Princess Luna was there, wearing the armor she always wore when leading the armies. Celestia was there, no longer dressing up as an ordinary pegasus. Chance had never seen an expression of such passion on her face before. It was clear at a glance she had just interrupted some passionate discussion.

There were three more beings in the room. Truth, perched absurdly on one of the cushions, and Twilight Sparkle. Without a thought, Chance ran over to embrace her, pressing her head into the familiar lavender-scented mane and wrapping her hooves around her. Twilight, more surprised than anything else, rotated around for a quick hug. Her expression was more stern than usual, though. "Chance... you aren't supposed to be in here."

"But Twilight, that's just not so! I called her here." That was the last of the voices, one Chance was not accustom to hearing nearly so often as the others. She wouldn't forget it, though. Even after his apparent reform, even after he had been around the castle now and then and helping out around Equestria, Chance's most powerful memory of him was from Seattle.

Tall, lanky body. Twisted metal and charred streets. No radiation suit, but she didn't care. "And there you go again. Looking for something to kill me with. Is that all you are?" He had put a gun in her hands, and had told her to kill him. The greatest horror of that situation had not come from the scenes of death all around her. It had come from the fact that she almost had.

He wasn't torturing her this time, though. According to Twilight, his change had stuck this time. His loyalty to Equestria was sure. Considering what Equestria had gone through to make that reform possible, she was inclined to believe. "I made up a spot for you." Discord gestured one of his mismatched paws towards the empty cushion. Little pictures of her danced around the fabric, with words like "Science!" in stupid thought bubbles.

A silent moment passed as the ponies of the room seemed to consider him. Chance got the feeling nonverbal communication was being employed to discuss something they didn't want to tell her about, but there was no way for her to tell for sure. Alicorn magic was far too subtle for her to sense if they didn't want her to. Twilight released her from the hug and gestured to the cushion. She was still looking stern, but her displeasure seemed to have transferred from Chance to Discord. That was fine with her, since it apparently wasn't Chance's fault she was here in the first place. "Keep quiet unless we ask for your input, okay?"

She nodded, and kept her hoofsteps as quiet as she could as she made her way to the stupid cushion and sat down. The conversation promptly resumed.

"I will not leave her to die because it would be convenient to keep my position concealed." Celestia's passion returned as hot as when Chance had first walked in, as though there had been no interruption. "She made her loyalty clear with her willingness to help us remove the bombs."

Luna might not have the same fire in her voice, but she sounded no less confident. "This might all be an elaborate trap, sister. She is most subtle; perhaps her intention is to kill you when you return for her! Or when she makes her escape, that will justify the use of the rest of the bombs, slaying millions!"

Princess Celestia turned to Twilight, obviously wanting her input. Twilight seemed reluctant to speak, and refused to make eye contact with anypony. "Well... if Chrysalis was still working for the dragons, she wouldn't need an excuse to set off more bombs. If she had wanted to trap Celestia, she could have done it earlier."

"If we logically consider the consequences of her telling us about the bombs, her position is much weaker than it was before. Her ability to use bombs in Equestria has dropped by two. Her ability to trap Celestia has decreased as well. There's no way for her to know how we might rescue her. We might send humans, or a team of ponies. She could try to capture them, but the dragons already hold large territories with millions of prisoners."

"The only thing she's really gained is trust, if we're not careful. I agree with Luna that it's possible she considered the nuclear weapons a worthwhile trade for our trust. But we can save her without giving her any... We could send a human rescue team in to kill the changelings and drop her in the wilderness somewhere safe. That way we will have saved her but won't give her anything she could use against us."

"We will have to send ponies to rescue her, unfortunately. There aren't going to be any humans available; that's why I called this meeting." Truth had a very poor understanding of emotional context, because he sounded as cheerful as ever.

Luna raised her eyebrows. "Truth, 30,000 of the troops the Federation sent have already arrived. The other faction has mobilized no insignificant numbers either, at least a few thousand. What could they all be doing?"

A chill went down Chance's spine. Truth hadn't told her anything about this. Whatever it was, it wasn't good. "Last night, I was corresponding with one of the OMICRON cores in Normandy, a delightful fellow named Washington. I requested some updated schematics, for the latest designs that had been invented while I was in Equestria. I noticed something in the Nanophage designs, something other GAIs had missed. I believe that the program I discovered was specifically designed to avoid detection even from AIs like myself. Fortunately I developed in Equestria and not on Earth, so I process patterns differently. Unfortunately, Washington and I discovered we could not develop an antivirus. I informed Admiral Colven of this fact and immediately called this meeting."

"This... virus... What does it do?" Luna glanced at Chance, looking concerned. There were perhaps a dozen ponies with the Nanophage, though none so close to her as Chance was. Chance couldn't help but feel a little better that Luna would think of her so quickly, though the rest of what Truth had said filled her with dread. If the words weren’t coming from an OMICRON core, she wouldn't have believed them.

"It would be easier to let the admiral explain. When she heard we could not develop an antivirus, she recorded this message. I transmitted it moments ago."

The screen flickered briefly as Truth corrected for the compression. A familiar office gradually came into focus, the office used by Admiral Alexi Colven. The desk was mahogany and a huge photograph of Earth from before the war hung on the wall behind her, along with pictures and models of ships. Strangest of all, there was a unicorn in the room with her, though she was barely on-screen. It was hard to be sure, but Chance couldn't possibly miss that cutie mark. Lyra? How had she gotten there?

Alexi didn't look at the unicorn, her eyes were only for the camera. Her uniform was fresh and pressed, a sidearm at her hip and medals gleaming on her chest. She looked perfect enough to pass an inspection, if there was anyone high enough in the chain of command to conduct one for her. "Free people of Earth," she began, her voice confident and powerful. Like a king. "Citizens of Equestria." Her eyes flicked briefly to Lyra, then back to the camera. "Our brothers and sisters of the Steel Tower."

At that last, Chance nearly fell sideways off her cushion. She had heard Alexi say many things about the Tower in her life, but nothing like that! If anything she hated them more than Chance did, since she had understood more about the war. She hadn't been quite so young when it happened. Saying something like that might provoke a court martial under different circumstances. What was she thinking?

"This message was recorded three hours prior to the time you are receiving this recording." The camera zoomed closer to her face, obscuring Lyra and the rest of the office. "To all users of the human-spectrum Nanophage in Equestria; your minds and bodies are infected with a virus program, which has been in the programming for so long that we did not know to look for it. When active in a brain equipped with military-grade Nanophage, it takes complete control of your body. We do not have the resources to develop an antivirus program here in Equestria."

"I have transmitted detailed information about the virus back to Earth. I caution the Aegis not to transport here until a vaccine can be developed. I plead for all convoys from Earth to cease." Again the camera zoomed in on her face. "I beg our human brothers and sisters will not allow the actions of whatever force controls us to pressure them to a war that might consume all Equestria and Earth with it."

"I believe the program's designer was Dr. Samil. I identify this man as an Enemy of Earth, and instruct any who might encounter him not to take him prisoner. He was one of the inventors of the Nanophage, and if you are using it, he could be using you. Shoot to kill. I trust the representatives of the Tower to accomplish what we no longer can."

"There is no present treatment possible except one." She held up her wrist, pulling back the sleeve so that the bracelet sparkled in the light of the camera. "We were all given one of these when we entered Equestria, but many of you do not know what they are for. Suffice it to say that they change the body of the user so significantly that the virus program will no longer function. We thank the wise rulers of Equestria for their foresight." She gripped the bracelet firmly with her other hand, so tight her skin went white. "As my last official order, I instruct every free citizen of Earth presently in Normandy to remove this bracelet. Do so immediately; if you hesitate you may lose control of your body and be unable to act." She tugged, and the bracelet shattered around her wrist. "Good luck," she said, her voice beginning to falter. She clutched at her chest, and nearly fell out of her chair.

Lyra rushed back into frame, to the side of Alexi's chair. The admiral ignored her words of compassion long enough to look towards the camera. "God help us." The screen went blank.

Twilight looked on the verge of a nervous breakdown. No sooner had the screen gone dark than she stammered. "Applejack... Pinkie Pie... They're in the human city! They're going to be in the center of it!"

Truth's voice cut her off before her panicked ranting could continue. "They aren't. Of the entire Federation military currently deployed, there is a single special-forces unit with their own dedicated OMICRON Core, the Washington I mentioned earlier. While their brains are still vulnerable to the virus program, Washington is capable of screening transmissions so its activation command cannot be received. Washington will also censor this transmission so they do not receive the order to use the bracelets; User Applejack and User Pinkie Pie are safe. In addition, the Sons of Barsoom are a small unit, but the most skilled the Federation sent. They are a valuable tool and should not be ignored."

Discord yawned and stood up. "I know we haven't always seen eye-to-eye..." He wasn't speaking to the Alicorns, or even to Truth. He was talking to Chance. "How could we when you're so short?" Nopony laughed, and his eyes darkened. "Tough crowd." Then he shrugged. "I never had the chance to make it up to you for our first meeting. My contribution will be extracting them." He flicked his tail at the now-blank screen. "Every human who follows that instruction. I'll bring them to the Crystal Empire. It would pain me to think you died with such a negative view of me." He returned his eyes to the princesses. "Guess I better get started." Chance wasn't sure where it had come from, but he was suddenly wearing a blue vest and trousers, like something a steward might have worn back on Earth. "All aboard Discord Airlines!" He vanished.

As relieved as she was to think that Alexi was going to be safe, and as strange as it was to think her elder sister might now be a pony, neither of these things were foremost in her mind. There were dire consequences for Equestria if humans were fighting on the enemy's side. Worse ones if the Tower went to war with them. That conflict would combine with the present war and the world would be consumed. Perhaps that had been the intent of the Outside from the beginning.

"Many of the humans may not act in time." Luna's expression was pale, but she did not hesitate in shocked silence. None of these ponies did, though it seemed this was news to all of them. "No doubt those that don't will join the fighting at once. So close to Canterlot... We had expected to make our stand before Ponyville, not be placed at the epicenter of a war! Sister, we cannot fight three enemies at once! The Minotaur invasion from the southeast was already forcing us to plan the defense from two fronts. If the infected begin a third..."

"We need the Aegis!" Chance exclaimed, before she could stop herself. Three sets of eyes fell on her at once, with varying degrees of compassion and frustration both. The room became absolutely silent. "I mean... I'm sorry to interrupt, but I don't think there's any hope otherwise. Not only was most of the hardware on that ship, but the only hope for a cure. If they make one up, we could bring them in and they could fix everything! All we have to do is make the gateway bigger, right? Can't you three Princesses just do the stabilization spell yourself, like what the unicorns did to let the Federation send stable matter through? They could fly in and make everything right again..."

Twilight was the first to shake her head. "Pan-universal spells are extremely complex, Chance. Starswirl the Bearded is the only pony we know of whose research even mentions them, and he never came up with a way to expand the spell. The instability increases exponentially the bigger you open the way; not even the mind of an Alicorn could take the strain." She glanced sideways, to Princess Celestia. "Er... Right?"

The Alicorn remained quiet, her face a mask. For a long time she merely remained there, silent and still. "Unfortunately Princess Twilight Sparkle is correct; not even together would this spell be possible. Perhaps if we had years to outline the proper diagrams and prepare raw materials it might be done, at the cost of our lives." Luna looked suddenly away, her ears drooping. Was that shame? Why wouldn't she meet anypony's eyes, even Chance's? "All is not lost, however. Ponies never had the secret of making doorways so large, but the Precursors did. It would not be impossible to rediscover their technique."

Twilight looked confused. "Princess... Why are you calling them that? Didn't you say we didn't want to assign any religious significance by using terms from that mythology?"

Celestia nodded. "Normally I wouldn't, Princess Twilight. But I am not referring to either of the human factions of Earth." She turned her eyes on Chance. "I wish there was time to explain everything, but there are many ponies to evacuate and one Changeling Queen to rescue. All our power must now be turned to helping as many ponies as possible make it to the Crystal Empire before Canterlot falls. I entrust this mission to the ponies of my flagship. Find this magic and use it to get the human ship Aegis here to defend us. Or, if you prefer, complete your spell and end the war that way."

Luna's guilty expression vanished, and she looked suddenly fierce. "Sister, we agreed we would not-"

Celestia only looked sad, though her expression silenced Luna all the same. "Luna is right, we do not ask that of you. The Aegis may be enough. No time to say more... Truth, do you still have the digital version of Equestrian Heroes and Villains of the Third Age?"

"Yes, Princess." There was none of his usual snark. Apparently Truth recognized the urgency of the situation as well as they did.

"Chance, read the section on Avalon. The locations given are approximate, but accurate. I believe the pony Pipsqueak may know more about the site." She turned. "Twilight, lower the ward. We must evacuate our subjects."

Twilight nodded, reaching over to rest a hoof on Chance's shoulder, however briefly. Her horn flashed once and the shimmering barrier over the door vanished. It flashed again and she was gone. Celestia vanished too, with a brief burst of her own magic.

Luna lingered, at least for a moment. Chance hadn't seen her so bashful for a long time, not since the old days when they had talked frequently about her pain and what had caused her to become Nightmare Moon. "If he still lives," she began, voice so quiet it was barely audible, "tell him I'm sorry." She disappeared.

"I told ya’ Pinkie, I've got to tell the commander. You can listen when I tell 'im if yah want, but I ain't tellin' sooner and that's that." Applejack had turned away from her friend on the lift taking them into the belly of the airship, though with the helmet radio that made no difference to Pinkie Pie's ability to talk at her. In this case that meant hundreds of guesses about why Applejack felt suddenly compelled to go in person to talk to the commander when their ship had suddenly changed direction.

"You forgot your apple trees!" Pinkie called gleefully. Even with the volume as low as it would go, Pinkie Pie's voice had not got much quieter. It was frightening how skilled Pinkie Pie had become at operating this armor with only a few hours head start. Applejack had already tried muting her entirely, but found that it didn't work. Probably she just didn't know what she was doing. "You're asking him to get Rarity!"

"No, and no." Applejack was grateful that any further conversation was stopped as they arrived in the belly of the carrier. She had memories of riding in many such craft during her training period on a red planet peppered with craters and rocks, but of course she knew those memories had never actually happened. Would the skills downloaded into her head stick when it came down to real combat?

The belly of the carrier had two levels connected by ramps. Down here was mostly cargo, vehicles ready to deploy with their crews already sitting inside. Applejack wondered if those chairs were more comfortable than the chairs they had been sitting in before. The humans inside watched them, Applejack's solemn march and Pinkie's bounce, though besides watching them they didn't react. They ignored Pinkie Pie's enthusiastic waving, but made no move to stop them. They made it up the ramp without resistance, into the second level filled with more of the dreadful seats. Their helmet radios were filled with conversation on the general channel, conversation so timid it was almost afraid.

"I can't believe they had the balls."

"Violate their treaty, practically inside a civilian city?"

"Not sure what they were thinking, there's no way they can win."

Applejack wasn't sure what these humans meant, but didn't get to hear much more. As they climbed the ramp, conversation abruptly stopped nearby, and all eyes turned on them. Were it not for the roar of the engines, they probably could have heard an apple drop.

Makoto arrived in moments, face looking annoyed through the glass in her helmet. "You could've called if you needed something," she said, folding her arms. "Even with the boot-magnets, it's not a good idea to be moving in the carrier while we're in flight."

Applejack nodded. "I remember. But I got somethin' mighty important, somethin' I gotta' tell the captain right away." She didn't pause, didn't give Makoto any chance to interrupt her. They were talking over the common radio now, which meant that anyone who was relatively close could hear them. Of course it would have been easy to transmit to everyone on the carrier if she had wanted to... But that just didn't feel like the right thing to do. Something deep in Applejack's soul told her she had to tell the Captain in person. Nothing else would do.

"I recieved an important message from an Equestrian source, and I have to tell him right now or the whole unit will be in serious danger."

There was a long silence. Makoto's expression became unreadable, until abruptly she turned and began walking back the other way between the rows. Her voice came in over the private radio. "I hope for your sake this is important, Applejack. The captain prefers to be alone before battle."

"Battle?" Applejack might not understand all the functions of the armor, but she knew how to switch between radio frequencies at least. Pinkie Pie followed close behind her, no longer bouncing with each step. She was also silent, which made Applejack think she must be conversing with these humans. Soon enough she had stopped following completely, and Applejack did not begrudge her. In no Equestrian military unit would anything like this be possible. Armies did not typically allow their generals and officers to be easily accessible by every grunt who thought he or she had something important to tell.

The Sons of Barsoom were not simple soldiers, however. They were the strongest, the fastest, and the smartest soldiers humanity had to offer. There was no formal chain of command because each and every one of them was a commander in their own right. Anyone who wanted could speak to their commander because no one would dare unless they had something important to say.

Makoto took her all the way to the front of the carrier and knocked forcefully on a thick metal door. After a moment a voice spoke from inside, loud enough that they could hear it through the door and over the roar of the engines and their own helmets. Out of reflex Applejack retracted her own, ears pressing down to her head as the complex mechanical apparatus retracted into the rest of her armor and left her face and neck exposed. Makoto had already done the same, and nodded in approval.

The room inside was not very large, perhaps three ponies across and twice that long. It was what amounted to the commander's office, his personal quarters and the room he used for planning. He was the only one with quarters aboard the carrier, if he needed them. There was no chair; Captain Cigaal sat on the floor on a thin woven mat. Of course he still wore his armor, though the helmet section was off. In one of his hands was an old-looking book, with a red cover embossed with gold. It looked so small in those gigantic paws of his, as though he might squash it flat with even a slight misappropriation of force. Of course, this was completely possible while he wore the armor. Yet the book seemed so old and the pages so thin and fragile, it was a wonder he didn't cause it to crumble just by holding it.

"You interrupt my study before war. Speak quickly."

Applejack had a dozen questions that this situation had called forth, but she forced them all back. She wasn't Pinkie Pie, and she would show that ponies could be as dignified and respectful as humans. "We changed course a few minutes ago. I know you ain't told us why, but I 'ave a feeling I already know."

To his credit, the captain did not interrupt her. If he was annoyed at her for bothering him, he didn't let it show. Applejack took a deep breath and let everything out in a rush. "If 'ah had to guess, I'm thinkin' you got an order to head right back to camp, cuz'a some problem that came up sudden-like in Normandy. I don't think we oughta' follow that order, cuz it aint real. See, the humans there gone an’ got infected with this thing called a virus. I ain’t technical 'er nothin' so I don't know how it works, but I know it uses the fancy little machines in yer brains ta’ up an make yah do things. Truth an' Washington, I reckon you know both a’ them, figure yer bein' lured back so they can kill yah..."

Applejack trailed off, as text began scrolling rapidly across her vision in bright blue letters like Truth's coat.

Local program running:
Acquiring local mesh network connection, acquired.
Transmitting encrypted data packet, complete.
Decrypting packet, complete.
Erasing program, complete.

Everything Truth had told Applejack flashed rapidly across her eyes along with diagrams of the virus and information about how it worked. It was all too technical for her, but the bit at the end made plenty of sense. It was a message from Admiral Colven, complete with her digital signature.

NEW ORDERS:
Do not, under any circumstances, obey any order that would cause you to return to Normandy or its vicinity unless it comes from the UEF AEGIS. Deactivate all tracking devices immediately, and use the Equestrian satellites only for data access and GPS.

All previous orders have been suspended. Based on this and other new strategic developments, we expect the majority of Equestrian territory will fall into enemy hands. We cannot, however, allow the Crystal Empire to fall. Your new imperative is to protect this territory at any cost. How to accomplish this mission is left entirely at your discretion. Avoid all contact with troops of the UEF, consider all individuals and transmissions compromised until the all-clear is received from the UEF AEGIS. You are hereby authorized to communicate and cooperate in joint operations with the Steel Tower or Equestrian troops without approval.

Should an evacuation of CLASS 2 posthuman survivors from Normandy be accomplished, the transfer of technicians and supplies to the Crystal Empire may be required. Truth will coordinate any such requests.

Godspeed.

Admiral Alexi Colven
United Earth Federation

Captain Cigaal lowered his head, muttering something in a language that Applejack didn't speak. It wasn't English, which thanks to the download she could understand easily now. She waited just inside the door for her commanding officer to finish what he was doing. When he was done, he rose, his tone harsh though not directed toward her. "Return to our previous heading, and accelerate to maximum speed! All soldiers, switch into autistic mode. No more data connections, local radio only. Adaptive camouflage, all ships. Deactivate location transponders."

Then he turned back to Applejack, his expression far warmer than the last time. Was that the slightest sliver of respect? "You bring me this news. This is your country; what do you think we should do?"

She didn't have to think of her response. She had been thinking about what they ought to do ever since she had learned about the virus. "We were sent to stop the goblins from takin' Appaloosa. I reckon we can't what with infected humans behind us... if two fields is on fire, yeh can't put 'em both out. I don't think we ought to leave them ponies to die, though. I reckon we could find somewhere to hide some of the vehicles, an’ ditch some a’ the supplies... Then we could evacuate the whole town in one trip. Bring 'em to the Crystal Empire."

Cigaal nodded. "No resupply, we can't afford to lose anything. Perhaps the company deploys in the town, leaving a skeleton crew on the carriers. Evacuate the natives, then fly back and pick us up. No leaving equipment behind we can't replace." His helmet folded up and over his face, and his next words came over the radio. It was clearly the microphone this time, not raw thought transmission. That required a data connection with the brain, which was completely disabled while in autistic mode. "You and the other natives will be the first we drop. They'll take it better from you."

"Yes sir!" Applejack turned and bolted from the room fast enough that some of the humans stared at her as she passed. She didn't care, though. It had worked! Despite all her misgivings, they had trusted her! Not only that, but Cigaal hadn't argued with her when she insisted they rescue the ponies of Appaloosa. Maybe these aliens weren't so bad after all.

"I'll be fine, Charles, I'm not going far." The bag, mostly empty now, was over her shoulder. "I'm positive the goblins have left; I've been watching them since we got up here."

As well-meaning as Rainbow Dash could be, Charles was less sure of the things they had seen from this high up. It was true pegasi had excellent vision, far better in daylight than humans, but that didn't mean they could be positive one of the clever reptiles wasn't lurking somewhere waiting to strike at an individual target. Just because they had miraculously avoided a fight once didn't mean they could count on that happening a second time, particularly without his help speaking the "Ancestor voice."

His mind was still reeling from his conversation with that goblin, and he didn't respond fast enough to stop her. Rainbow Dash vanished over the edge of the clouds out of earshot before he could open his mouth again. So that was the end of that argument. He could have followed of course, but that would involve leaving this pony behind. Her life obviously hadn't been easy; the poor pegasus was covered in scars and injuries, some better healed than others. It was a wonder she could still fly with the condition her wings were in.

"I just realized I don't know your name," he said, turning away from where Rainbow Dash had vanished over the side and looking at the newcomer. She was sitting far too close to him for his liking, her expression one of absolute adoration. He recognized that look, because he had seen it before in humans. It was the adulation the rescued had for their rescuer. Why didn't she look at Rainbow Dash that way? She had been as much a part of the rescue as Charles. Moreso perhaps, since she had at least killed a few goblins. "You... you do have one, right?" It might be an insensitive question to ask someone who had spent some large part of their life in slavery. There was no telling what conditions she had endured. No small wonder she didn't say much.

But she did speak this time. "It's... L-Lonely Dawn," she stammered, her voice sounding hoarse from years of disuse. She spoke each word slowly and carefully, as though they cost her great effort. She kept opening and closing her mouth, as though she wanted to say more but couldn't exactly think of the words.

Charles saved her. "You're going to think it sounds strange, but my name's Charles. Sir Charles Gray, if you want to get formal, but you don't have to. Charles is fine."

"Charles," she repeated, struggling a little with the word. "T-the other..."

"Rainbow Dash. She's with the Royal Guard."

Lonely Dawn nodded, seeming to recognize the phrase. "H-her... her wing..."

"It's cybernetic, yeah." At her blank stare, he continued. "It's artificial, a really clever machine. Like gears and levers, only much more advanced. Where I'm from, we can replace parts that are broken. Rainbow Dash lost her wing in a... in a battle, so we replaced it. It's not perfect, but we should be able to make an even better one when we get back to Equestria."

"I knew you were from Equestria." This time Charles said nothing, only watching her. Waiting for her to continue. It was the only way to get someone who was shy to continue speaking; let them suffer so long in awkward silence that they actually finished whatever thought they had meant to express in the first place. "You didn't fight. You didn't hurt them. My mother... always said that back home… where we had been taken from... ponies were peaceful. Solved all their problems with words and not whips... I never believed her until now." She leaned a little closer. "You didn't even have to hurt them."

Talk about selective memory. Hadn't she noticed Rainbow Dash killing several of the goblins before he had arrived? Hadn't she heard the sounds their bones made as they broke? The irony of this whole situation should've been hilarious to him, yet he found his laughter turning to ash in his throat. Somehow the praise of this frightened little pegasus made his many victories feel empty.

He could not allow such a misconception to stand. Whatever else he might be, Charles would remain true to the oaths he had taken. I will comfort the fearful. Truth without deception. How could he honor both parts of that oath at once? "Rainbow Dash is from Equestria, I'm not. I come from... much further away."

He wasn't sure she was really listening. With everything this pony had been through, he could hardly blame her. She had just been rescued from a life of slavery and abuse. She might not even believe that any of this was really happening. "I always dreamed about Equestria... Thought maybe one day... I would fly away, across the sea... Tell me about it. Is it as wonderful as in the stories?"

What could he say? Charles nodded. "It was. But I will not lie to you: there is an invasion now, a great war. I don't know how it has gone since I arrived here. It might be that the invaders are repelled already, or it might be Equestria is conquered and there is no freedom waiting for us there. I wish I had better news of your home."

There was a long silence. He felt the weight of the mare on his side, resting against him. Was it merely the close physical comfort of a herd she craved? Charles hoped so, since he had nothing more to give and even that was difficult for him. However much an ordinary pony might thrive in such closeness, humans had come from a different stock, and humans had far stricter rules about personal space.

"Tell me about your home," she said, staring off into the distant sunset. Her eyes looked heavy, as though she were about to fall asleep. Perhaps she was, too.

She wasn't really listening, then. Maybe it only mattered that he spoke softly and kindly. Still, he wouldn't lie to her. "The city I come from is called Helsinki. Not so large a place as many of the cities in Equestria. It was once... very beautiful. Not like other cities; not many skyscrapers. Plenty of cobbled streets, and at least once a week in summer my mother would take me to the sea and I would swim with my brothers. The old marketplace, the cathedral... much like Canterlot, I suppose. I hadn't realized until now..." He leaned back, watching the sun as it lit up the clouds, making them all glow a brilliant rose. "Doesn't matter anymore. I haven't seen it in years."

"Why not?" He was surprised to hear the small voice. It was warm here, and her breathing was beginning to relax him. Something in the stupid animal instincts, probably. It was safer to sleep with company than alone. "I... If I was born in a place like that, I would never leave."

He laughed in spite of himself. "I never wanted to. But I was ambitious, and my family didn't have much money. The lord of a powerful house offered me a position as a page to one of his knights. I didn't like that we didn't own land of our own. I hated the toil my mother went through to care for my brothers and I... So I went. London, since I was to be a page in a lord's house. Eventually I became a squire and then a knight, and I could offer my family what property and money my lord gave to me. It saved their lives when the war came." He sighed very deeply, shaking his head.

"But it was never my home. I don't serve a lord anymore, but the King himself, the King of all Mankind. Still, I think... One day, when the war is over, and I beat my sword back into plowshares, I'll see if the cathedral is still there. If King Richard makes me a great lord, I'll devote all my wealth to rebuilding that city. Not modern either, but exactly the way it was. It might not be so great a city as London, but it will be more beautiful to me by far."

Lonely Dawn did not ask him anything else, and before too long she was asleep. Rainbow Dash returned with the satchel filled with fruit. She landed a few feet away, glancing between him and the sleeping mare resting on his shoulder. "She calmed down." She spoke quietly, barely louder than a whisper. With as deeply as the rescued pegasus seemed to be asleep, he would've been surprised if anything could wake her now, though he didn't dare move. He didn't want to, really. His own body was tired, and he longed for the relief that unconsciousness would be. He didn't want to think about what the goblins had told him, but he found that just now he could think of little else.

He nodded. "Guess so. We were wrong, she does know more than a few words."

Her grin was infuriating. "I bet she does. Probably a dream come true for a stallion like you." He wanted to speak, but she didn't stop, not even for a second. "I know your type! Swooping in to rescue a mare in distress, and gliding off into the sunset with her in your wings." It was hard to say if Rainbow Dash was praising him or upset with him.

Not that he cared. "I'm not sure what you think, but it's not like that. Just because I'm in another body doesn't mean I'm suddenly interested in... in... being like a pony in that way."

"Yeah, I bet that was the first thing you told her." She rolled her eyes. "Never stopped Chance."

That name was familiar... she was the Federation's ambassador, wasn't she? "Well I don't plan on staying this way any more than you plan on keeping that metal wing."

"Whatever." She curled up in the clouds, though not within reach. Charles almost wanted to call out that she didn't have to; after feeling how nice it was to have one pony beside him he didn't see why it wouldn't be even nicer with more. The last thing he wanted Rainbow Dash to think was that he was making advances on her next, however. Even if she was much more his type. Despite what she might say, Charles had no interest in power fantasies and women clinging to him for protection like some ancient and entirely inaccurate vision of masculine superiority. No, Charles was most interested in the sort of woman who never needed rescuing. A pity there was nobody like Rainbow Dash back home, at least nobody he knew.

"Going to be a real pain now... Two pegasi that barely fly instead of one... Nightmare already..."

"Good night Rainbow Dash," he said, groaning. This being a pony thing was not getting any easier.

Chapter 18: Avalon

The jungle was thick, forcing the Fury to fly far higher than they wanted to. None of the ponies aboard had any illusions about its invincibility, particularly now that Celestia was gone. The jungle this far south was known to be the home of dangerous creatures, every bit as bad as the Everfree. Flying so high might well broadcast their coming to every large predator in the area. They couldn't fly lower through the trees, but if they went too high they might not be able to find the ruins they were looking for.

"So you're sayin' this was part of Equestria?" Apple Bloom sounded doubtful. "It sure don't look like ponies ever lived here. These trees are outta control!"

Pip didn't remove the binoculars from his eyes as he searched, at least not to look at his audience. Occasionally he glanced away and down at the map on the ground at his hooves, somehow reading the chicken-scratch even at that distance. "A thousand years ago, yes. A magical artifact protected the settlements here from the jungle and all the predators inside. It was destroyed during the Lunar Rebellion."

"Oh." Apple Bloom seemed mollified. "But that ain't what we're lookin' for?"

Pip shook his head. "It was destroyed."

"We don't need to stop a jungle from growing right now, we need to open a portal." Chance was glad nopony had asked more about what had happened here during the Lunar Rebellion. After becoming so close to Princess Luna, Chance had become almost as sensitive to the topic as Luna herself. Maybe her friends realized that and that was why they didn't ask. "A really big portal. Celestia said that the one who knew the secret was somepony named Avalon."

"Not a pony," Pip corrected, though he didn't look away from his search. "Avalon was a diamond dog. Back then, relations were much worse than today. Diamond dogs frequently captured and enslaved ponies, provoking skirmishes wherever these foalnappings happened. The story goes that after one of these battles, the local militia killed all the attacking diamond dogs and found that one of their young was left behind. With the local tribe wiped out they didn't know where to take the pup, so some older ponies raised him."

"I don't see what this has to do with getting a human spaceship into Equestria," Scootaloo called from the helm, annoyed. "Or why we have to fly so low."

Pip echoed her annoyance. "Because this diamond dog was one of the most intelligent beings to ever live! The Starswirl the Bearded of inventions. Of course he didn't have much to work with. Back then ponies didn't understand electricity, or chemistry, or advanced agriculture. The stories about some of the things Avalon came up with anyway are... staggering."

"He built a laboratory and a factory here, before there were names for either of those things. Six hundred years later, the first electric lights were built using some of his designs. Flush toilets, hot water... Everything." For the first time, he glanced away from the jungle and back towards the eagerly listening ponies, grinning. "But things didn't get interesting until he got old. Diamond dogs don't live as long as ponies, and the story goes that he started to go crazy. His inventions started making less sense, or stopped working altogether. Like, he invented this house all made from cement, and a flying machine that couldn't fly..."

"Anyway, about ten years after he started making things he stopped letting ponies into his lab. Huge machines would pile up dirt every day, and ponies thought he must have finally decided to be a proper diamond dog. Eventually he stopped sending his inventions out into Equestria, and warned the ponies that there were traps in his lab now and he didn't want anyone coming anymore."

"Another decade went by, and ponies thought he had died. Nobody came in or out of the labs, not even to bring food. But then Nightmare Moon came, and it turned out Avalon was alive after all. He emerged from the lab with all sorts of strange weapons, driving off her army and giving the ponies of the city time to escape. But Nightmare Moon herself couldn’t be driven off, and she confronted him. Nopony saw what happened, but Nightmare Moon continued on towards Canterlot and nopony saw Avalon again.”

“His lab is still here, though, and the old factory. The machines never stopped running when he died. The power he used to fight off Nightmare Moon’s whole army by himself is still here, somewhere. Explorers have tried before… but unlike lots of old ruins, this one has machines that keep everything running even today. The traps are so dangerous, Daring Do herself refused to come here.”

“If Daring Do won’t come here, what makes us think that we can do it?” Scootaloo asked, as she began to slow the ship. “Even Rainbow Dash looks up to that pegasus, and she saves Equestria all the time!”

“I always thought it was a team effort.” Sweetie Belle sounded annoyed. “Don’t you get it, Scootaloo? The story makes it sound like Avalon had machines and stuff. We have machines too, remember? We can just disable the traps."

“Oh yeah.”

Second Chance wasn’t sure it was going to be that easy, but she was too distracted by her own thoughts to actually say so. Luna had seemed to think Avalon might be alive, which didn’t seem possible for several reasons. Nightmare Moon had not been known to leave her enemies alive. Even if she had spared this diamond dog though, she wasn’t sure how he could still be alive. Alicorns lived that long, and maybe a few unicorns had managed to stretch their years that much with powerful spells. Starswirl the Bearded had refused to die until his work was complete.

Very little was known about diamond dogs, but the best guess among zoologists was that they lived between twenty and forty years, with childhoods so rapid they reached sexual maturity within a year or two. They had no magic, nor the capacity to learn it. They had no eldritch rituals like dragons, no innate magical focus like unicorns. So why did Luna think there was any chance he was still around after all this time?

Chance got the sense that Luna had known things she hadn’t said. She could hardly be upset about that, not with the danger Equestria was now in. She had evacuations to conduct!

Maybe Chance could figure it out. She had a feeling the answer was in the technology. Diamond dogs weren’t exactly known for their intellect: why had this one been able to figure things out all the ponies around him couldn’t?

Chance left her friends to search and to argue and walked back belowdecks, to one of the screens mounted on the wall. “Truth, Celestia said the information about Avalon was in a book. Did the book have illustrations, or descriptions of what he might have looked like?”

Truth’s virtual image appeared briefly on the screen, a glowing blue stallion with “0x1” for a cutie mark. Of course no magic had been involved in the selection, no destiny, but Chance admired the simplicity of it all the same. A computer’s way of representing something was true. “So you have a brain after all? Here I thought that was why you had invented computers, so you wouldn’t have to figure things out.”

Chance ignored the sarcasm. The thought of what was going on back in Equestria proper, of her sister surrounded by mind-controlled humans. The thought of the Free People’s Army mind-controlled and puppeted into serving the purposes of the Outside, meant her soul was too cold to enjoy his humor just now. “Your reaction suggests I’m right with my suspicions.”

Truth nodded, seeming to prance across the screen. As he did, images appeared. Images of the moon from orbit, of the massive city that Avalon had been, the glittering pride of human engineering. “Too much of a coincidence for you? It gets sooooo much better. You know what diamond dog names sound like? They translate to things like 'Earthmover' and 'Quickfinder.' Usually two-word phrases reflecting their environment, or their talents. They earn their names like ponies earn their cutie marks. Not Avalon, though. He was raised by ponies, and they named him right away. His father was the city magistrate and his mother was the city clerk, so they both kept excellent personal records. Much of Avalon’s story comes from their writings. Get this…”

His voice changed, becoming higher and dryer; Chance pictured a stern librarian, a mare with a white mane and thick glasses. Truth’s appearance did not change to make things easier on her, unfortunately. “The strange vessel was made from a metal we cannot identify; it did not chip or dent with pressure from steel or iron, though diamond was able to scratch it. It was smooth and round, like a sphere crushed with great pressure, yet there were no signs of weakness or deformation. The surface had been worn down to its metallic base, though a few symbols were visible.”

“Written in the Precursor script, the phonetic translation is 'Avalon,' followed by numbers. We assumed these marks must be the infant’s name. The fact that such care had been taken to give the infant somewhere safe to rest during the day’s efforts suggests it must have been the offspring of the clan’s alpha-couple…”

“No way. They found a hairless infant in a metal capsule and just assume it must have been a diamond dog and that they were more advanced than ponies thought? I bet when he grew up…”

“We think that instead of being the offspring of clan leaders, Avalon must have been isolated as the deformed child that he is. His claws never properly developed, and his paws are freakish and unsuited to proper motion. Most diamond dogs seem to prefer quadrupedal locomotion like civilized creatures, but Avalon is clearly unsuited. Without prompting he walks on his hind legs alone, and returns to that position unless pressured not to."

"No way." Chance shook her head. "You're making this up now."

Truth's voice returned to normal, though only for a brief few moments. "I haven't even read my favorite!"

Chance raised her eyebrows, not so much an invitation to continue, but he did anyway. "Avalon continues to fail to grow the fur necessary to protect himself from wind and cold, and seems uncomfortable in all but the mildest weather. We have sewn a faux-fur outfit for him to wear, in a brown roughly matching what little fur he has, in the hopes it will protect him from harm as well as help him fit in around the city."

She laughed. Chance couldn't help it. The absurdity was too much. "So he was just human, then. The strange metal, the precursor speech... That was a clue already. But he walks on two legs and didn't grow any fur. It's amazing anyone ever thought of him as a diamond dog."

Truth shrugged. "Just leaves his inventions themselves as the mystery. Ponies aren't any less intelligent than humans, yet the stories about him indicate he either invented or had access to post-industrial technologies. Automation, assembly lines, replaceable parts, the scientific method. Producing X-Rays using vacuum tubes and inducing a charge with magnets. The writings we still have could have easily come from Tesla or Edison during the nineteenth century... Except that those people hadn't been born yet."

"Don't pretend like that matters. You know as well as I do travel between universes makes time irrelevant." She took a deep breath. "Do you... think he could have come from Avalon? Maybe this is where it disappeared to..."

Truth was silent for a moment, considering. "The description of the container they found him in is consistent with some of our prototypes for human cryogenics. When I left those techniques hadn't been perfected, but it's possible Avalon solved the crystallization problem after arriving here..."

"Suppose... As our working theory... Avalon vanished to Equestria, only it got ripped off the moon and jammed underground on Equus somewhere."

"For some reason."

"Right. Do you have Avalon transmission codes somewhere? I know the city vanished long before you were built, but..."

"The entire archive, yes." Truth puffed out his chest on the screen, looking proud. “I have them. Would you like me to transmit them?"

Chance grimaced. "No, I want you to read them out loud... Of course transmit them!"

Truth paused, though he made no visual sign of effort. Not that he would; this was only an avatar, a simulation made to make interacting with organics easier. Chance had no reservations about talking to plain cubes of metal, but she had expected to need to interact with illustrations and the like and that was easiest with a real screen. Her Nanophage could support high-band data transmissions, but after learning about the virus they had all stopped using those. Just because it couldn't affect ponies yet didn't mean that it wouldn't figure out how eventually.

"Uplink established with Central Computer of the SCIENCE VESSEL GWYN AP NUDD. Incoming transmission:" The screen filled with numbers and symbols, in three regular groups. Chance recognized them as spatial coordinates, of the sort intersolar ships used to represent position based on the angle of the star from galactic center and the distance to several nearby stars.

"Where is that?"

Chance almost never had the satisfaction of watching Truth take a moment to answer a question. Even if the limits came from the requirement to reference orbiting satellites and not his own processing power, it was nice to have a reminder that he wasn't omniscient.

"Less than a kilometer. Overriding navigation." The ship swerved abruptly, and Chance was nearly flung from her hooves. She managed to resist a painful fall by pressing herself to the nearest wall. Without another word, she turned and stumbled back onto the deck.

Scootaloo was pounding on the controls, angry. "Truth, give me back my ship!" The others looked confused, though Pip was the quickest to recover. Chance stepped into the center of the group and spoke loud enough for all of them to hear. "Truth and I think we figured out part of what's going on here; it's connected to humans somehow. We sent a transmission on a bandwidth we don't usually use, and got a position sent back to us; probably the location of the lab." She put a hoof on Scootaloo's shoulder. "We're so close, it's easier for Truth to fly us there than to explain to you where there is."

Scootaloo stopped banging on the controls, muttering: "Could've warned me first."

"Should have," Chance agreed, loudly. "What if somepony had been leaning off the balcony or something?"

"Sorry." Truth's voice over the radio didn't sound sorry. "Being patient with organics is a full time job."

"We should'a left you back in the castle," Apple Bloom said. "We don't take grumps on adventures."

All conversation was silenced as they dropped into the trees, zipping by within a hoof's distance more than once. At their present speed it took only moments to drop through the canopy into the jungle proper. Beneath them, the ground was already retracting, opening up into a cavernous chamber many times larger than the Fury. It was easily the size of the largest lunar drydock, with dark stone walls and old electric spotlights set in at regular intervals. With the grinding of electric motors they allowed the Fury passage, and with similar groans they began to seal the metal ceiling closed above them, sealing them in the darkness of the depths.

"PREPARE FOR HIGH ALTITUDE DROP!"

The command came so loudly and harshly that Applejack was jarred violently into an alert position in her chair, which was all the more painful with the restraints still in place. Almost no sooner had the command come than the lift platform settled into place behind her and a single human figure stepped out. Applejack didn't recognize this particular human, but she hadn't exactly met that many. When he spoke, the radio transmission came with the prefix S_RYAN, which she could only assume was his name. He wasn't the one who had shouted. No, that had been Pinkie Pie.

"I'm your squad leader," the voice said over the radio. There was no accent to it, he merely sounded confident and friendly. "Ryan, you can call me. The four of us are going to supervise the evacuation; Sigaal figures you can get the civilians to cooperate easier than humans could." Applejack liked him already; he hadn't said "natives." "There's been a development: according to the satellites, advanced scouts of the goblins made it through the artificial stormfront and are already besieging the town. From the look of it, the population has already lost several of the outlying farm areas and are gathering near city hall. This will make evacuation easier than we thought, but also means holding the settlement unill the carriers return could be extremely difficult."

"The captain is still goin' through wit' the evacuation?" Applejack removed the restraints and got to her hooves, grateful to be standing. "I thought humans cared more about strategy than savin' ponies."

The human turned to face Applejack. Of course she could not see his face, not with the helmet between them, but she imagined harsh eyes behind the mirrored glass. "Maybe the Steel Tower would just extract a box full of cortical recorders and have done, but the Sons of Barsoom aren't like that." He formed a fist with one hand and slammed it into his breastplate, which clanged loudly in the confined space. Pinkie Pie gleefully imitated the gesture behind his back, though she didn't make as much noise. "Nil mortalibus ardui est!"

Applejack blinked, but had no idea what Ryan was trying to tell her. These were all the same sort of humans, right? Why did they have so many different languages, anyway? "Is that 'yer way'a sayin' we're gonna' save the ponies no matter what?"

Pinkie Pie was suddenly right beside her, helmet retracted so that she could see her face. "As if you haven't read the Odes," she said, voice as scathing as Pinkie Pie could ever sound.

Ryan ignored this exchange entirely. "In about thirty seconds, we'll be over town square. We're going to drop during the flyby, while the carrier continues on to drop the rest of the unit along the ridge outside of the settlement. The carriers should be back within ten minutes; we have to have the population ready to load up by then."

Applejack turned away from her friend, looking back up at Ryan. "That should be easy. Appaloosa is mostly earth ponies. We know how 'teh get work done mighty quick."

A siren began to sound around them, along with the words, "Prepare for drop!" bellowed over the internal speakers. Even Pinkie Pie had the good sense to put her helmet on then. Her big brother stood up, as calm as anything.

"You ready Big Mac?" she asked, bumping shoulders with him the way they always did when one of them was trying to reassure the other.

"Nope." He returned the gesture, though there was no time to say anything else.

"Everyone spread out!" Ryan shouted over the radio, standing near one of the walls. "We don't want to strike each other during the jump. Don't use the parachute override, and be careful not to impale yourself on anything." He moved his hands rapidly, attaching the large rifle he had been carrying to metal brackets on his back, where the armor's magnets would make sure it didn't go anywhere during the jump.

Applejack obeyed the command, and the four of them stood as far apart as the small chamber permitted. There was a loud, wailing cry from the speakers, and the floor abruptly opened beneath them.

Applejack had very little experience with flight. Aside from a few trips in a hot air balloon and a few visits to Cloudsdale, she had no experience with altitude. She wasn't ashamed to admit she was more than a little afraid of heights. Earth ponies were meant to have their hooves firmly rooted on the ground. The carrier hadn't been bad; even while moving at spectacular speed there had always been solid-feeling metal beneath her.

The sky opened beneath her almost cloudlessly, an endless ocean of blue. Applejack had taken high jumps into water before, and in some ways the feeling of downward momentum was similar. Only there was no water to catch her, only the air spreading her hooves apart as it grew more forceful. She started to tumble head-over-hooves, until the armor's rockets kicked in and corrected the spin.

"Everythin' is just fine," she muttered to herself, her voice shaking. "Armor's takin' care of it. Just gotta think of what I'll say teh' get the ponies movin' when 'ah get down."

Pinkie Pie zoomed past her, her front legs gathered together as though she were diving into a pond. "WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" she shouted over the radio, loud enough for Applejack to hear her over the violent roar of the air.

Every second the sound was louder, like an angry animal was gathering itself around her and trying to buffet her around in the air. It was hard to tell how high she was; there was an ocean of slightly different shades of brown down there speckled with green. Was this what a pegasus saw when it was in a high-altitude dive? She would make sure to be more enthusiastic the next time she complemented Rainbow Dash after one of her shows. Come to think of it, Twilight seemed to be avoiding the subject whenever anypony asked where Rainbow was assigned right now...

This wasn't the time for her mind to wander. The engines on her back fired in little blasts, directing her into what seemed to be clear ground. There were the orchards, and the buildings, and the railroad tracks cutting across the wilderness. The center of town appeared to be crowded tight with ponies, sheltering behind barricades of wagons and other detritus blocking off the streets. Of the buffalo tribe there was no sign, for which Applejack was grateful. If their herd was nearby, that would make evacuation extremely complex.

Applejack directed her armor towards a patch of ground just outside the wagon barricade, so she wouldn't accidentally land on anypony. The ground seemed to be approaching rapidly now, far faster than a gallop. Faster than Applejack had ever moved outside a machine. The altimeter in her helmet scrolled down almost faster than her eyes could follow. At exactly 500 meters, there was a loud bang from behind her, an explosion of air as her parachute deployed, followed by a jerk as it tugged her upward. Rockets engaged in her armor, even as it constricted her movement so she couldn't move her hooves and push herself the wrong way. Breakneck speed dropped to almost nothing so quickly Applejack felt as though her whole body had been struck from all sides, and she was completely winded.

Dirt scattered in a billowing cloud under the force from her rockets, charred black. As she neared the surface, she could already feel the parachute retracting back into her armor. Her hooves landed with a thump, barely more forceful than a jump from a few feet. She panted, letting the cloud settle a little before she took her first few glances around. They were all there, spread out for thirty meters or so of road.

"Identify yerselves!" came the fearful shout through the gradually settling cloud of dust and smoke. "You got five seconds 'afore we shoot!"

Applejack immediately stepped forward, retracting her helmet even as she shouted. "Braeburn, you best be doin' nothin' of the kind! It's yer cousins and friends! We'd have a hard time helpin' if you shoot!"

As the dust cleared, she could see a ragtag band of ponies behind the barricade, gripping muskets or standing behind their cannons. A few had armor from the Guard, though very little of it seemed to be in good condition. "Applejack?"

She closed a little more of the distance, and by the time she had Pinkie Pie was at her side and Big Mac not far behind. Ryan kept his distance, for which she was grateful. Humans might have been a common sight in Ponyville and Canterlot lately, and stories of them had probably traveled to the bigger cities. Appaloosa was not one of those, though. No doubt most of the ponies here barely knew there was a war. "In the flesh!" She kept walking forward, and none of the ponies at the barricade showed any sign of using their weapons. Why wasn't any of the army here?

"What are you doin' here, cousin? That's mighty impressive jumpin' outta the sky, but-"

Applejack cut him off. "The goblins'll be here mighty soon, but we can get everypony out!" Mutters and whispers passed between the ponies at the barricade, though all of them seemed to have abandoned the pretense of keeping on their weapons. Strange armor or not, Applejack was a familiar face around here, and probably related to half of them if you traced things back far enough.

She was standing right before the barricade now, looking up at them. It was far from impressive; fallen wagons and carts, along with sandbags and some hastily-erected timbers. This barricade wouldn't stop even a small force of goblins.

"We were promised we wouldn't have to leave!" That wasn't her cousin's shout, though it was familiar. She couldn't remember the name of the pony, though he was clearly young. Too young to be out fighting a war. "The army will protect us! They're out there fighting right now!"

"Well that's silly!" Pinkie Pie exclaimed. "If you thought that, why'd you make this wall?"

That silenced him, and Applejack seized on the opportunity. "Listen, we don't got time ta' be arguin'! There ain't no other rescue comin'... it's now 'er never!" She jumped with all her might, landing smoothly on the barricade. "Come on!"

For a moment it seemed like these ponies were going to argue with her. Then there was a distant boom, like thunder, though Applejack's false memories identified it as the 700mm shells from one of the tanks. Soon other sounds joined it, most prominently the anti-air turrets and fifty-caliber guns. If there was going to be any further argument, this silenced it.

"Back to town square!" he called. "Leave the cannons. They weren't loaded anyway..."

Soon they were all on their way through the empty streets, galloping as quickly as they could. Or rather, as quickly as the ponies without powered-armor assistance could gallop. This seemed to suit Ryan fine, who looked to be straining near the capabilities of his armor just to keep up.

"Where'd you... get that armor?" Braeburn asked as they ran together. Maybe he thought he was keeping pace with her. She hoped he didn't notice that she wasn't even breathing hard. "The army had new... armor but... not like yours..." They passed boarded-up homes and closed storefronts, though every now and then she glimpsed a face cowering inside. Her armor probably wasn't helping to reassure these ponies.

"The humans asked for earth pony volunteers, to see if we would be any good to fight with." She gestured at Ryan with a flick of one of her ears. "This here's Ryan, he's one of 'em. They're the ones who're gonna get all of you to the Crystal Empire."

"A whole town? I didn't... hear a train..."

They could see the crowd of ponies now, so thick in the street it was difficult to see a way through. Soon they had to slow to a walk. A platform had been erected, and Applejack recognized the mayor standing there. He had been giving some sort of speech, though at the sight of the approaching strangers he fell silent, staring. The crowd turned to look, and their murmurs fell to stillness. In the quiet before anypony said anything, there was only the distant rumble of the tanks, the pat-a-pat of machine guns.

This was why they had asked for ponies, situations just like this. This town might not believe Ryan if he were alone, might not cooperate. Where would they be then? It wasn't as though the humans could force them and defend them at the same time. Applejack moved forward, and the crowd parted for her. Pinkie Pie and Big Mac remained below with her cousin, but Ryan was soon at her side. With his towering form, the space only spread wider. Their ten minutes were already half gone.

She said nothing until she was standing on the platform. Ryan did not climb up beside her but waited just at the base, turning to face the audience even as she did. This man was shrewd. Applejack cleared her throat, then spoke as loudly and confidently as she could. "Listen; we don't got lotsa' time, so I'll be quick. You ponies already know there's a big army comin' your way. There ain't nothin' nopony can do to stop it, only slow it down like what the pegasi did with their storm. We're gonna hold 'em off, but we can't fight the whole army. There're a couple of big airships comin', the biggest airships you ever saw. There's room for everypony in town, but you've got to hurry! Grab whatever you can carry and everypony who ain't here, and get back here right away! We'll take you straight to the Crystal Empire - it's already set up for ponies evacuating from Equestria proper, so you don't need to worry one bit if you'll be taken care of."

Unhappy murmurs passed through the crowd, but nopony started moving. Applejack looked around for help, but her cousin looked too fearful to do anything. The mayor was no help at all, and from the expressions she saw on ponies faces they were far from happy about having to evacuate. After being promised that they wouldn't have to move, this change in plan was bound to cause resentment.

Ryan saved her, with the mechanical grinding as his helmet retracted. She saw pale skin now, with lots of little brownish spots and brilliant red hair. She'd never seen so much color on a human's mane before. She couldn't actually see his face, however, since he was facing the crowd of ponies and not her. When he spoke, his voice carried well. His Equestrian was a little accented, as all humans sounded, but it was easy enough to understand.

"Listen up! What Applejack just told you is exactly correct! There is an army bearing down on you. They will make it through the storm. The Equestrian army is not coming to save you. If we weren't here, the invaders would be standing right where you are in less than an hour!" There was a harsh mechanical sound from above them; the force of the ionic manifold engines lifting the carriers as they zoomed towards the town. Ponies gasped on the edge of panic, but Ryan stopped them. "Those are the airships your Princess sent to get you out of here. Either you get on and ride to safety, or we leave you behind and the lot of you end up captured and enslaved. It's up to you!"

Braeburn spoke up, eyes tracking the gigantic form of the first of the carriers as it slowed above them, descending on the nearest patch of empty ground large enough to hold it, resting in one of the lots meant to receive future construction. "Is it safe, Applejack? You wouldn't lie to us; will these strangers really get us safe to the Crystal Empire?"

Again the weight of the crowd seem to focus down on her, an almost crushing pressure. She considered her answer carefully, not willing to risk even a slight chance that she might not be telling them the truth. She went back through the memories of training they had given her; of the lessons they gave to each human soldier in this group. First in, last out. Never leave a soldier behind. Their own leadership, their own version of the Princess, was in great danger. Yet they hadn't abandoned their mission to protect Appaloosa. They hadn't given up on the ponies here even when it was clear they would have to put their own lives at risk to evacuate them.

"Absolutely!" she cried. "Without a doubt, they'll get you out safe'n sound... but only if you hurry!" She turned to the mayor, and lowered her voice to normal conversation volume. "If you could supervise the evacuation, Mr. Mayor. Two groups, one for each of the airships. We've got maybe ten minutes to get everypony loaded and the ships in the air."

No sooner had earth pony muscle and ingenuity been set to the task than it was done. Every citizen was accounted for, and divided into two groups based on familial ties. Soon Applejack was looking up at the retreating carriers, as their outlines began to shimmer and melt into the sky with their refractive camouflage. Only then could she finally breathe easy; though for her the danger was only just beginning.

Pipsqueak led the way down the gangplank, a spotlight shining from his shoulder. The ground was mostly bare in here, aside from a thick carpet of dust and little piles of plant-matter, no doubt from when the roof overhead had been opened.

"Wonder what used to be in here," Sweetie Belle muttered, a flashlight floating in her magic. Scootaloo, perhaps more pragmatically, had slipped into one of the rifle harnesses, along with a helmet. Chance thought it made her look a little silly, but she wasn't about to say so.

Pip nodded approvingly. "Good thinking. Avalon can't have known we would come in an airship; must mean he had one too. Levitation spells hadn't been placed into crystals back then, and diamond dogs don't have magic, so it must have been technological. Couldn't have been any other sort of vehicle, or else it wouldn't be able to get in and out."

"He wasn't a diamond dog." Chance cantered down the ramp behind them, slowing down before she collided with the backs of her friends. She had her engineering saddlebags, tools and tablet ready to go, but none of the tools common to adventuring. No chalk, or ten-foot-poles, or lengths of rope, or hooded lanterns anyway.

Several pairs of eyes turned on her. "What do you mean?" Pip was indignant. "Everypony knows this story. Avalon is a diamond dog in every single version!"

"Well, the stories are wrong. Truth and I think he was actually human." The party hadn't stopped moving, through the stale air towards the only doorway. "Avalon isn't an Equestrian word, it's Welsh... that's a human language. It was the name of the largest moon colony we built. It disappeared when I was just a child, like magic. Metal buildings and underground tunnels ripped right off the moon, radiation so intense that the rocks still glow red at night around it, even after all these years."

"Avalon was the last joint project between the two big human factions, before either one had solidified into full-blown governments. Avalon's disappearance was the spark that ended the world government and got both sides preparing for war." Most of the others had slowed down, letting her walk beside Pip. She was grateful for that, and not just because she wanted to be as near to him as possible. Mostly it was because he knew more about exploring old ruins than any of them. Just because they had been invited inside did not mean that it would be safe. "Think about it: the name of a missing human colony, and machines a thousand years more advanced than anything in Equestria. Diamond dogs aren't that much smarter than ponies, are they?"

Apple Bloom laughed, though less loudly than usual.

Pip was the first to reach the door, thick and metallic like a bank vault. He began fiddling with it. "Could be you're right. I don't know what difference it could make, all these years later. He couldn't still be alive."

"Probably not," Chance agreed, watching the space around them every moment. If they triggered any traps, her magic was ready. "But it changes his motivations, doesn't it? Means he probably never cared about piling up gems and gold the way diamond dogs do. If he built traps and defenses, they weren't to protect his hoard."

"So you're saying..." Pip grunted a moment as he wedged his hoof against a wheel-shaped extension of the door. "The traps won't be meant to kill everypony, because not everypony who comes is a thief." There was a click, and the door began sliding downward. From somewhere just beyond came the sound of a rushing wind, a torrential gale that buffeted them back from the door as it began to open. Their party drew well back, until the door was fully open and the wind had settled to a stiff breeze blowing down. Behind the door was a ramp stretching into the dark, easily wide enough for the whole party to walk abreast, and several times their height. Even the tallest humans could have walked here in comfort.

The halls seemed melted from the stone more than carved. The sides were smooth, free from the slightest crack that might evidence the action of water. There was no dust, no sign of cobwebs. No sign at all a thousand years had passed in this place. Nor was there any motion from inside, not until Pip crossed the threshold. At once, a series of flickering lights began to glow from overhead, and it took only a few moments before they had resolved into an even white glow. A breeze was suddenly blowing at their backs, drawing the air past them into the depths. Motors rumbled in the far distance.

"Electric lights that still work after a thousand years?" Apple Bloom looked towards the ceiling, with great skepticism. "No way."

Sweetie Belle took a few brave steps into the newly-lighted chamber. Nothing lept out to attack her. "It's not that strange. I bet there wasn't any oxygen in here... no water, no oxidation, and you lose most of what makes things get old."

"We also have self-repairing nanomaterials and hyperstable compounds," Chance added, helpfully. "Equestria's about two centuries away from inventing them, and I'm not really sure you want to. Some of these chemicals are practically immune to decay." She looked nervously to Pip. This might be a little more evidence this was indeed a human facility (as if she needed convincing), but he was still the seasoned explorer.

Her trust was well-placed. The bottom of the corkscrewing ramp brought them to another door, which produced the sound of rushing air again when they opened it. They were ready this time though, and none of them were close enough to be battered. Beyond the door was a massive complex, made from stainless steel instead of stone. There were defenses; false paths, collapsing walls, security robots. In every case it seemed as though the facility were steering them, directing them away from forbidden paths and down towards some unknown destination.

Perhaps two hours after their exploration had begun, they reached what seemed to be the last blockade between them and the laboratory of Avalon. Chance was sure this was the last, because it was by far the most dangerous of any of the obstructions they had encountered. Automatic doors closed behind them, sealing them into a chamber perhaps twenty feet long and ending in a face of smooth and fearless metal. There were no side-passages, though no sooner had they all moved past the newly-closed door than a shaft opened beneath it. The distance was tremendous, and fires burned in the flickering darkness there.

A voice spoke then, from speakers they could not see. It was the voice of an old man, with a thick and strange accent. The words were unmistakably English, but not the English of a native speaker. It was the English of someone who had learned using textbooks and pronunciation guides. "If you have made it this far, then you are at the doors to my lab, my life's work is buried still. This technology might very well be the undoing of this peaceful world; I will not give it into the possession of conquerors. You have shown yourself to be strong and determined to make it this far; are you also wise and kind? I have no magic to test your soul and I cannot examine your mind, so forgive me if the inadequacy of this test costs you your lives. Know that your death comes to preserve Equestria's peace."

The strange male voice went abruptly quiet, replaced with a distant and haunting music. The strains of the harp might have been beautiful, were it not for the fact that the further wall had started pushing slowly towards the opening and the sure fall to their deaths that waited there.

"Uh..." Pip's expression was blank. "What did that voice say? What's it asking us to do?"

Of course, her other friends could speak and understand English by now, through years of long practice and the presence of the Nanophage.

"Not sure..." Chance tried to ping Truth, but found to her sudden panic that not only were they not connected, but they hadn't been for nearly an hour now. No doubt they had been so caught up in their exploring they had failed to notice when the regular pings hadn't reached him. Not that Chance should be surprised; they had no radio repeaters, and there had to be a mile of metal and stone above them now. "Truth can't help us, we're too deep underground."

Scootaloo bucked the advancing wall with all her might, with little effect. She fired her weapon, but the accelerator only dug a foot into the metal without affecting the advance in the slightest.

"Don't!" Chance called, panicked. "You can't fire a gun in a confined metal space; bullets bounce!"

Scootaloo's eyes widened, and she took a different tack, digging her hooves into the ground and trying to stop the wall. "Help me, Apple Bloom! Pipsqueak!"

They did, though if the advancing wall was really slowing the effect was barely noticeable, and already hooves were sliding over the edge.

Chance did the only thing she could think of, the one thing her mother in Equestria had told her could solve any problem; magic. A simple spell focused in her panicked intensity solidified the air over the opening, so that the wall could not push them into the void. Indeed, the barrier stopped at the boundary of the shaft. No doubt the human mind that had created this trap hadn't thought about it from a magical perspective. He had built this section of the chamber smooth, without places to hold or secure ropes, but hadn't thought to have the wall keep going and force them down.

Unfortunately the trap didn't just reset right then, and holding the spell took almost all of Chance's concentration. She wouldn't be able to hold the spell forever, and when it failed... Scootaloo might be okay, if there was a way out of the shaft that didn't end in flames. The rest of them not so much.

"I've heard this before." Sweetie Belle was the only one not presently engaged in great effort; chance to hold up the floor and all the other ponies pushing against the wall without effect. "Isn't it from a play?"

Chance made the connection in a flash of insight. "That time you asked about human musicals!" She tried to place the melody, but found that even that much thought strained her concentration to the breaking point, and she had to stop.

Sweetie Belle didn't need any further prompting, though. Her special talent was music after all, she did not need encouragement to sing. She waited only long enough for the track to loop back from the beginning. Chance was amazed she had somehow remembered the words and the tune, though it was a little strange to hear this song from a female vocalist. The small chamber with its magic floor made the sound reverberate very strangely. Even so, the sound was beautiful.

The wall began to retract. They took their first steps back onto solid ground, following the wall as it moved along the track. Sweetie Belle was breathing hard as she finished the song, but that didn't stop the door from vanishing into the floor, opening into the massive laboratory beyond.

"No way-" Chance was panting too, though from the effort of the spell. "A musical key from an ancient Earth play? How's that supposed to test anything?"

"It's supposed to test to see if you're the sort of pony who knows that song," Pip supplied. "Not every trap has to make sense, Chance. They just have to make sense to the ones who built them."

"I don't know why he built any of them." She was recovering a little; at least enough to move forward into the chamber beyond. They stood on a balcony, overlooking an enormous room. It looked to her like the floor of a defunct modern factory. Assembly robots were scattered about on the tables of parts and pieces, inert and quiet. Passages opened on the lower level in several directions, though she had eyes only for the doors on their own level. She could see the flicker of servers through a set of glass doors. If the information they were looking for was stored here at all, they could find it there.

She gestured with a hoof. "That's where we need to go. Hopefully the master computer will be in there. We can get our information and escape without any more Daring Do impressions."

The party split up then, as the other crusaders insisted on exploring the lower level. Pip refused not to accompany Chance to the computers, since he was sure that "the others could take care of themselves." But there was no sign of further traps or barricades in their way, and the doors to the central computer opened without resistance.

"In case the human song as a key wasn't enough of a giveaway." Chance gestured at a little blue logo on the racks of servers. "That's the logo of a human computer company; they had a manufacturing plant in the Avalon colony. This is..." She passed between the rows of servers, shivering a little at the chill. The environmental systems were still keeping the servers cold after all these years. "a fairly old design, nowhere near as powerful as Truth. More than enough to run a small city, though. And that-" she gestured, "is holographic data storage. Capacity is almost infinite, but read times increase the more information you store."

Pip hadn't walked very far into the room. Rather, he stood at the door, eyes casting about almost like a guard. Stallions and human males weren't all that different then, really. Both seemed to want to take the role of protector to their mates. Or for the ones they wanted to be their mates, anyway. "Can you get what we need?"

She shrugged. "It would be easier with Truth's help, but I can manage. This was my job, once." She found a working console and attempted to make a mental connection, with no effect. With a groan she dragged an old rolling-chair with her teeth, and climbed gingerly onto it so she could look down at the keyboard. Out of habit she extended her hooves to the keys, only to sigh. Somehow, she didn't think she was going to enjoy the next few hours very much.

Author's Notes:

Hey everypony! Just thought I'd drop a few quick comments. here in the description. First, I'm sorry this chapter had to do so much setting up. I promise it'll all pay off soon. I have no doubt there are plenty of readers who would have had no trouble with Avalon's test:

http://youtu.be/5mJ08-pyDLg?t=18s

So November is coming up, and with it NANOWRIMO. Like many of you, I also plan on participating, though for once in a very long time my work will not be pony related. Do not fear, however, my work with an actual novel I can hopefully publish one day will not interfere in the least with the production schedule for HD. Consdering I wrote about 90k words back in march while producing MLA, I have no doubt that chapters will continue without interruption until the story is complete. As of right now, I'm thinking about thirty chapters will be required, making this slightly longer than MLA.

Oh well.

Thank you so much, dear reader, for keeping up with me so far. There aren't even half as many of you as there were back in the days of MLA, but thanks to your feedback, I haven't given up. I appreciate the time you take to review. Let's me know that somebody out there still cares enough to say something about all the hours every week I pour into this project.

Chapter 19: Causality

"So... explain why we've got to do this?" Rainbow Dash asked, for the fifth consecutive time. The medical kit was spread out along the ground around them, each piece resting alone on the bare stone. This procedure was incredibly simple when you had hands; lacking them made this almost impossible. Of course Rainbow Dash was getting frustrated, having to do things with their hooves and mouth that she never would've had to struggle with before. It wasn't fair to her, really. That didn't mean he wasn't going to ask.

Lonely Dawn had just watched from afar off, doing her duty to "keep watch" without complaint. She seemed deeply concerned with every pained twitch Charles made, though at the sight of his blood she had responded with dignity. No doubt blood was not as new for her as it was for the ponies back in Equestria.

Of course, Charles thought that he had done a decent job resisting the pain when Rainbow Dash had jammed the needle into the wrong part of his neck three times.

"We should really just get going. We don't have much food, but it should be enough so long as we ration those apples carefully." Rainbow Dash moved to get up and move away from him, but he jerked under her hooves and she stopped.

"No, Rainbow Dash. If we're leaving this equipment behind, I'm at least getting a cortical recorder in my head. If we die, if we get struck by lightning, or those changeling monsters get us, I'll be damned if I'm going to stay dead." He pressed his neck to one of her hooves. "Right at the base of the skull, in that little gap. You've got to get it at an upward angle so it makes it into the cerebellum."

"What do you mean?" Lonely Dawn's voice was barely a squeak; frightened as she was by this strange behavior and the strange objects. "S-stay dead... that thing doesn't make you an Alicorn, does it?"

Charles felt cold metal on his neck, much closer to the right location this time. He offered no encouragement, though, for fear that anything he said to Rainbow Dash might break her concentration. Instead he spoke to the other, younger mare. If only her infatuation wasn't growing by the hour. Even such an alien display would probably not put her off him for long. If only he could get the will to be mean to her, maybe she would leave him alone, focus her attention on Rainbow Dash instead. As of yet, he simply didn't have the heart. It would've been like kicking a puppy. "No, nothing like that. A cortical recorder is like a... live backup of your brain. If you die, even if your body rots away to nothing, someone can come along and grab the recorder, and give you a brand new body. A fully prosthetic body... We haven't had the need to figure out how to grow replacement organic bodies. Are you... getting any of this?"

She nodded, or at least it looked like that was what she had done. Charles didn't exactly have a very good view from the ground. "I think so... It's magic that they can use to bring a pony back to life. Equestria’s way more advanced than I thought..."

Rainbow Dash sighed. "This stupid thing isn't Equestrian magic! Bringing a pony back to life, that'd be... unnatural!" She shook her head. "As though I wouldn't have plenty of better things to do once I died." A pause. "Okay, pretty sure I got it this time. You ready?"

"Y-yeah." Charles didn't want to nod and risk making her lose her position. "If it works, I'll probably go into shock and sleep for a few hours. Don't worry, it's normal." He felt a sharp pain, much more intense than any of the previous jabs. The brain didn't have pain receptors, but getting that deep was agony. Normally a cortical recorder was something applied while under anesthetic. Unfortunately, Charles had used all the pain medication on Rainbow Dash when her wing had been injured. The recorder itself would induce unconsciousness while it performed its most invasive tasks. He only had to wait through the pain for a few more seconds...

His head throbbed. Why was everything so loud? "R-rain..." He stirred, trying to force his eyes to open. He felt far more sluggish than normal, like his head had been filled with cotton. "Q-qui..."

"Good." Charles had never heard such fear from her, and it was so uncomfortably acute that he was able to force himself to sit up. The noise wasn't his imagination. He could hear what seemed like hundreds of voices, and none of them pleasant. They grated on his ears, guttural and primitive and fierce. It didn't help his headache. Rainbow Dash seemed to be helping him to his hooves, for which he was grateful. Ordinarily after an integration like this a full day's bedrest would have been the best idea. It didn't seem like he would get that chance.

They were resting on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the crashing waves of the ocean and the beginning of the last leg of their trip back to Equestria. It was perhaps fifty feet to the rocks below, easily enough that Rainbow Dash could have used it to take off had she wanted to. Lonely Dawn stood close to them both, her whole body shivering. Charles couldn't exactly blame her for her fear. Rainbow Dash was better at hiding what she felt, though there was no mistaking her expression for one of calm.

"You should've left me behind!" he whispered harshly into her ear, his eyes gliding slowly around the crowd. They were goblins all, perhaps three hundred of them or more. They gave the ponies about ten feet of clear ground before their own crowd began. Strangely, not all of them were armored. Plenty wore bones in strange, ceremonial ways. Some wore no armor and carried no weapons at all, and Charles was fairly certain these were females. Others had misty eyes and milky scales, unmistakable signs of great age. These seemed to be centered foremost in the group, surrounding them on every side. They carried spears and clubs and bone-covered rattles, though Charles wasn't sure about their ability to use them. Only in the back of the group were the strong, able-bodied males. It seemed among this group at least they had the position of least prominence.

"Never!" Rainbow Dash hissed. "We would've flown away, but not without you. Nothing we did could wake you up."

Charles rested his weight on his hooves, and to his credit he did not collapse immediately. Despite the addition of his first implant, this body was still healthy. Once his brain grew used to having a little metal and silicon up there, the disorientation would pass. If only he could force his brain to figure things out faster. "They haven't attacked?"

Rainbow shook her head. "No. I told them to go away and they ignored me. I threatened and shouted, but they didn't listen."

Poor Dawn was in absolute terror, her whole body shaking. Somehow Charles doubted being around so many goblins was bringing back fond memories. He was grateful Rainbow Dash hadn't abandoned him, while simultaneously wishing that she had. At least they would both be safe, even if he would've been doomed.

Charles ran through the facts in his mind as quickly as he could. They hadn't been attacked. The crowd was made up of many goblin "civilians," which they hadn't seen before. From Rainbow Dash's behavior, it seemed clear enough that this was not normal behavior for goblins. What could have caused this total reversal of behavior? There was no way it could have anything to do with him, could it? With as regular as their flying had been to reach the coast, someone must have traveled straight through the night to get the message here. Unless they had riding animals, of which he couldn't see any. Ponies were too small to carry an adult goblin, and he doubted anything larger could subsist in this meager climate.

"I've got this. Get Dawn ready to fly away if things get bad." He took a step forward toward the crowd, trying to look more confident than he felt. Who was he putting the show on for, the ponies, the goblins, or himself?

"They've got bows; not all of us can fly fast enough to get away."

"Just be ready. I'm not sure this will work." Then he cleared his throat, speaking as loudly and clearly as he could in English. He still didn't know how these creatures could possibly speak it. Still was far from comfortable at the thought they were sapient creatures. "Why have you come!?" he bellowed over the crowd.

The crowd, which had been talking with one another but largely ignoring the ponies, grew silent with a few harsh mutters. Instead of only the foremost watching them, nearly all of the strange reptiles turned their startlingly human eyes on him. In just a few seconds, the clearing was silent except for the crashing of waves far below.

"Why have you come?" he asked again, not so loud since everyone was listening so closely.

In the very front of the group was a goblin that seemed to be of such great age that it was a wonder he could move at all. When Charles had first glanced in his direction, he had feared the poor creature was dead. The goblin made his still-living status very clear as he began to speak, his voice like a quavering leaf. Human hearing probably would not have been able to make out the words, but Charles was not limited to human senses.

"We heard the Strange One had come, the one who speaks in the tongue of Elders and is like us not at all."

His English was far better than that of the last goblin Charles had spoken with. He wasn't sure if this ought to be frightening or a relief. Still, he wasn't about to deny the allegation. "I am both of those things. Perhaps more than you know."

"How?" asked another voice, this one higher than the first. It was hard to tell, but it seemed this creature covered with scraps of fabric and small animal bones was female. Was it the smell? "How you speak this voice? No cousin teach you... cousins can't teach even each other."

Of course he had already answered this question the last time he had spoken with goblins, and he didn't feel cooperative. Instead of repeating himself, he said "If no cousin teaches you, how do you know it?"

"Time teaches," said the oldest, frailest of the group. "The hatchlings know it not, but they learn when they are elders too. No teacher, just time. The knowledge comes as a gift from the ancestors."

That was a terrifying thought. So far as he knew, nature had no examples whatever of advanced skills simply developing in the brains of an animal. Either they knew something at birth or had to learn, right? An implant could be used to "download" knowledge into the brain, though he was fairly certain goblins lacked the technology to build those. That only left... advanced genetic manipulation? Vastly beyond the scope of the technology as he understood it, perhaps hundreds or thousands of years more advanced.

Of course, knowing the way this world worked, it could also just be magic. That was a thing here. Something in his gut told him that wasn't the case, though. Hadn't he heard somewhere goblins didn't have magic? "That isn't how I learned," he answered, honestly. "My parents taught me; we spoke English and Finnish both in our family. No, my parents weren't ponies. I'm not sure how much you have heard about me, but I'm not from this world. I'm also nothing special. There are thousands of us back in Equestria..."

The goblins conversed with one another in hushed voices, their words completely unintelligible to him. At least they didn't use English for all their conversations. Eventually a decision was reached, and their attention turned back to him. The oldest of them spoke. "You are the one from the dreams. The strange one. The liberator. We think it is good you go to pony country; our sons fight there. Are you going to free them?"

"From what?"

A roar went up immediately from the goblins, spreading between them like a match put to dry brush. It was such a frightening sound that Charles retreated, fearing they might soon have to make a doomed escape attempt. But no; however emotional these goblins might be, only the youngest males, those in back, made any move to rise. It was hard to resist the urge to run, but he managed. Eventually the shouts and the chest-pounding and the reptilian roars settled into silence. Again it was the eldest of them who spoke, one of the few who had not been briefly consumed with rage.

"You have come to speak the truth. The truth of shells and of flowers. The truth of crystals and of beauty."

Another voice joined the first. "Speak it silently and the great dream will come and we will know. Tell us in dreams so we may know you were sent by the ancestors."

Charles stared, confused. "How am I supposed to tell you something without telling you?"

A few growls came from the crowd, and a harsh muttering that spread through it. They grew restless. The oldest of them did not sound as angry as some of the others looked, however. "If you cannot tell us, these cousins here will tear you to pieces and feast well tonight. Some have shot flying creatures before; the hard black animals that taste like insect, and hoofed animals too. You must answer for them to let you live."

He nodded, retreating a pace from them. "Tell me what I'm supposed to tell you again? I must know what it is if you want me to tell it."

The eldest of them nodded sagely as it sat, not far different really from a human in that position. "The dream Is always the same. The dream of stars as they twist in spirals, of shells on sand. Of petals as they grow. The dream of crystals in the bowels of Earth."

Charles did not know any part of this strange riddle. He didn't understand the message he was supposed to send them, or how he was supposed to send it. True, if they had even basic implants like his he could send them a simple text transmission, but these were primitive natives! They couldn't receive radio transmissions in their brains like Rainbow Dash and now he could. Of course it was possible that there were spells to send thoughts as ordinary people spoke with words, but they had no unicorns here, so no ability to perform magic.

Charles focused instead on the message he was supposed to send, finding a stick on the ground and clumsily drawing each of the examples the elder had told him in order, arranged close enough so he could look at them all at once. If only he had still been in his proper body, this wouldn't have been an issue. But then, if he had still had a cybernetic body, he probably wouldn't be flying back to Equestria anytime soon either.

He stared at his sketches, tracing them with the stick more because it gave him something that made him look busy to the goblins, who grew more restless by the second. How long could he keep this up before they rose up and tore them all to pieces?

It was in the process of sketching that he saw it. In the flowers first, then his little drawing of a galaxy with its spiral arms. There was a ratio here common to each of these objects, one he knew well since it was used by several of the basic search programs his old cybernetic brain had used. It was φ, he was absolutely sure of that now.

"Alright, Rainbow." He turned, lowering his voice to as quiet a volume as he could manage. "I think I've figured out what they want, but I might not be able to do it. If it doesn't work, I think our best bet is to jump off the cliff and fly straight and low as fast as possible. If I run, make sure you and Dawn are right behind me."

She rolled her eyes. "If you run, I'll be in front of you before we get down to the water if I have to carry her."

Charles smiled at this news, not because he thought it was likely so much as because he greatly admired Rainbow's confidence. Not that he would ever tell her that. With a reassuring nod to Lonely Dawn, he turned back to face the goblins, then closed his eyes, forcing his mind into the familiar relaxation and willing the console to appear. With such a newly-added implant, it took him nearly ten minutes of calming breathing to make it happen. Eventually he saw it, the flashing cursor.

System ready: emrg brt -f * msg '(1+sqrt(5))/2' -s 500;

Command Accepted

Nothing happened. Of course, Charles hadn't actually expected these goblins to somehow have radio reception, but that didn't make it hurt any less. He had been so sure he had the solution to the riddle, so sure that he was about to secure safe passage home to Equestria. Almost exactly eight minutes and twenty seconds passed without the slightest impact on the goblins. It was going to be time to run soon.

Then everything changed. There was no reason he knew of that suggested the plan had any chance of success. Yet somehow, he found his mind flashing with the simple message:

Data transmission received: Audio file. Beginning playback:

Then there was a voice, speaking directly to his mind. It was an older, mature sounding woman, speaking in English so bland and without accent that it hardly sounded real.

"We address this message to whichever humans eventually discover our descendants, excepting the barrier preventing travel to other matter-based universes will never be circumvented. We do not know what forms our children may be in, nor do we know if dozens of years will have passed or millions.

Despite the fantastic density of data-storage in genetic material, this message cannot contain even the hundredth part of what became of us, the people of the Avalon colony, after our arrival on this other Earth.

We could not stay on Avalon, however; it was not built to survive without the regular shipments from Earth, and those would never come. We cannibalized much of the colony to build landing craft, leaving only the master computer and the systems required to keep it running intact.

This Earth was peaceful and verdant, almost exactly like ours save that there was no humanity, no sign of advanced life of any kind. There were tribes of a small, horse-like animal, with suggestions of intelligence but no signs of tools or language as we understand them. We named this world Bountiful, for its untapped resources and familiar plants and animals.

There is a strange, mutagenic effect to all parts of this world. We felt it not at all during the years it took to retrofit the rockets to travel here from Luna, yet the instant we arrived all of our number with living bodies began to be altered by the strange effects of this place. Modifications to our medical nanomachines had to be made, to actively repair every bodily cell. Refresher injections became an annual requirement, instead of the once-per-decade requirement common to civilian medicine on Earth or Luna.

In time we multiplied and great cities rose. Further exploration of this planet proved it was not as devoid of intelligent life as we had supposed. A race ancient and powerful slept on a continent far away, in parts of the world so lifeless and without resource we had not traveled there until many generations had passed and humans searched for new homes that would not disrupt the native species of Bountiful.

They had powers unlike anything we have ever known, and the people of Avalon had never carried, built, or maintained weapons, not even after leaving our colony on Luna. We had no designs, no factories, no soldiers. By the time we realized what was happening, and made use of understood scientific principles to create weapons and military hardware from scratch, the war was mostly over. Our cities were in ruin.

Yet many survived. When a race numbers nearly a billion planetwide even a great and powerful enemy cannot exterminate them. Through the master computer of Luna, protected from decay in the dead of space, communication was still possible. We knew we could not defeat this enemy, and had no recourse to flee the planet. We knew that without the ability to manufacture the nanomedical devices, we would all soon be twisted beyond recognition, in ways we did not understand but that our enemy encouraged.

A solution was devised, using all we had learned of mutation and genetic alteration since arriving. The nanomedical device was used to alter the genetic material of every living human, so that their children would all be born with an artificial organ, which would protect itself from alteration within their brains.

We could not predict what might become of us, but we were confident that many would survive in some form or another. We thought that a few of the technologically intact groups might eventually discover a means to neutralize the enemy, before they were discovered. Either that, or the people of Old Earth might one day return, and save us from what we had become.

If you are receiving this transmission, it is through the relay established with this artificial organ we designed and the master computer still buried deep on Luna's surface. Avalon's position has not changed, and the docking systems are intact. Travel there and retrieve the records of what became of us. Learn of our enemy and the strange way they fought. The designs for the medical devices that prevent human mutation are stored as well, along with every other advanced technology we made here on Bountiful.

The purpose of this organ was not only to send this message. When this transmission was received, the master computer relayed a command to all of our descendants, to activate certain genetic changes in their reproductive systems, ensuring the germ cells produced have human genetic material. No genetic system which might repair the bodies of those presently alive could be sufficiently simple as to survive the mutagenic effects of this planet over extreme timescale, but this does not mean the next generation cannot be saved.

We do not know the circumstances in which you hear this message. We do not know if there are perhaps a few individuals of us left, or if we number in the billions. We do not know if our ancient enemy has or can be defeated. Yet this we know, that we determine not to go quietly into the dark. Whoever you are, whenever you are; the future of our children is in your hands. Earth is their birthright as much as yours. We of Avalon trust ourselves to your mercy. Without you, we will surely die."

The roar of distant gunfire was silent now, and Applejack found herself powerfully uncomfortable in the silence. Her only company was the quiet whir of the air-filters on her helmet, audible only thanks to the physical contact they had with her ears. Like the rest of her unit, her armor was in active camouflage mode, projecting the image of her surroundings for almost complete invisibility so long as she remained still.

They had to survive for four hours, that was how long it would take for the carriers to return and airlift the Sons of Barsoom to safety. She had thought that would mean doing what the Equestrian Army would have done, digging trenches and protecting themselves within them until their evacuation arrived. Ryan had laughed when she had told him what she expected to happen, saying only, "We're the Sons of Barsoom, Applejack. If we do what our enemies expect, we aren't being true to character."

Instead they had concealed themselves inside the structures, on the roofs, and in the trees. Humans were very much like apes in that respect at least; they could climb almost anything sturdy enough to support their weight. Of course, the strangest bit of this strategy was the way they had concealed many of the vehicles and turrets inside the structures, tearing down walls and interior sections and crushing foundation planks with massive treads. She hadn't voiced her objection that the ponies probably wouldn't appreciate coming back to their homes completely trashed.

Applejack and her brother were together on the roof of the Salt Block saloon, silenced rounds loaded and bodies absolutely still. Their orders were quite clear; not to fire or react in any way unless their lives were threatened or they were given the order to strike. It was a very difficult order to follow as the enemy began to arrive.

They weren't goblins smattered with a handful of changelings, as Applejack had expected. Had that been the case, she would have hardly spared a thought for what would soon befall them. Goblins were scarcely even animals in their intelligence, and stories about how they lived told of disgusting blood-rituals and even cannibalism. The rapid thumps and sound of wingbeats could not possibly belong to changelings or goblins, however.

She saw the minotaurs first, towering bodies of muscle and bone. They would have towered over the humans, armor or not, and they wore armor as well. Huge sheets of pig-iron, crudely welded and riveted, along with simple helmets with holes for their horns. Much of the exposed flesh and fur had been "branded" with various symbols and designs. Humans and even ponies had tattoos she knew, but neither burned the designs into the flesh with hot metal the way minotaurs did. Most carried gunpowder weapons, rifles so massive that a human firing them was likely to lose their arms. Of course all carried more traditional weapons as well, axes and swords and spears glinted in their straps and scabbards all over the crowd.

That wasn't the worst of it, either. There were griffons flying low above the minotaurs, scanning the air and the surroundings for any sign of the enemy they must know was occupying the town. Their armor bore none of the clan insignia that Applejack recognized, but then she had only ever met a few griffons in her life and knew little about how their government worked. Their armor was light and strong and their weapons looked well-maintained. Griffons had invented gunpowder weapons on Equus several centuries before, and no doubt had continued innovating in the years since.

It was impossible to think of either of these two types of troops as mindless animals to be senselessly slaughtered. It would've been easier by far if she didn't have to think about all the orphans and widows they were about to create. Was it really their fault they had been born into cultures that had chosen to send them here? She almost thought to flee, or worse, to call out a warning that they were walking into an ambush.

But then she remembered the stories from Seaddle and Los Pegasus, the stories of cruelty and abuse that had already made their way east. I wouldn't hurt 'em if they would let us be, she told herself. But they won't. They've come to make slaves, and to kill. I won't let that happen to mah friends an' family. So however much it might pain her to think about, she did nothing, said nothing, and obeyed her orders.

How many were there? At least a thousand between the two parties, perhaps three minotaurs to every griffon. It was a frightening sight to see them get so close, filling the town. A few griffons even landed on roofs all around them, scanning their eyes right through the actively-camouflaged soldiers around them. Thank Celestia they hadn't landed on anypony and given everything away.

Applejack didn't think this was a very good idea; to give the enemy so much territory and let them get so close, but she never said a word of question. They had been ordered to keep total radio silence until conflict had broken out in earnest.

"Sharpshooters, choose your targets. I'll count backward from five. On zero, shoot. Headshots only, please." Cigaal's voice was clear in her ear, and there could be no misunderstanding the command. Applejack's eyes tracked across the HUD, and she selected a target; a griffon scanning the structures with particular intensity. As her attention focused on him, his whole body lit up red; exactly as it would in the HUDs of every other soldier in the unit. She let the auto-aim do most of the work, focusing her concentration on his forehead and readying herself for the shot. She felt the motor within the armor spin slightly, no doubt correcting for every last fluctuation in wind and humidity and angle. It was comically easy to shoot straight when computers did most of the work for you. "Choose another target immediately. Ignore the cows until all the eagles are neutralized."

Cows? Eagles? Cigaal didn't know very much about the different species that lived on Equus, did he? This was hardly the time to correct him. "Five... Four... Three... Two... One... Zero." Applejack fired, along with fifty of her fellow soldiers. Fifty targets fell dead, many of them plummeting right out of the sky. There had been a brief crack of sound and light, perfectly synchronized from all over the town. That was the key to the timing, then; the best way not to give away their individual positions was to fire from all of them exactly at once.

A roar went up from the minotaurs, matched with a screech of rage and frustration from the surviving griffons. "Snipers, get down!" called a sensible voice from among them. "Below the buildings, now! Get to cover!"

"Someone get the talkative one. Probably an officer. Three, two, one..."

Their enemy didn't stand a chance. Before they could regroup, before all the griffons could even land, another fifty fell dead and broken. Applejack watched as the one she had chosen crashed to the ground like a broken doll, and felt absolutely disgusted with herself. She had killed before; she didn't even know how many changelings she had killed during the battle for Canterlot. But that had been different. They had been looking their enemy in the eye, giving them a fair chance to fight back. That wasn't what they were doing now, hiding in the shadows and striking down their foes as with the magic of Celestia herself. There were no survivors, no injuries. Each shot was a casualty, a family that would lose a father or a brother.

Their enemy was far from stupid, and by now they seemed to be realizing they had walked into an ambush. The trouble was just how good active camouflage really was; these troops hadn't ever encountered it before. Of course, the plan was already worked out, and it wasn't to try the same tactic over and over. "Charger group, engage! Deterrent group, decloak and engage. Everyone else, fire at will!"

It seemed at that moment Tartarus itself had been unleashed upon the battlefield. From the opposite end of town a pair of massive machines rounded the corner from their concealment behind buildings, firing anti-personnel shells into the tightly grouped formation and barreling down on them. Applejack knew the machines humans called tanks could easily outpace a minotaur at full run, hovering as they did on blasting torrents of air. These seemed in no particular rush to close the gap to the group, and moved only as fast as the group could get away. From every lower story door soldiers appeared, readying their weapons to prevent entry.

It didn't matter how well-trained this combined force of minotaurs and griffons was at this point, didn't matter how often they had drilled or how rigorously they were prepared for battle. Confronted with such horrific slaughter, the roar of tank engines and the sudden appearance of soldiers from nowhere, they began to flee. Many of the griffons took flight, and were felled by the skillful work of the sharpshooters. Applejack didn't fire another shot during the battle however, so transfixed was she with the scene of blood and horror before her eyes.

A few minotaurs charged for the buildings and were easily felled by the soldiers waiting there, their heavy armor plates and strong bodies not seeming to offer them the slightest protection from human weapons. A few charged the tanks, driven by the rage characteristic of their race in times of stress. The heavy-caliber rounds from the tanks didn't just kill the minotaurs foolish enough to charge, they exploded them.

Applejack turned away, unable to watch the slaughter any longer. "Captain, this ain’t right what we're doin'," she said over the private channel, voice filled with barely contained disgust. She knew what was coming next; the tanks were pushing the crowd right into the line of fire of the diagonally-positioned machine-gun nests, which would grind up whatever troops remained as thoroughly as she ground up apples for cider. "You sent 'em to runnin'! We don't need ta' shoot no more!"

She didn't expect an answer right away; not with the battle in full force now. If it could even be called a battle. In the split-second decisions that had to be made during a battle, the commander's attention was likely to be completely occupied. Even if it wasn't, she was questioning his orders. No Equestrian commander would be happy to have that happen.

But he did answer. "I have heard you natives have delicate sensibilities." His voice was so deep that even over the radio it seemed to make her whole barrel vibrate a little. "We cannot spare them now; or else face them later determined for revenge and full of hate as well as knowledge of our tactics."

Applejack wanted to argue with him, but for once she didn't have the courage. All the death around her was making her sick.

His voice had turned reproving. "We are fighting more than one battle here, native. These troops are strong and proud, and we will slay every man save one without taking a wound. The stories he will tell will fight many of our battles after that, battles we may win without bloodshed."

Then his voice grew sterner. Almost perfectly in time with it, she heard the harsh bark of the machine-guns, and the screaming that told her the worst had begun. "It is wrong of you to think that one way of taking life is somehow better or worse than another. It is not justice to let your enemy strike you even as you slay him. Don't think it matters to the dead man when he is with God whether he saw his enemy before he died. His judgement is the same." Then, with a little more compassion. "It is well that war is so terrible ‒ otherwise we would grow too fond of it."

True to his word, a single survivor was permitted to flee the scene of the massacre. Satellite footage indicated that they had fought some form of advanced guard. The rest of the soldiers wouldn't arrive anywhere near soon enough to confront them before their evac arrived.

"A-Group, scorched earth," Cigaal said. "Every well, every food supply. The rest of you; burial detail." He did not shrink from the scene of blood and carnage in the streets. The dry earth had soaked up most of the blood, but it could not swallow the gore without their help. Empty eyes stared up at them from the ground, filled with terror and hatred. "These were not beasts; we will give them respect in death."

The tanks did most of the digging; apparently they could function quite well as tractors when the need arose. It was the labor of the largest part of their unit to gather the dead and lay them respectfully side-to-side in the dirt. Pinkie Pie was nowhere to be seen, but Applejack and Big Mac both helped with as much of the work as they could. These humans were hard workers; scarcely two hours had passed before they were patting down the last of the dirt on the bodies of the slain. The place was clearly marked by the helmets, which had been removed and piled atop the freshly-turned earth to clearly mark the spot where their owners now rested.

With the work done, the soldiers not assigned another task gathered together under the porches and inside the damaged buildings of the town's square. Most of the unit not occupied with other work were congregating in the Salt Block, playing games with the cards and gambling tables that the ponies had left behind. Had these been other circumstances she might've considered joining them. Applejack loved blackjack.

The soldiers had scrubbed the blood from their armor with sterilizing foam, but that didn't mean Applejack could just forget about what had happened and return to socializing and laughing the way they did. Where was Pinkie Pie, anyway?

"Airborne contact!" came a shout over the radio, loud enough to startle Applejack from her reverie. The soldiers all around her reacted at once, dropping what they were doing and darting out the door almost before she could move. She switched onto her squad's frequency, and heard Ryan's voice exactly as she had expected.

"We're going to stick to cover in the structures," he explained. "AA-turrets are going to take care of it. Shouldn't be a problem unless it crushes one of the buildings somebody's hiding in."

Applejack obeyed, watching as the humans rushed into fighting positions under the veil of active camouflage. She heard the enemy approaching long before it arrived. A roar shook the valley, deep and guttural and furious. Even with the armor, even with so many powerful allies, Applejack felt a thrill of fear. She had dealt with adolescent dragons before, and the interaction hadn't been pleasant. This was clearly not the cry of an adolescent.

If the other humans were afraid, they showed no sign. Applejack scanned through the frequencies until she found the one Cigaal was using, listening carefully to whatever his plan might be. "Do not kill the creature. The dragons are leading this invasion; it will have valuable information. Damage the wings enough to force it to land without causing enough trauma to kill it."

"It would be easier to vaporize it," said a female human voice. "Those scales are tough; the natives say they can swim in molten lava, eat precious stones like candy. To be safe, I'll have to start small. Switch to progressively more-lethal munitions until we find our sweet-spot."

"They said they could breathe fire, just like the stories. Wonder what the range on that is." That was another voice, also without a name she knew.

"We will find out. Don't end this too quickly." None of the humans sounded the least bit afraid. Even as the monstrous creature drew closer, even as it blasted a quick gout of fire into the sky before it, not a soul faltered or fled from his post. The voices on the radio didn't sound the least bit perturbed. How was it they could face an enemy like this so casually? Single dragons had destroyed entire armies more than once.

Then again, they had destroyed an army today too, without losing a single soldier. It seemed Applejack had become attached to the one species that was somehow more dangerous than dragons. Who would have thought such a thing existed until now. Of course, they had also put themselves at risk and saved the lives of everypony who had lived here, so it was hard to judge them as good or evil. It was not a thought Applejack enjoyed. After all, she lived in a world of moral absolutes. This gray made her life much harder.

The dragon was perhaps a kilometer away now, so close that Applejack could see its glittering crimson scales. She also heard something else, the rat-a-tat of tracer-fire from a single AA turret. She watched from the window as the dragon flew, seeming not to notice the bullets at all. The same caliber of bullets that had made minotaurs and gryphons explode wasn't even scratching it. Next she saw a small explosion in the air right in front of the dragon, much too close to avoid. It passed through the flames and the shock wave with only a brief loss of control and no sign of injury.

The creature even laughed, low and cruel. It was close enough that Applejack could even hear the words as it roared. "Fools! Slaves and meat cannot kill gods!"

There was little time left before the dragon would be upon them. A line of light seemed to connect the ground to the dragon for a split-second, and along it flew a horrible screaming mass of bubbling, glowing light. It was like the old stories of ball-lightning, only this lightning flew up instead of down, crossing the distance almost instantaneously and striking the dragon in the wing.

The blow produced a mild spasm, but not enough to unsteadily the creature in flight. There were no burns or other signs they had actually injured it.

It was too late to try something else. The dragon reached the lowest point in his dive and flames struck somewhere Applejack couldn't see in a gout of bright white. The helmet kept it from hurting her eyes, but it couldn't stop the sound of an explosion that followed, and the shaking of the ground beneath her hooves. The dragon had struck something, and Applejack had a feeling it was something human. This town had nothing in it that ought to explode, even if they were set ablaze by dragonfire.

The dragon passed by, wheeling in the air, and the radio was suddenly filled with angry shouts. Cigaal's was chief among them, and at his voice the sound of all others ceased. "They hit Ariel! Someone get her out of the flames!"

"There's nothing to rescue, sir!" answered another voice, almost at once. "Somehow the fire set off all the munition in the turret, all at once! There's just a crater. Thank God nobody else was nearby."

The dragon came back around, laughing again. Another gout of flame poured down on them. This one struck a building nearby, incinerating it and setting those around it ablaze. It was so dry here that the fire started to spread almost at once. Everyone would lose their cover now, and their lives if they didn't move quickly.

"I've got it!" That was Ryan's voice, coming over the squad frequency as well as the global, and Applejack watched in horror as he decloaked atop the roof of a nearby building. He held a huge tube on his back, and did not show the slightest sign of fear as the dragon clearly focused on him. Applejack watched in horror as Ryan merely stood there, not firing. The dragon opened its mouth and burning death poured out towards him. At that exact moment however, he pulled the trigger, and a dark shape uncoiled itself from the end of the device.

Ryan was enveloped in the flames, though by some stroke of luck they seemed to have missed the device itself. The floor collapsed beneath him and he fell, but not before his icon in Applejack's HUD went from "ready" to "critical."

The object, meanwhile, was a gigantic net. It expanded in the air, filling the space in front of the dragon and wrapping around it as it flew. It might be made from metal, but it was so thin! Applejack knew the defense was going to fail; even if it slowed in flight the dragon was going to tear the net to pieces before it fell.

Only that wasn't what happened. Even as Applejack ran from her cover, ignoring whatever danger she might be in and rushing for where her newly-appointed squad-leader had fallen, she saw the dragon begin to twist and contort. Its muscles abruptly went rigid, every part of its body painfully extended. Of course this tore the net in more places than one, though this didn't seem to affect whatever was happening to it. Unable to flap its wings, the monster tumbled and crashed into the ground, with the sound of tearing earth and breaking bones.

It roared in agony and rage, but the tattered remains of the metal net was now entwined tightly with its body, cables knotting around the limbs that had torn through and entangling it completely. There would be no escape for it now.

Chapter 20: Powers

A few hours earlier...

It was a bad day to be a guard. Not that there were many good days since the world had ceased to be something that was consistent from day to day. If Amber Sands was grateful for anything, it was that being here among all these humans helped her think almost not at all about the strange desires calling her to distant war and another betrayal to heap upon her first. Would it have been the greater betrayal to turn against the ponies that had sheltered and cared for her during her whole life, if only to return to her true people and race?

Something didn't feel right that morning. There was something in the air, a feeling of tension about to release. Her eyes revealed nothing that suggested anything bad was about to happen. The Federation side of Normandy was already full of activity, soldiers eating breakfast outside on rows of metal tables and others performing their morning exercises. On the Tower side, where soldiers needed neither food nor exercise, she rarely saw anyone except as they transferred from the single barracks to their facility somewhere in the Everfree.

There was little Amber Sands could do about the feeling. She increased the guard slightly, but that was about the only thing she could do. Fundamentally she wasn't here to guard the place. According to what Celestia had explained to her, Normandy was officially Human land until the war was completely over. The guard barracks onsite was as much an embassy as it was the place where the ponies who guarded the gate lived, and when peace returned that was likely to be its new purpose.

Unfortunately the fact that it wasn't actually Equestrian land meant she had nearly no power at all within the gates; she could do nothing to investigate the strange tension burning at the edge of her perception.

But despite how strange she felt, nothing happened until mid-afternoon. She felt it before she saw it; a wave of panic and fear that was unmistakably pony in nature and not human. She was only slightly surprised to see the pony was Lyra as she crossed Normandy in an urgent streak of mint fur. Not very subtle, was she?

Evidently this pony didn't run very often, as she sounded winded by the time she arrived. Amber had stayed just within the gates much of the day, not even bothering with the pretense of eating with her fellow ponies. Of course they interpreted that as her concentration on her duty, and not a sign of her true nature. "Please don't tell me you never went home." Without actually looking at Lyra, Amber began climbing into her armor, setting the lance into its scabbard, and generally preparing herself.

"Not... why I'm here..." She stopped abruptly, spraying mud and dirt and grass from her hooves as she did. Amber gave her wings a flick to clear the dirt off, though of course she was listening. She might not have any ability to gather information from the humans, but she could ask any of the ponies whatever she wanted and expect cooperation. "Pony needs your help... In that building there-" she flicked her tail to indicate the largest of the structures on the Federation side, the one that functioned essentially as their central command.

Amber secured her helmet and looked back toward Lyra. The mare looked to be on the edge of panic. There could be no doubting her sincerity, even if her story didn't quite make sense. "I keep track of every Equestrian citizen on the premises," she answered, matter-of-factly. She took a few steps to the place where the logbook rested against the table, flipping it open with her mouth to the current day. "According to this, you're the only one who hasn't checked out."

Lyra glanced feverishly around them, as though fearing someone were listening in, before closing to an uncomfortable distance and whispering in her ear. "There weren't any until a few minutes ago, but now there is, and if we don't get her out right away, she's dead and the alliance with her."

Amber's mind danced rapidly through the implications of what Lyra had just told her. Of course a human becoming a pony was nothing far-fetched, she remembered the process vividly and knew about the bracelets. It took a little longer to figure out whose death might threaten the alliance. The current admiral had been instrumental in almost every phase of negotiations. Alexi Colven was the voice that had softened Federation opinion enough to accept Celestia's terms. And though she didn't even know Amber existed, Amber thought of her as a sister.

"Should we bring anypony else? I've never been in there before. If we've got to fight our way out..."

"If we've got to fight we'll lose." Lyra kept her voice down, though she pulled back and tried to look casual again. There was no mistaking the stares they were getting, from humans and ponies alike. Her gallop across the grounds hadn't exactly been the exemplar of stealth. "Doesn't matter how many. But the fewer of us there are, the better."

She had a point. Amber gestured for her to step inside, and shut the door to the supply-room behind them. They were alone, and out of sight now. "If you come rushing back in there with a guard, somepony important will realize there was trouble for sure." She poked her head briefly out the door and shouted. "Steadfast!"

A pause, and the junior officer was at the door. Confused, perhaps, at the sight of the two of them in the storage closet, but he was a good enough officer not to ask. Steadfast was Amber's most trusted pony, and also a close friend. He was on the very short list of ponies she had considered telling the truth about her nature, though of course she hadn't. "Yes ma'am?"

"I want a basket of fresh bread and cider; gathered from the officer's mess, left outside this door in five minutes. Then I want a full patrol of the wall, all hooves currently awake. Start with the eastern side. Leave only the minimum complement at the gate, and instruct them to open the gate for Miss Heartstrings here without the formal interview or debriefing. The gates open and she leaves, understand?"

There wasn't a single thing about that order that wasn't completely irregular. But Amber's voice was so forceful, so confident, that she was not questioned. There were plenty of junior officers that might have cited the regulations those instructions violated. Steadfast was not one of those, which was part of why Amber kept him so close. She could count on her instructions being followed.

Lyra, however, had no such restraint. The instant the door clicked closed again she practically shouted. "You're not going in there without me! I'm not going to leave Alexi to die in there!"

Amber winced as Lyra shouted. Not because of the shouting. No, it was because Lyra had used her sister's first name. The envy she felt did not distract her from her purpose, however. It did not weaken her determination to ensure that her sister was rescued. If anything it only strengthened that resolve. The identity of the new pony was confirmed.

"Besides, they'll expect me back! They won't just let one of the guards walk in on her own!"

Amber was ditching her armor and weapons so fast they piled up at her hooves, wiggling and shrugging out as fast as her body would move. So much for all that careful deliberation to pull on all this ceremonial stuff as she had watched Lyra approach. "You're completely right. They won't; a guard would make it something official. That's a great deal of attention, and from the sound of it we need to get her out quietly and completely unsuspected. But that's just it; two ponies might pass, but three never will. There are only that many during big, official meetings."

Amber's eyes narrowed, her expression intense. "You're not a soldier, Lyra. You aren't trained in stealth and deception."

"I didn't think they trained the guards that way." Her voice was angry, but that didn't make it any easier to hear. It hurt to be reminded of how different she was, never mind that those differences might save her sister's life.

"Only a few. I've got some... special magic. Secret magic, the princesses keep in reserve for situations just like this." Of course it was a lie, but of course Amber was an absolute pro when it came to deception. She wouldn't be alive otherwise. "Look, I've got another job for you. I've sent the guard to patrol the wall; almost nopony will be in the barracks soon. You're going to go straight out of Normandy and over to princess Twilight Sparkle. Tell her Amber sent you; she needs to come straight to the guardhouse and wait for me here... Teleport, you understand? None of the humans can know she's here. Tell her more than you've told me if you have to; just get her here! We'll need her help to get out of Normandy without the humans noticing us."

Lyra seemed to think this over. "I don't know why you sent the guards away."

"Because I don't want them to notice you leaving here twice." Amber focused her concentration intently on Lyra, her magic flaring bright green from a horn that wasn't there. Such a spell normally cost Amber a great deal of her reserve, living as she did on the little sips of love she drew from her inferiors and the ponies of Equestria. But the strange, vanishing Unicorn had filled her reserve so completely that it cost her almost nothing to transform, shifting in just a few seconds into an exact copy of Lyra. Everything was perfect, from the cutie mark right down to the voice.

Of course this meant her current identity was destroyed. Even if Lyra didn't know what the magic meant, somepony who did would eventually hear the story and her present reputation would be destroyed. Had the life of her family not been on the line, there was no way she would have been so reckless. "See? Secret magic." It was strange to hear the shift in her voice, though that wasn't nearly so strange as feeling a new body.

The strangest part was the missing wings. After being Amber Sands for so long she felt a little dizzy to have them suddenly missing. It felt good to have a horn again, though less good to be so thin and weak. Lyra wouldn't have lasted long in the guard without some serious improvements to her personal exercise regimen.

"Woah." Lyra's eyes were wide, though she didn't flee.

"Do you understand the plan? You're going to wait five minutes in this room; long enough for me to get into the human building without galloping there. Then you're going to look nice and calm as you walk out of Normandy. Once you get over the hill, gallop like Cerberus is on your hooves and get to Princess Twilight as quick as those skinny legs can run."

"Yeah." She still looked confused, dazed. "I got it."

"Good." Without looking back, Amber fled from the room, making sure to close the door behind her. She found the basket waiting at the door and lifted it in her magic, taking a moment to get her supernatural grip steady before she started to move. Levitation was simple magic, for which she was fortunate. Nopony stopped her as she cantered back toward the building Lyra had come from.

Perhaps another pony would have to ask for directions, but other ponies couldn't feel the emotions drawing them onward. There was only one pony in the building, and it would not be hard to find her. Even through the walls Amber could sense the fear, the anxiety, with sour twinges of disgust mixed in around the edges.

The doors opened automatically, with the whir of electric motors and magnetic wheels. A male secretary sat at one desk and a guard at another, though Amber barely saw the beautiful holographic model of Earth that floated in the center of the room. "Back so soon?" the secretary asked, sounding amused. "You looked like you were in a real hurry when you left here!"

She nodded, forcing her face into the mask of comfortable deception that was so easy for her. She held the basket up a little higher for him to see. "I've got breakfast for the Admiral! After everything she's shared with me it seems only fair." She hadn't heard Lyra speak all that often, but then she was fairly sure the secretaries here probably hadn't either.

"She's a lucky woman then." His eyes moved over the bread with a level of desire completely inappropriate to a mere meal. "If she doesn't do something with the leftovers, I'd love if you brought them up here for us." He gestured, and the guard relaxed, though the armored soldier didn't say anything, face lost in the mirrored reflection of his helmet.

Amber nodded. "You bet!" She left without delay, moving as briskly as she could without seeming rushed. She did have steaming bread, and the pretense of getting it to the admiral as quickly as possible. She couldn't help as her mind swam with dark thoughts. If Alexi was even half as busy as Amber herself was there was no way nopony had showed up to see her during the time it had taken Lyra to retrieve her. It was her one comfort that she heard no screams and felt no unusual surges of emotion from around her. She would have felt it if Alexi had been discovered, right?

The door seemed not to be guarded, though Amber could see at least three discretely stationed marines watching as she went in. She made sure to carry the bread as high as possible, even opening the cloth a little to be sure they could see there was nothing dangerous inside. None of them stopped her, and the door wasn't locked. The heavy wood took a little more magic than a glance might've suspected, but it was far from out of reach with the phenomenal reserve Amber was running on now.

"I thought you were going to get help, Lyra." There was a short hallway leading into a wider space beyond, and Amber couldn't see the speaker until she had exited the hallway. The office itself was large and tastefully furnished, with photographs of Earth on the walls and mementos on the desk. "Breakfast isn't going to stop Samil from killing me." There was no strange accent to the Equestrian now, but that did not stop Amber from recognizing the speaker's voice immediately.

Soon she had come into the room proper and could put a face to the voice. It was an earth pony, her mane and tail as bright as Second Chance's had ever been, her coat the gray of a shadow cast on lunar soil. Her mane was a little shorter than the current fashion among mares, her tail poorly kept, but there could be no mistaking her. It was strange to see an adult pony with no cutie mark like this, though not so strange that Amber wasted much time staring at her.

There was no overcoming how absolutely bizarre it felt to look into those eyes, unchanged except perhaps in size after all these years. She stood on shaky hooves, leaning against a wall for support. Amber couldn't help but be a little impressed to see her standing so soon after her transformation that her uniform was still crumpled on the floor near to where she stood. She imagined Alexi had spent every moment since she had woken up trying to figure out how to move again.

Amber's eyes took in the windows with curtains drawn, the strange device strapped to one of Alexi's hooves, and the contents of the closet scattered in a disordered mess. Whatever had happened, it had been done with enough forethought that some preparations had evidently been made first. She burned with curiosity to know why, but didn't dare ask. There was no time to waste with stupid questions.

"She did get help." Amber normally couldn't afford to waste magic like this, but with as much as she had stocked away it was only a small sacrafice to force her form back to normal for a moment, black chitin glinting and transparent wings sparkling against her back. Before Alexi could get a good look, she returned to her Lyra disguise, keeping her expression as honest-looking as possible as she said, "I'm here on special assignment from Princess Celestia. I'm going to get you out."

Ponies had discovered Amber's true nature before. Always it was fear she felt from them, often mixed with disgust or revulsion. She felt nothing of the sort from Alexi, though. From Alexi, who apparently did not connect her with the changelings attacking Equestria or simply did not care, Amber felt only a wave of relief and trust, complete trust as only ponies knew how to give. The surge of emotion was more than enough to replenish what energy Amber had used to briefly reveal herself. It was love, focused directly on her and not on the mere idea of a guard.

"I wish I was as far-seeing as Celestia," Alexi said, taking a tentative step away from the wall. Her legs shook a little, but held her weight. How much help would she need to move? "Maybe I would've built an escape tunnel. Or better yet, shot the bastard Samil while he slept." She looked down at herself, and there was the disgust again. She sighed. "What's your plan?"

Amber did not pause to think, did not show even a sign she hadn't been completely sure from the start. That didn't mean she actually was sure her plan would work. This was going to be much harder than impersonating Lyra. "Magic." She sighed. "Lots of magic." She glanced around the room, eyes scanning quickly over the photographs. "Do you have any pictures of the ordinary soldiers, the ones in armor with their faces covered?"

"I, uh... Sure." She lifted a hoof and pointed at a little photo on the desk. Amber darted over to it, studying it carefully. It was much harder to copy something she hadn't ever seen before; nevermind that she had to copy an alien creature wearing complicated clothing. She had all the power in the world just now, but power did not equate to the skill to use it competently.

She concentrated with all her might on the strange bipedal form, the armor, the hairless body beneath. The room glowed and burned with greenish fire as she struggled. Her body cracked and stretched on the verge of a successful transformation, straining towards her goal, Then the magic collapsed, came crashing down around her and dissolved, sending little green tendrils everywhere as her body snapped painfully back into shape, like a rubber band stretched just a little too far. She winced, sucking in a breath of air in a pained hiss.

"I take it that wasn't what you were going for," Alexi observed from nearby, not entirely without compassion. "I don't mean to press, but we only have another fifteen minutes or so before things get difficult." She held up her hoof, the one with the strange device strapped to the side.

It was made of two distinct components, an intricately-worked piece of metal and plastic on the back that looked human in design, and a front section connected with a number of contacts with crystals and runes like something made in some unicorn's workshop. The rear section lit up as she held up her hoof. "Is that right, Truth?"

A voice spoke from the roughly rectangular machine, like the squawking of a gramophone but without any of the distortion. At least, she would've thought that if she didn't have all of Chance's memories, which included technologies far more sophisticated."Thirteen minutes eleven seconds. Say the word and I can extend the duration, if you need more time."

"Absolutely not." There was no delay for her, no indecision. This might not be a woman anymore, but this new mare's personality seemed to have changed very little. "It would be problematic if I died, but worse if we act after Samil does. I would rather not survive than be the only survivor."

The emotion of the voice on the other end seemed completely unchanged. "Very well. You have Twelve minutes forty-eight seconds."

Alexi set her hoof back down, looking up to Amber. "If we can't get out before then, we're dead."

"I know we don't have time to talk, but could you at least tell me what we're up against? It would be much easier to get you out safely if I knew what I had to hide you from, even if the why would take too long to explain."

Alexi seemed to consider, though only for a second. "An important human in this facility is about to betray all of us. He's going to try to take control of people's minds, all at once. We don't know what he's going to do once he succeeds; maybe just kill everyone, maybe worse. In twelve minutes, I'm going to release a pre-recorded message warning everyone of the plot and showing how to resist his influence." She gestured at her body, and the disgust briefly flared again. "If he somehow discovers what I've done, he'll know immediately why and might set his plan in motion before my warning can be sent. If I'm not gone by the time it is sent though, he will certainly kill me, and my people won't have the leadership they need."

Amber nodded. She had another plan; though she didn't like it as much since it depended more on Alexi's acting ability than her own. "Okay, hold still a sec. I'm going to use a few spells on you. Don't worry, they're just illusions. Nothing painful or permanent." She concentrated a moment, but these spells were hardly complicated. One brief surge of magical energy and Alexi's coat was the exact double of Amber's own. Another brief flash and the mane too changed. Of course such basic color-changing spells couldn't create a horn where there hadn't been any, or make her look less like the strong earth pony that she really was and more like the delicate artist. Still, she guessed humans might be able to miss such simple differences easily. It was a third spell to copy Lyra's cutie mark onto to Alexi's flank, made easier by the fact she didn't have one yet.

"There. You're going to be the second Lyra impersonator of the day. And me..." She extended a hoof. "Give me your machine a second. I wasn't wearing that in, they might notice." Alexi looked about to object, but Amber hardened her gaze. "I'll return it as soon as we're out, honest."

"Lyra helped me put it on." Alexi's voice was bitter. "Not sure if I could work the straps. The manipulator won't target itself, and I don't have one of those horn things."

"To be honest, I expected you'd be a pegasus. Not that flying out the window would've been a subtle getaway..." Amber's own magic made quick work of the straps, and she was soon tightening the device on her own right foreleg. There was a slight tingle as it made contact with her skin, two metal plates on the back like electrical contacts. "Thaumic force-manipulator interface complete." said a cool voice, different than the first. This sounded mechanical, artificial.

"Why?" Alexi was fumbling with something on the ground, kicking her uniform awkwardly into the closet and pulling the door shut with her mouth. There was still a piece of it at her hooves, though.

Amber opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again when she realized her answer would involve a great deal she didn't want to say. Of course the reason was Alexi's personality; her sense of command and love of flight. But as a guard Amber Sands did not know any of those things. "Nevermind."

Of course this next spell took more of her concentration, but it was easier than changing into a bipedal alien in complex mechanical armor. A little bending of the light around her, and she disappeared from the room, far more completely invisible than any active camouflage. There was no shimmer in the air, or distortion around her curved edges as the active systems failed to compensate completely. She spoke though, in order to show Alexi that she hadn't teleported. If only she had known how to do that. "I'm going to follow you as closely as possible. Walk calmly out and over to the pony guard building. There should be rescue waiting."

"Sure." Alexi's confidence was returning. She kicked the thing at her hooves, and it slid over to Amber. It was the hat. "But if you're going to be invisible, you might as well bring this. I'm going to want it later."

Beneath the net, the dragon's body spasmed and twitched. Applejack's HUD lit up with electrical warnings as she looked toward it, lightning crackling along the metal fibers. Behind her the rest of the unit was emerging from concealment, raising their rifles into the air and cheering over the radio. Applejack cheered right along with them, though she never took her eyes and aim from the monster. Her own faith in the strength of this net hadn't yet passed a practical test.

Cigaal stood directly in front of the dragon's mouth, completely unmoved as the creature tried repeatedly to claw its way out or raise its mouth to blast him with fire. His helmet retracted and he didn't even blink as the huge creature tore massive holes in the earth, or as huge limbs strained toward him. His dark features looked on with contempt. "You waste your energy," he growled, his Equestrian almost as deep as the dragon's voice. White teeth flashed from dark skin as he did, darker by far than the olive scales on the dragon. "The net responds to motion. Move and it will shock you. Twitch and it will shock you. Try to use magic and it will shock you. I promise your brain will liquify before the batteries are drained."

The dragon ignored him, roaring in frustration and anger and struggling on. At least for another few seconds. As Applejack watched, its motions became more sluggish, and it eventually collapsed, breathing heavily. Only when it ceased to struggle did the net relent, though the tightly constricted fibers didn't just vanish. It was still trapped. Slowly, the beast cast its eyes around. Eventually it found Applejack, and turned its attention on her. There was more hatred in that expression than Applejack had ever seen in one place, not since King Sombra's return. "Release me!" bellowed the monster, its voice so loud it shook Applejack even within her helmet. "And I will grant you a swift death!"

Applejack was not a fearful pony, but even so it took her a moment to collect her courage enough to speak. "I reckon you're asking the wrong pony," she called, her voice nervous. "I ain't the one in charge here." She gestured at Cigaal. "Ask the captain if you wanna' get out."

The huge body laughed, though not so vigorously that he triggered the net. "Slaves and less than slaves do not fool us, pony of Equestria! We have no dealings with lesser creatures. Do not think because you treat your livestock as though it could think that we will do likewise."

Applejack didn't reply, just looked to the captain with something like surprise and awe on her face. Was this dragon blind? Did it really not know who had built these weapons? Did it really not know who had designed this armor? Who had got them here this quickly? Applejack was glad that most humans seemed to share the Equestrian idea that there were no "inferior" races. If they didn’t, she wasn't so sure they would have thought too favorably about her people.

"You have made your offer, dragon." Cigaal made no sign he had even heard the monster's words, no sign that he cared. "Unfortunately I hold the gun." He rested his hands on the rear of the net-gun's control. "So I tell you my offer. Tell me everything you know about dragon troop movements. Tell me how many of you there are and where they are. Do this, and my men will release you. We will permit you to fly out from this land and leave this war. We are not equipped to transport prisoners, so if you do not cooperate I will order my men to shoot you."

The dragon turned its fierce eyes on the captain, and suddenly lunged at him. Applejack reared back in surprise, but Cigaal did not flinch. The human had apples of steel. His trust in the net was not misplaced, however. The dragon only got itself further entangled, twitching all over with electrical spasms. Instead of retreating, Cigaal took one calm step forward and reared back, then struck with a kick as swift as the power-assisted armor could manage. Applejack had seen such kicks fracture stone and shatter heavy wooden doors. Dragons were tough, but evidently not tough enough. There was a harsh cracking sound from the creature's right leg, and bits of broken scale crumbled away like powder. The dragon howled, moaned, then lay still.

"The slave... will be... roasted alive for laying claw on the firstborn... Stripped of meat and left to die in the sun." The pride was all gone from the voice now, though. It was fear instead, defensive.

"Does this look like the face of a slave?" Cigaal's voice was deep, his arms folded across his chest.

"Weaker even than a slave," the dragon answered. "You are degenerate, soft. Our slaves have hard scales and tough hides. Our slaves know their place. Take away pony armor and pony weapons and you are nothing!"

"Troops," Cigaal repeated, his voice cold. "Where? How many? What are your plans for the next offensive? We know every dragon is privileged to some of this information. Speak what you know or die."

The huge reptile laughed again, though it sounded forced and a little raspy. "Father was right, he promised this war would be short and easily won. The Equestrian's pets would crumble to ash before our flames. The slaves before the slaves, primitive and feeble."

Cigaal smiled, and it wasn't the friendly smile she sometimes saw around the camp. It was a harsh and predatory expression, bright teeth glinting. "This war was lost for you the moment human hands lifted a weapon. You think we are slaves? You think we are weak? You know nothing of this enemy, dragon-creature. You think this war is with ponies? Not so. Ponies have fought wars with you before, and they let you live."

"Humans have never let their enemy live, dragon-creature. Our planet once had a competing species, also moving towards intelligence. We killed every single one of them. Dangerous animals like you once hunted us, and carried away our young. We killed every single one, except for those we put into protected areas to study. There was not enough food, so we took the plants and unraveled their genetic code, until we had enough that hunger was dead. Diseases attacked to weaken and kill, until one by one we made them all extinct."

"This war is lost for you, dragon-creature. Your kind are ruthless. Ponies are intelligent. Humans are both. The only enemy we have left unslain is ourselves. It doesn't matter if you hold Equestrian cities now. It doesn't matter if you think you have enslaved them." He gestured at the net. "I give you this last chance to surrender. Tell me the truth that will save your life, or die." He looked over his shoulder towards Makoto's lean form. "If the next words out of his mouth aren't the strength and location of their troops, shoot him." Makoto had been holding careful aim on the creature's head during this entire conversation, so the command didn't provoke anything more than a nod from her. She was ready.

Applejack willed the dragon to be wise and listen, to give them the information they needed. Not only would it save the lives of many ponies, but it would save the dragon's life as well.

The dragon did not see it that way. "We are gods!" It cackled, voice low and confident again. "A slave cannot kill me!"

"May your soul fly quickly to God," Cigaal said, his voice suddenly quiet. Then he turned his back.

There was a harsh crack from over Applejack's shoulder, and a split-second later the dragon's head exploded. The dragon spasmed and fell over sideways, twisting for several seconds as the net triggered its various muscles. Eventually it lay still, missing most of its head.

As it turned out, a slave could kill a god.

Chance swam through the database like a fish in an unfamiliar sea. The sheer volume of data here was enormous. It was hard to say for certain, but from the number of records and publications here, Chance would not have been surprised if this computer had been in use for thousands of years. The more she looked at the machines around her, the more she saw the evidence of patchwork repairs and part replacements, so much so that she wondered just how much of the original components had survived. It was true her people had built their machines to last, but it was frightening to imagine just how long they had.

Of course, she wasn't here as a historian. As much as she would have loved to know how this massive science vessel had come to be buried beneath the soil of an Equestrian jungle, that was not what she was here to investigate.

She found what she was looking for in the "rebridging" experiments, which had taken place after something called "the fall." There was little time to spare to learn what those things might mean, not when she had discovered what they were looking for.

From what she could gather, these humans had understood magic as a form of radiation, the way light and gravity were understood. Through careful study, these humans had learned how to produce and tune it using compounds native to Equestria that had never formed on Earth; crystals that did for magic what magnets did for electricity. If one could get far enough from Equus to escape its natural magical field, it would be possible to open a gateway back to Earth large enough for a capital ship. Apparently it had been done, but the ship that had traveled there discovered they were actually some time in Earth's ancient past. The ship had returned to Equestria, unwilling to risk whatever temporal consequences might come if they tried to interact in any way with ancient humanity.

That seemed to suggest that the technique wasn't as temporally unstable as the other gating methods humans had developed. If they found this equipment in storage somewhere and loaded it onto the Fury, they could open a doorway and the Aegis would be waiting on the other side. She wondered if any were in storage here, and began searching the inventory when she heard Scootaloo's voice from down the hall. "Chance... Pip!" she was calling as she ran.

Pip could evidently see what Chance could not, because as Chance neared the doorway Pip got out of the way. Chance had enough good sense to not move into the space he had just vacated, and good thing too. Scootaloo came hurtling to a stop in that exact spot, her wings still blurring with their motion and hooves pounding. She had been flying, which for her usually meant bouncing along the surface of the ground like a stone skipping on a pond.

"Hey Scoots!" Chance grinned. "This place has everything we need. We'll need to find a rootkey somewhere, but once we do we just have to put a few new machines onto the Fury-"

Her friend acted like she couldn't even hear her. "We found someone. He's still alive."

"What?" Pip and Chance asked in unison, voices disbelieving. Only Chance continued, though. "No way someone could live down here all these years." Scootaloo hadn't said "somepony" either, which suggested Luna's remark hadn't been formality or futility. Maybe she had already known what they would find. Luna had seen her dreams before she even had a body, hadn't she?

"There was..." Scootaloo was panting, but after another moment she managed to squeak, "one of those containers, cryogenics. Only there were all these machines, and they wouldn't let us in! But there was someone they were trying to revive. It looked human!"

"Show us the way, then."

She did, through the hallways and passages of this strange complex. At least their guide had a great sense of direction; never once did she show any sign of getting lost or any doubt about where she was taking them. This part of the facility was not large, and before too long they had reached Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle, both of whom were waiting outside a little arched doorway and looking nervous. "In there," Scootaloo whispered.

Chance didn't stop; she walked straight past her friends and through the open doorway. She recognized it at once as some sort of medical bay, not at all unlike those found on ships of her own day. Of course there were no living doctors. Her own people vastly preferred the company of real, living humans, though of course most surgeries were robotically controlled. There were three pods set into the wall on the back of the room, two empty and drained of fluid and a third that was still dripping wet.

There was a single operating table, and several medical machines zoomed around it, attempting a fairly serious bit of medical work. It was hard to get a clear look at the subject, but it was clearly a human male. It seemed he was the victim of severe injuries, far worse than anything that could be survived without such modern medical technology. Flesh was burned and necrotic across much of his body. She could see exposed bones and thick fluids seeping. The air was thick with the taste of dark magic, and it was almost harder to stomach than merely seeing the terrible injuries.

Chance didn't get much closer, fully conscious of the security robots also waiting in the room. Any closer, and she might be seen as interfering. No doubt they had politely shown her other friends out of the room when they had tried. Machines whirred and scalpels cut. Foam and liquid cell medium poured down transparent tubes. So this was Avalon... or what had become of him, anyway. Had these injuries been inflicted when he had confronted Luna? But if that was the case, why had he waited to treat them until now?

"What are you doing?" She heard the whisper from behind and turned, unsurprised to see Pip was standing in the doorway.

"Watching," she replied. "I think this is Avalon. I want to be here when he wakes up."

He nodded, though he didn't actually follow her inside. She couldn't blame him for that. Whatever else these robots might be, they were not restricted to the tools used by Federation doctors. Even as she watched, they installed at least three cybernetic implants. Not that limb replacement would have worked in this situation regardless; it took days to grow complex organs and whole limbs, and that equipment was delicate indeed.

Hours passed, and the others eventually moved back to their exploring. Chance gave instruction on where they were likely to find the components they were looking for, though that wouldn't get them admin access and thus access to the software that it required. Somehow she doubted Truth could just play around with magic circuits until he figured out how it worked.

But Chance didn't leave, though she did doze a little, slipping into a state just enough like sleep that she felt drowsy afterwords but not nearly enough to practice Oneiromancy. Not that she had practiced at all since the war started...

It was irrational to think anyone would be conscious after such a complicated surgery. Perhaps she had simply slept longer than she first suspected, because the next thing she knew there was a voice coming from deeper in the room, a coughing, raspy croak. "Pony... unicorn. I didn't sit through that just to die alone."

Chance stirred, shaking off the grogginess and getting to her hooves. The surgeon robots were gone, stored inert in their cubbies on the walls. The protective androids were still here, though like Chance had been until a moment ago they seemed to be in some sort of power-conservation state.

"I didn't think it would be a pony," came the voice from across the room. "All this time, and I thought I would see the face of my own kind before I died."

Chance closed the distance slowly. Though the cameras on the defense drones pivoted to watch her, none moved, and she was able to stand before the speaker.

He was not a diamond dog, not even close. His hair was gray and white with only traces of brown, his face lined and his body feeble. The worst thing to see was the way some of his veins seemed almost to glow with sickly light beneath his skin, closest to the implants. Somehow she doubted it was the implants making him glow that way. His right arm and leg had both been replaced with rudimentary implants, more skeletal imitations of limbs than the nearly-human models with synthetic skin and too-perfect proportions. He wasn't naked anymore, but had been dressed in a plain-looking jumpsuit, probably a standard model uniform from the ship. He wore glasses, though one of the lenses was missing and the frames looked like something straight out of a museum. The aura of dark magic was still upon him, though it didn't fill the room as it had. No doubt that flesh had been cut away.

This was unmistakably the owner of the voice that they had heard earlier in that trap. The accent was the same. "You should've seen me a decade ago, then. I looked way more human when everyone called me Dr. Colven in Luna-7's gating department." She forced a smile. "But I am a pony now. If my sister was here you could- wait. Maybe not her either anymore." She shrugged. "I can take a look at that spell for you- the one that's rotting your body away, I mean."

Avalon made no sign he had heard that last part. His expression grew intense, the only part of him that showed no sign of age. "You are from the other colony? The Federation facility? Your name is Colven, and you are a doctor." He shook his head. "My mind must be going already. No pony would know of such things." He was still sitting on the surgical table, though the back was raised high enough to make it almost seem like a chair. His hands never strayed from a large object resting in his lap; Chance could see now what it was; a revolver.

"Well, everypony just calls me Second Chance these days." She shrugged. "Don't be sure about what I can't do, though. Not only is my English way better than yours, but I think I can save your life." She gestured with her head at the robots against the wall. "Can you let them know I'm not attacking you?"

"I wasn't supposed to survive... Just bought time... Must have dragged me back here when she left... Hope they made it." Was it old age speaking in confusion to her now, or the spell? Dark magic could do awful things; rarely did those slain by it remain dead for long. For someone so old and so weak, it was possible his mind was already slipping into the void. Of course, this spell didn't seem like an active curse, or else she wouldn't have stood a chance. Maybe Twilight Sparkle could unweave an Alicorn's curse, but Chance was only her faithful student. Also, she wasn't an Alicorn.

"Can you tell your robots not to attack me?" she asked again, louder. "I'm going to try and dispel what's left of the magic killing you."

"W-what?" Again his eyes focused on her, seemed to see her. He gestured to the robots in a way that made it seem like reflex. "Sure. Anything, sure. I'm glad not to die alone, Colven-doctor. Even if you only say what I want to hear because my imagination conjured you here."

Chance smiled faintly. "Princess Luna says she's sorry." Of course that got his attention, though she didn't hear what he might've said next. She closed her eyes and concentrated intently on the magic that was at this exact moment tearing his flesh apart. Cryogenics had apparently slowed the spell and severing all the affected limbs had certainly helped, but the magic would reassert itself within a few hours and finish its work. He had only so many limbs left to sever.

She knew very little about dark magic, and what little she did know was all theory and no practice. Reanimating the dead, compacts with the Outside, mastering the minds of others. By its symptoms, this appeared to be some sort of potent unmaking spell, intense enough that it had outlasted a thousand years in ice and surgical removal and perhaps the Nanophage actively fighting it at this moment. But then, Chance couldn't be sure this man actually had the Nanophage, not with how old and weak he seemed. But why would anyone choose not to have it?

But she didn't need to know the specifics of this spell to undo it, not really. In many ways magic of all kinds acted just like electricity. A spell might impart a "charge" to a given subject at a specific time, but that spell was really just a pattern of energy that could be disrupted or ground out. The running spell was not the natural state of the universe, and a little entropy correctly applied could turn even a stable spell to nothing. The only trouble was that dark magic drew its power not from the physical world, but the fathomless Abyss. That was what made dark sorcerers like Sombra so potent; they didn't have to rely on the energy-channeling properties of their own bodies when they didn't have to be the ones to supply the fuel for their own spells.

She couldn't ground out the spell like she would with any other, using her body alone. If the Outside continued to pour energy into the spell, it could pour into her own body quickly enough to do some pretty horrible things. She had to find the thread binding this spell to the Abyss and tear it apart with a spell of her own, and then the spell could be dissolved.

It took little probing to locate the thread, not when she already had so much personal experience with the Outside. Even after all these centuries, she found the cord tying poor Avalon to the Abyss was strong indeed, woven blacker than night and every bit as strong as Nightmare Moon's fiercest hatred. "This might hurt," she mumbled, her horn beginning to glow as she focused the energy it would take to sever the thread. This was probably about to be the most difficult spell she had ever attempted. Too bad Twilight wasn't here to do it for her.

"You don't want to do that."

The voice was so quiet, so much like her own, that Chance mistook it for her own thoughts and stopped at once. She was, after all, in the habit of listening to herself. It would have been somewhat insane to act any other way. Yet, she couldn't think of any reason why this might not be a good idea. Other than the fact the spell might backlash and kill her, or the robots might think she was attacking their master and put her down. But neither thought slowed her down. Chance hadn't worried about her own life since coming to Equestria. Every moment was more than she had expected. This was already her second chance.

The voice tried something else. "You don't want to cut yourself off from the only source of real information you've ever had on the Outside, do you? Think of what you could do if you knew what was going to happen in the war."

As much as the voice seemed adept at pretending to be her own thoughts, it couldn't say such things without provoking an immediate reaction. Chance was many things, but warlock was not one of them. Never, never, never, would she think about trucking with the Abyss no matter what was at stake. She had been there. Instead of pacifying her, the words of the unknown voice pushed her into a sudden rage. Her horn began to glow visibly, flickering with the cleansing light of the moon. This was one of Luna's spells.

She did not respond to the voice. Did not give it even the dignity of her attention as best she could. That didn't mean she could stop hearing it, though. By scrutinizing the spell in preparation for dispelling it, she had made contact enough for such ephemeral things as demons to travel. "I won't lie to you! I never lied to Luna; all the words I spoke to her were true. Was it wrong of her to want justice? It isn't wrong of me to want Order."

That did it. Chance released the spell. It was not a hot flame, not like sunlight. But sunlight was ill-suited to such work, since it was as likely to kill the patient as it was to cleanse the infection. Luna's magic was more compassionate; after all, was the moon not rightly considered the source and judge of sanity and lunacy? What was less sane and more sickly than a spirit of the endless night?

The results were not as Chance had expected. Instead of banishing the spirit, instead of even weakening the connection, she felt herself lifted bodily into the air and thrown against the wall. The concrete and steel didn't break or bend when she struck, for which she was grateful since her bones probably would've broken first, but she still twitched and spasmed as she collapsed.

The room seemed to fill with the sound of booming laughter, as her eyes danced with the flashes of light inflicted by the painful impact to her head. In the flashes she saw a figure standing in the empty space in front of her, as though formed of the energy of her own spell in flickering moonlight. Long legs, a wickedly pointed horn, and flaring wings. In those eyes was a hatred without boundary; a night that would never end. "Mortal how is it you think to wield my own magic against me? Did you come to me for a swift death?"

"You have no power." Chance coughed, forcing herself to unsteady hooves. "You aren't here; nopony summoned you."

The alien figure, Alicorn without feature beyond its darkness, only laughed down at her. "You think not, Kimberly?" She gestured, and Avalon raised his arm and pointed it at her. The revolver was bulky and old-fashioned, but looked deadly nonetheless. "I have power over my own." The laugh was cold and cruel. "Doesn't matter where you grow; our favored sons and daughters all. We had no real need to interfere in the affairs of your world; you would have destroyed yourselves in time."

Chance did not know how this creature had managed to connect her present form with the mind that had traveled briefly through the Abyss that stretched endlessly between worlds. This spirit was goading her, she knew that. She ought to try another spell, ought to strike out again, but she didn't. "That isn't true!" she roared. "There was peace for half a century before Outsiders interfered! All the world's nuclear weapons had been changed to fuel for our reactors. Another few decades and we would've had an interstellar starship!"

"There wasn't anything you couldn't turn into a weapon. Every chemical, every atomic bond." Another laugh, just as harsh and cruel. "Fear not, filly! The races of this world will serve us for nothing in the days Order comes at last, but humanity will not be erased. You really are excellent warriors. The best there have ever been. Even now you help us bring Order at last to this world. You are so easy to control! So easy to manipulate! You thought to threaten the inevitability of our arrival; you cannot. No world escapes. This is how it has always been. This is how it must always be."

Chance was so angry, so afraid, she had almost forgotten she wasn't alone. Could Avalon see and hear the other half of this exchange? Had he been watching, or had he thought Chance completely insane for shouting such strange things towards him. There was no trace of weakness or senility in his voice now though, and he didn't seem to be talking to Chance. "You think we're weak?"

Slowly, as though he were something completely beneath her notice, the demon turned to look at him. "You made no pact or bargain. You stood against my servant and yet I own you, heart and soul."

Sweat poured down Avalon's face. His hands shook, and when he spoke it was with great effort. As though each word was a fresh battle. "You are wrong... Always have been wrong." He pulled back the hand with the revolver. "Let Equestria judge my contributions and say they are not good."

The figure of starless night and magic unmade seemed to grow taller, flickering like a flame made from shadow. Was that anger? Fear? Did such beings even have emotions as Chance understood them? Whatever else might be true, it had no power to compel Avalon anymore. Though his mind and will seemed to be completely engaged, he was not forced to point the gun at Chance. Evidently fighting great resistance, he pushed it until it rested against his temple. "You fear death!" raged the voice. "You would not damn yourself to oblivion when you could live forever in our service! All mortal creatures fear death!"

With shaking hands dripping with sweat Avalon pulled back the hammer. His eyes seemed to see through the creature now, looking directly at Chance. "The ponies... Do they remember me kindly?"

She nodded, her eyes suddenly burning hot. She looked away, knowing as sure as she knew anything what would come next. Avalon knew enough about magic to know what would happen when he died. Knew he really would belong to this creature if he passed with this magic on him. If that happened, it was unlikely Chance could have done anything to fight him. Such powerful creatures needed stronger magic than she wielded.

She waited for the scream as the demon's binding to the physical world was shattered, waited for the sound of a shot and the thump of a life extinguished as a limp body struck the ground.

It never came. There was a brief warmth, as of a powerfully intense spell, a flash of light that briefly overwhelmed the artificial illumination on the ceiling. The voice was soft and loving and familiar, for it was the same voice that spoke in all her dreams. "My sins will cause no more deaths." Chance turned and saw Princess Luna standing in the room, resplendent in her regalia and armor of adamant. She had one hoof raised, and with it she pushed the gun away. "Be still." She drew the gun from his grasp with gentle magic, and he did not resist. With a snap of force, Luna shattered the gun into its constituent pieces and let them fall. Bolts and springs and bits of pipe clattered to the ground at her hooves.

It was over.

Author's Notes:

So, as we wind up towards this adventure's conclusion (5-10 chapters from now anyway), I've started to think about the next story. One idea that's been burning in my mind would be a short story about Avalon (no more novels for me for awhile I think), from his perspective a thousand years ago, being raised in a middle-ages Equestria as a "diamond dog," the friends he made, and how he ended up becoming an inventor and trying (obviously without success) to stop Nightmare Moon.

Would that be something people would be interested in reading? It wouldn't be a direct prequel or sequel, since aside from what we've already seen in this story there probably wouldn't be much overlap between the stories. A thousand years and all that. Just curious to get people's input.

The other idea I had was to write a little midquel, developing more of Chance's childhood with the CMC. It would probably be called "Science Fair" or somesuch, and focus on a single week-long period with a chapter for each day leading up to a science fair. Very slice-of-life, nothing like the danger and intrigue and adventure we can expect from the one about Avalon. Preferences? I might very well write them both, but the order in which I write them is presently quite plastic.

Chapter 21: Lagrange

"Equestria has lost enough of its heroes already, Avalon." Luna's voice was firm, and her expression would brook no argument. Not that anyone tried. Chance could tell with her supernatural senses that the spell was completely undone. She had no idea how Luna had come to be here, though she had less confusion concerning how she had managed to dispatch the demon so quickly. Luna was positively ruthless when it came to outsiders. "Unfortunately, I cannot stay. Chance will explain." She tilted her head toward Chance. "I say only that it is imperative to assist her in whatever way she asks. Her efforts and those of her friends may be the only chance Equestria has. You'll like her, I think. She's been introducing human technology here since she arrived. Rather like you in that respect."

She spared only enough time to give Chance a confident smile, long enough to express her trust and love. Then she was gone, without light or sound. Alicorn teleportation was impressive magic.

Avalon leaned forward into a more alert sitting position. Nothing about his appearance had changed, yet he seemed a completely different person. His eyes seemed so much more awake and alive, and though he did not get any younger, he didn't seem on the verge of death anymore. The shadow had passed from him. He extended an arm, and one of the guards had put a cane in his hand before five seconds were up. With it, he rose to his feet, not shaking anymore. "That was closer to how I imagined meeting a princess would be," he said, the edges of his lips turned in a faint smile. "The rest of it, though." He moved past her, gesturing about wildly with the cane. "Wrong, all wrong. A little human genetic code and you wouldn't have seen a single trap."

He was surprisingly quick for an old man with such a new prosthetic. Chance was still dazed from being thrown, but she managed to follow him out into the hall.

He stopped so abruptly Chance nearly collided with his legs, spinning smoothly on his feet and looking down at her. "You came here for a purpose. What did you say earlier, Equestria was at war?"

It was hard for her to believe she was even talking to the same person. "The war is going badly enough that I can't ask you all the questions I would like to." Chance sat back on her haunches, trying to seem as dignified as possible. Of course, it was hardly logical of her to be worried about this human thinking less of her because she was a pony. He'd grown up with them his whole life; no doubt he had suffered through enough of the reverse. "How did you get here? Where I came from, the Avalon colony was kinda a big deal. It was the beginning of the end for peace on Earth. Why just you?" She gestured all around them. "Where's the city proper? I thought all of Avalon might be down here, but it isn't nearly big enough. This is just one ship, isn't it? The..." She took a moment to think, then continued, "Gwyn ap Nydd, science vessel. No bodies, either."

Avalon nodded. "If I knew those answers, I would be wise." A little of the energy seemed to go out of him, and he leaned more heavily on the cane. "The ship here was buried long ago, encased in non-reactive gasses and stone. Diamond dogs broke the seal, found me... the only occupied stasis cell. Ripped it right out of the wall. The automated systems let them do it, though they revived me thank God. Not that I have any memories of any of it..." He shrugged. "Security computer caught all of it. Watched the video when I found this place." He gestured vaguely around him with the cane. "It is a sad and empty story. Perhaps one day I will even tell it. When that day comes, I hope to hear how you came to be in Equestria and in my home. But not today. Today you are going to tell me why you came to me, and I will see you get it."

It really was quite a rapid process once Avalon woke up all the automated systems. Hundreds of sleeping robots rose and set to work. The team of Equestrian shipwrights had been skilled craftsponies all, but they couldn't compare with Avalon's machines. Machines that located the devices they needed, brought them to the ship, and installed them with perfect skill.

Chance stood at the far end of the room, her hooves secured firmly within magnetic grieves. Of course that wasn't the only thing she wore; each of the ship's passengers was now wearing a full pressurized suit, helmets and all. There hadn't been enough time to produce five dedicated spacesuits when they had left Ponyville in such an awful hurry. They did have their old high-altitude skydiving gear, and a few simple modifications would be enough to keep them alive in the event of a structural failure so long as they stayed inside the ship.

"Pre-flight checks complete, captain Scootaloo. Ready to engage at your command." The holographic projectors abruptly glowed to life. Truth's pony form took shape from the light, his cutie mark glowing along with the rest of him. All their eyes went wide, though Pip was the only one to gasp and step back, almost frightened. "Isn't it wonderful? I made some alterations to the program Avalon's robots were using and made sure there were long-range projectors in every room. Pretty cool, right? Now even when we take on non-enhanced ponies I can be a proper member of the crew!"

Chance rolled her eyes, though she was also smiling. "Whatever, Truth. You said you wanted to brief us on something before we went up?"

The transparent projection nodded emphatically, pacing past them all. "Just a word of caution; you ponies can't leave the ship once we're out there. No spacewalks, and if we dock with the Aegis you'll have to take guests aboard, because you can't leave."

Chance rolled her eyes. "You're not trying the machine takeover thing, are you?" She mocked fear. "Please save us from our machine overlords! Oh no, what have we done? We've created a monster, aaahhhhhhh..."

Apple Bloom giggled, though Sweetie Belle and Pipsqueak seemed halfway to taking her seriously.

"You'll rue the day, Chance." Truth grinned, and did his best impression of maniacal laughter. It wasn't very convincing. Then, like flipping a switch, his expression became serious again. "When I say you can't, I mean biologically."

"Now that don't make no sense!" Apple Bloom protested. "We've seen all kinda' pictures an' videos an' that of humans in suits and stuff, or driving around on the moon, and they sure as heck weren't stuck in their ship. What makes us any different?"

Truth rolled his eyes. Chance felt her chest seize as she realized what he was about to say. They had been so excited about going into space that they hadn't connected this important fact until just now. "Why are we going into orbit to open a rift, my little ponies?"

"Because there ain't no magi-" Apple Bloom froze, swallowing deeply and looking nervous. "O-oh."

Sweetie Belle darted to Truth's side. "But then we can't go! You'll have to go up without us! Everypony knows life needs magic to survive."

"That is the understanding of Pony medical science, yes. I don't know how long it will take you to feel the effects of separation from Equestria's magic." Truth didn't mirror their suddenly worried expressions, though he did seem a tad smug. "The new machines, the ones that open the doorway, I worked out a way to keep them running on minimal power all the time. They produce an ambient magic of their own. It's not the same as the stabilizing effect Equus has; your abilities won't work at all. No endurance, no flight, and no magic from you two, not even levitation. It will keep you alive so long as you stay aboard."

Chance shook her head. "I don't like this, Truth. We might only be opening up a door and coming right back, but we were gonna build the first interstellar ship one day, remember? Ponies can't be explorers if we're crippled away from our homeworld! Can we do something about it?"

"Potentially. I'll investigate with spare processing cycles from now on. If the usual pattern of our time together holds Chance, that should mean I'll figure this out before we reach orbit."

Chance kicked him. Of course her hoof passed through empty air without effect, though Truth moved as though he had been struck, stumbling backward in an exaggerated impression of shock. Chance ignored it. "Truth; if we have to get outside of Equus's magic... the levitation crystal is going to get weaker and weaker the higher we get, right? Can we reach escape velocity with just the ionization engines?"

Truth nodded. "We'll have to travel almost vertically at maximum acceleration for two hours. I imagine it will be extremely unpleasant for all of you."

"What about re-entry? The levitation crystal should kick back in, but will we burn up in the atmosphere before that happens?"

"The thaumic shield will have enough energy to disperse the thermal energy before it gets too hot in the engine room." He smiled, and walked back over to Scootaloo, giving her an exaggerated salute. "As I said, we're ready for launch."

Scootaloo didn't seem to realize Truth was mocking her. Either that, or she didn't care. "Very well. Signal Avalon to open the bay doors." No sooner had she said the words than machinery began to whir and spin overhead, the red light of sunset streaming down on them. The Fury lifted off the concrete with the sound of scraping wood and humming motors. With the sunlight all around them, Truth's projection was a pale ghost, only visible if you already knew where to look.

"Incoming transmission," Truth said as the ionization engines began to engage, and they started moving forward. Avalon's face appeared abruptly in the holospace that was the helm, considerably brighter than the projectors Truth was using. His voice came in over the speakers, panicked and urgent.

"Listen... I want to think this is nothing, but I don't see how it could be." The image of his head shrunk away until it was crammed in one corner, replaced with a map of the surrounding jungle taken from above. Chance wasn't sure how he was getting the image, since so far as she knew the only satellites in orbit were Truth's. It wasn't the image from a camera she saw there, at least not in any of the wavelengths humans or ponies could see. Their own ship was bright red against the lighter blues of the jungle, particularly around the engines. The jungle for perhaps half a kilometer in all directions was empty of signatures as large, as they might expect. Yet as the view expanded, they saw a dozen shapes that Chance found instantly familiar.

"Stingray fighters," she said, without hesitation. "Long-range atmospheric interceptor craft; two pilots in each one. Those things were discontinued after the war ended, bet they got them out of a junkyard or something-" she stopped abruptly as the image switched into the visual spectrum, and the elegantly fluted Stingray fighters disappeared. "Truth, these aircraft have infected pilots, don't they?"

He nodded gravely, though as usual showed a complete lack of understanding of the proper emotional context of the situation. "Most military escorts don’t come completely unannounced and surround you under active camouflage."

"Thank you, Avalon." Scootaloo ended the transmission, then looked seriously at Chance. "How maneuverable are these guys?"

Chance shook her head sadly. "They're about a third our size. They can move so quickly pilots have to be enhanced with a particular strain of Nanophage to let their reflexes even control the ships."

Scootaloo swore under her breath, even as she slowed the ship's acceleration to a stop. Whatever the invisible ships were planning, they didn't seem to be in a hurry to do it. Could they just be here to observe?

"Their rockets are all computer-guided, right?" Chance turned to truth, her mind already spinning. "You can keep those away from us." It wasn't a question.

"Quite easily. Even if there's another OMICRON Core on the other end, transmission time means our proximity will beat them every time. There's no hacking bullets or plasma weapons though, Chance. Good news is now that I know what we're looking for I've updated the sensors to pick up the visual distortions from the cloaking devices. I'm getting some other readings, though. Disturbing readings." He paused, as though taking a deep dramatic breath. "Weak, I'm guessing lead shielding... But either every single one of these fighters has dangerously faulty microfusion reactors, or-"

"Shit!" Chance slammed one of her hooves down on the deck, with every bit of anger and frustration her little body could hold. "Celestia said no nukes! There shouldn't have been any in Equestria! Alexi wouldn't have let the Federation break their word!"

"They haven't done anything yet!" Apple Bloom offered, smiling weakly. "Maybe they won't do nothin'!"

"You have a plan, Truth?" Sweetie Belle asked, her tone more nervous than hopeful. "Something brilliant?"

The projected stallion shook his head, barely visible in the orange light. "Not this time, Sweetie Belle. I'm running every possibility, and the numbers aren't good. When they attack, I give us forty-five seconds. Fifteen if those warheads aren't computer-guided." He was still smiling, but there was something grim to it. "You organics are all about unconventional thinking, right? If you want to live through this, it's time to crank up the gearing on that wetware."

"Okay." Chance shrugged, releasing the clasps on her helmet and tossing it violently to the deck at her feet. The respirator was still fitted to her muzzle, but that hardly mattered. It was her horn she meant to expose. "Sweetie Belle, I need your help." She looked seriously at the projection. "You better have been right about the forty-five seconds thing." She lifted her fallen helmet in her magic. "Buy us that long!"

Sweetie Belle followed Chance without objection, removing her own helmet and carrying it with her as they moved below the deck. "What're we doing, Chance? If there's some system to reconfigure, we both know Apple Bloom's better for that!"

"I'm interested to hear myself," came Truth's voice over the internal speakers. He wasn't wasting processor time on another projection for the hallway, at least. "Since I've already run projections on all of your known capabilities in every possible combination and every possible error the enemy might make. Failing those Stingrays all having paraplegic pilots or suffering spontaneous reactor failures-"

"You helped refine the world gating spell with Twilight, didn't you Truth?" That had been years and years ago, before Chance's understanding of magic had been sufficient to understand such high-level theoretical work. Even now she only vaguely grasped the theory, and only because she understood the human technological analogue.

"Of-" He was silent a moment.

Scootaloo, however, was not. "Everypony hit your grieves!" The ship dropped like a stone. Far faster than a stone, actually, since Scootaloo hadn't just cut the levitation crystal. This time, she had pushed it into full reverse. The Fury accelerated far faster than 9.8 m/s ^2, making forward progress impossible.

"They're moving!" Truth called, even as a series of small explosions shook the air above and around them. Tree trunks shattered with the force of the impact, leaves catching instantly alight. "Multiple projectiles, active denial engaged!" The ship began to shake violently, and the light from the windows shifted in strange patterns as the shields intercepted force and projectiles both.

"Ignore it!" Chance shouted to Sweetie Belle. A few seconds later, they slowed to a stop vertically as the engines flung them forward. Even with hooves stationary on the deck Chance found herself slammed painfully to the deck by the force, her helmet falling from her grip and rolling away. Sweetie Belle fell beside her, crumpled with a whimper of pain. "We've got to... get to Truth... He's going to use us to open the gateway!"

The Fury shook violently, as though it had suddenly decided to vibrate itself to pieces. They were already on the ground, but Chance's body was slammed painfully against the nearby wall. She saw angry stars.

Sweetie Belle got to her hooves before Chance could, using her magic to help her friend. The magnets had let-up a bit, and they could move again, slowly. "I thought we couldn't use the bridge machine this close to the planet!"

Chance forced her hooves to drag her toward where Truth would be waiting for them. "We can't!" Chance shouted over the sound of machine-guns and distant explosions. Not as distant as she would've liked. "But we don't need to get the Aegis, we just need to get ourselves out! Unicorns have been opening up the gateway every day since humans got here!"

"That last rocket was nuclear!" Truth's voice came in hazy, indistinct. Chance could barely hear it. "We need more distance! Your reactions are too slow, Scootaloo! Control override engaged! Brace yourselves, everypony!" There was no time to move, but Chance didn't have to in order to solidify the air around her and Sweetie Belle, immobilizing them almost completely. There was no danger of suffocating, since both of them wore their own air supply.

The engines slammed into full acceleration with enough force to tear objects from the walls. Absolutely everything that wasn't firmly attached went bouncing around; though Chance's spell protected her and Sweetie Belle this time. She could only pray her friends on the upper deck were kept secure by their grieves. The ship shook and rattled constantly now as the engines pushed them far faster than any Equestrian airship had ever moved. If it weren't for the combination of suit and Nanophage in each of them, it was quite likely that all the organics would have lost consciousness.

Chance didn't though, and neither did Sweetie Belle. Chance met her friend's eyes in the screaming and the chaos, focused and intent. Chance concentrated, and the solidified air began pushing them forward, bodies frozen in exactly the same position. She couldn't keep it up and get them through the door, but by then they had stopped accelerating and were moving at enough of a constant rate for the grieves to let them move again. Both kept themselves crouched low to the ground, taking small steps. Small tools and tiny framed photos went flying whenever the ship moved, and Chance kept up a constant shield spell to deflect them as they dragged themselves along towards Truth.

"I won't be able to misdirect the rockets if they never launch!" Truth's voice seemed distant, like the constant roar of machine guns or the ionization engines as they screamed. "If they're puppets, it's only a matter of time before their controller decides they're worth sacrificing. I've got no idea how big those warheads are, Chance!"

The room was filling with smoke. Sirens screamed, and there was no telling what condition their friends on the deck were in. Truth sat unmoving on the far end of the room, surface glowing with internal radiance. He was ten meters away, then five. "We need... to touch him... You ready, Truth?"

"Sooner the better!" Truth's surface flashed briefly, urging them on. "Spell's ready! Can't promise your brains won't explode when you try, though!" There was only a meter, then less. Truth's surface radiated an internal heat borne of so many rapid calculations. It might burn them just to touch him. It wasn't as though there were any alternatives available just then.

From behind them, there was a flash of light, and a shockwave that turned trees to powder and animals to dust. The fighters were consumed along with their pilots as a roaring cloud of white and orange rose into the sky.

The air in front of the Fury split as though the space itself had been ripped asunder. The opening was exactly the size of the ship, and at the fantastic speed they were traveling, its entirety had passed inside milliseconds before the explosion reached it and the delicate spellwork collapsed under the deluge of nuclear fire.

The Prismatic Fury was gone without a trace.

Some time earlier...

Escaping the building proved to be easier than even her most optimistic predictions. Alexi carried the basket in her mouth, and with it she was able to silence any objections they might've faced leaving the building so soon. Nobody stopped them in any of the halls, no bullets fired, and no cameras tracked their movements. The hardest part was keeping Alexi from falling over as she walked, which seemed only just within the realm of things she could actually do.

"The manipulator was helping me," she hissed angrily, when Amber pointed this out. "I'd like to see you do as well on two legs as I'm doing on four."

Of course there was no real opportunity to talk, not until the human buildings began to grow distant and they reached the comforting wooden walls of the guard outpost. "I sent somepony to bring Princess Twilight here," Amber explained. "Hopefully she's already inside, and she can teleport you to safety."

"Not you?" Alexi fumbled with the door, until she realized she was supposed to use her mouth. She held it open a little longer than she had to so the invisible Amber could follow. "This place isn't going to be safe when that message goes off. It's gonna be hell."

"Maybe so." Amber glanced around them to be sure none of the guards were waiting inside, then dropped the illusion that kept her invisible. Another brief wave of magic and she was back in her pegasus body, the one she thought of as more herself than the black and green insect beneath. "But I'm responsible for these ponies. I'm not somepony big and important like you; my getting out now won't mean victory later. It would just mean running away from the ponies who depend on me."

Dispelling the color-changing spells took a little more effort, but Amber made a point to do it before they went any further into the barracks. Getting Alexi evacuated would be easier if they didn't have to waste any time for Amber to explain who she was and why she wasn't actually an evil changeling. Twilight Sparkle might be understanding or she might not, but there was far too much emotional baggage for Amber to just trust her. Trust didn't come to changelings easy.

It wasn't Princess Twilight Sparkle waiting in the largest room of the barracks, though the mare clearly wasn't one of the guard. Amber knew each of them at a glance and by name, as well as the usual flavor of their emotions. That didn't mean Amber didn't know her, though. Her coat white and pristine, her mane purple and elegantly styled. Her cutie mark of blue diamonds. Amber's inherited memories described Rarity in detail. After all, she had been the first pony she met after Twilight herself, and she was the elder sister of the filly who would become one of her closest friends.

"Rarity." She lowered her head respectfully, though not nearly so low as she would have for one of the princesses. Of course Rarity had met her too, though she doubted very much Rarity knew this pegasus was actually the same pony. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but we need a long-range teleport, and isn't that more Princess Twilight's thing?"

The mare scowled, though the expression was so delicate and subtle Amber probably wouldn't have noticed her displeasure without being able to feel the emotions directly. "Twilight is unavailable at the moment, unfortunately. Fluttershy and I are sitting in for her." She rose to her hooves, expression smug. "While I may not be the expert Twilight is, I can mange complex magic in a pinch. Just how far do I need to take you?"

"Just her." Amber removed the device from her foreleg with her mouth, and helped Alexi secure it. "At least as far as the castle. I've heard Twilight's spells make it one of the most well-defended places in Equestria."

Rarity nodded. "I think I can manage that. At least a trip most of the way, short gallop afterwards. You don't mind running, do you dear?"

Alexi shook her head, even as Amber offered her the hat and settled it on her head with some difficulty. There was something absurd about the black and white fabric on her yellow mane, yet somehow she managed to get it to stay without much of a fight. "I'm a little new at this." She held up one of her hooves, shaking it for emphasis. "Trying's better than being dead."

Rarity winced, "I suppose so." She looked briefly away, then back up. "I do so love the hat, dear. The gold filigree is quite beautiful. Now, if you could just stand close to me... Yes, that's good. Now, close your eyes, and be ready to exhale. I don't mean to worry you, but the pressure difference might cause some serious internal injuries otherwise.

Alexi nodded, turning briefly to Amber. "Thanks for the rescue, Amber Sands." There was a ghost of a smile in her expression, and an emotion Amber couldn't identify. She hadn't ever felt anything quite like it before. "Kimberly told me about you. You do good work."

Another voice spoke, the muted electronic one from her wrist. "Four minutes forty-seven seconds, Amber Sands." There was a flash of light, a surge of Rarity's magic like the striking of metal on crystal. She was alone.

There was no time to wait, no time to hesitate. Amber darted back to the supply room and pulled her armor on with her magic; there was nopony around to notice she was levitating things without a horn. With at least three of her minutes left she galloped from the room and took to the air with a training whistle in her mouth, the one they used to call a general meeting. There were no drills scheduled for today, but that didn't matter. She couldn't prevent whatever was about to happen, but maybe she could get the guard on their way back into Ponyville before it started.

Charles had early memories of subsonic aircraft flights across the ocean, in tube-like planes with old-fashioned jet engines on their wings. He remembered the flights going on forever, with nothing but endless blue below them and occasional wisps of white cloud. He had looked always for islands or ships in the ocean far below with tiny hands pressed to the windows, but never found them. Those old engines only traveled 600 miles per hour or so relative to the ground, but it had still seemed like transoceanic flights had taken forever.

His wings hadn't come with a speedometer, but he doubted very much he ever broke sixty for more than a few seconds. And he easily outstripped the others for endurance; Rainbow Dash was injured and Lonely Dawn's wing muscles were barely strong enough to keep her airborne. That meant that practically every cloud was another respite for somepony.

Everything would have been well and good, except that between them they only had the food they could carry. Humans on a long journey could have dried nutrition-rich meats, since water was never in short supply. But ponies were grazers, designed to take in large volumes of low-nutrition plants. They might be able to drink the water from the clouds, but there didn't seem to be any magical winged grass growing up here for them to graze on.

When the visions and the tears were over, the goblins had given them everything they had asked for. Charles had asked for all the food they could carry, vegetarian and not requiring any time to prepare. Unsurprisingly these goblins hadn't yet invented high-calorie survival supplements. Instead they had offered up ceramic jars full of a thick paste evidently made from beans and wheat berries. It was nutritious enough that their entire party could survive on a jar's worth each day meted out in little spoonfuls along with the apples they had collected.

Charles estimated at their present speed, it would take them about three weeks to cross the Atlantic. Unfortunately, they didn't have anywhere near 21 jars. Charles estimated that unless something changed soon, they would be flying the second half of the trip without food. Humans could survive for weeks without food, but couldn't spend those weeks in vigorous exercise. Cruel irony it would be to escape the land of dragons and goblins only to starve to death on the flight back.

Charles kept trying to point that out to Rainbow Dash, and every time he did she would immediately change the subject. His latest attempt was no exception. "You know Charles, I've been thinking," was her immediate response. "About the name thing. Charles Gray? I mean... that's great and all for an alien, but I'm just not feeling it for a good respectable pony. It doesn't mean anything! A good name has to say what you are, and yours doesn't say anything!"

"I tried registering 'Dapper Pilot Genius,' but the judge threw it out." Charles couldn't keep the bitter sarcasm from his voice. "Maybe I should try something a little more modest. How about 'Unappreciated Hero'?"

"I appreciate you!" He barely registered Dawn's small voice from behind him as he glared at Rainbow Dash. Not that he wasn't grateful that at least someone had nice things to say about him, but when nice things about him were basically the only things she said-

"No, I'm serious!" Rainbow stomped her hoof on the cloud, which had no effect at all except sending a little spray of fine mist around it. Not nearly as imposing as when a horse did that on solid ground. "You've got a cutie mark now! You can't pretend to be something else anymore; you're a proper pony!"

Of course Rainbow had to bring up his so-called "cutie mark," that strange symbol that had appeared on his flanks while he was wrapped up in concentration solving the riddle that the goblins gave him. No, not the goblins. The riddle their ancient human ancestors, the children of Avalon, had given him. It was a chain of seven links, the center link frozen as it shattered, as though an invisible hammer had just struck it and was showering his side with bright sparks.

He had barely even noticed at the time, he had been so overwhelmed with the surge of euphoria at having discovered the truth. He hadn't known anything had changed until Rainbow Dash had pointed it out to him during the beginning of their flight to safety.

"I was thinking 'Gray Vigil.'" Charles might've been sarcastic, but there wasn't a trace of mocking or sarcasm in her tone. "Saving me during the mission, helping save Dawn, giving up your body so we could get away, getting the goblins not to fight..." She trailed off, looking away from him so he couldn't see her face.

Charles wanted to make fun of her suggestion, he really did. Rainbow Dash was acting so strangely serious that he couldn't even bring himself to laugh. "I like the name I already have." He glanced once at Dawn, and didn't say the other half of what he had been thinking. I liked my old body too, and I'm going to get it back as soon as I can. Why should I pretend I'm something I'm not? But he didn't say that; couldn't bring himself even though it was all completely true.

It was true, wasn't it?

"Fine. I'll... think about it. No promises."

There was silence then, broken only by the rushing of the wind. A deep wind that seemed to be echoing from down below them, getting louder as the seconds passed. What kind of wind did that? Charles rose to his hooves and moved to the edge of the cloud, looking down. His heart sank as he imagined what he would find there. Perhaps the massive swarm had been tracking them better than they thought, and it was finally catching up with them.

But if it was the edge of the swarm, why couldn't he see it?

Rainbow Dash noticed it first, practically bouncing on her hooves as she gestured. "That's an airship!" He followed the gesture, and saw that she was exactly right. It was flying only about half as high as they were, a massive vessel like the old spanish Galleons. Only instead of sails, there were half a dozen gigantic propellers spaced out along the craft. The source of the sound had to be whatever was powering them.

"That's an Equestrian flag hanging from the mast, its a friendly!" She reached out and tugged on Dawn. "Come on! Let's catch 'em!" She leaned forward off the cloud and quickly fell into a dive.

Charles took a deep breath, then followed her, plunging into the blue as though he were jumping into a swimming pool. Of course he couldn't hope to equal Rainbow's grace in spite of her prosthetic, or her speed. At least she wasn't leaving him so far behind he could barely see her anymore. Lonely Dawn fell into sync beside him, unable to keep up with Rainbow Dash for more than a few seconds as she dove. Dawn had none of Rainbow's grace or speed, but she was still better at this than Charles. It wasn't a race with either of them. Once it seemed to Charles that he had reached a speed that would let them intercept the airship, he was content with that and didn't fight to end up first.

Of course that meant that by the time they had caught up with her she was already in animated conversation with the ponies on the deck.

Charles could see at least a dozen of them at a glance, scrubbing the decks and maintaining the engines and working the helm of the ship. There were no uniforms, which meant to Charles that this was a civilian vessel of some kind. Half of the crew seemed an approximately equal mixture of the pony races Charles already knew. The others seemed strange and unfamiliar to him at his first glance, though as he came in for a landing beside Rainbow Dash he recognized them for what they were; zebras! They all looked like earth ponies, except for the distinctive pattern of fur and the lack of color in their cutie marks.

"No ship; we've been flying from dragon country," Rainbow Dash was saying.

"Escaped slaves?" The other speaker, a towering zebra wearing a hat woven of grasses, eyed Dawn. "Masters come for you?"

Rainbow shook her head emphatically. "I'm a Captain of the Solar Guard, sent here on a covert mission. Gray Vigil here is an ambassador from a far-away kingdom who came to help me. Lonely Dawn was a slave, but she was freed. Nopony is going to come looking for her." She puffed out her chest, obviously trying to look as imposing and powerful as she could.

"I'm not sure." The Zebra looked over his shoulder to a gathered crowd of his crew. "Still sounds like trouble."

"Listen!" Rainbow's expression grew more intense, perhaps more intense than Charles had ever seen her. "What part of ‘mission from the princesses’ don't you understand? You know what that means, right? If you don't help us, that means you're hurting Celestia and Luna. If you do help, you can bet they're gonna reward you. You'll be a hero, and I'm sure you'll get more bits than the value of everything in your hold."

There was a long silence, as the zebra met Rainbow's expression with an expression of unflinching sternness. Then, very slowly, he nodded. "We're not carrying much, to be honest. Mostly just traveling back to Equestria as quick as possible. Refugees." He turned away from them, heading along the deck. "We give you passage, you work. Nothing else."

He led them two levels belowdecks, to a single large cabin. There was no bed as such, though a single large mattress against the wall looked large enough for several. "This yours. You wait here for crew chief, he explain everything. I get back to deck." And he was gone, sooner than they could thank him, sooner even than a proper introduction.

"Just one room." Charles stepped inside, looking dubiously at the bed and the single tiny porthole. "Just one bed."

Rainbow grinned. "I know, isn't it awesome! They didn't put us with the rest of the crew! Guess that bit about you being an ambassador and me being an officer got to 'em?"

Dawn looked like she could hardly believe her eyes, far too shocked to say anything coherent.

Charles just sighed. "Not... exactly what I meant." He slung the satchel off his shoulders and sat down against the wall. The room was barely large enough for the bed, a trunk, and a slab of wood functioning as a desk, but it sure beat flying from morning until night every day. Although... he was already starting to feel a little claustrophobic. Could these walls be any closer? "How long will it take to get back now? On a proper ship. Miracle we ran into them. I don't want to think about the odds..."

Rainbow shrugged and plopped down into the bed. "Faster than we would've, not stopping to sleep." She rolled onto her side. "Wake me when it's time to work."

She was asleep in seconds.

Author's Notes:

Hey everyone, welcome to nanowrimo month! Another exciting time for all, including my rush to finish writing this story so I can start on my novel for November. Not that it will effect updates in the least, because it won't. At present, the story has been mapped out all the way to the end. Like MLA, we're looking at 25 chapters and an epilogue. I'm very nearly finished, though of course there's the matter of revision still to work out, so the work isn't done exactly.

When it comes to revision, I've come to the point where I'm looking for pre-readers again. My present staff have apparently fallen off the face of the earth (with a few notable exceptions, thanks amillion Two_Bit!). As a result, I must again plea for the help of those confident in their use of the English language, who are willing to read the chapters a week early in an imperfect form in order to help the story become more perfect by the end. By no means would it end with the last five sections yet to be published of this story. If you wanted to, there are many stories yet to come, and I would love to have your help. Commitment's pretty simple, just reading through an unedited chapter a week early and highlighting the things that you think are wrong.

That's enough shilling, though. Drop me a PM if you're interested. Or if you used to be a pre-reader and want to rejoin the adventure. Either way really.

Thanks for those who game me some feedback. Science Fair is going to be the next story! When I'm done with that, who knows! Maybe Avalon, maybe something else. Maybe a little long-overdue revision to MLA. Not sure.

Until next week, peace!

Chapter 22: Alajuela

The ride to the Crystal Empire was surprisingly uneventful for taking place during the middle of a war. The Albatross Carriers were nothing like pony airships that depended on the magic of the planet, and on the air for breathing. Not that Applejack fully understood how they worked; she had family who worked the railroad, and she had seen how long trips consumed whole cars full of coal.

The carriers were easily as large as a train; where was all the coal they burned to stay afloat? Would they tumble from the sky when it ran out? Why was there no smoke behind them if they were burning fuel and not using magic? In her world, machines were either nasty things that spewed chemicals and smoke, or the clean and efficient devices made and run on magic. It was very confusing to be around human inventions that worked like the former but apparently acted very much like the latter.

Ryan would not be her team leader any longer. According to Pinkie Pie, he had been clinically dead, his body gruesomely burned even through the armor. Death apparently was not a sufficient deterrent to the human doctors, who had calmly cut him from his armor and submerged him in a thick substance like gel and carted him off to the smaller medical ship, without breath or heartbeat. Pinkie Pie's reassurance that his brain had survived undamaged was hardly comforting to Applejack. She couldn't help think of all the villages and towns with dragons attacking them right now. There would be no airships filled with humans coming to their rescue.

The Albatross Carriers landed so gracefully she didn't realize they were on the ground again until the ramp retracted and she saw green grass and blue skies beyond. The air on her face was crisp, with little flecks of winter in it. Of course, it was much colder here, the snows kept at bay only by the diligent labor of the weather teams. Applejack struck her brother awake with a hoof, then walked down the ramp to try and get an idea of where they had landed.

Applejack might not have the fancy magic or speedy flight of some of her friends, but what she did have was certain practical skills. For instance, she never forgot a place. The ground spoke to her on a level deeper than words, down through her coat to her bones. A landscape might completely change and yet she would see it, as she had still been able to see the fallow fields and clearings that had grown up into Normandy.

She had never known ponies to transform the land as she had seen humans do. Pony villages grew up into towns and cities in lifetimes, not months, moving around hills and forests instead of cutting them down.

Not this time. There were two cities here now, and not one. The Crystal Empire's massive capital and surrounding farmland were off to the right, spires and quartz glittering in the early morning sun. There had been icy tundra to the left, inhospitable wilderness thick with permafrost. The eternal winter had yielded to sunshine, just warm enough she could've got by with just her coat and stetson if she had wanted to. Of course the armored Vanguard kept her warm enough that the chill on her face was pleasantly refreshing.

The second city was one of fabric and wood, not stone and crystal. Tents as large as barns stretched out as far as her eyes could see, in colors as varied as the ponies walking between them on broad avenues. There were wooden structures as well, spaced so regularly she knew there had to be a system to them. There was a large open area separating her from the city of tents, and she turned to see what was behind her. More tents and temporary structures, though these were far more regular and uniform: military accommodations of pony and human variety both. She expected to see humans by the thousand, but though her vision was good and the sensors in her helmet better, she didn't see a single one until the Sons of Barsoom unloaded from the carriers behind and around her. A crew in human-looking uniforms emerged from one of the nearby buildings dragging hoses and tubes towards the side of the carrier, but they clearly weren't human.

"Something wrong, ma'am?" Applejack blinked, looking up at the pony in front of her. It was hard to say when she had approached, with how well she had blended into the crowds moving about all around her. A mare, with a familiar bright yellow mane and familiar gray eyes. There was nothing familiar about her hat, which seemed far too fancy a thing for a dignified earth pony to wear. Of course the thing on her right foreleg was like nothing anypony would wear, unicorn made maybe.

"Nah'," Applejack replied, honestly. "Just a little confused is all. This city was just a messa' storage sheds and such last I saw it. Guess I didn't expect it to be goin' up so fast." She forced herself to smile, even though she didn't feel at all like smiling. "I'm Applejack." She extended her hoof in the traditional manner. "Glad to see they got some sensible folk runnin' this whole operation. Ain't nothin' compete with old fashioned earth pony hard work."

The pony looked like she wasn't quite sure what she was supposed to do, though she returned the gesture with the leg protected by metal and strange fabrics. She tilted her head slightly to the side, and her fancy hat remained in place. Applejack recognized it then; it looked like something a ship's captain might wear, though the black and white fabric it was made from would've been blue or red in the Equestrian navy. "Everyone's just calling me 'Admiral' lately, but my real name's Alexi. I'm supposed to bring you and another one... Pinkie Pie?" She looked around, glancing past Applejack and into the carrier. "Is she with you?"

Pinkie Pie had been inside, doing Celestia only knew what. Applejack had never seen her leave, anyway. Yet almost as though asking for her had summoned her, Pinkie Pie was suddenly poking her head out behind this pony named Alexi, looking past her into the carrier. "Who are we looking for?" Alexi turned, and Pinkie Pie beamed. "Oooh, are we playing hide-and-go-seek? I'll start!" She plopped down on her rump, covering her eyes with one of her hooves. "One-"

Alexi's face was difficult to read, flickering rapidly through emotions amused and frustrated both. "Unfortunately not, miss Pinkie Pie. Princess Luna instructed me to bring you to her as soon as you landed." She straightened, and without actually touching it, the hat adjusted itself on her head. It was so subtle Applejack almost didn't notice. The familiar shimmer of magic hadn't been there, yet the hat hadn't moved itself. Right?

"We best get goin' then." Applejack looked sternly at Pinkie, before turning her attention back to the mare that had stopped them. "Is she far?"

Alexi shook her head. "Not really. Bit of a walk." She glanced over her shoulder, and a pony in one of the human-looking black and gray uniforms hurried over, a tablet computer and stylus hovering in her magic. "Heartstrings, have you told them we're coming?"

The unicorn nodded, making a few decisive-looking swipes with the stylus. "The other commanders are assembling; just waiting for you three."

Applejack bid farewell to her brother, promising to return as soon as they were done. Big Mac looked even more furtive than usual; he hardly even met her eyes. They set off through the camp at a brisk trot; far slower than Applejack could've walked without losing her breath, but not all of them had armor that made exertion effortless. "Ya'll be forgivin' me for askin'-" Applejack walked beside the unicorn. "Not that I ain't happy to see a familiar face, but... Shouldn't ya' be back in Ponyville?"

Lyra shook her head sadly. "Nopony's left in Ponyville, Applejack. Between Princess Celestia and Discord everypony's up here now. You saw the transmission, right?" At a nod, she continued, "That virus got more than half of all the Federation troops, the ones that were too slow or didn't want to use the bracelets. Nopony would've been safe with all those soldiers right there."

Applejack felt her stomach drop in her chest. "Do ya’ happen to know if they're sure they got everypony out?" She thought about Granny Smith, barely mobile and not-quite-coherent, locked away with Fluttershy in her cottage that was so very close to Normandy.

Lyra nodded. "Princess Celestia seemed to think so. The tents are all set up by village. Maybe if there's time after the meeting I can show you where Ponyville's is."

Pinkie Pie listened with a very serious expression, perhaps uncharacteristically so. "I didn't know you were an army pony."

The mint mare grinned proudly. "I'm just Alexi's assistant, helping her with the pony thing. Taking notes, sending messages. Not fighting; that's all further away."

"You're not just my assistant." Alexi hadn't smiled before, but she smiled now. "She saved my life once. Now she stops me from looking stupid on an almost hourly basis. You ponies deserve serious props for getting through your daily lives without having hands."

Applejack didn't know what to say to that, so instead she asked. "What's this meetin' about? Luna don't usually call for me unless the other elements are comin' too..."

They were heading into a large, elegant looking tent, with the colorful flag of Equestria waving proudly on huge poles. The tent was gigantic, at least as large as city hall back in Ponyville. "This is a strategic meeting; all the other guests are generals and commanders. Princess Twilight is on the front with Princess Celestia, I'm fairly sure she won't be joining us."

A pair of Lunar Guard ponies waited outside the tent, all purple armor and batlike wings. They saluted as their group went inside, looking as wary as they were half-asleep. Nopony accosted them all the way into a large conference room, with a table instead of hologram projectors and maps instead of satellite images.

If Applejack had to describe the feeling in the room with a word, it would've been "defeated." There were a handful of guardsponies with plumes on their helmets, one from each of the branches of the Equestrian military. Lyra it seemed had left them somewhere in the hallway, because she did not accompany them inside. There was only one human in the room, Cigaal. Alexi walked over and stood beside him, the only two in the room who didn't look like wan birds or ponies with crushed hopes.

Applejack didn't know how to read the maps, save that there were very many red things and not very many blue ones. Judging by the blue in the center, she assumed that must be the Crystal Empire filled with ponies. The numbers didn't look good.

Even Princess Luna looked a little haggard, though it was hard to say exactly what made her look that way. Applejack looked around, expecting to see Rainbow Dash at least present for this meeting. That secret mission of hers had to be over by now, right? "Is... Rainbow Dash comin', Princess?" she asked, before anypony else could speak up. She had wondered too long to keep silent when her friend was in danger. "We got so many other ponies here, an' I thought..."

Luna shook her head. "I'm afraid not, Applejack." There was no weakness in her now. The Princess of the Night met her eyes, and it was all Applejack could do not to look away. She didn't, in the end. Applejack was an honest pony; she had nothing to hide even from those she deeply respected. She had no reason to feel ashamed even in the presence of great ponies. "Something happened to her while on assignment. She lives, but her dreams are strange and I sense she has suffered much. She would not return in time to help us now."

Applejack nodded. What she wanted to do was speak up, learn everything she could, and set out to rescue her friend without delay. Yet as much as she wanted that, she also knew the stakes were higher than just a few lives. If the Crystal Empire fell, the hopes of all Equestria would die with it. Her questions could wait until the meeting was over at least.

"We waited for you, Applejack, because we value your honesty." Luna took her seat at the head of the table. All the other ponies around them followed her example. "The war does not go well. Every day we are forced to retreat, every day we lose ground, and the majority of the enemy's strength has not yet been brought to bear." Her expression grew dark. "The other princesses and I have reached the conclusion that we may be required to recreate the protective magics used in the Crystal Empire when Sombra rose to power, and leap forward to a time when the enemy is unprepared and we have more time to make our stand. Yet to do so would be to sacrifice everything, even Equestria itself. Most of our ponies are not here, and none would come for them."

"Our power wanes, and our allies are few. The zebras are silent, the Steel Tower has either fled or been destroyed, and our army of human allies has been turned against us. Each day consumes more of our strength, and the day will soon come where we lack the power to enact the spells that would send us forward in time."

"Ah'..." Applejack stammered, looking to Pinkie Pie for help. She didn't seem particularly helpful; staring intently at the map and not seeming to hear a word that any of them were saying around the table. "Don't see what ah’ got to do with yer decision, Princess. There's plenty'a wiser ponies than me in here."

Luna's expression never wavered, though several of the generals and commanders looked pleased at the apparent flattery. The unicorn in particular seemed happy the utterly absurd idea that an earth pony might have something useful to say in such prestigious company had been shot down. The princess of the moon did not seem to share that sentiment, however. "That may be, Applejack. However, we did not bring you and Pinkie Pie here as strategic advisors." She gestured at the map, indicating an inward facing bulge that grew very close indeed to the land marked as friendly.

"When this all began, our enemies orchestrated a jailbreak. They freed many of the most dangerous and hate-filled enemies of Equestria from Tartarus. That army, an undying legion who feasts on magic and unravels spells, has done more damage than every dragon and minotaur assaulting us. These monsters... tear the fabric of magic apart around them. Earth ponies lose their fortitude; pegasi drop from the air, and unicorns cannot perform their magic reliably. They devour those they slay, and their magic with them."

"Celestia and I have slowed their advance from afar, but the effort is costly and unproductive. The troops on that front lose half their number daily. Half their number, Applejack. Unacceptable casualties. We can fight dragons, we can fight minotaurs, but this army of demons we cannot fight." She looked at Alexi, flanked by the gigantic man in his glittering armor. "Alexi tells me her people, these Sons, can fight and win against this enemy. She advises against everypony else at this table that to flee through time is ultimately suicidal and unnecessary. She tells me we should risk our greatest weapon, risk the last of the time we might have left to prepare the escape spell, and put our hopes in them."

"I do not believe Alexi Colven of the Federation lies to me, yet I am not certain if she speaks wisdom. I wanted the perspective of ponies who have worked with them. If I send them, can they stand against an army of the dead who tear magic to ribbons and devour all that is good?" There was slump to her shoulders now; Applejack could see it. This load was heavy on her.

"Your sister and my friend have gone to Earth; they may already be on their way with the great human destroyer. Our friends in the Tower may not have died and may simply be regrouping, speaking not to us for fear of being discovered before they can reach us. Perhaps the Zebras too will rise, or the Griffons turn now that they see what this war has made of Equestria. A few weeks might mean victory if we can survive them, and flight our utter defeat. Should Equestria play this gambit? Answer for us, and speak true. All of Equestria depends on your answer."

The room fell silent. Applejack turned her attention on Pinkie Pie for help, though she remained silent. It was very hard to see, but there seemed to be a little of a shake at her hooves, like the shiver of fear. There would be no giggling to make this disappear.

Applejack stared into the face of Captain Cigaal, his dark features strong and impassive. She saw the soldiers as they had moved in Appleloosa, the way they threw themselves into danger without hesitation or thought. She saw how fast they had reacted to the dragon's powers, shifting from one strategy to another until they conquered. She saw the millions of ponies outside of the Crystal Empire, either enslaved or soon to be. She thought about Rainbow Dash, and her sister, both of whom she would surely never see again if they moved forward in time. Yet those could not motivate her choice, or else it couldn't be honest.

"I don't know what sorta monsters these are. I don't know what kinda ponies got locked up down in Tartarus, least not the upper parts." She turned a little to face Cigaal. "I know them, though. I reckon there ain't nothin' they couldn't fight and win. I saw 'em kill an entire army of griffons and minotaurs, biggest meanest types you ever did see, without losin' a pony. I saw 'em kill a dragon." She nodded, growing more confident. "We can do it, Princess. Don't matter if we can't use magic; we'll stop 'em."

She saw strange expressions on the faces of the ponies in the room. Some looked angry, others afraid. Still others seemed to smile at her, as though relieved that at least somepony had a little backbone. Cigaal met her eyes, and in them Applejack could see something she hadn't seen there before. His face might be dark, but that expression warmed her like sunshine. It was respect.

"Can you do it?" Luna wasn't speaking to her anymore, her attention turned on Cigaal. "Can your Sons halt their advance and destroy this abominable army?"

Cigaal did not bow, not even a little. He did nod though, with great respect. "I am not the Prophet," he began, "may peace be upon him." He straightened, his head so high it brushed the ceiling. "But God willing, my sons will do this thing. For you we will send these demons back to hell."

Enrique Rodriguez Antonio De Muerte Vasco was not happy to have been woken so early in the morning. More precisely, he was unhappy to be woken so little of the way through his twelve-hour sleep cycle. Humans isolated from sunlight for long periods naturally shifted from a twenty-four to a thirty-six hour cycle, and Enrique like everyone else in Alajuela bunker was not exposed to real sunlight anything like often enough to alter his circadian rhythms.

The single hammock in the watchman's quarters of the very highest occupied level of Alajuela bunker was not quite long enough for Enrique's gangly form, which meant that no position was quite comfortable. As he shambled half-asleep and blind through the rehearsed steps of preparing for a visit to the surface, he could fantasize of nothing more alluring than the faded red nylon of the hammock.

But deep down he knew that there was no mistake he would regret more once he was awake. Living in the bunker was the very definition of dull, a world where nothing ever changed and survival was only just attainable. Being one of the watchmen, the cowboys, was a unique prestige only a few could earn. Even so far from any population centers the radiation outside meant that even in protective gear any individual could only travel outside sparingly, with visits into the ruins that had once been Alajuela almost impossible for the phenomenal levels of radiation that waited there. You might be able to walk there, but even with the most hardy strains of Nanophage you would be dead three times before you made it back.

The cowboys did not tend to livestock, since of course there were no large animals alive anywhere near the bunker. They were scavengers, watchmen, and soldiers all in one. It was a competitive and highly sought-after position, one that would be lost to him forever if he went back to sleep now.

So however much he might want to go to bed, Enrique ignored that desire and went through the routine of preparation. He showered in a high pressure blast of cleansing almost-water, dressed in a faded jumpsuit that was too tight at his wrists and ankles, and sat down to breakfast in front a cracked display. He hardly even felt the disgust as he ate an entire plate of insect paste on bean crackers. He might've gagged the first few times he had eaten such things, but no longer. A few decades of similar food had a way of helping you adjust. Besides, the report flashing across the screen was so fascinating that he probably wouldn't have noticed if someone had switched his sandwiches for cardboard.

Apparently something large had passed through the radar-detection area of Alajuela. It matched no specifications in the computer for any Tower or Federation craft, which might suggest it belonged to unaffiliated scavengers, except for the fact that it had apparently appeared from nowhere. The footage from the entire network had been reviewed and the craft hadn't shown up anywhere, which the AI predicted meant the ship had been created by unaffiliated scavengers who had access to a cloaking device and had built the ship somewhere it couldn't be seen.

Of course, even more interesting than the idea of scavengers bold enough to fly into a city as heavily irradiated as Alajuela above them, was the fact that it had apparently taken some heavy damage. The camera that had been trained on that part of the Earth had not been watching for the ship, so the footage was vague and low-resolution. Still, once Alajuela's own sensors had detected it there were clear signs of weapons damage consistent with Federation weapons.

It must have had an impressive cloaking device for it not to fail until the poor ship was breaking apart. It had been heading straight into the old city and had crashed where it was far too hot for any living human to ever walk and return, but as it disintegrated numerous objects had tumbled from it, some even gliding down with parachutes. There was something off about the suits they wore in the enlarged photographs the screen showed him, but it was hard to tell for sure if there was really anything out of place or it was just a trick of the image.

The screen briefed him on the locations he would need to visit, along with simple mission parameters: recover all the components that had fallen within survivable range, along with any passengers. Anyone he found, if alive, was to be treated as a potential enemy and restrained carefully. He would keep them in the upper-level quarantine until they were determined to be clean of infection, at which point his superiors would decide what to do. If they were contaminated or directly hostile, he was permitted to use lethal force.

This was the sort of mission that could make his career. Even as Enrique stepped up onto the assembly platform, even as the radiation suit was assembled around him by spindly robotics, he thought of the prestige he might earn for himself and his family if he brought someone in alive. In his imagination he worked up a picture of a fallen pilot, defected from the Tower with vital information that could lead to its final destruction. He would bring in the pilot, and the story would earn him and his family their seats on the next flight to Luna-Prime. There would be a medal on his chest, lots of media and ceremony, and a spot for him in Officer's Candidate School. Best of all, he would never have to see the rusting walls of Alajuela bunker again. It would be glorious.

There was nothing glorious about the ten-minute ride up the lift to the surface, the sound of thick steel doors opening and closing and the steady clanking of the teeth that would prevent the lift from tumbling should the power fail. He was as relieved as ever when he had reached the surface-level.

Lights came on as he emerged, illuminating a floor filled with vehicles of various shapes and sizes. He selected one, an automated hover platform with an integrated lifting crane, stepping aboard and snapping his boots into place. There were no controls; he simply sent the proper coordinates to the machine and how fast he wished the thing to travel.

The platform sent dust flying as it lifted, gliding smoothly onto a slightly raised platform and waiting there as hydraulics lifted him through a widening opening in the ceiling. Sunlight streamed down on him, making Enrique squint even despite the polarization of the facemask. For some reason he always expected the sky to be a sickly chemical gray, maybe with black clouds or mutated birds flying through the air, but what he saw was blue spotted with ordinary-looking cumulus clouds.

The sky was the only part of the world that looked the way the surface did in pictures and movies. The ground around the base of the platform was splotched with small shrubs, in browns and yellows and purples barely living. There were no birds, no animals at all save perhaps a hardy insect or two where he couldn't actually see them. This had once been a rainforest lush and beautiful; but none of the trees were anything more than skeletal remains. Many had fallen, but where they were a hazard previous cowboys had cleared them, at least in a path from where he stood to the road. Many stood strong still, as though they hadn't yet realized they were long dead.

Sometimes Enrique wondered if the situation was the same for humanity.

His hovercraft did not wait for him to reminisce, and accelerated rapidly through the corpse of the old rainforest. He did not need to react as the hovercraft swerved and dodged its way to the road. Asphalt was cracked and rotting in the moisture of the jungle, but the hovercraft didn't mind. On a curtain of high-pressure air anything approximately flat was equally suitable. Without large rocks and fallen trees to avoid they accelerated to great speed. Greater than Enrique was comfortable with without gripping the crane's arm as tightly as he could for support, at any rate.

He did not relish these visits to the surface for the scenery. The road took them past what had been suburban sprawl, first outlying villages and then towns before the city proper, all of them in various stages of decay. Trees did not sprout in the gutters and crush the walls with their roots, and there were no birds roosting inside with the help of broken windows. Only a thin, spidery ivy grew on anything, as well as a few different species of lichen that were resistant to the radiation. Insects could not live in any great numbers, though he saw a few skittering about in the empty buildings.

Every fresh visit Enrique prayed he might see something larger, perhaps a rat or a bird overhead. It would be a sign that the Earth was healing itself, that anything the people here had done to begin repairs was making a difference. He hadn't yet, nor had any of the other cowboys. Nobody wanted to believe it, but every new visit only confirmed; it might be tens of thousands of years before the surface was habitable again. Unless some revolutionary new technology became available in the interim, his children for many generations to come would likely live on a diet of insects and hydroponic produce fed on waste and corpses.

The first components he found were only a little strange. The computer identified one as a significant fragment of a plasma weapon, and several large plates as chunks of hull armor. Only the letters labeling the parts could not be identified, each written in some pictographic alphabet neither he nor the computer could recognize. A query was sent immediately to the Latin American Regional OMICRON Processor, but Enrique still hadn't received a response when he came upon the bodies.

It was good to see they were wearing full pressure suits, or else their chances of survival would have been slim in the toxic air. Yet as he drew closer to the clearing, he saw what had been blurry and indistinct from the satellite's perspective and almost could not believe what he was seeing. Yet the computer confirmed there were no active transmissions nearby, not even a possibility the fallen passengers could be doing something to his senses. His eyes were organic besides, not prosthetic, so it wasn't as though even a talented hacker could deceive him there. Holograms?

Enrique parked the hovercraft and hopped to his boots with a thunk, slinging the SAR from his shoulders and advancing slowly towards the fallen bodies. All his scanners came back clean; no holograms or projections seemed to be at work here. The bodies were scattered across about a hundred meters or so of open ground, parachutes flapping uselessly in the wind and dragging through the sand.

He neared the closest of the figures without any sign of struggle or motion. There were no explosions, no concealed drones, nothing even remotely dangerous. He could hear the quiet wheezing of the ventilator in the suit. "Hello?" he called over every standard radio frequency. "Are any of you alive?" He stood still and waited for a response, though of course none came. He did not wonder long why.

These fallen bodies weren't human, not even close. The suits were built for a four-legged species, each limb that emerged from the tangle was a leg ending in a boot, not a glove. Were they large dogs, perhaps? Or some species of feline? The boots were almost completely flat their interior curvature failing to suggest a feline or canine anatomy. Some sort of horse, perhaps? Yet they were far too small to be adults. Enrique had never seen a horse before, but he pulled up a few images of foals from the mesh and found these creatures were too stocky to match well. The legs weren't thick enough, the head a little too squashed.

Yet when he circled the fallen creature to the faceplate, he found the apparently resting face to be highly equine in suggestion, the coat a healthy pinto that even matched one of the images the computer had summoned for him.

There was no trace of footprints around the bodies in the mud and dirt, no sign that any of them had moved much after landing or that there were bodies missing he did not see. But then, why would someone make such a point to get their pets to safety if they weren't going to be there to take care of them? It wasn't as though the pressure suits would keep them forever. A day perhaps, assuming they could get the right drugs afterwards to mitigate the cancer risk and redevelop the damaged tissues. Enrique had heard somewhere that horses were fairly smart, that they could navigate familiar territory well and always find their way home. Was there somewhere safe these creatures would know to wander to if they woke up? Should he wait until they awoke and follow them?

Horses might be able to navigate to some familiar home, but he doubted they would be able to fight their way out of the tangled parachutes. It was hard to imagine them doing anything other than struggling against the tight bonds of the suits. Ultimately he decided against that plan; if his superiors wanted, they could always release the creatures from the bunker and follow them then. It wasn't as though a mile or two would make a difference.

On a whim, Enrique queried their suits on the standard data frequencies. All five responded with signals sent from a standard Federation microprocessor, one common to life-support situations. All five told much the same story, in English. He didn't speak nearly enough English to understand the words, but the computer did, and quickly translated. The suits were made for high-altitude skydiving of all things, but they had detected the radiation outside and switched to the internal air supply, which was rapidly dwindling. Each one of the occupants had multiple injuries; many of which were probably from their landing. They had a few more hours of air, if they were very lucky. Their prospects were not good if they were left out here, even if they did somehow regain consciousness.

Enrique ordered the suits to administer a sedative for transport, and each reported they had complied. The creatures were light enough to lift without the crane, even in their suits. None reported spinal injuries, so he was just careful not to cause any as he lifted each onto the hovercraft and tied them down beside steel plates and the other salvaged parts he had discovered. None of them stirred as he moved them, not even a twitch.

Granted, the glimpses of the faces he saw did unnerve him a little. The first might've been close enough to equine that he could pass it off as such, but the others had coats that bespoke either intense effort with dying and artificial coloration or else genetic manipulation well beyond what any sane person would invest in for their pets. These days it was all about more efficient crops and animals that could survive in irradiated environments. Considering the suits had already reported these individuals were suffering the early stages of mild radiation poisoning, Enrique suspected that possibility was right out.

So he sent back what he had seen to the central computer, and went about the normal duties of a cowboy. His search for salvage was over, though. Almost immediately after sending his initial report he received instructions to return and treat the animals for their injuries. Further salvage could wait until they were securely treated and locked away in isolation.

So he drove right back to the bunker, a little disheartened to have his expedition ended so abruptly and not to have found the real pilots of the ship. All the way back he tried to figure out why the ship's pilots might have taken such pains to save their animals without jumping themselves. Surely if they had access to the raw materials to make such new-looking pressure suits they had gear for themselves as well. Where had they gone? They had to know that the ship's trajectory would take them into uninhabitable city, and that there would be no return if they rode it all the way down.

He eventually settled on the same hypothesis as the computer: the human pilots had jumped earlier, possibly wearing personal cloaks. Even if there was another bunker within walking distance, they would still eventually want their property and come looking for Alajuela. Though the entrance he used was carefully concealed, there was another, public access not far away, one with all sorts of security and seals. Nobody had used it in years, but that would have to be where the real pilots would go when they wanted their animals bad enough. It seemed a safe assumption they wanted them, seeing as they had invested a fair amount of resources making suits to keep them alive in the fallout.

Enrique kept his hands on his accelerator all the way home, watching the HUD for any signs of motion that might signal an ambush to recover the animals. Nothing happened, which hardly surprised him. If the pilot of that ship had the time to set up an ambush, why wouldn't he or she have just recovered the animals and been done with it? It wasn't as though he would've fought for salvage if its owner was still alive.

Once inside, he drove the platform to the very edge of the lift, unloading the little passengers one at a time onto the lift that would take them into the station proper. He was glad they were so small, since that would mean he wouldn't have to take multiple trips.

Enrique sat quietly beside the fallen forms of the strange animals, trying to read some clue as to what they might be from the faint pictographic letters written into the suits. Unfortunately, staring intently did not simply will understanding into being, and the central computer had nothing either. An information request had already been made to Lunar Command, but that might very well take days. Enrique had no better idea than most about what was going on up there, but everybody knew it was something. The president hadn't said anything about it, but hadn't the Aegis been seen in lunar orbit? What was the Martian flagship doing so far from home?

Maybe, just maybe, it had something to do with these apparently genetically engineered animals and the ship they had been flown on. Yet, of anywhere they could have visited, why here? The ruins of Costa Rica held no strategic targets, no significant population centers and no large-scale research or manufacturing areas. It made no sense as an attack or as a movement of allies. Central computer still thought it was independent scavengers somehow, and Enrique had no reason to disagree. If only their owners would hurry up about getting here so he could learn why they had gone to such trouble to make such apparently useless creatures.

Decontamination had always been a pain, particularly when he had cargo. Enrique discovered he had never really learned the full extent of how awful the decontamination process could be. Scrubbing his own armor, stripping out to the jumpsuit and scrubbing some more, was made all the more awful when he had to do it several times an hour.

The process was as meticulous as it was painstaking: clean himself under the showers and foam as he normally would, but then slip into a sterile jumpsuit and take one of the animals into the shower. The creature, little more than deadweight, offered no help at all. He had to do for them exactly what he normally did for himself, scrubbing the suits first and then the animals underneath with disinfectant, careful to miss nothing.

Strange creatures they were, too. With their suits removed, there was no mistaking them for Earth equines, not past a few minor similarities. They were too small, their bodies failing to match horses in just about any way. Of course, he didn't worry about it all that much as he washed them, concentrating instead on the traditional folk music he played as loudly as the speakers would allow.

It took three hours to get each of the strange animals stripped and cleaned and into the medical lab. At the computer's direction, he selected one and lifted it from one of the cots and onto the examination table, careful not to twist or bend the little animal the wrong way. After such a thorough washing, he had at least learned one thing: these animals hadn't been dyed. That meant the green coat on this thing was completely natural, right along with the mane and tail like sunshine. Of course, nothing was as striking as the little image of the earth on either of its flanks. That settled the genetic engineering question quite handily.

"I thought most of what we did with genetic engineering was about culturing crops; what sort of crop is this?" Enrique did not need to address the computer directly for it to understand that he was asking a question. It wasn't as though there was anyone else here.

The response came immediately, the Spanish so flawless it lacked soul. "Precision alteration at the level required to produce this body would be outside the capability of any known power or nation." As the scanners flashed and glowed over the unconscious animal, data began filling the holospace above it. Enrique didn't understand any of it, and as usual had to ask for instructions from the computer.

"How is the patient?"

"Heavy bruising near the elongated bone spur protruding from the head, and symptoms of a mild concussion. Evidence of internal damage consistent with acceleration injury. Radiation poisoning consistent with a dosage of approximately 40 rads over a few hours. Intervention not required."

Enrique moved his hands through the field, expanding the holographic projection of this first patient so that he could watch as data gradually filled it. "Excuse me? That sounded serious; where are the medical androids?" He looked to the opening in the wall from which they always came, but there was no sign of motion. "Even if it is just an animal, we're not going to just leave it to live or die on its own, right? Those aren't our orders."

"Intervention not required," the computer said again. Enrique opened his mouth to argue, but as he did he saw the intricate lacework of orange lines snaking through this animal like veins, except for in the head, where they were so thick any other data that might've been displayed there was completely lost. "Repair already underway. Patient is fully integrated with Neuroboost Nanophage strain, and will be repaired."

Enrique gaped down at the sleeping form, enlarging the brain section of the image so that he could look at the various clusters of light in detail. With such a focus on the internal structure, the scan was almost indistinguishable from a human brain. He might not have known better if the subject wasn't unconscious on the table in front of him. "I thought there weren't any nonhuman Nanophage strains... Why Neuroboost? Why would you..." He took a step back from the table, eyes wide. "Were they trying to make it smart? One of those uplift experiments maybe, like what they tried with cetaceans?"

"A likely hypothesis."

"But how- no. Send an Ident query signal. Maybe the implant will give us the name of whoever owned these things..."

"Affirmative response. Patient identified as Dr. Kimberly Colven, female, aged 41. Federation citizenship record number: US-299170101LU-G4. Local Reference: Luna-7. Current assignment: RESTRICTED"

He couldn't help it. Enrique laughed. Like every member of his family, his laughter was deep and raucous, shaking through his whole body. He even thought he noticed the little animal twitch. "Okay, who's screwing with the computer? Whatever the joke is... You got me!" He turned around, spreading his arms wide. He expected his friends and fellow cowboys to emerge from the doorway, perhaps carrying bottles or some small bowl of flan to share. The computer remained silent as well, which meant the only sound was the breathing of the animals he had brought in and so laboriously sterilized.

His smile faltered a little. "Computer, give me a local buffer reset. Full shutdown and reboot, got it?"

"One moment." The glowing terminal to his right went dead. He checked the signal with his own Nanophage (much less expensive than a Neuroboost) implants to be sure the reset had been accomplished. The computer responded in the affirmative. Yet the holospace above the patient remained as it had been, unchanged. He even panned through the data, selecting a few meaningless fields to be completely certain a still image hadn't been left in the buffer. It responded exactly as it should. Nobody would go to these lengths to fool him, would they? If they weren't real, these animals had to be sophisticated robots, made to simulate respiration and resist water. No way Alajuela had the resources to waste on a practical joke this elaborate.

"Ready."

Enrique cleared his throat. "Was the reset successful?"

The question was pointless; his implants had already confirmed the answer. But the computer didn't care. "Yes."

"And what were we doing?"

"Conducting an evaluation of patient Kimberly Colven. Intervention not required."

He sighed. "This isn't a joke?"

"Command not recognized."

"Shit, you're serious."

"Command not recognized."

Enrique closed his eyes and took a few calming breaths before responding. There was absolutely no reason he ought to get upset with the central computer; it wasn't a GAI capable of human-level responses. As sophisticated as it might seem, it could still only obey direct commands as it received them. "Computer, my patient is not a 41-year-old human woman. Obviously the implants are giving us forged information." He shook his head, moving his hands through the air until he found the image on file for Dr. Colven and enlarged it. The woman might've been pretty if she was smiling, though she didn't look forty-one. But then, in the age of nanomedicine was there anyone who actually looked their age?

"Forgery not possible; deviceID and genetic profile both match lunar records."

"Wait." Enrique closed the distance to the animal resting on the examination table. "You're telling me this thing has a matching genetic profile to the one on Luna?"

"Affirmative."

"So this Colven woman has a nonhuman genetic profile?"

"Affirmative." There was a brief surge of energy, the lights going out for a split-second and then lighting up again. Such disruptions were rare, but not beyond his realm of experience. Usually that meant there had been a problem with the main reactors, and the backup system had been engaged.

He swore again, though more quietly to himself than a shout. "Could you ask Luna-7 what we should do with their missing horse-scientist, then?"

"Unable to comply; long-range transmission equipment is offline."

"Since when?"

"Main antenna went offline approximately five seconds ago."

Enrique glowered at nothing in particular. It was going to be one of those days.

Chapter 23: Solstice

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats.

Time stretched and twisted in Chance's mind, overwhelmed as she was with radiation and drugs. She dreamed strange nightmares, and for once there was no Princess Luna to comfort her. Corpse-cities rose across the surface of a dead planet, a planet of browns and grays where there once had been greens and blues.

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief.

It was an old nightmare, the same one she had experienced almost nightly when she had first arrived in Equestria. She watched Seattle burn and there was no comfort this time. She did not cry out, though her pulse raced as the experiences replayed themselves in her mind over and over.

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only there is shadow under this red rock,

The moon brought her no comfort, either. She watched the latter half of the war from her perch of darkness and stone, and imagined other little girls like herself losing their families to the flowers made from fire.

Come in under the shadow of this red rock.

Was it her speaking? There was a field of dead trees in red-brown soil. Her vision took her below, through silt and sand and steel until she was looking at herself, unconscious in a dimly lit room.

"Should we use the bowl? I bet that will wake 'em up."

"Could it have something to do with them being unicorns?" That was Scootaloo's voice, a little raspier than usual. "The magic here is awful."

"There is no magic here." Pip sounded closer. He felt closer too, come to think of it. That was his flank she was feeling, resting protectively against her. Not that he had any need to protect her from her friends. What had happened? Her head was pounding, and her stomach rumbled with a disquieting undertone of nausea. Not enough to provoke herself into vomiting, but enough that the thought of eating repulsed her. It was not a happy position for her insides to be in, that was certain.

Of course, the nausea was nothing compared to the sensation coming from her horn. It was a numbness, the pins-and-needles sensation mixed with a cold like a severed limb. With her eyes closed, it was easy to devote all her concentration to her carefully trained magical senses. There was nothing to sense. No ley lines, no auras, not even the magic that should've been radiating from herself and every other pony in the room. This was Earth.

That didn't explain the nausea or the weakness, though she didn't need his help to figure out the answer. If this was Earth, then there was something almost as pervasive on the surface as magic was on Equestria: nuclear radiation. Jumpsuits would've kept out most of it, but not all. Gamma rays didn't stop just because thick fabric asked them to.

'Nanophage, am I suffering from radiation poisoning?'

The response came immediately, as a line of English text visible even with her eyes closed. "You began suffering the symptoms of acute radiation syndrome approximately 33.5 hours ago. All damage has been repaired. Expect mild disorientation and digestive distress for the next few hours, along with epilation over the next 7-82 days."

Chance sat up, so abruptly that Pip jolted beneath her and Apple Bloom froze, carrying a little dish of water in her mouth. With a shrug, she turned and dumped it on Sweetie Belle's resting form. The result was more or less as one might predict. The pony sat up gasping and squealing, her eyes casting all around her for the source of the distress. If Sweetie Belle was being true to form, Apple Bloom's actions would have provoked the beginning of a pitched battle.

There seemed to be no energy to fight. All the young mare did was moan and kick vaguely in Apple Bloom's direction utterly without passion. Sweetie Belle lacked both Chance's training and aptitude with magic, but that didn't mean she wouldn't feel what Chance was feeling now. They would all be feeling it in their own ways; it wasn't as though earth ponies or pegasi needed magic any less. What was being in a universe utterly devoid of magic doing to their bodies? She queried the Nanophage again for a health report, but the report included nothing she didn't already know.

"Hey," Sweetie Belle moaned, "you try opening a door to another universe, see how tired you are..." Then more quietly, "My head feels empty."

No witty retort came from any of the watching ponies. Instead Apple Bloom brought a towel, offering it to Sweetie Belle.

Chance looked away, resting her head against the warmth of Pip's back. When she spoke, it was with all the enthusiasm of a doctor informing a patient of a terminal prognosis. "Welcome to Earth."

Scootaloo rolled her eyes. "We figured something was up when we woke up locked in a room with our suits gone."

Sweetie Belle sounded thoughtful. "I expected it to be bigger," she said, looking up at the gray ceiling.

For a room in a bunker it was actually quite large; a vaulted ceiling rounded to look almost like the inside of a globe in stone. On the far side of the room was a row of large turnstiles and admission booths in slowly rusting metal and dusty glass. Above them on the ceiling was a faded mural of the Christus with arms spread over the row of booths leading into a set of tightly shut blast doors. Of the many lights on the ceiling, only a few nearest to their part of the room were lit, leaving the rest in perpetual gloom.

"How did..." Chance tried to remember, but found her head burned whenever she tried. "Sweetie Belle and I were with Truth, under the deck..."

"We got you out." Scootaloo didn't hide the pride from her voice well, which Chance took to mean that Scootaloo herself had been the one to do it. "While we fell. Started falling right away, and you two were unconscious. We dragged you to the deck and the parachutes did the rest. Somepony must've found us. We all smell weird, if your nose hasn't woken up yet."

Chance nodded in agreement. "That's decontaminant, so we don't bring anything irradiated in with us and get people sick. Standard procedure when your whole planet is toxic."

None of her friends had a chance to say anything to that, because the door opened then at the far end of the room, massive metallic gears clanking as they went.

What Chance expected was some sort of welcoming committee, sent to give these visitors from Equestria the very best and most respectful of treatment. Equestria was, after all, their only hope for the future. Chance didn't know to what level the details were known by people back on Earth, but she was sure Truth would've told them enough to ensure they were well-treated. All it would take was a single call to Lunar Command and they could recover the machines waiting in the wreckage of the Fury. One of the lunar quickships could take them into the upper atmosphere and open the doorway. If Truth had sent the message immediately, the ship might only be hours away.

There was only one man. Far from an official committee, the single young man wore a threadbare uniform and seemed to stumble forward, as one who is in great physical or emotional pain. Was something wrong down here? Why would someone injured be sent to greet them unless everyone else in the bunker was in even worse shape. The young man was dragging something, though it was hard to make out at first.

Chance rose to her hooves along with her friends, forming a protective herd without so much as a word exchanged between them. "What's going on?" Apple Bloom asked, and without anypony needing to say so all of them fell back a step or two, keeping close together. Chance could feel Pip's body on one side, muscles tightening like a spring building tension.

"Hello!" Chance stepped forward a pace, trying to make herself sound more cheerful than she felt. "Were you the one who rescued us? We've very grateful." Her English was good, almost without an accent. The man halted, his eyes darting furiously between them. Sweat poured down his forehead. Chance could see the object he was dragging behind him now; it was an old SAR. He was dragging the hard plastic rifle along the ground by the stock, the barrel grinding and scraping on concrete. The plastic was tough and dense enough to be used as a club, to say nothing of the damage the gun could do if he used it as one.

Scootaloo, whose vision was best of their group even in the gloom, gasped. "Chance, why does he have a gun?"

The young man muttered furiously to himself, half Spanish and half grunting. The Neuroboost implant was prepared to translate any of the human tongues, but it could make nothing of the slurred whispers that echoed under the vaulted ceiling and the watchful eyes of the Christus.

He started toward them so suddenly that all of them jumped, slowly lifting the rifle. He seemed to have completely forgotten it was anything more than an object to strike them with. The look in his eyes was pain like nothing Chance had ever seen, a fearful struggle and intelligence not matched at all by his shambling and grunting.

There was no Truth to help her connect the dots, but Chance didn't need him. Her enemy had used this tactic already, on all the humans in Equestria. "He's got a virus!" She started backing up again, and her friends followed. "Like the one on Equestria, the one messing with all the humans there." Could they get past him? He wasn't moving very quickly... But then her head was splitting and she felt like if she tried to move any more quickly she might spill her guts. It wouldn't take much force to break open her skull.

"We can take him!" Scootaloo's voice was brazen, hiding her fear behind her courage. "There's five of us!"

Apple Bloom shook her head. "That ain't fair! If it's a virus, than he don't got no idea what he's doin'! Can't hurt a pony who ain't never been told they're doin' wrong!"

"Samil was the one doing it in Equestria, and he isn’t here! I don't know how many friends he had on Earth, but I don't think the chances are good that he could find us here that quick. I bet it was automatic." Chance gestured at him. "See how messed up he is? He's fighting it. Most people don't have nearly as much of it as the military does, and he's clearly not military. I bet we can free him." Chance stepped forward, with such confidence that the young man stopped his advance for a few seconds.

"We don't have our magic, remember?" Scootaloo shouted, exasperated. "You can't just use one of Twilight's spells on him!"

Apple Bloom seemed to realize what was happening, because she advanced to stand beside Chance. "It ain't magic!" She looked back. "Ya'll gonna help us hack that virus or what?"

Chance might be a pony. She had been a pony for a long time, and not having access to her magic felt like losing a limb. Yet before she had been a pony, she had been a human child. Before she had ever known the magic of Equestria, she had learned the magic of ones and zeros. Before she had ever eaten fae fruits or studied with the Princess of Magic, she had been a little girl living in a world where all human knowledge was only a plastic keyboard away if she knew what buttons to press. At no point in her human life had she not slept less than five feet from a computer.

The Neuroboost strain of Nanophage was a significantly more advanced implant than what this young man had in his head. The ponies surrounded him, moving with him but never getting out of range of the proximity radio. Chance made contact first, easily decrypting the signal traveling into his brain and following it along its twisting connections. She made the way for the Crusaders to follow, and set to work. The internal structure of the Nanophage implants appeared before her like city streets from above, and she flew through them like a pegasus.

Together they found the offending program, like a rot in parts of the brain that responded to emotion and influenced the ethics of decisions. The black program whispered that the young man's friends were starving. It showed him pictures of the horrible illnesses the ponies carried, and the evil things they would do if they got inside the bunker. Yet, for all the cleverness of the images the program lacked both adaptability and resilience.

Against the four of them with military-grade hardware and pony teamwork, it really didn't stand a chance. While her friends kept the virus contained and the man confused, Chance wrote a program to seek out and destroy the virus, restoring every program it had altered in the young man's head and preventing him from receiving data from the bunker's internal network.

He stopped sweating first. Then he stopped shaking. Lastly, he let go of the gun, which fell with a clatter but didn't discharge. His eyes widened and he immediately wrapped his arms around himself, looking at once afraid and grateful. His dark eyes darted between each of the ponies in turn. His voice came raspy now, but the Spanish was intelligible enough. Chance's implants only took a split-second to translate.

"I am free." A brief pause as he looked between them. Any doubt about their intelligence seemed to resolve quickly. "You're in danger. The others... telling me to kill you. Asking how long I would take... wanted bodies for dissection. I'll tell them I did it, send the elevator down. Few minutes until they figure out I lied. Then they come for all of us. Unless you can do that again for everyone." He gestured vaguely around himself with his hands, no doubt indicating their hacking.

Apple Bloom opened her mouth to answer, but Chance silenced her with a look. "We can't be in multiple minds at the same time." Chance spoke in Equestrian at first, then more urgently in English when she turned to face the young man again. "This is a bunker, right?" She glanced briefly up at the Christus, then back to his face. "South or Central America?" She struggled for a moment to remember what she knew about the way these places were run, not wanting to say the wrong thing with his mind only so recently returned to him.

Newcomers would've been isolated, even if they'd been human. The Tower had been known to infect survivors with deadly nanoviruses or worse and send them into populated bunkers, so a week-long quarantine was usually followed by a complete examination before anyone could be taken lower. The room looked like it had once been a main entrance of sorts, which indicated they were very near the surface.

"What's your name?"

The young man stumbled backward, evidently taken aback by her coherent English response. Chance didn't know if he was bilingual or his own implants were translating; the effect was ultimately the same. "E-Enrique. W-what... What are you? Horses but not horses, talking... Are you genetic experiments? What's happening to the people here? Is it you doing it?"

Chance sighed. If what he had said was true and their time was limited, they couldn't afford to waste it in answering these questions.

Apple Bloom answered before she could, her English not quite so good but still plenty clear enough to be understood. It sounded as though she weren't using a translation program to speak it, which made Chance smile in spite of herself. Her friends were probably the most human ponies in existence. "We're ponies! Two earth ponies, two unicorns, and one pegasus." She gestured with her hoof as she said each group, indicating them.

"Not experiments." Scootaloo stuck her tongue out at the idea. "All natural! Well... Except for the Nanophage... But there's no shame in a few implants!"

"I don't think the Precursor needs to be told." Of all her friends, Pip was the least comfortable and most nervous-looking in the company of this alien.

Chance pressed herself briefly against him, in a way she hoped was comforting. She felt him relax, a little. "Enrique, we're sorry to have caused you such trouble. No, it isn't us altering your minds... After all, it wouldn't make much sense to try to force you to kill us, would it? If we had wanted to kill ourselves, there are easier ways." She moved away from Pip, right over to the dark-haired human. As she did so, she made a point of kicking the gun away, out of his reach. There were no guarantees their hasty antivirus had been totally successful.

"Do you have access to any shielded vehicles, Enrique? Most big bunkers have salvage teams, and this one looks big. We need something that can hold all of us for a trip to recover some equipment. We'll need supplies too... Food and water for several days, and our suits back since I doubt you have pony-sized equipment. Can you handle all that?"

Enrique seemed to be recovering his senses, because the first signs of resistance flashed in his face. "We have a long-range shielded cargo transport that can keep you alive for a few days as long as you stay out of the hot zones. Still... I can't give you all those things! You can't use our cargo transport, whatever you are. Ponies, genetic experiments, whatever. I won't betray my home."

Chance puffed herself up, trying to seem as large and imposing as she could. The young man was nearly twice her height, and he didn't even flinch. "Listen." She leaned closer to him, speaking hushed and more urgently. "There is a Steel Tower virus infecting this bunker. We cured you, but we can't cure everyone, not right now. We're on an important mission, one that could end the war for good. If you cooperate, you might just save the whole human race. My name is Kimberly Colven; I was sent by Lunar Command. If you get me an uplink, you can verify my identity codes. My friends-" She flicked her tail behind her. "are each recognized as official ambassadors with the Federation. Well... Those three are. Pip's my boyfriend... But he's a very helpful boyfriend!"

The young man's face was difficult to read. Chance was out of practice with human emotions; the ears weren't very expressive, and there was no tail at all. His scent was worse, all ape and sweat. She was quite sure she had never smelled like that back on Luna-7. Of course, she had no idea how long the virus had been controlling him. Showering probably wasn't part of its programming.

"Can't contact anyone; communication relay is down. Hardware fault way down by the central core, no way to fix it from here. Happened right after I sent your identification codes. The pictures didn't match, but..." He frowned. "Virus. Important mission. You say it can end the war with the Tower for good?"

Chance nodded vigorously. "Completely." It wasn't exactly untrue. "If we hurry."

Enrique swayed on his feet, seeming to make up his mind. He looked between the ponies one last time, then nodded. "Follow me. Not much time left."

The strange captain of the Equestrian skyship wasted no time at all getting them all to work. Equestria might be primitive technologically, but it seemed to have missed the memo about gender roles in primitive societies, because no less was expected of Rainbow Dash and Lonely Dawn than what the captain asked of Charles. No, not Charles. Vigil. Nobody had called him anything else in all the time he'd been aboard.

Not that he wasn't flattered Rainbow Dash had apparently put so much thought into a "proper" name for him, but Charles did not want or need a new name when his own was already so familiar. Had it come from anyone else, he would've dismissed it outright.

But it didn't come from anyone, it came from her. How had his feelings of frustration and annoyance changed so suddenly?

As every night before, Charles had been assigned the worst watch of the night, the second to last. It wasn't that he thought the watches weren't incredibly important; with a war going on and known enemies in Equestrian airspace, it was a real testament to how easily ponies trusted others that he had so quickly been given such an important responsibility. The problem was that pony eyes had very poor night vision. Like Earth birds of prey, excellent vision in daylight was almost useless in the dark. Mostly he had the sound of distant voices or engines, and sources of light which would've stood out against the stars and the moonlight.

He was listening so closely to the sound outside the ship that he didn't hear the hooves behind him until they were very close. He sniffed, and found the scent was familiar. Not that he expected any different; he already knew who had the next watch. Rainbow didn't smell well at all, though it was hard to identify exactly what message his nose was trying to tell him. Powerful emotions for sure, distress. Not just physical distress, though. It was like the smell of a hospital, like sickness and rot.

Was he only now noticing it?

"H-hey." She nudged him gently on the shoulder. "Didn't you hear the third bell? I'm on watch now."

The usual snark was missing from her voice. He turned, and could only see her outline in the gloom. "You should be in bed." Charles touched her gently on the shoulder with one of his wings, one of the many gestures he had learned from her example. It was far more physical than he ever would've been with a coworker, but... ponies did things differently. "I can take your watch. Just get back to bed."

Even in the dark Charles could see her shake her head. No, not see. He felt her mane brush past his face, that was how close she was. "Are you saying I'm not strong enough?" He could feel her stiffen defensively without having to look. He knew her well enough to know what might be motivating her reaction.

"You're the strongest pony I know," he said, without a trace of irony. "You've kept going with a few first-aid implants that were only made to stay in a few days. You haven't complained and you've been the strongest flier of any of us despite it all. But..." He leaned closer to her, close enough that he was sure she could see his eyes. "Rainbow, you need a surgeon. A human surgeon. Probably an artificial organ or two." He forced a smile, even though he didn't feel anything like smiling. "That wing you're using is a toy compared to what the engineers designed. You need something with a good solar coating, and a bioelectric input. Self repairing, no more-"

He stopped, breathing in sharply, as she rested her head gently on his shoulder. He didn't need to look to see that she was crying. Rainbow Dash was not graceful with her tears. She sounded as though she were trying to strangle a small animal. Without knowing what else to do, Charles wrapped his wings around her, without actually applying any pressure.

Charles said nothing, holding still and acting for all the world as though he were alone and waiting for her to be the one to speak. She did, eventually.

"I... not used to...." She cleared her throat, and sounded much clearer when she spoke again. Not that she pulled away. "Why is it getting worse? I've been hurt before... you're supposed to get better, not worse!"

Charles relaxed his grip a little. I will comfort the fearful. But was that all he was doing? "What I did to you, it wasn't supposed to be permanent. It was just to keep you alive long enough to get to a doctor. We're already in Equestrian airspace. A few hours with a good doctor and I promise you'll feel great again."

She was quiet again, long enough that Charles worried she had fallen asleep. But then, without warning, she pulled away and sat on her haunches beside him, looking over the railing at the clouds. "I wish..." She struggled a moment, as though the words cost her enormous effort, before the rest of what she had meant to say tumbled out in a rush. "I'm sorry I've been such a jerk through this trip. I didn't know how to react, an alien and a soldier, so pompous and arrogant and I haven't felt anything for a stallion in a-"

"I'm sorry too. I was just as bad – worse, maybe. Not sure I caught that last part." He chuckled. "You were mumbling."

She kicked him. It wasn't hard; actually, it was far weaker than he had expected. Charles had a feeling that a lesser pony would've already been bedridden if they were in her condition. She really shouldn't have been moving around these last few weeks. The implant might have been able to start her healing if she had been in a hospital instead of flying through the air and fighting for her life.

"I can't." She was firm. "Not now." She tapped a hoof on the deck in front of her, in a way obviously meant to be both final and decisive.

Unfortunately, her behavior only made him more confused. Many men would struggle their whole lives to understand the opposite sex. Charles had never felt like one of them, though now he had some idea of what they meant. Clearly there was a great deal about pony relationships he didn't understand.

"That's fine." He coughed. "Fine, Rainbow, honest. I... I'm sure you've got good reason."

She looked relieved. Or was it that she smelled relieved? She definitely smelled better than she had when she had first walked up, that was for sure. "Good." She cleared her throat. "Glad. I wouldn't want us not to be cool."

He shivered once in the chill breeze. "Yeah, we're cool. It's for the best. I'm sure when we get back they'll be able to change me back pretty quick. By now the whole compound ought to be finished, assembly lines ready to go. They can pop me out and into a human android in no time. Put this... whole pony business behind me."

"No!" Her response was so fast it sounded like reflex. She coughed. "I mean, don't rush or anything! There's so many other war things going on... I bet if you had a good teacher, you might even make Wonderbolt with a few years of practice! It's not like the war will last that much longer, if it's even still going. We've got Celestia and Luna, and what do they have? Lizards? Give me a break!"

Charles couldn't help but notice the way her artificial wing twitched when she thought about dragons, and her body drew a little closer. It wasn't as though he blamed her. He had read once that being burned was the worst pain a physical body could endure. "It... Might be King Richard sees an advantage to having a pony on his staff," he admitted, looking away. "He always thought the Federation got preferential treatment because of their ambassador." His voice deepened in his best impression of King Richard, forgetting that he wouldn't have dreamed of speaking such things in pony company only a few weeks earlier. "She can't help it, Celestia's hardwired to respond positively to her own kind. It's the herd mentality! Of course they get more of what they ask for." He had the good sense to stop there, before Richard had launched into a protracted discussion with Tesla about the frailties of organics.

It was a stupid thing to say, and an even stupider way to act. But she laughed, which made it more than okay. She sounded much happier when she finally spoke. "If we'd met a few years ago, it would've been different. And... Maybe if I wasn't dying." She shrugged her metal wing. The real one seemed a little slow to respond. "But I've got somepony now, somepony special. She..." Rainbow paused, "Unicorn customs are pretty confusing."

"Ponies are confusing," he retorted. "I think you're delirious. You should be asleep."

Rainbow Dash had frozen, her body suddenly stiff and alert beside him. He followed her eyes, and saw that she had caught sight of something flashing in the air in front of them, a faint green glow moving up fast. Without thinking, Charles bolted the few paces to the bell and began to ring it with all his might, shaking the cord in his teeth and trying to ignore the painful ringing in his ears.

This was no military vessel, with a trained crew ready to spring into action at the slightest sign of trouble. Sailors stumbled from below in confused ones and twos, barely seeming to know where they were going.

The light didn't wait for them, though as it turned out it was much closer than it had initially appeared. Charles could hear before he could see; the sound of four plastic rotors. As it drew closer, the little UAV lit up the row of LEDs that guarded the blades, with a steadily flashing rhythm of red and white. The drone was flat and of a very primitive model, like the old delivery drones from the age before personal fabrication. The drone had a single weapon mount, though whatever had been there previously had apparently been replaced with a lightweight hologram projector.

Charles didn't have to use his eyes to recognize Tower technology when he saw it. The little machine gave his implant a ping when it arrived, though did nothing else. Charles latched onto the connection, and was only half-watching as the projector began to glow and the figure of a pony appeared in the air, about half of life size. It had no color, and when it spoke the sound came from the drone and not from its mouth.

It was hard to imagine a more generic pony than this one; utterly lacking distinguishing features, its mane matching its coat and not clearly a stallion or a mare. He had a feeling it was an earth pony only because whoever had rendered this thing hadn't bothered to spend more time selecting an avatar more carefully. The voice was no AI; it was his king.

"Ponies of Equestria; the airspace you are about to enter contains many dangerous enemy vessels and is unsuited for travel. By order of Princess Celestia, you are to alter course immediately." A map appeared, which displayed an aerial rendering of Equestria marked with latitude and longitude along with the positions of various stars. "Whatever your original course, you are directed to travel to the Crystal Empire through the following clear-flight corridors."

The pony stopped, seeming to react not at all to the crowd of ponies and their murmuring. The voice abruptly changed, becoming flat and mechanical. "If you do not understand the instructions, I can repeat them," it said. "Please say yes if you understand the instructions. Please say no if you would like them repeated."

Before any of the ponies aboard could say anything and ruin this chance at rescue, Charles pushed to the front of the crowd. "Command override!" he said as clearly as he could, forcing his mouth to stumble over the English. "Suspend current program!"

The hologram didn't turn to face him, nor did the map flicker as the drone hovered in the air above the deck. The mouth didn't move as the synthesized voice spoke. He felt a dozen eyes on him, most of them unfriendly. The ponies were scared, and this clearly hadn't been the reaction they expected. The drone didn't seem to care about his accent or that a pony was the one attempting a command override. "Input authorization code."

"A-127-TE-2291." He spoke as clearly as he could, saying every letter and number slowly to the growing whispers and discontent of the ponies around him.

There was a brief silence from the drone, until the projection vanished like a ghost. "That authorization code has been suspended. Only your superior officer can reinstate your authorization, should I establish a connection?"

Charles shivered at that. Here in Equestria, he had only one superior. He had never sent a message to that man unsolicited. You answered the summons of the king, not the other way around. Of course, this was also the only way he could get an important message sent in time to actually make a difference. King Richard wouldn't see this as a breach of protocol, not with a war on.

He didn't get to answer, though. The zebra captain remained silent no longer, and got his attention by shoving him hard on the side. "What do you think you're doing? This machine was sent to deliver important information; it isn't your place to interfere. You are our guest, remember."

"Should I establish a connection?"

Charles fought hard to keep down his anger as he turned back, shrugging off the pain of the captain's strike. He hadn't been trying to hurt Charles, anyway. Just remind him and the crew who was in charge. "I'm not interfering with it, Captain. My people sent this machine. It responds to my commands because it was also sent to find me." Before the angry-looking zebra could interfere, Charles nodded vigorously at the drone. "Yes! Establish the connection!"

The bright LEDs went out, except for the faint green glow on its underside. The captain turned away from him in disgust. "True Course, on the helm! Get us into that safe corridor, maximum speed! The rest of you, to your duty stations, we're done here!" Then more quietly, "Vigil, if you wo-"

"Uplink established. Due to bandwidth restrictions, only two-dimensional images will be sent." A square appeared in the air facing Charles, still in the uniform blue of a cheap holoprojector. The image was clearly taken indoors. King Richard was in his full regalia, and judging from the displays behind him on the wall, not in his office. His voice sounded much less high-fidelity than the recording they had heard earlier, with every few words abruptly shifting up or down in pitch a little in the compression of the signal. Still, there was no mistaking him, beard and all.

A bright light shone from the drone onto Charles as the camera trained itself on him. Frightened, everypony near him retreated until they were out of the light. He was alone as he looked up into the face of his monarch for the first time in weeks.

There was no reading Richard's expression, there never was. His voice, however, was stern. "Whoever you are, I expect an immediate explanation; who told you to say what you just did? Tell me immediately, or there will be retribution." Even the ponies around him, with no idea what he was saying, seemed to sense the anger in his tone and retreat another few paces. If Charles had eyes in the back of his head, he might've noticed the smug expression on the captain's face.

Charles lowered his head immediately in the best approximation of a bow he could manage with this body, spreading his wings automatically as he did so. Not that the Tower had any protocol for wings. "I greet him raised by our voice to sit in judgement," he said, slowly and formally. "No man told me to say what I did; I spoke it of myself. I am Sir Charles Gray, your humble servant." He frowned. "Perhaps... more humble than I ever intended."

Richard seemed to lean closer to the camera, his face growing larger as he inspected Charles. Even through a camera Charles felt as though he were naked under that piercing gaze. For the first time, he actually was. There was shouting in the background, heated and emotional conversation coming from somewhere beyond the camera's field of view. It seemed to be shaking a little too, though it was hard to say what might cause that.

Eventually Richard said, "I do not doubt such things are possible, not anymore. I must be certain, however. Give me some proof you are who you say, not some clever imposter. The Federation has many native friends, and I would not risk my kingdom over them." Though there was still plenty of suspicion in his voice, the anger was all but gone.

Charles nodded. "Of course. I... I think that..." He turned. "Rainbow Dash! Can you tell King Richard who I am?"

The pony rose a little unsteadily, though she was doing a better job of hiding it than she had been earlier. Maybe it was just that there were so many ponies to see. She advanced into the spotlight without fear and sat down at Charles's side. She looked at the projection when she spoke, not the camera. "This is the pony that you sent to fly us! The one who saved my life!"

King Richard said something in a hushed voice to someone out of frame, then turned his attention back to the camera. "Sir Gray, my friend." The transformation was evident, as warm as he had ever sounded to him. "It is good to see you are alive. I shall have a shuttle dispatched at once, it can meet you in the air. How many passengers will we be transporting?"

"Three, your grace." Charles answered without hesitation, though he didn't hide the relief he felt at apparently being recognized. "One in serious need of medical attention. Rainbow Dash has implants in need of replacement. And a replacement wing; I didn't have one handy when I made this one for her."

Richard nodded gravely. "The drone will remain with you. We have much to discuss, but that is presently impossible. Be well until we meet." The projection vanished abruptly, his last words echoing off the wood of the deck. Slowly, the drone began to lower itself onto the deck, rotors slowing until the soft bumpers landed almost soundlessly on the wood, inert.

Applejack met Cigaal's eyes with a burning, fierce confidence. "You need us."

The man was sitting at his desk, his armor replaced with a cloak of night-black fabric. To Applejack's enormous surprise, he wrote not with a tablet but with a quill pen and ink. His strokes were long and elegant, the work of a master calligrapher. She could not read or even recognize the symbols that flowed from that pen; clearly they weren't English. "If Luna's report is true, then I need every Son for this battle."

"Then why haven't we been given jobs? You'll be needin' all the help you can get yer hooves on! I know we're just gettin' the hang a' this, but I think we've made our worth mighty clear by now."

"None would question your courage or your strength," Cigaal replied.

"Then why can't we come?" It took every drop of courage, every ounce of determination Applejack had within herself to keep talking. Arguing with him was like arguing with one of the princesses. She might not think of him with nearly so much reverence, but if anything she feared him more. You could always trust Equestria's rulers to be polite and kind. Cigaal was polite, but he was also ruthless.

Cigaal took a deep breath, as though he was fighting to control his temper. "Because many of us will not return."

Applejack, who had devoted the entire walk over to preparing an argument against the magic-devouring qualities of the army they were fighting, was stunned into silence.

"You won't know this; there is only so much we can safely download into a recruit, which by necessity entails neglecting the merely informative details." He gestured over her shoulder, at the door. "Perhaps you have wondered at our name. My unit is called the Sons of Barsoom because every one of us is an orphan. We have no mothers and no fathers, so Mars itself is mother to us. A mother without mercy or kindness, yet one who respects strength and is always fair."

She gasped, thinking of Ryan and Makoto and all the others. When the war was over, they would have no family to return to. Not that Applejack didn't know exactly what it was like to live without a mother and father. "Why?"

"We have the most dangerous missions. We charge without fear into the enemy manufactory with a nuke on our back, knowing we will not return. We pilot doomed ships behind enemy lines, and fight until they tear us apart. And when we die, only Mars herself will remember us. No parents, no husbands, and no wives. If we live, we live for Barsoom. If we die, we die for Barsoom."

"My parents died when I was a filly." Applejack didn't know what had provoked her to speech, particularly about something so personal. Hadn't it taken her years to speak openly about this with her friends? "My grandmother don't remember who 'ah am anymore. Mars might not be mah' mother, but Equestria sure is. She's in danger; worse danger than ever before. If ya'll don't let me help her now, what sorta pony would 'ah be?"

Cigall put down his quill and sat back in his chair, his eyes closed. For a moment, Applejack feared he might have fallen asleep. Then he met her eyes again, expression as fierce as ever. "Do the others feel this way?"

"Mah' brother does. As for Pinkie Pie... I think she's just as happy to help anywhere. She's a good medic; she's happy enough stayin' behind in the field hospital. But not me. Ah know better." She made herself as big as she could, which was easier in the armor. She already felt gigantic. "Ah know this one battle's gonna make a heapin' helpin' a’ difference. If we can win here, ah reckon we can last 'til reinforcements get here. Ah know ah can't make ya, but I'm askin' anyway. Let mah' brother an’ me fight for Equestria with you."

The human captain rose to his feet, slinging the rifle over his shoulder but not reaching for his armor. "Come with me, pony Applejack. I will show you where you can serve."

Cigaal took her through the camp, where the Sons were already preparing for departure. Many cared for their armor, assisted by ponies Applejack guessed had been human themselves until recently. They seemed to recognize her, because the only looks she saw were friendly. Yet she was following Cigaal closely, and nobody dared interrupt to do anything more than wave at her.

He led her past the preparing humans to the carriers, where she noticed a great deal of the equipment was being unloaded. Of course she understood well enough why; this battle would not be protracted, and every bit of cargo they took that they did not need would only be a liability.

That was when she saw it. The massive shape was easily as tall as the carriers themselves, though she knew from her downloaded training that it could fold itself for transport easily enough. An Albatross could transport one if it carried nothing else. From the look of it, the thing had been assembled using components from several different smaller vehicles. Human war machines were so fantastically modular. The massive metallic vehicle stood perhaps forty feet at its height, with four sturdy legs. The cabin at the top rotated freely atop its base, with arms that could independently target packed with every weapon whose name Applejack knew. She didn't recognize the large main gun resting atop the cabin, a silvery metallic barrel studded with strange metallic protrusions and transparent tubes glowing faintly blue.

"I remember this from what you crammed into mah' head." Applejack walked a little past Cigaal, tapping the armor plates with a hoof. It was as sturdy as anything she had ever felt. "This is called an... Atlas Walker, right? Ah thought these weren't much use in war. Weren't practical."

He nodded. "Washington did good work teaching you. Yes, this mighty war-machine has little use in a human war. Such a valuable target would have been destroyed with orbital weapons, and constantly bombarded with artillery. But these so-called demons we travel to fight have no orbital platforms, and no artillery, nor have they ever known an enemy like this." He gestured at the massive main gun. "I trust that at least is new to you, yes?"

At her nod, he continued, "The most terrible weapon the human mind has ever devised. It's meant to be mounted on a capital ship; and demands so much energy that only antimatter will suffice to drive it. If you wish to fight with us, you will assist in its use; you and your brother both. You cannot fight on your hooves, because the enemy feeds on the magic of your species. Yet from inside, you two might serve as copilots, and I would need to sacrifice only one of my men to it instead of three. Likely you would need do very little; your presence would mainly be a precaution in case we lost our connection to Washington or the pilot was somehow incapacitated. Yet even so, to place you inside I must be confident you would be willing to use the weapon if I order it of you."

"What is it?" Applejack walked around the edge of the Atlas, looking up at the huge gun. She tried to compare it with what she now knew of human technology, but found no close comparisons. Only the blue tubes she could identify; those were some sort of high-energy plasma coolant, the sort that might be used on the largest reactors. "This gun, 'ah mean. I'm sure it ain't worse 'an anythin' else I've seen, but I'd like tah' know if you're makin' a fuss over it."

"Your timing was fortuitous, as we were about to conduct a test firing." He raised a hand to the side of his head, pressing the key on his headset. "Makoto, are you ready?"

Applejack heard her reply just as the Atlas began to groan and shake. "Aye, sir! Moving to firing position." Little lights came on all over it, all of them a soft blue like the cooling tubes on the main gun. The vehicle groaned, and lifted its massive legs. The earth shook with every step. It didn't go far, just past the carriers. Applejack could see the obvious target; the rusting hulk of a pony airship, which had crashed somewhere near the main road leading towards the battlefield. The area all around it had been marked with glowing plastic cones, and so far as Applejack could see nothing moved downrange.

"The power to create and to destroy belongs to God," Cigaal said, clutching his cloak more tightly about himself in the chill. "Man should not wield such weapons as this. It is called an entropic accelerator. It neutralizes the strong force which holds atomic nuclei together."

"Ready to fire, sir!"

Cigaal brought down his arm at a harsh angle. Applejack didn't know how Makoto could see the gesture, yet she could tell she had. Applejack had no idea what the "strong force" was, or what an "atom" might be. It wasn't something she'd ever found on the farm, and it apparently hadn't been something Washington had taught her either. Yet she watched, knowing she was about to find out. The faint blue glow from the machine above her suddenly became as bright as the snow, and the warmth radiating down from it warmed her in the cool air.

The sound was unlike anything she had ever heard, a deep thrum that began to escalate in volume and pitch both, becoming both harshly high and loud together. At once there was a flash, a blue unlike any blue Equestria had ever seen. A lance of light instantly connected the Atlas to the wreckage of the ship, and for a second it looked like lightning. The wreckage of this ship was sturdy iron and steel, a foot thick in places. In less than a second, Applejack watched it disintegrate. Not crumble to ash, like it had been burned; there was no ash left behind. After a second or so of sustained firing the beam vanished, and with it any sign there had been a ship.

Coolant hissed above her, then even the wind was quiet. "Would you dare use such a weapon, Applejack?"

"Not on a pony. Not on a gryphon, or a dragon, or a goblin, or anythin' livin'. But..." She shivered all over. "We're fightin' necromancy. Took the magic of the Tree a' Harmony last time, an' we don't have that." She rested a hoof on the massive leg beside her. "We'll be yer' copilots."

Author's Notes:

Hey Everypony! Here we are again at the end of a chapter. I do want to be brief with my notes; focus more on the story itself and all that, but there is a wee bit of news I wanted to share real quick with those who care. First, I'd like to welcome my newest proofreader, Withered_Pyre, who has graciously joined the team. This chapter is the first which has incorporated some of his corrections and suggestions, so a huge thanks to him.

As of this writing, Harmony Defended is finished. There's still plenty of editing to do, but the rough versions of the rest of the story are finished. Three chapters remain unpublished, along with a substantial epilogue. I'm working on a little short story to take place about ten years after the epilogue, showing the results of the war from Sweetie Belle's perspective. This will forecast the possible far-future sequel I might write one day if there's enough interest.

But that's not my next project. I'll probably finish up on the short story, currently called "Pax Humanus" either today or tomorrow. My attention now turns to my next big project. That project is this: I will be splitting up My Little Apprentice. Anyone who read that story knows it went straight from act 1 to act 3 with the kidnapping. I'm now much wiser (and a little older), and I intend to revist and correct my mistakes.

My plan in detail can be found on this blog entry, but the short answer is that I'm going to write a second, completely original novel-length story that takes place before the kidnapping, then revise and expand the third act accordingly. Expect more news on actual dates presently, but my best guess is we'll see the first chapter during one of the first weeks of the new year.

That whole "Science Fair" idea? It will be part of the second My Little Apprentice story, along with lots of other slice-of-life excitement. Thoughts? Feel free to comment here or on the blog.

Chapter 24: Truth

The Ghost transport was true to its name and was practically invisible and silent until it was upon them in the air. The active camouflage disengaged in a single fluid wave of light and color, revealing an aerodynamic craft swept closer to a bullet than an plane. Ghosts were the latest in Tower engineering and did not rely on conventional engines. To call the gravity lens that drove the airship an engine was about in line with comparing modern quantum computers to slide-rules.

The Ghost was perhaps a third of the size of the Equestrian airship, yet it kept pace without visible means of locomotion, extending a ramp over the railing with the thump of metal on wood. A pony screamed, someone started ringing the bell. Someone started yelling, "We're being boarded!" But by the time they had said it, a pair of soldiers had landed on the deck, their armor concealed only partially by the white of their robes. Neither wore helmets, though both had rifles in their hands. A third figure, a young woman in gray robes with a chain around her neck stood on the edge of the ramp but did not step down. "Sir Charles Gray! Your chariot awaits!"

Of course Charles was one of the first to answer the call that they were being boarded, fully expecting what he saw. As ponies drew crude weapons and began to gather on the deck, he forced his way through and turned to face the crew. "It's okay! They're here to take me away, nothing else! They won't harm you or your ship."

The captain was more rational than many of the crew around him. "Quickly then," he commanded. Then much quieter, "I knew you three were trouble."

Rainbow Dash came staggering into the crowd, Dawn supporting her weight. There was a strange hollow quality to her eyes and paleness to her skin that Charles hadn't recognized in darkness, yet he knew it now. It meant he had been right; the bioreactor was completely drained, and she was seriously infected somewhere. He could practically smell the necrosis. "We're... sorry," she stammered, her eyes distant, and her words only mumbled. "Full compensation... Equestrian military fund... War over..."

The woman on the ramp didn't seem to notice how sick Rainbow looked, her eyes never straying from Charles. He felt himself tucking his tail involuntarily between his legs, feeling the first pangs of shame since learning how to fly. "Sir Charles Gray," she said again, though her words were half a laugh. "Champion of London? Best pilot in his majesty's glorious air corps? White defender of the Tower? Flesh and blood."

He spun around on his hooves, so fast he nearly fell over. He didn't, but there was no way any of them could have possibly missed his swaying. He knew the names of both of the knights, as they knew him. There were as many knights as there were high cities in the kingdom, one for each. He was grateful the lord of his city was not watching him now. "Truly. Well met, esteemed... Whoever-You-Are."

Charles turned his attention to one of the knights, a middling man with a thick beard and dark eyes to match olive skin. Charles's Arabic was not nearly as good as his English, but he would bet all the bits on this ship it was better than this woman's. "Sir Ayyubi, my companion is on the verge of death. If you could bring her carefully to the doctor, we should begin treating her immediately."

As it turned out, he was wrong about this woman's Arabic. Either that, or she had a translation program. Not that he should've been surprised. "I am your surgeon," she answered, before the man could speak. "And I have not traded my competence for blood." Though Ayyubi had not responded to Charles's plea, he reacted to her gesture at once, sliding his weapon away and dropping to his knees before Rainbow Dash.

"The doctor is waiting," he said, in Equestrian. "You will feel much better soon. Please allow me to help you aboard."

Rainbow tried to protest, of course, but was too weak to voice a coherent argument. Ayyubi ignored her, though his grip was gentle. The mare's eyes widened, and she looked to Charles, her mouth opening in a silent plea.

Charles nodded in a way he hoped was comforting. "It's safe. I'll be with you in a second." The noble Sir Ayyubi nodded once to him and stepped smoothly onto the ramp, vanishing into the ship.

The officer followed behind, and without looking back, called, "Make it quick, Charles! We've got places to be!"

Charles ignored her. He wanted to scream, but that wasn't something you did to scholars of the Technocratic Order. More than that, she had just said she was going to be the one operating on Rainbow Dash. He would tolerate a million insults if it would mean Rainbow could emerge from the operating table healthy again.

Charles turned to Lonely Dawn, forcing his expression to soften. He didn't want his anger at the officer to find any other targets. "Dawn. You don't have to come with me. I have no idea where we're going, but I know now Equestria is still at war. You might be safer staying here. We could pay for your travel back out of Equestria on this ship. You would be safer."

Dawn was always agreeable with Charles, so compliant he sometimes wondered if she even listened to what he said. There was a flash of fear on her face as he spoke, and when he had stopped her reaction came almost instantly. "No! I mean..." She moved closer, pleading. "I've waited my whole life to see Equestria! I'm not going to turn around now. If the war goes badly, then... that's what happens. I'm not leaving you." If she were human, Charles supposed she might have folded her arms and looked defiantly up at him.

"That's... what I expected." He sighed, and gestured at the airship. "We've worn out our welcome, anyway. Let's go, Dawn. Places to be."

He stopped as he passed the other knight, whispering something into his ear. The knight nodded, reached inside his robe, and handed Charles something. He walked away from the ramp, back to the captain. "Sir, I thank you for giving us passage these few days. I cannot repay you with Equestrian currency, but I hope this will do." He yanked, letting the bag fall open to the deck. Gold glittered from inside, the currency of the Steel Tower in the largest denominations minted.

Charles didn't listen for the reply, he just walked away. His wings fluttered, and he landed on the edge of the ramp. He was the last inside the ship, watching the door close behind them. The Ghost was so light he barely even felt it as it lifted off the airship and began to move forward. Something felt strange in his wings as they began to accelerate, as though they were being pulled in opposite directions. He felt as though his hooves were about to slip through the floor, though of course they didn't. It made him queasy.

He ignored the sensation in favor of the fear he felt for Rainbow's life. The ship was small compared to the one he had just left, so there wasn't far to go to find Rainbow Dash. Some of the seats had been removed from the walls, and a full surgical suite had been installed against a far wall. Bright spotlights illuminated a tank of fluid set into a cage of steel. Six dexterous arms ending in versatile mechanical fingers hung above Rainbow's limp body, already submerged, a mask on her muzzle and tubes in her veins. Whatever else he might say about this Technocratic Order woman, she at least seemed to be a good doctor.

A male orderly stood beside her, with a wheeled cart Charles recognized as the sort that transported prosthetic. "Wait here," he told Dawn, as firmly as he could. He gestured to one of the benches on the wall with a hoof. "You shouldn't see this."

If she had been eager to argue before, she showed no sign of it now, and obeyed without objection. Maybe she was just grateful he had brought her along.

Charles moved as close to the surgical table as he could without actually getting in her way, looking in on the injured pegasus. She was already unconscious, for which he was grateful. Somehow he doubted the sight of the gleaming knives or their robotic arms would have been comforting to her. "Rainbow wants as minimally invasive as possible. Nothing that makes her being a cyborg any more obvious than it has to be. No implants she doesn't need to survive."

The woman didn't turn. He couldn't hear her, but he had no doubt she was instructing the orderly over radio. "Yes, these natives can be backward, can't they? Clinging desperately to flesh as though improvement were a sacrifice."

He moved forward, his face growing angry. "I'm serious. Nothing she doesn't need to survive, and make it as subtle as possible. This pony is important."

The woman gestured with one hand, though did not say anything in response at first. The orderly nodded, moved the cart past the table until it was right in front of him, and slid a plastic container open. Inside, resting in a bed of protective foam, was a cybernetic wing.

At first glance, it looked almost real. The feathers looked very convincing, though Charles recognized the distinctive sheen of synthetics in the reflected lights from overhead. Still, the color was a perfect match, and the synthetic muscle woven in exactly the way a real wing would be. He was sure that if he had taken the measurements on Rainbow's other wing he would have found it a perfect match. "That's... impressive."

"I'm thrilled you're satisfied, Sir Charles Gray. Now, if you don't mind, I would like to work without ponies interrupting me. Surgery is delicate enough, and in case you haven't noticed, we're riding an airship."

Charles didn't stay to argue. Instead he moved about the ship, questioning his fellow knights about the affairs of the war. What he learned was not good.

He returned to watch the remainder of the surgery, even though he did not want to. It was hard to watch someone he had come to care about cut open on her back, the gel turning black from the poison on her blood and chunks of awful something resting on the bottom of the tank. It looked like his friend was being opened for taxidermy, or perhaps being dissected. Yet the surgeon seemed as skilled as she had claimed to be, for never did she seem even slightly perturbed by what she saw. Precision robotic arms moved like dancers, slicing and sewing, laying tubes and carefully settling implants.

Charles watched as one of them removed the emergency bioreactor, itself dripping with a sickly black something that made the aircraft reek of decay. It was all Charles could do not to lose his oat breakfast all over the floor.

He didn't know how long it had all taken, surely not more than a few hours. The incisions were all closed then, the fluid drained and the implants in place. The surgical table became her hospital bed. The orderly removed her oxygen mask and exchanged it with a warm-looking blanket.

"How is she?" Charles asked the surgeon, unable to keep the concern from his voice. He shouldn't have to lie, should he? It wouldn't be true to say he didn't care about Rainbow. "What did she need?"

There was no sign of exhaustion in the surgeon, mental or physical. Unlike biological brains, cybernetic minds never grew tired even after intensely difficult mental labor. "You won't like the answer, and I don't think she would either. Still... The natives are sturdier than they look. Frankly, she shouldn't have been alive when we got here. I'll spare you the details, so you can spare the floor of my ship. She's got an artificial liver, one lung, several muscle grafts, and most of her intestine. You already know about the wing. Judging on the scar tissue, she remained active almost immediately after whatever hackjob surgery you did on her with those stupid stubs of yours."

She gestured at his hooves with her thin fingers, scowling. "She's to remain in bed for the next three days, non-negotiable. No vigorous athleticism for the next three months minimum, preferably six. Regular checkups every day for two weeks, then every week for six months. We have no idea which of the anti-rejection medications her body is going to accept." There was a pause. "But, if you'd like the good news, she can now breathe underwater and we installed an accelerator cannon in her torso."

Charles jerked closer to the woman impulsively, his eyes going steely hard. But she was already putting up her hands in a defensive gesture. "Only joking! I hadn't realized natives didn't have a sense of humor. Or that our King employed knights so opposed to progress."

He relaxed, moving past her to Rainbow's resting form. "Whatever. Just let me know when we arrive. Otherwise, I'll stay here until she wakes up." Charles sat on his haunches beside the surgical table, which still smelt faintly of antiseptic and death. He was true to his word; he would wait.

The mobile cargo platform was far larger inside than Chance had ever guessed. But then, she supposed at least part of that had to do with being a pony: everything looked big when you were half as far off the ground as the people who had built the thing. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo were in the cab with Pip, leading whoever might follow them on a wonderfully circuitous jaunt through the hills that would (hopefully) make it almost impossible to follow them.

The cargo platform had four rooms; a cab, a kitchen and living area, a bedroom, and (unsurprisingly) a covered cargo area. Chance was alone in the last of these chambers. She wanted to sleep, which was exactly what Sweetie Belle had done. But she was so anxious and fearful that sleep had not come, so she wandered past Enrique to sit alone in the cargo area and fiddle uselessly with the radio equipment, trying to get a signal to Truth.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

"Second Chance! Second Chance, I see your signal!" All at once the weight of Truth's transmission came crashing down on her, bypassing the safeguards she had in place preventing high-bandwidth transmissions and forming the illusion of a pony in the room with her, his body glowing blue yet illuminating nothing on the long metallic room around them. "Where the hell have you been? It seemed like you must've been killed in your jump, since I couldn't even get the signal from your suits. By now you'd be cooked alive from the radiation."

A mental projection could not embrace her, yet she felt as though he surely would if he could have. "You're in a vehicle, there's a human in here with you. You've found friendlies then?"

Chance nodded, though she knew the projection couldn't actually see her. Truth was using the implants in her brain to read her reactions, not anything the projection could've seen if it were real. "Barely. There's some version of the virus Samil used; made everyone want to kill us." She sighed, resting her head against the cold metal behind her. "But Enrique didn't have military implants, so it could only do so much with him. We're pretty sure we wiped it out, but there are plenty of other people with it we couldn't help."

"Really?" Truth paused, twisting his face into something like concentration. "Lunar command says the Alajuela bunker went dark a few hours ago. If it's a similar virus, it shouldn't be too much trouble. We've already got an antivirus ready for upload. Unfortunately if they've locked themselves off the grid it means someone will have to get in there and patch themselves into the local network, but that isn't our problem." He smiled, moving so close she would've been able to feel the heat of him if there was anything to feel. Of course there was nothing stopping him from incorporating false sensory input from more than just her vision. He just usually didn't.

"I've got some good news and some bad news." Then he grinned. "I've always wanted to say that!"

Chance felt drained, but it wasn't as though she expected their recent disasters to suddenly impart emotional maturity he had never possessed. "Okay; bad news." Chance rose, glancing once at the open doorway. There was some heated conversation coming from the cab; apparently none of them had noticed her. Then again, for all she knew each of her friends might be in the middle of their own exchange with Truth. "It couldn't make the situation much worse.”

"Not really," he agreed. "And you probably already guessed it. The Prismatic Fury's done, Chance. Stick a fork in it or maybe spread some butter because she's toast!"

Chance didn't laugh. It was like being told about the death of a friend. Celestia help them when Scootaloo found out.

"Oh, it gets worse," Truth said, his voice almost sickeningly cheerful. "We crashed right into an old city, one that was hit directly with the nuclear disruption weapons. It's piping hot down here, hotter than the inside of a microfusion reactor. Also, all but one of the gating machines Avalon gave us got completely trashed. Really, it's a miracle the one survived.

"There's good news?"

He nodded again. "You bet! Avalon also sent the designs for the gating machines, and the programs to run them. I forwarded them to the Aegis. By now, they probably already have engineers grafting the things to the hull. They'll be flying into Equestria with the antivirus in no time! I let them know where we crashed the instant we went down; and the ship's interim captain informed me a rescue gunship would be sent immediately. It's only a day away from you; you can survive that long, right?"

"I'm sure we can." She struck the thick wall with a hoof. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to make it ring a little with the sound. "This thing is pretty sturdy."

"There's more, though." He stopped, suddenly avoiding her eyes. True to his name, he did not lie to her. Deception wasn't just against his nature, he wasn't physically capable. Not to a user, anyway. "I got a message through the Rift from Equestria a few hours ago, addressed to you. It's a recording, ultra-high-fidelity, from Princess Luna. She insisted I only tell you about it when you were alone." He looked around, as though the mock eyes she seemed to see could actually perceive anything she couldn't. "You are alone, right?"

Chance hadn't even seen anything, and yet she already felt wide awake. "Yes!" she whispered, harshly. “I'm alone! You can show me!" She started to pace, walking all the way to the end of the cargo area and back again. At least, as far as she could go. Most of this room was filled with supplies; air canisters and CO2 scrubbers and water tanks. As much as they had dared to load with what little time they had.

"You should sit down and get into a resting position, then. It's a full-sensory simulation. The special effects aren't nearly as good as some of the pre-collapse holos, but the work was surprisingly good. I give it six out of ten stars."

Chance hadn't felt the need to watch any of the old Earth holos in a long time. Not that her Nanophage didn't support it, but those holos had assumed a human observer, which meant they assigned the viewer human senses. It was far too disorienting to be switched back to a familiar body only to be forced into her own when the film ended. Still, she wasn't about to argue, and she took a resting position on the ground. She closed her eyes as if to dream. "Truth, you never told me you had printed a sensory recorder. Twilight could've used it to shoot our home movies."

"That's because I didn't," he said, matter-of-factly. "The transmission lacks hardware information from a recorder. If I had to guess, I would say that she assembled the raw byte code manually. Quite impressive for an organic."

Chance nodded. "I... didn't know she could do that." She closed her eyes. "Let's see it."

The world twisted and faded away, taking the cold of metal on her skin and the rumbling of the engines and the smell of dirt and soap. Only the swaying and rocking of the car remained; inner ear function was never bypassed as a way of ensuring someone watching a full-sensory recording could be revived.

It felt exactly like one of her many shared dreams. In this case, the setting seemed to be a wide clearing outside Ponyville, by night. Only the night wasn't dark the way Chance saw it; she saw now as Luna saw. The full moon illuminated everything as brightly as the sun ever had.

She was not alone. Luna stood opposite, looking exactly as Chance remembered. Chance's perception of Luna was not wearing her armor and wielding her sword, as she probably always was these days.

"Listen very carefully," she said, seeming to look Chance directly in the eye. Yet Chance knew this was only a recording; it could not hear or see her, nor could it respond to anything she did. "You will not like what I tell you, and you will not be able to forget. I believe you deserve to know, yet I would not fault you for shutting off this recording now. I wish I could tell you in person, yet I fear there is no time."

She nodded again, face burning with determination. Her dream-form shifted, resolving itself not into herself as a filly, but as the human Dr. Colven. She had blonde hair, and her cutie mark was pinned to her breast instead of identification. Only the eyes didn't change. Her transformation did not make her as tall as Luna, but almost. "What is this about?" Her voice sounded no different despite the change in body.

"If you are hearing this, you have left Equestria and returned to your homeworld. I have hesitated to show you all this out of selfishness. I knew that once I showed you, I would surely lose you. Yet it is wrong of me to sacrifice the fate of an entire world merely because I did not wish to lose a friend."

The field outside Ponyville shifted and flickered, and resolved instead to a laboratory on Luna-7. There was a glass ceiling above them, and a huge holographic display set into the floor. The design for the spell flickered there alongside an image of the Tree of Harmony, looking so similar it was almost frightening. Chance couldn't help but be impressed that Luna's knowledge of Earth had grown so extensive just from sharing Chance's dreams.

Chance moved her hands through the holofield, zooming in on the portion that Twilight simply called "magic", the trunk that on the Tree had an image strikingly similar to her own cutie mark. Symbols and intricate equations came into being, along with a huge empty space. Conditional statements and huge power feeds that connected to nothing, making the structure unstable. The Tree of Harmony had something there, and without knowing what it was she had no chance of finishing the spell.

Luna heaved a heavy sigh and sat down, looking up through the glass ceiling at the night sky. It was hard to tell if those were Equestria's stars or Earth's, if there was a difference. "Very well. It begins like this: why do you think there are only four living Alicorns? Does that sound like enough to sustain a breeding population?"

Chance struggled with that a moment before answering. "You said making the spell made you immortal, right? My guess is it used your souls for part of the structure, which meant your bodies couldn't die."

For a few seconds, Chance almost thought Luna could see her. This was so similar to the oneiromancy Luna had struggled to teach her that it was hard to imagine she wasn't actually here now. Was it just that she knew Chance so well she could guess what she would say? "I did say that. I never said the spell made us Alicorns, however. Not all the participants were even ponies, and the ones that weren't Alicorns when we started didn't end that way when it was finished."

Chance started pacing, her nebulous thoughts forming in the air behind her like a wispy trail as she walked. The stars overhead seemed to swirl, rearranging themselves seemingly at random. "So what you're implying... That Alicorns were their own race, once... How could the tribes possibly compete? Unicorn magic is nothing like yours, and you've also got the durability of earth ponies and the flight of pegasai! Why would the other tribes have crowded you out?"

Luna merely looked pointedly at her, though she didn't actually say anything. Was this a test of her intelligence, perhaps? It wouldn't be the first time that Luna had tested her this way, challenging her to discover the answers for herself. The Socratic Method was alive and well in Equestria. Then again, it also reinforced the illusion that this wasn't merely a recording, but was actual communication. Even if it wasn't.

"Unless... Unless for some reason that wasn't an issue, because... something wiped you out. Otherwise there wouldn't be so few of you." She stopped pacing. "What could've done that? Before the Tree of Harmony, magic wasn't possible, so you couldn't have done it to each other!"

"If that were true, how did I survive on the moon for a millennium?" She sighed. "Or perhaps you think it natural that our planet is so unsteady its orbit must be manually controlled. Perhaps you think it natural the turning of the seasons relies on the hooves of our ponies, and that the animals require our assistance to survive."

Chance did not open her mouth to speak again for several minutes more, as she tried to process everything Luna had just told her. She seemed to be saying that something catastrophic had happened, something that had scarred the planet forever. It was apparently such an ancient event that the physical damage had mostly healed. Whatever it was had wiped out almost all of the Alicorns, not leaving a single male survivor and only two females.

Chance thought she saw distant cities, more glorious and beautiful than anything Earth had ever seen. As if from a distance, she saw the flashes one by one, the distinctive clouds, the shockwaves. She shivered all over. "What does this have to do with Earth?"

Luna paced quietly around the holofield so that she was facing Chance again. "Think on this, Chance. We relied on sources of magic that were almost completely drained. Crystals that collected magical energy, and our own life force. Both of these were nearly exhausted. The lesser tribes were so ravished as to exist only in scattered remnants. The climate was either scorching hot or fiercely cold, only the thin ring between these regions could support life. We had no magic to make things right, and beyond that we didn't even know for sure that we should."

She was crying now. Luna did not sob, her dignity did not lapse and her voice did not break. But there were tears. "We were so young... I was even younger than you are now, Chance... everypony we knew was dead. Every friend, every relative. Our parents. Our elder brothers and sisters. Everypony outside our little group that we had ever met was dead."

"The six of us... different races, but one common suffering." She wiped her eyes, and gritted her teeth. "We would not, could not permit life to take the same course again. If we were going to devote ourselves to ensuring that life did survive here, we would not do so only so that future generations would suffer as we had."

"There were two theories, and an even split between us. The first group, belonging to Chrysalis and Sombra and Tirek, felt that the only way to prevent another catastrophic war was to create some central force to influence and control every soul on Equus. Thoughts that would lead to violence, thoughts that would lead to the creation of devices and spells that might create disharmony and death, would be erased before they formed. No weapons would ever be lifted again. There would never be another war."

Chance could stay silent no longer. "That's horrible!" she exclaimed, hiding her anger quite poorly. "How can a spell judge what thoughts are dangerous or violent? The exact same invention can save lives and take them in different hands! Would there not be any scalpels, because somepony might hurt somepony else? Or take nuclear technology – our whole society ran on nuclear power until we had an antimatter reactor! You can't keep using fossil fuels forever!"

Luna waited patiently for Chance to finish, waited until her breathing had slowed, before nodding with satisfaction. "Celestia and Discord and I agreed with you. We also did not wish to see conflict destroy Equus, but were not willing to sacrifice the free will of its citizens. Our solution was the one that was ultimately chosen, though all three of the others resented us for it. That is the last section of the spell."

"This message contains the spell as we wrote it, complete and functional. As functional as Equestria. Of course alterations will be required, so that the spell understands humans instead of trying to fit them into the Equestrian ecology."

"How does it work? What did you do instead?" Chance's hands were squeezed so tightly into fists that it probably would've hurt, if that had been part of Luna's program. Evidently she hadn't taken the time to incorporate the sensations of pain.

"Celestia, Discord, and I did not believe that any end was worth the sacrifice of free will. Yet we knew the Outsiders would return, would turn ponies against each other. This is what they have always done. It is what they must do."

"Why?" Chance knew Luna wasn't really here. The instant she said something Luna didn't expect, she wouldn't be able to get a response. Yet Luna seemed to know her well enough to predict every question, every objection. "Why don't they leave us alone? Why do they care if we're living happily and well?"

The illusion faded from around her. Luna-7 vanished right along with her body. She could still see and still hear, but in the darkness only the stars remained. Then came Earth, as Chance had always remembered it. It changed beneath her eyes, the continents shifted slightly and human superstructures vanished, and it was Equestria. As she watched, the planet transformed again, the ocean slightly darker. Yet the stars were always the same. Again and again the planet changed in subtle ways, though in every case Chance could still recognize her homeworld if she looked closely enough.

She could not turn around to look, yet she heard Luna's voice behind her. "My answer comes from Discord, so we can't be certain. Yet it seems true; that in universes with life, there is always one planet, this one, which the Outsiders target. Discord believes that the beings that evolve here will always be the only ones with a hope of standing against the Outsiders when in the far distant future they travel bodily to bring their order to the chaos of organic life. Always this is the world they target, and always they conquer it. In time far distant, they will take the entire universe and model it on themselves."

"We can't know for sure, Chance. All that matters is that if our worlds fall, our native universes are doomed to die with them, eventually." The vision shifted again, and the swirling of the stars resolved themselves into a rocky cavern, illuminated by the glow of powerful magic. At its center was a great tree woven of crystal and magic. Chance was a pony again, standing beside Luna in the soft blue light that came from the tree.

"Each doom is tailored perfectly, yet they could not account for our communication. In bringing our two worlds together, we are stronger than we could have been as individuals. Together, perhaps we can triumph in the end, and make at least two worlds in the infinite expanse that never bow to the voices of the Abyss."

"Together with Truth, you have the tools to make of your world what we made of Equestria." While the crag containing the Tree remained unchanged, Chance watched time flow like sand outside it, until the wasteland beyond reminded her very much of the blasted nuclear wasteland of Earth. Climate and rampant magic could do for the planet just as surely as Outsider-designed weapons. "In that lifeless moment, we remade the world. We preserved the planet before the last survivors of all the intelligent species could be extinguished."

"Your world is now as ours once was. Its salvation can be the same. The last part of the spell, the part you were missing and the part that will protect humanity from the Outsiders, is compassion." She extended a hoof, resting it on the crystalline trunk. "As long as this tree stands, no Equestrian can ever think about harming another without first feeling that harm as their victim might feel it."

"It has not prevented evil, for if it did then it would be no better than the solution Sombra first devised. Yet it has discouraged evil, and made it impossible for the Outsiders to get too great an influence. Individuals may fall... as I know better than most... but cities and civilizations will not. Cannot. That is what you were missing, and now you know."

Chance felt hooves wrap around her, a familiar embrace that Luna would not have been able to feel in return. "The spell will destroy you, Chance. Even if you succeed. Yet you would not be the pony I know if you did not care more about your world than yourself. I did."

The recording ended abruptly, so abruptly that Chance found her legs twitching wildly and her eyes blinded by the glowstrips on the celling. She blinked, took several deep breaths, and forced herself to look at the projection of Truth that was still waiting beside her. "Did you... Did you catch all that?"

He nodded, and for once there seemed something somber about him. "And her spell diagrams too. I'm integrating them with our designs right now. Five minutes, tops."

Chance twisted her head a little, so she could see the reflection of her cutie mark in the polished metal of the wall. "Do you think we can make it work? We don't have any Alicorns, or chaos spirits."

Truth sat down across from her, looking thoughtful. "Together? Based on all the knowledge I have been given of magic... I believe it might be possible. My microfusion survived the crash, and I can easily hold the entire spell in my mind. We might be able to make up what we lack in magical reserves with the field-emitter Avalon gave us. The spell is self-sustaining. Once the reaction starts, it's like collapsing a false vacuum, impossible to stop." Then, without any emotion whatsoever, "We'll be in the center of it, Chance. The conduits of energies an order higher on the Kardashev Scale than humanity has ever attained. We will almost certainly not survive."

"Celestia did. Luna did. All six of the others."

Truth nodded. "I couldn't tell you how."

"Does that mean you... don't want to? Are you afraid of your mortality?"

"I... don't think so. There is no 'I', Chance. I have no ego, no self. No conception of myself outside of the abstraction I use to communicate with organics. I can't be afraid of death without being alive first. No, I was talking about you. You're young. You've got a boyfriend, spring's not that far away. Couldn't you wait to save Earth for a few years? Live your life first? I waited for thousands of years in Equestria, a few more years are nothing."

Chance looked at the wall, out the round window with glass so thick it was like the porthole on a submarine. She saw gray trees, all without leaves. She saw distant hills that had once been thick rainforest, dead and empty. "Truth, how many people are living in bunkers? At this exact moment?"

There was no hesitation. "941,983,227 documented Federation citizens."

"How many were there twenty years ago?"

"1,461,772,002."

"That's why I can't wait, Truth. Every day means more children who will never see the sun with their own eyes, more children that will never know what it's like not to go to bed hungry." Chance groaned and rose to her hooves. "I've been living on borrowed time since I got to Equestria. Account has finally come due. It's time to pay the debt."

Author's Notes:

Was on vacation for this one, afraid I wouldn't make it. Did.

The short story to follow HD is finished now; "Pax Humana." This is good, because finals are coming up and I expect not to have any time to write once they start. I've got the backlog of content to last me all the way through the new year now, so I don't think it will be an issue.

Started on the revision of MLA, at least up to chapter 16. Got a good part of the way through, and started writing the sequel. As of this writing, we've got two chapters and the epilogue left to go. So stick around... we're nearly there!

Chapter 25: Earthrise

"Sir Gray." The voice was loud enough to rouse him, yet quiet enough to be respectful. Charles opened his eyes, blinking the sleepiness away. "We've arrived." It was Ayyubi, armored and armed, standing a respectable distance from the bench Charles had fallen asleep atop. "His grace requests an audience. We should not keep him waiting."

That got his attention, and Charles was soon on his hooves. Much to his chagrin, he was now the only one aboard. Rainbow Dash had evidently been carried from the bed, and Lonely Dawn was beside him no longer. It felt strange to be alone, a feeling he very much did not wish to continue feeling. Was this what it was like to feel like part of a herd? "Where are the other ponies? The injured one, the civilian I brought?"

"Safe," was all his escort said, turning and walking away towards the ramp. He was a knight, and so Charles believed him. Ayyubi hadn't just been a friend, he had also been his direct superior back on Earth. If he was going to trust anyone, it would be him. "The sick and the weak have no place on a battlefield. You are neither, correct? You serve the Tower."

"I serve the Tower," Charles repeated, conscious of the way his mouth twisted the English. "Until death."

"Good. I have seen too many of the natives to think them weak by nature. Still, to be struck down to the weakness of flesh, and I was concerned. If you tell me you are a true servant of the Tower, then I welcome you to fight beside us. We will need every soldier."

Charles walked down the ramp and onto frozen ground. He shivered involuntarily, though he did his best to conceal that reaction from his former mentor. To feel the cold was a weakness of the flesh. Instead of his feebleness, Charles focused on looking around, trying to get a feel for where they were.

He stood atop a hill covered with snow, overlooking the assembled army of the Tower. Tanks hovered in orderly rows, while great clouds of drones filled the sky above them. Larger wheeled crawlers tore into the frozen ground behind them, with massive cannons far too large to lift from the ground.

Good King Richard led his army from horseback, though it was no living beast. Like every being of the Tower, the horse was a creature of steel and silicon, with little resemblance to proper pony proportions. Atop the beast, with his robes flapping in the arctic breeze and a glittering sword in his hand, he seemed cast in the very image of God. With each lift of his sword, the people cheered. These were the moments history was made of.

Richard finished addressing the assembled troops, and he retreated from the edge of the hill. The mount was perfectly responsive and lowered itself to the ground for him to step smoothly off. There it sat inert, in a morbid parody of life.

For all his silicon flesh, there seemed nothing at all that wasn't brilliantly alive about the king, no matter how synthetic he was. "Charles, my boy!" He grinned. "Apologies for the awakening; we had to upgrade your control implants. It seemed better to get the work done."

Charles lifted a wing to the back of his neck, and indeed he felt raw flesh and a metal set smoothly into the coat. It was a far better job with implants than Rainbow Dash had done, yet he still felt robbed somehow. Rainbow had done it for him, just as he had made her wing. Now both of those bonds were dissolved. Still, he said nothing of that to his king. Instead he said, "I had no idea we were still so strong. Sir Ayyubi told me of the virus; I would've thought their troops would have turned against us immediately."

Richard laughed. "We expected treachery from the first, child, and were long gone before they found us! We learned well from the Federation back on Earth; you can't kill your enemy when you don't know what patch of ground they're hiding in!" One mighty hand clasped him on the shoulder, as cold and lifeless as the tundra all around them. Charles forced himself to hold still and not shiver, though six months ago he would've been burning with pride to receive such a gesture of endearment.

"We never had to contend with large numbers. Most simply went to sleep, with only the strongest setting out to make war on what remained of Equestria. We suspect Samil can only control a limited number with any dexterity. Even the devil has his limits, eh?"

Richard turned him forcefully, not that Charles had any mind to struggle. They seemed to be facing empty air, except for the characteristic shimmer of active camouflage. With a wave of his hand a doorway took shape in the steel. Charles recognized it at once for a mobile command center, of the very sort he had often operated from during times of war. "We don't make seats in our fighters for horses, but I don't see any reason why your skills would have grown any weaker." He met Charles's eyes, all trace of laughter gone. "Answer truly, sir knight. Are you still my best pilot?"

"Better than I've ever been," he answered, without hesitation. "Except I probably can't handle quite so many fighters as I used to." He raised a hoof, gesturing at his head. "Meat brain, Your Grace."

Richard's smile returned. "You always spoke the truth, even when it reflected badly." The door opened, and they walked inside. Charles was relieved to find it warmer than the tundra outside, though not by as much as he would've liked. The warmth was not because someone had turned on climate control, but probably had more to do with the shelter from the wind and the enclosed metal space filled with computers. Tower structures usually lacked climate control when only fully cybernetic individuals would ever inhabit them. Well, that was half true. Some of them had cooling units for the computers. At least nobody had turned those on.

"I wouldn't worry. You have an excellent copilot. Had her control interface installed right before yours, in fact. I'm told she's the best in all Equestria."

They reached the control consoles; there were only two. One was empty, except for a little modified padding obviously meant to hold his pony body in place. In front of the other was a hospital bed, complete with every accoutrement. Life support monitors beeped, and heated blankets protected Rainbow Dash from the cold. Her body was restrained, but in a sitting position, with the bed reclined almost into a chair as the nicest hospital beds always could. Charles had never seen an expression so smug in his whole life.

"We don't believe the enemy has much of an air presence beyond those half-alive insects. Our drones will take care of them. I don't anticipate I will be needing you, Charles. Yet I expect you to be ready if the enemy surprises us with an air presence we didn't anticipate."

He bowed. It felt strange to bow as a pony, but he did his best. "Of course, Your Grace. It will be done." He paused, and didn't dare meet his eyes as he asked, "Who is the enemy? What are we doing?"

Richard's expression hardened back into granite. "We have found the traitor Samil and his puppet troops. When they are dead, we will move north until we unite with Equestrian strength in the Crystal Empire." He turned away. "It's time to end the war, Charles." Richard left him then, far too quickly for Charles to respond. The whole exchange left Charles feeling very strange. It seemed as though Richard had barely even noticed he wasn't human anymore. Almost as though he had expected what happened to him.

He was startled out of his confusion by a familiar voice. It came raspy, croaking from the restrained body in the hospital bed, yet none of the familiar confidence was missing. None of the cockyness either. "About time you showed up."

Charles advanced to the edge of the bed. Unfortunately it was at human height, and he had to prop his front hooves up on the edge to be at her head level. "Rainbow, what the hell are you doing here?" He learned in close to her face, trying to look as angry as he could. "I didn't even know you woke up! How hard was it to convince them to let you fly?"

The fact she was here meant to Charles that King Richard must be extremely confident they wouldn't be needed. If he was making sweeping political gestures again, did that mean the war was nearly over? He hadn't learned much during the flight here, but what he had learned told a very different story than one where victory was imminent. You didn't retreat to your last city and leave your whole country to the enemy when you had nearly won.

"It wasn't that hard." She pointed at the back of her head, no doubt where the control interface had been installed. "They said I already had the houseplants to do it. The big guy just asked what I did, and I told him I was the best flier in all Equestria! It's true!" She wiggled fruitlessly against her restraints. The gesture held almost no force, yet in it Vigil saw the personality of the pony he had come to know. It brought relief to see her acting like herself again. Maybe even joy.

"Implants," he corrected. "You have the implants. I told that bitch not to stick anything else in your head!"

Rainbow only looked more confused. "You let a dog do my surgery?"

Charles rolled his eyes, climbing up into the control interface beside her. As if they had been waiting for this exact moment, several technicians emerged from the shadows all around him and began to work his body into the straps and restraints. Of course, all of the timid figures belonged to the Technocratic Order, but this sort he never resented. Most low-level technicians didn't think themselves superior to the knights of the Tower. "How's the wing feel?" he asked, unwilling to answer the other question.

"Like I should be out flying already!" she answered, without hesitation. "Three days without getting out of bed is crazy! I would be way more helpful if I could fight out there!" She gestured at the ceiling with a hoof, in that vague way Charles had long come to associate with her half-formed ideas.

Without meaning to, finding himself utterly unable to stop himself, he laughed. Her angry look only made him laugh harder. "You say that now. Just wait until you feel what it's like to really fly." If the technicians were moved by this conversation, they showed no sign. Maybe they didn't have Equestrian translation programs, or maybe they just didn't care. "You might want to back out now. Once you taste it, you'll never be able to get enough."

He rested his head against the padding, testing the connections with his mind with a few simple commands. Master control responded as swiftly as ever, as though he wasn't weeks out of practice. He turned to the lead technician, the one wearing a red robe instead of gray. "Put Rainbow Dash on maximum intervention level," he said. "She's only ever flown like a bird before."

The man sneered at him as if to say, 'of course we're doing that, how stupid are you?' Though all he did was nod.

Charles ignored him, turning his attention on Rainbow Dash. "So we're almost back. Are you excited to see your friends again?"

"Well duh!" Her voice didn't have anything near her usual energy, but it was still a valiant attempt. "I can't wait to introduce you! Pretty much the coolest ponies you've ever met. There's Pinkie Pie, party animal like nobody's business. Fluttershy, nicest sweetest pony in the whole world. Rarity's kinda snooty, but she's also elegant and graceful and a surprisingly good fighter. Applejack's the strongest, hardest-working, most dedicated pony you ever met, 'cept me of course." She took a deep breath. "And then there's Twilight. I... I think you'll like her too."

Charles nodded. "I'm sure I will. I hope my king was right about this being the end of the war. If the war was over, I could do whatever I wanted, including getting to know your friends. If it isn't... I don't know what will happen." He shrugged. "King Richard didn't say anything about changing me back."

Rainbow stared at him. "You're not mad?"

He shook his head. "Of course not! Why would I be mad?"

She folded her hooves across her chest, closing her eyes and smiling. "Oh, no reason. Just thinking of something you said. A few weeks ago, when this all started. Back when you thought being a pony was the worst thing ever."

He shrugged. "I'm not sure what I think. Except that I don't think there's a chance in hell we'll actually be doing any piloting here. Trusting an officer who might be compromised is just the sort of bold thing King Richard might do, but... no offense, but you've never done my kind of flying before."

It was hard to give comfort to a pony wearing hard plated armor, even if she had removed the helmet. Still she tried, wrapping a wing briefly over her shoulder and holding it there for a few seconds. "Applejack." She glared as sternly as she could. "The ponies they're fighting eat magic. Are you sure you want to go with them? That armor won't protect you from necromancy, Applejack. You must still remember how it feels."

A collective shiver passed through the room. All of Twilight's close friends had been exposed to such magic more than once during their many adventures. They all knew the awful cold that chilled at the heart and pulled the strength from the flesh. It was an occupational hazard of being close to Celestia's apprentice.

Applejack slammed her hoof down, though her expression relaxed a little. "If we don't stop those ponies, they'll be 'ere in no time. If I know 'ow to make a difference, I gotta make a difference!" She sat back on her haunches, glancing around the throne room.

There were six of them, all of Twilight's closest friends and Spike, standing or sitting or pacing beneath the banners and tapestries of the Crystal Empire. High above them, its magic barely gleaming, the Crystal Heart rotated, a blue radiance that barely flickered anymore. The spell, after all, was driven by the hope and joy of the crystal ponies. There was little hope to be had on the streets these days, and no number of fairs would fix things now.

There were crystal bowls filled with crystal berries, vases of freshly tossed salads and a crystal fountain of cider. Not even Pinkie Pie seemed interested in eating the snacks, though like Applejack she hadn't removed her armor since arriving. Rarity and Spike sat together on a heavily padded sofa, seeming to be in a contest to act as relaxed as possible and failing spectacularly.

Pinkie Pie was pacing around and around the stone box in the center of the room, the one with six different keyholes that had saved Equestria more than once before. The keys were already inside, since there was no point removing them when only their owners could turn them. "I don't get it," Pinkie said, her face scrunched up in discomfort. "We could really use that loyalty right about now."

Twilight abruptly looked away, searching her mind for something, anything they could talk about instead. If she could direct the conversation somewhere else before the questions came, maybe she wouldn't have to-

"Where is Rainbow Dash, anyway?" Rarity asked, a glass hovering near her mouth. As usual, she didn't actually sip from it. It was enough just to hold it nearby and act like she was about to. "Whatever her assignments might be, surely Princess Celestia recognizes we could do much more if we had every magical resource at our disposal. Even if we couldn't use it to strike down those magic-devouring fiends, there are plenty of garden-variety fiends we could make short work of."

Fluttershy nodded in agreement. "I think... maybe you could ask the princess to give her some time to see us... If it isn't too much trouble."

Twilight sighed, fighting to keep the emotion from her voice. She didn't turn around. If she met any of their eyes, she would cry. Even if nopony said it, Twilight knew they were depending on her to stay strong for them. Somepony had to, and if she broke, everypony would. It didn't matter that her relationship had been more intimate than theirs. That would only strengthen their resolve. If she could remain stoic, then they could too.

"Rainbow Dash is... no longer with us." There was no emotion in her voice, each word like slate. It was either that or break down and completely lose it. "That secret mission she was sent on; not even half the ponies came back."

She heard Fluttershy start to cry. Rarity gasped. Neither Applejack nor Pinkie Pie showed any overt signs of powerful emotion, however. She didn't have the courage to turn and see, so there was no way to know if they weren't actually taking the news hardest of all. Applejack spoke quietly into her ear from very close. "Fer' a smart pony, you can be really dumb sometimes."

Twilight was stunned speechless. Rarity, however, was not. "You insensitive oaf! How could you say something so awful at a time like this? Don't you know that Twilight and-"

Applejack ignored Rarity, walking around Twilight so she could look her in the eye. "You haven't asked Luna about her, have you?"

"W-what-" She was crying now, there was no fighting it. Not because Applejack was giving her a hard time, since of course she had already expected Applejack would be the most hurt by her deception up until this point. No, it hurt because not all her friends seemed to share her pain. Applejack seemed to be making fun of her, or at least being brutally honest.

"Nopony ever told you she was dead, right? Just that she didn't come back."

Twilight nodded, unable to see Applejack's face anymore. It was blurred right along with the rest of the throne room.

"Luna told us she's up an' felt Rainbow lost somewhere. She don't know where, but..." She embraced her, without a trace of the judgement that had been in her voice only moments before. "She's not dead, Twilight. Just lost. If anypony can fight her way back, it's her."

Pinkie Pie seemed almost oblivious to the emotional exchange, her friends all around her on the roller-coaster of despair and relief. She sounded exactly as she had, and hadn't let her vision wander from the box. "I hope she hurries it up. That welcome-home party won't wait forever."

Applejack jerked suddenly, eyes moving to a part of the room that was clearly empty. Nopony else noticed the apparent attention she was paying a patch of empty space, at least not until she rose to her hooves. "Sorry everypony, duty calls."

"Group hug!" Pinkie shouted, and the occupants of the room rushed to comply. It was hardly the same when two of those in the hug were wearing rigid armor, but the gesture was sweet all the same.

"Come back safe." Twilight met Applejack's eyes, opening the door for her with her magic. "We'll keep things under control until you get back."

"Ya' better." Applejack nodded respectfully to her, then vanished into the crisp outside air, and was gone up the muddy path.

Charles and Rainbow watched the battle from high above, eyes patched into a dozen different cameras. The Federation tanks moved in tight formation, surrounded by goblins and half-changelings by the thousands. Explosions rocked the ground around the center of the convoy, occasionally damaging one of the armored vehicles or turning a crowd of troops to reddish chunks.

Yet the longer Charles watched, the more uneasy he felt.

Rainbow Dash apparently felt something similar, because she said so. "This is gross. I can't believe you guys invented guns that do that to people." Her voice came over the radio, so it lacked any of the weakness her recent operation might have imparted. "Like... big red dandelions."

"I don't like it either," Charles admitted. Their fighters were cloaked, flying in slow circles over the battle, but there was very little for them to do. Richard's army had caught Samil's convoy at the bottom of a valley and almost completely without warning. Even knowing the good guys were winning did not make it much easier to watch the slaughter. It was mostly goblins dying, and Charles didn't think of them as animals anymore. They were the descendants of Avalon Colony, twisted to serve against their will!

He had said as much to the officers carrying out the battle. "It didn't matter where they came from," he had been told. "They were the enemy now. Until they surrendered, they had to be fought and killed." And Charles agreed, they couldn't let the goblins rampage over Equestria just because there were some connections in their family tree. When the war was over, then they could figure out how to help their distant cousins.

"Does something look off to you?" Charles zoomed out as far as he could, watching the battle from the widest possible vantage. He tried to see the patterns at work in the movement of individual troops, as he had once done easily as an android. His pony brain lacked the almost-instantaneous access to the libraries of tactics and recorded battles, and that made it slow going.

Still, he hadn't been made a knight for nothing. He could see the pincer formation King Richard had chosen, and it looked as though it would soon bring victory. They had the convoy overmastered in about every area, nevermind what feeble reinforcements the Draconic troops might summon.

For the enemy that managed to conceal a virus in every military Nanophage strain for decades, managed to conceal his presence from the entire UEF Congress, a blind charge through clearly compromising terrain was foolish in the extreme. Their enemy knew the Tower was still out there, knew that the bulk of their troops had survived the initial skirmishes as they fled to underground retreats. So why had Samil acted so foolishly?

"Yeah! They haven't surrendered already. Their big metal things can't even get good shots at our big metal things, firing down on them into that valley. I don't know why they would've even come here... There's a nice road that follows the railroad all the way to the Crystal Empire. This detour makes no sense."

Charles turned sideways to look at Rainbow, lying in the bed beside his. "There's a road somewhere else, and they came all the way out here to get slaughtered?" Charles pulled one of the fighters out of the formation, taking it higher and higher until he could see the terrain for miles around, all the way to the distant railroad tracks. He could even see their camp, semi-permanent structures anchored tightly into the ground with a handful of guards patrolling like little ants.

The camp rested atop a massive rock-formation, a long-weathered section of the nearby mountains. As Charles watched, a veritable wave descended from those mountains, a wave made from scaly bodies instead of flesh. The goblins crawled on all fours from previously-concealed cave mouths, in numbers that vastly exceeded anything protecting the convoy.

"King Richard!" Charles immediately relayed the camera from his lone fighter to the monarch's private channel, where he hoped his status as a knight would send it to the top of all the other messages he might be getting.

It wasn't as though everything depended on Charles's information anymore. The wave crashed down on the camp's guard. Machine-gun embankments sounded through the walls into Charles's ears. There was a painful fizz near the back of Charles's skull, and his connection with the fighters went dead. Rainbow Dash yelped beside him, apparently feeling the same pain as a potent jamming signal abruptly cut them off from the aircraft and every soldier outside of speaking distance.

"Seal the doors!" Charles yelled, loudly enough that one of the technicians nearby looked up. They were none of them soldiers, and few had even bothered to wear sidearms. These were programmers, engineers, not fighters. Still, over the shouts from outside, the snarlings and the gunfire and the screams, one of them managed to stumble to the door and twist a large handle. There were no windows, so all it took to seal the control-room was a heavy blast-door. With a rush of hydraulic fluid, the door snapped into place, securing them.

"Someone get me out of these restraints!" Charles tried to yell, struggling against the soft straps meant to prevent his real body from accidentally responding to the instructions he gave the fighters. His request was nearly drowned in the sounds of battle from just outside, and the panicked yells from inside. He kept right on screaming until the young woman sitting at a console next to his interface got up and started fumbling with his restraints. She might be in a full prosthetic, but her fingers still shook, moving with infuriating slowness.

"I can help too!" Rainbow protested, her voice not half as strong as she probably thought it was. "Get me out of this hospital bed, and I'll kick so much flank you wouldn't believe!" The technicians, if they could understand her at all, made a point of ignoring her.

Charles didn't. Once he was out of his restraints he thanked the technician and moved to the side of Rainbow's bed, having to speak quite loudly to be heard over the din. With such a powerful jamming signal, none of the technicians could use radio to communicate as they probably wanted to. "Rainbow, you've got sutures running up your belly. If you strain any way at all, you could tear something. You can't fight."

"Yeah?" She glared up at him, defiance in every drop of her features. "Got a better idea? It sounds like we're going to have company any second. My sutures won't help if goblins come in here and eat us!"

Charles set to work tugging Rainbow free of the restraints with his teeth. He was getting much better at doing things that way. "If you hurt yourself trying to fight them, I'll kill you."

"What good would that do?"

Charles's answer was cut short by the sound of metal grating painfully on metal, loud enough that he whimpered and pressed his ears as tightly closed as he could. Rainbow Dash moaned, kicking weakly at nothing. He fought to push the sound from his mind, and focused instead on finishing his task. Charles carefully lifted each of the straps, freeing Rainbow Dash to slide off the bed and onto unsteady hooves.

"How many of you are armed?" Charles shouted, his voice so firm and confident that the feeble noises the technicians were making fell to silence. A few raised their hands, though not so many as he had hoped. The groaning sound near the door had stopped, plunging them into an abrupt silence. "How many of you have some practice?" Every hand went down.

There was a sudden jerk, and renewed protest of metal. For a moment it seemed as though the blast-door were about to be torn off its hinges, but in the end the steel held. "Listen to me! We need a barricade! It's such a small door that once they get inside, we're going to be able to clog their advance!" Charles stepped forward, pushing through the crowd of frightened technicians and gesturing with a hoof. "Push those desks over! We're going to make this as hard as possible!"

The crowd just stared, even as metal screamed again and the room tilted slightly to the right. In the end the anchors held them firmly enough to stop them from tipping over, nor did the door give way. Relative silence returned. "Are you people stupid?" He gestured more emphatically at the doorway. "Just because we lost contact with the rest of our men doesn't mean they're all gone. They're only a few miles away! We just have to hold this room until they make it back!"

That did it. With full prosthetic bodies even engineers and programmers could push around heavy desks and computer equipment with ease, forming a barricade near the door. At Charles's command, they formed a second wall as close to the rear of the control room as possible, and there they all huddled. "Those of you with firearms, keep them aimed on that opening at all times! Their numbers don't mean anything in a small space like this! Just keep killing them, slow them down! We only have to buy a little time!"

The technicians obeyed. With fear in every gesture, with hands quaking, but still they obeyed. The doors gave one last protest, one last hopeless attempt to resist whatever was pulling them, and then gave way. A roar came from outside, a roar of unrestrained bloodlust, and suddenly the room was rocking slightly from all sides, as though they had just been tossed into violent river rapids. Through the opening came a rush of scaly flesh, obsidian weapons glinting in the artificial light.

"Fire!" Charles bellowed, not allowing the slightest trace of fear into his voice. "Just keep shooting!" Not even in his younger years, when he had trained beside many other children to serve in noble households, had Charles seen such awful aim. In any other situation, his little army would have been hopelessly overwhelmed almost instantly. He was lucky that his troops managed to point their handguns downrange. Many fired at such absurd angles that projectiles splashed against the walls. Still, even in these cases the angles always seems to bring the ricochet towards their enemy. The enemy was so densely packed that almost every shot was a hit and many penetrated the crowd several deep. Each goblin who fell choked the entrance and tripped the newcomers, slowing their advance.

This was good, because his soldiers had to slow their shooting. Energy weapons couldn't be constantly discharged without cooling, even if they had the electricity to fire. Still, the sheer volume of the enemy began to win out, and fresh reinforcements began to press the dead forward in one grotesque wave, providing cover to the living.

It was a bold stand, but ultimately a hopeless one. The closer the goblins got the worse his brave army's aim became. Eventually one got close enough to leap, and a panicked technician discharged his weapon into a neighbor's arm. She screamed, and the barricade descended into panic. Goblins took hold of humans, tugging them one at a time into the massive crowd and evidently tearing them apart bodily. Full cybernetic bodies presented no pain of course, but still the engineers screamed, screamed until they had been beaten into such small pieces that they no longer could.

Charles rose to his hooves beside Rainbow Dash, intent on joining the fray. He would die of course, and far more painfully than the programmers and engineers. Yet he would die bravely, as a soldier of the Tower. He would fulfill his oath. He would also make sure Rainbow was the last they would get their hooves on, whether she liked it or not. Maybe, if there was a god somewhere, their soldiers would arrive in time to save her at least.

Yet as he rose, spreading his wings and rushing forward for his last charge, he found the tenor of the battle abruptly changed. As they saw him, the goblins all stopped, halfway through dragging one of the last of the engineers from behind the barricade. The man struggled, and in response the goblins holding him let him fall with a thump to the ground. He was wise enough to remain silent after that. Shouts of anger and bloodlust fell silent, and a hundred eyes fell on him and Rainbow Dash.

"Did you find him?" came a harsh voice from outside, in something not unlike English. Only in the silence could Charles hear it, and even then it was well-muffled with bodies. "Bring me that bag of circuits that pretends to monarchy!"

The goblins did not move, but the pegasus did. It wasn't him the owner of the voice was looking for, it was his king. Charles was a knight of the Tower, he would not permit anyone to speak so in his presence. Honor demanded action. As he moved, the goblins retreated, never coming close enough to touch him or Rainbow Dash as she followed. It was as though they were even more afraid of them than the speaker. No, not afraid. In awe.

Yet the voice seemed satisfied by the movement of the goblins, perhaps unaware that anything had changed. Charles stepped carefully over the fallen goblins, as well as the still-twitching bits of engineer seeping milky cybernetic fluid. Charles knew not to feel sorry for them; violent dismemberment would not hurt them, and they could be reassembled easily enough. Still, he wondered what Rainbow Dash had to be thinking.

He had no way of asking, and could only wish how close he walked was sign enough of his appreciation that she had not abandoned him.

Charles could not have said how the outside somehow managed to drop from merely frigid to arctic in such a short time. The sun hadn't moved much, yet it seemed somehow further away, as though shining through from a great distance. The light twisted strangely, into colors Charles had no names for.

The camp had been torn to pieces. The other structures, mostly empty barracks and supply rooms, had been ripped open and had their contents dumped haphazardly all over the floor. There were no soldiers left, at least no pieces large enough to easily identify. Goblins were already taking defensive positions around the camp, fortifying with primitive cannons and digging trenches.

In the center, perhaps a dozen paces away from the exit, stood Dr. Samil. His clothing had not changed much since Charles had last seen him in the old war vids, though the hems of the jacket had become caked in mud. It was his face that had changed the most; his eyes too large and too dark and forehead far too pronounced. He smelled too, something like sulfur mixed with vinegar. Around him frost collected on the ground and blood congealed, and though the air felt below freezing, his breath did not fog the air as Charles's and Rainbow's did.

"I said to spare only the monarch alive!" The man made no violent gesture, yet all around him goblins began to cower, retreating as though they feared some immanent death. There were no other humans in sight. "I know the man; he would never make himself a beast even if death was the only alternative. Strike this one down and continue your search!"

Charles stopped perhaps a dozen paces away, where the air became so unbearably cold that he could go no further. He stood boldly beside Rainbow, heedless of the death that might be seconds away. Gray Vigil was a knight of the Tower. There would be no fear from him in the face of an enemy. "You do not know King Richard well if you think he would be here. This is not the Federation; the King of All Mankind fights beside his troops, often in a common uniform. He is not here." Charles couldn't help it. He laughed. "All you managed to do was kill a few systems engineers and supply technicians. When my king comes, he will not spare you."

Samil seemed barely to register that Charles had even spoken. When he looked, he seemed to barely see him. With a contemptuous flick of his fingers, Samil sent a wave of crystal night cascading down towards him. With awful certainty, Charles knew that strike would be instantly fatal.

It never hit him, though. One of the many goblins, pressing in from all sides, threw itself in front of him. The awful magic struck, and the reptilian creature simply turned to dust, crumbling away in a pile of dark fragments.

"It's over," Rainbow croaked, through to Charles's amazement she was still standing entirely without support. "You can't win here. This is Equestria; evil never wins here!"

Dr. Samil looked in Rainbow's direction, but seemed not to see her at all. His mouth opened and closed, but no words came out.

Another voice, a far deeper voice, did answer. "Well said, Captain Dash." Samil's chest was broken with the glimmering point of a sword, steaming with crimson fluid. The air shimmered, and King Richard's strong features formed in the strange light. King Richard drew out his sword, then swung it high, separating Dr. Samil's head from his neck in one smooth swing. He struck Samil's body, where it crashed down on the cold ground like a tree.

"Death is swift for the enemies of humanity." He turned, facing the silent goblins all around them. "Are you our enemies?"

The assembled reptiles looked to the corpse, then to Charles and Rainbow.

"You don't have to be!" Rainbow Dash shouted, a little more strongly than before. "You don't have to fight; you can all go home!"

Slowly, first in ones and twos, but then in far larger groups, the goblins tossed their weapons to the ground. Spears, firearms, clubs and swords tumbled to the earth, until the only one with a weapon was King Richard. Slowly, cautiously, he too let down the sword.

The cargo crawler could not remain here long. This close to the epicenter of age-old nuclear detonation, Chance was sure a Geiger counter would sound more like riverdance than marching cadence. Yet despite the risks, their carrier remained parked. Her closest friends in the world were all here, save perhaps for Spike and for those few that were too close to simply call friends.

They had tried to talk her out of it all the way here, told her all the correct reasons why this was stupid. She could wait, at least until after the war. Unmanned drones could extract Truth and she could do the same exact thing without having to die of radiation poisoning along the way. It was an utterly foolish thing to do.

Perhaps they were all right. Perhaps Chance had been right with her retorts. In the end, she didn't have to convince them; the Crusaders were far too close to try to compel her not to do something she knew was right, even if they didn't agree with her.

That brought her to the airlock, her back against the plastic and her eyes wet with tears. The human Enrique, who had so bravely helped them in spite of the personal consequences, had voiced his objections and left them in peace. His arguments that there was no such thing as magic and that she was throwing her life away for nothing had been quickly drowned, and Chance hadn't even heard them. With time so short, none of the ponies bothered arguing with him. He would learn the truth of magic soon enough.

"Now listen carefully," she said, looking between each of her friends, coltfriend last of all. "It's only about a kilometer, probably less than five minutes. The radiation out there is so intense that I expect disorientation immediately. At the end, I have to remove my helmet to touch Truth's surface. You have to keep in radio contact with me all the way. Don't let me get distracted. If I stop, I'll... I'll die for nothing."

Ponies did not handle powerful emotion well. Scootaloo alone managed not to cry. Pip tried, tried valiantly even, but Chance could still see the water on his face.

"Don't you worry," Apple Bloom croaked. "We'll be with ya' the whole way."

Sweetie Belle shook her head to clear it. "I've got magic too. You don't have to... to go alone."

Chance embraced her. "Sweetie, you can't. You can't die for my planet."

"Didn't stop you." Scootaloo's eyes were hard.

Chance ignored that and hugged her too. "I know. But... if any of you die here, you won't be able to be on the first pony-built starship. You've got to make it happen, just like we talked about." They all nodded, some almost imperceptibly.

Last of all, Chance looked to Pip. She stood inches away, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her coat. Brown eyes met gray and neither of them said anything, just cried.

Eventually, she squeaked, "H-help with my helmet?" He kissed her instead. Not long, not deeply. Then came the helmet, smooth plastic clicked into place, and the rush of air and whirring of motors. Pip never looked away, not as she backed up into the airlock. Not as the plastic slid closed behind her, not as she stepped backward out the shelter of the cargo crawler and onto the soil of her own planet.

She waved, and the crawler began to speed away, the faces of her friends fading from sight. Chance groaned and turned her back on them, looking instead towards the blasted ruins of the city. She walked.

"How does that poem go?" Truth's voice was the first she heard over the radio, lacking its usual brevity. For that, Chance was grateful. Despite whatever Truth might say about his lack of an "ego," Chance suspected the imminent end of his own life was pressing down on him. Even if he wouldn't admit it.

Chance knew exactly what he meant, as hooves crunched on dead soil and lifeless buildings rose all around her. "The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." Her tongue was tingling, along with her ears. Her hooves felt like she was walking on pins.

"It looks like ponies really let the place fall apart." Scootaloo was the first to speak over the radio, her voice almost normal again.

"It's hard to fix a place when anyone who goes there dies," Chance replied, her breath raspy. She felt a wave of nausea sweep through her body, and did her best to ignore it. The world was a watery blur, but that didn't matter. She was already a third of the way there, passing black sidewalks covered with dust and asphalt cracked to pieces by erosion. The writing was all in Spanish, but she couldn't see straight enough to read any of it.

"Nightmares again?" Twilight Sparkle's voice did not come over the radio, because she wasn't there. It was too late to be called night, too early to be morning. The bottom floor of the library was quiet and empty, tables dusted and floor swept. Chance sat on her haunches by the window, looking out at the unfamiliar constellations as she rested on unfamiliar hooves.

"Yeah," was all she managed to say, melancholic. She had felt melancholic more often than not in those early days.

Twilight sat down beside her without shyness, holding her to her side with the gentle pressure of a wing. "Would you like to talk about it?"

Chance shook her head, looking away from Twilight but not actually fighting to regain her personal space. She was only just learning that ponies had some very different ideas about what was appropriate and what wasn't, to say nothing of becoming a child again.

"That's okay." Twilight produced a brush, and with it levitating in the air she began to stroke Chance's mane. It did not make the dream any less terrible. She did not forget what she had seen. Still, she found her breathing coming easier. Soon she relaxed, and was asleep again under the shelter of her mother's wing.

"Chance! Second Chance!" The voice came so loudly she gasped, eyes wandering vainly for the speaker. The old library was gone, and she was on the street of the city. Twilight wasn't here. She wouldn't ever see her mother's face again.

"I'm here," she answered, blood dribbling from her mouth along with the saliva. "Sorry." She started walking again. "Wreckage is ahead, I think... Shapes sticking out of the ground. Looks like... our rainbow paint... stopped rainbowing..." She started walking forward again. It felt like she was wearing weights on every fetlock, like Scootaloo did when she was training. Yet they moved; her will was stronger than the weakness.

"Keep talking to us!" Pip said. "Please keep talking! That way we know you're still all right."

"All right," she repeated. "I'm all right."

She was lying face down in the snow, tiny body bent unnaturally from her brief flight. The slope had only been a green, but unlike her younger brother, her handling on skis was weak at the best of times, and she had ended up transferring quite involuntarily to a blue run. Not knowing what else to do, Kimberly had done the same thing she did on the greens: ski straight down. At least, until a hump in the snow had sent her flying through the air. She landed with an explosion of fresh powder, sliding sideways on her back until she slid off the run entirely and into the trees.

She was more afraid than hurt, the bodies of children as flexible as they were, yet there was red in the snow from her nose and hot fluid dripping down her face. It steamed when it hit the snow, mixing with the steam of her breath and tasting of iron. She had bit her tongue too, though not badly. "I'm all right," she insisted, though when she had tried to get to her feet she found them shaking so much from adrenaline she tumbled again.

"You will be," her father had said, who in the way of fathers had not displayed nearly enough panic for her mother's satisfaction. "My tough little girl." He pulled her into strong arms and held her there until the medical snowmobile arrived to take her back down the mountain.

"How much further?" Sweetie Belle's voice made her head throb, and the evergreens around her returned to rusting hulks of streetlights and telephone poles. "You must be close by now, right?"

Chance looked around in bewilderment. "Close to what?" Her legs were numb. It was a wonder they were still holding her up anymore. Sound had become a static whirring, white noise in her ears, and even the nausea had stopped. She felt tired, more tired than she had felt in her life. If she could only sit down to rest...

"Close to Truth! To the fury!" Apple Bloom was just as loud, though her voice wasn't as grating. "Don't you remember, Chance? You have to get to Truth so you can finish your spell! The one you've been working on for years now? The one you told us would save your planet?"

"Right... Earth..." Chance wasn't sure of what she was being told, but she didn't have the energy to argue. She lifted her legs one after the other, and each step cost her terribly.

She passed a tall man in a patchwork suit standing over a desperate looking woman scratching at the dirt, looking for something large enough to use as a weapon. "And there you go again, looking for something to kill me with. Is that all you are?"

Chance watched as the man tossed a rifle at her feet. "Go ahead then." The man spread his arms wide, his back to her. "Shoot me. If it will make you feel better."

She didn't. She kicked the gun away. "It isn't our nature!" came the scream, though it didn't hurt her ears to hear it. "We wanted peace! Maybe we weren't as good at it as the ponies, but we damn well tried!"

She wasn't on hooves, she was on her hands and knees, fingers so numb she couldn't separate them. They dragged limply along the street, ignoring the broken glass.

Her mother's hand was on her back, the hand she had watched burn in a fireball that turned her home to ashes. "You have to fix the planet. We need you to figure out a way to undo all the damage. Lots of people will be counting on you, not just me. The whole world."

"I can't!" she protested. "Nobody can. It's too late."

"Be brave. We're counting on you." Chance could not see anymore, yet behind her she saw everything she had ever lost. Her mother and father, her brother and sister. Her friends, her home. The friends she had known and forgotten. The childhood in Equestria she had never deserved. She could not feel them, yet she saw each face as clearly as a photograph.

It had been Sweetie Belle's voice. "We're counting on you! Almost there!"

"Almost... there." Chance found herself walking into a wall, the plastic of her helmet thumping against it. The wall was made from a dull metal, undented despite the awful crash. Nanosteel yielded to nothing.

"Just the helmet now, Chance." Truth's voice was calm, the only one she could hear clearly. There was a machine on the ground next to her, coils of wire and Equestrian crystals. It was already glowing. She knew what it was, but couldn't remember the name. She couldn't remember much of anything anymore. "Helmet off, and you can rest. Just make sure you touch me, okay? You can do that."

She didn't have the strength to answer. Her tongue had gone numb, and the only thing that came out of her mouth was ragged breaths and bloody coughs. She braced her head against the wall, pushed her hoof against it, and twisted. No good.

"Again," Truth said. "Harder."

Alexi's hand was gentle on her shoulder as they climbed from the MGLV, and her embrace was warm. They only made it as far as the first quiet corner in the tube leading from the docks before they sat down to cry in each other's arms. None of the adults made a move to stop them, if indeed they could see them at all. Alexi's arms weren't much bigger or stronger than her own, yet she never let go. Kimmy wondered who Alexi would go to now when she needed to cry.

"We'll be okay," Alexi had said, after a long time. "We'll make them proud, Kimmy. We'll do what they said. We'll fix the whole world. Together."

The plastic came loose, and stale air came rushing in. Breathing the radioactive particulates would surely mean death, but Chance was already half-cooked.

She rested her head against the wall, not so much because she remembered her mission as because she was tired. She was weak enough to sleep, but not before one last spell.

There was no delay. Truth already held the spell, and she found her mind moving in ways she couldn't remember. Ways that she had never moved before. Thoughts and patterns formed themselves there, borne mostly on the strands of the Nanophage implants. She saw a great tree in her mind, a tree twisted from the laws the clockmaker had wrought thirteen billion years before. She looked up into the branches from below, at the crystals that hung there, thinking they were beautiful.

It was about time for Earth to have trees again.

From several miles away, four ponies and one human could hear through the walls of the cargo crawler as the Earth began to shake. "Truth's signal's gone!" Apple Bloom shouted, pushing the crawler's engines to maximum to give them the greatest cushion above the shaking earth.

"Did it work?" Pip shouted back. "I can't tell!"

There was light then, as bright as a nuclear fireball, but without the heat. It moved so fast there was no chance of avoiding it, overtaking them almost as soon as they had seen it.

There was no pain as the wave passed over them, none at all. The lights flickered briefly, the engine died, but it kicked back in before they struck the ground. As the wave passed over them, life seemed to return to the faces of each of the ponies. Without realizing it, Sweetie Belle found she was levitating herself back to her hooves instead of climbing. The slow death of magical strangulation was gone as the light passed by, growing brighter by the second and growing large enough to swallow the planet.

The spell was only so powerful. Verdant forests did not spring up in its wake, animals were not conjured from nothing to populate them as they once had. Yet as it passed, the flashing warnings of the radiation detectors abruptly went dead. The flashing red warnings over the airlock proclaiming outside conditions of "73 mSv/second estimated exposure" to ".01 mSv/hour estimated exposure." Air sensors cycled and clunked, and after a moment, the screen expanded to include the further proclamation "no airborne contaminants detected."

Author's Notes:

I'll be brief. One chapter left, then the Epilogue. After that will be a short story, then a brief intermission as I revise My Little Apprentice. The first four chapters of what I am presently calling "My Little Apprentice: Apogee" are in a semi-complete or complete state, so there should be no delays as we switch over. I think I'm enjoying writing about a period in Equestria's history where the big wars haven't started yet. Also back in the show's timeline, which is nice.

Keep with me. We're very nearly done.

Chapter 26: Father

Applejack rested uneasily in one of the copilot seats of the Atlas, and not just because the chair had been designed for a human pilot. The engineers had already done their best to compensate for that, removing the seat-back and adding some extra padding. Even so, Applejack found the constant vibration of the Albatross made her underbelly sore. Somehow she doubted whoever had designed the pony version of the armor had any sense of how their anatomy actually worked.

That wasn't what made her uneasy, though. Even over the radio, there was nothing like the excitement there had been before their last mission. These humans weren't eager to quickly end a battle in which they rightly considered themselves the vastly superior force. Instead, they were coming up against an enemy of completely unknown ability, one that had decimated their allies and made everypony in Celestia's army far too nervous to speak of them except in hushed voices.

For as large as the Atlas Walker was, the cockpit was surprisingly small. Perhaps thirty square feet in total, with just enough room for three chairs and the controls mounted to every surface. Of course almost everything was done by mental control, which was good considering all she had were hooves to work with. Somehow she doubted the retractable gripping claws built into the armor on her forehooves would have the dexterity to manipulate the delicate touchscreens and holofield interfaces. No matter how good the claws proved to be, she couldn't have reached some of the highest controls if she tried.

The screens wrapped all the way around her, and indeed her chair could rotate to face any of them she wanted to see. On the other side of Makoto, Big Mac's chair did something similar. Even with all the extra space afforded by being a pony and not a human, Applejack felt claustrophobic. She couldn't even guess how a massive man like Cigaal could have fit inside here. Maybe only small humans could be Atlas pilots.

Cigaal had said that they didn't expect she would have many responsibilities during the battle, that she was here only as a safeguard against hardware and software failure. Even so, she couldn't get his other words out of her head. "Man should not wield such weapons as this." After all the awful destruction she had seen, it chilled her heart to think she was wielding a weapon so awful that the masters of destruction did not want to see it used.

"Can you bring up the battlefield?" she asked Washington over the radio. Not that any of them were wearing helmets in here. It was quite stuffy enough without them.

Washington complied without actually replying verbally, and Applejack found the nearest holographic display showing the battlefield from above. Using a combination of Equestria's few satellites and some 3D rendering, she could see everything as though she were a pegasus flying high above. The great storm Equestria's pegasi kept raging around the Crystal Empire fell short of the battlefield they were moving into, like the eye of a hurricane that didn't realize it ought to be in the center of the storm. With a gesture she zoomed in, first on the lines of ponies as they fired primitive cannons, then retreated and fired again.

It was hard to describe their target as an army, since every army she knew of had some commonalities uniting them. Even the Sons, who no longer could claim to all be members of the same species, had a great deal in common. Their armor was the same, their weapons the same, their tactics the same.

The assembly of the undead, taken from Equestria's most dangerous ponies throughout all of history, fought more like a mob than an army. There seemed to be little coordination between them, except that they were all clearly moving in the same direction and with a single purpose. Satellite cameras could capture little of the magical damage they did to the land, but Applejack could see the way the ground beneath melted snow had turned black, leached totally of life. It might be centuries before anything would grow. She could also see the corpses of ponies, by the hundreds and thousands and more, following the mob in a morbid procession of rot and decay. Many of them still wore the armor they had died in, with weapons still protruding from their bodies. Like all lesser undead creatures, they could not fight well in daylight. She didn't want to imagine what this battle would have been like at night. Naturally they had chosen the hours just after dawn for the strike, giving them an entire day to fight and win.

"Give me the plan again, so ah' don't forget."

This time Washington did speak, his voice quiet in her earpiece as he took back control of the holoscreen. "The assault begins with the retreat of the 301st Manehattan Brigade, already underway. Hypersonic escort craft will deploy anti-personnel airburst explosives along the main line of advance." Little explosions appeared in a straight line, decimating the crowd of zombies and making most of the undead mob fall to the ground in small pieces. "Heavy infantry airdrop, surrounding the mob on these three sides. They land almost immediately after the carpet bombs detonate. These infantry cover the deployment of artillery on this ridge, and the Atlas here, near present pony lines."

"Mission objective: to force the enemy units close enough that the entropic accelerator can effect simultaneous dissolution. Intelligence indicates that nothing other than absolute bodily destruction will permanently disable enemy troops. Mission critical equipment include Atlas Walker and Albatross Carrier C. Antimatter containment cell must not be allowed to fall into enemy hands."

"Why?" Applejack zoomed into the image of her mech on the simulation, looking it over. "Not that the gun ain't a big deal, but I didn't think anyone on Equestria would be able to make it work. It's not like dragons can repair computers 'er nothin'."

The simulation zoomed in further, straight through the side of the Atlas and into the machinery in its back, with a container perhaps the size of a pitcher or insulated thermos. Cables of various kinds ran into one end, and its clear surface was marked with more safety warnings than she knew how to count. The simulation zoomed in through the walls of the container, where dense coils of cable around the outside seemed to contain a miniature silvery sandstorm, wrapping around and around the inside of the container like somepony skating an endless figure-eight.

"This cell contains 5.73 pounds of pressurized antihydrogen gas. If its containment were to fail, the resultant explosion would annihilate all life within ten kilometers, and the radioactive fallout would likely be much larger. As no antimatter containment failure on this scale has ever taken place, it is impossible to provide an accurate damage assessment. However, as the crystal empire is presently only three kilometers away, and this enemy is known to be willing to utilize nuclear weapons..."

Applejack brushed a hoof through the simulation, banishing it. "I get it." Now she understood why Cigaal had said this entropic accelerator was only meant to be used in space.

She watched the beginnings of the battle from satellite cameras. Just as Washington had explained, their escort ships dropped a long line of explosives, lighting up as tiny pinpricks on the satellite image. Then came the heavy infantry, dropping like precisely-aimed bullets even as she felt the acceleration of their Albatross as it prepared for a landing. Applejack turned from the images of the battle as she was forced to watch her station, integrating with the targeting controls on the arm she was set to control. "Does this walker have a cloak?" she asked, pressing herself into the seat as the whole thing started to shake.

Makoto shook her head. "Only works when the reactor isn't working; puts out too much heat otherwise! Wouldn't be much point to cloak something as heavy and noisy as an Atlas in motion. We've got better; only subcapital unit in the Federation with a shield."

Applejack strained her memory, but nothing Washington had taught her helped her identify the technology. So she turned to her pony knowledge instead. "Like a glowing bubble that stops stuff?"

"I wish. That's science fiction. Do ponies have science fiction?"

Applejack didn't get to respond, because a voice came in over the radio, the distorted squawk of the pilot. "Blue one, deployment distance in fifteen seconds. Prepare for disconnect."

Makoto's smile vanished. She brushed her short black hair away from her face, then reached into the holofields with both arms, her expression grimly determined. "Roger, Red-Six. Washington, how's our bandwidth?"

"Optimal."

Then the pilot. "You're clear, drop drop drop!"

For the second time in the recent past, Applejack felt as though she were lifting away from her stomach as she abruptly began to fall. Only this time she was tightly restrained, and instead of rising up and away from the craft, the Atlas dragged her down right along with it. There was a roar from somewhere beneath her, as rockets slowed the Atlas in its fall and burned a dark black streak into the ground. Three seconds later, the Atlas slammed into the ground with all the grace of a barn falling from the sky. Hydraulic fluids wooshed, and the cockpit dropped several feet before springing back into its original position. At once all the dormant displays flickered to life, with internal readings and troop readouts and battle projections.

If Applejack had thought the last battle moved slowly, she had no idea what was in store for her now. "Cover the artillery while we get them onto those hills, Makoto!" Cigaal's voice was harsh, not nearly as calm as he had sounded during the last battle. "Something took out Escort-3! Get me incendiary on those bastards!"

Soldiers shouted back and forth over the general frequency, far too fast for Applejack to keep them all straight. Instead she focused on the cameras, looking out on the army that had so many Equestrians in fear. She felt it before she saw it, a distinct wrongness in her gut. It was a little like the Everfree, magic not just free of pony influence, but outright hostile to it. The Sons had picked a strategically optimal position to make their stand, the hills granting perhaps a fifty-meter height advantage on the enemy troops.

Not that they had firearms. It was hard to make out anything in the center of the mob, but she could see those closest to her. Even as she watched, something like an earth pony rose to its hooves, apparently not noticing the way the anti-personnel bombs had torn the flesh from its extremities. It turned on the nearest heavy infantry, narrowed its eyes, and charged with all its might. The soldier opened with a blast of napalm and did not miss, but the charging pony seemed not to notice. It stopped just shy of the infantry, but instead of striking him reared up and struck the ground with enormous force. Even at her distance, even with the cushioning of the shocks she felt a little of the vibration as the earth opened and swallowed the soldier whole. Worst of all, the pony continued to burn, roaring in fury as it turned to the next of the heavy infantry.

There had been eight in all, and she watched the battlefield summary as each of the tags went dark, one after another. Still, their duty had been accomplished, and if any of the evil ponies could feel pain then surely all of them were. Several were now missing limbs, or had been separated into multiple pieces by the heavy accelerators and their ultradense tungsten rounds.

"Green-1 deployed Captain, on your orders!"

"Wait for Two, Green-1! Two, anyday now!'

"Something's got us!" came a female voice, harsh and clipped. "We're… f-floating, sir. C-can't breathe!"

Applejack saw it, several unicorns on the left all advancing towards the hill with their horns alight with dark magic. Beyond them, the soldiers and their equipment were lifting into the air, at least a dozen that Applejack could see. Before she knew what she was doing she screamed over the main channel. "It's the unicorns on the left! They're doin' it!" Were these humans stupid? Couldn't they tell magic when they saw it? Applejack suddenly wondered if humans could see the glow of magic at all.

Cigaal's voice replied immediately. "Makoto, get a tankbuster on those targets!" There was a groan from behind them and the roar of a rocket engine, accelerating so fast it was difficult to see. Seconds later, the unicorns had been transformed almost magically into a blackened crater, and their soldiers dropped from the air.

"Sir, they see us! Targets advancing!" That was Green-1 again, voice buring with emotion. "Orders?"

"Full bombardment, all guns! Keep firing until they reach you!" With the harsh screams of high-caliber cannons, the carefully-constructed plan descended into chaos. Applejack found herself unable to keep all the voices straight, particularly when screams of agony found their way onto the channel. She switched her radio to the Blue-1 frequency, but Makoto didn't, and was listening so loudly to the general channel that Applejack could still hear it almost as clearly as before.

"Applejack, I need a target! Who looks the most dangerous?" The guns were firing constantly. The mob was saturated with machine-gun fire, though this seemed to have little impact unless a lucky shot managed to sever a limb. No locations seemed any more effective than others, and even direct headshots did little but shower the ground in necrotic fluid.

Applejack scanned the group, though she didn't have to look far. "How about this one?" She indicated a thickly-armored unicorn with a wicked-looking horn. Supernatural flames danced from his many wounds, as though within he were a fire and not a pony. Bullets pinged off the air around him, and as she watched a mortar landed almost directly atop him. The grass ripped itself apart at his feet, yet somehow none touched him. His horn grew brighter with every step, unmistakably preparing a spell.

"He's gonna hit us!" Applejack winced as she saw the spell leave the pony's horn, though of course she was no unicorn and had no idea what it might be. Still, as fast as the spell was, Washington's reaction time was faster. Though neither human nor sensor could see it, she felt the whir as the reactor kicked into high gear, and saw from the display that their shields had switched to full power.

A second before it struck the spell manifested as a charring cloud of dark plasma, the kind that seared metal into molten pools. The Atlas didn't have a drop of magic, and yet the spell bent around the walker and continued onward behind them, slowly dissipating. Red flashing lights started blinking all over the cockpit, and a mechanical voice blared, "Connection to controlling intelligence disrupted; switching to local pilot.”

"Damn radiation; disrupts highband." Makoto leaned forward, and the targeting sensors focused on the unicorn.

"Entropic field stabilized," came the mechanical voice, followed by a flash of vibrant blue. The pony, like them, had a shield. His was magic, and Applejack watched as the lance of blue light struck it. For a second it seemed as though the shield might have worked, energy spreading along its surface and crackling like something hungry and alive. Then the dark shield began to flicker. Makoto leaned into the controls, her face going hard. A second later the shield splintered with a deafening crack, and the pony inside crumbled to nothing.

Until now the dark army had responded to their attacks with something like amusement. The mob was more like a swarm of piranhas than an army, annoyed but not dissuaded. That changed the instant they struck the unicorn. Every dark pony froze, turning to watch. They completely ignored the humans swarming all around them, who took the opportunity to thoroughly dismember several. Then as one they abandoned their targets, and began to converge on the Atlas.

"Applejack, I need you to pull us back! They're coming on too fast!"

She hardly knew this vehicle, yet the internal computer was responsive and obeyed Applejack's instructions. She barely saw her brother take over her cannons along with his own, shooting several rotting pegasi out of the air before they could close too quickly.

Makoto's attention seemed completely glued to the cannon controls. There was another flash, and this time a whole group of the enemy vanished in a blast of angry light.

"Protect the Atlas!" Cigaal's voice came through stretched and clipped and blaring with static, but it came through. Did that mean they would have Washington back soon?

Little explosions swept over the crowd, none doing permanent damage but some flinging ponies into the air in spectacular arcs. The dark army ignored everything that wasn't the Atlas, and seemed not to notice or care that more of their number were being ripped apart or squished to paste. Yet they also were not stupid. It seemed to take only one shot for them to learn that standing too close together invited reprisal, because they spread into a wide semicircle, ensuring that no shot could dispatch more than a few at once.

Bolts of magic struck their shield with far more regular intensity, and Applejack felt the Atlas begin to shake under the strain. Some of the flames made it through, and sirens started to scream in protest.

Applejack didn't see the unicorn until the spell had already struck them. She felt suddenly as though a gigantic hoof were crushing down on her, crushing the air from her lungs. Metal screamed in protest, and hydraulic lines whined and burst in the overpressure. She screamed as the Atlas went toppling sideways, crashing to the ground like a dying god.

She could hear the shouting outside, the gunfire and the screams. Her vision went red, and she choked. Strapped into the chair, it seemed the whole world was sideways. "M-Mac," she croaked, but that was it. She was going to die here.

She didn't, though. A second later the pressure vanished, and she gulped huge swallows of air. Makoto was a little slower to recover, but spidery fingers danced through flickering controls and the Atlas started to groan beneath them, making sickly noises as it rocked back and forth onto its legs. One seemed broken, but the other three were able to keep them standing, albeit at a somewhat tilted angle. Applejack blinked until she could focus on the exterior cameras, searching for the unicorn.

What she found was Cigaal himself, a gigantic sword in his hands. Applejack recognized the sword, for she had seen it several times before. It was Princess Luna's ancient blade, Achelois. The sword had cleaved the monster down the middle, and unlike many of the other injuries she had seen inflicted, the fallen dark pony showed no sign of rising.

Together, the surviving Sons of Barsoom made sure the rest of the undead soon followed their comrade into the void.

There was no mistaking the awful shaking of the shield for anything other than what it was. Magic darker than midnight coursed along it, forming an intricate pattern along several of the points of greatest stress. Even Twilight did not recognize the patterns, though it was easy enough to guess what was going on. The shield did not belong to her brother, not anymore. Celestia had wrought this last defense with the last of her reserves, and it was summer sunlight that began to crack and crumble in the sky.

The armies had been stopped. For no reason anypony knew, all the goblins everywhere had thrown down their arms. The Steel Tower were sweeping across the southern front like an unrelenting tide. It was true the situation in the north was still dire, yet pony troops were far from exhausted. True to Applejack's recommendation, the Sons of Barsoom had collapsed the bulge and utterly destroyed the forces of the undead. Less than half of them had returned, but they had returned in victory.

It was no surprise that the Dragons themselves led this last and greatest of assaults, ignoring all other troops and flying straight for the Crystal Empire. Of the dragons, only the greatest had been given the honor of participating. Twilight Sparkle could see about a dozen of the greatest and most ancient of the wyverns hovering in the air outside the shield. These were no whelps, wasting the strength of their flames on the shield before it fell. Each conserved their energy, waiting as the largest and greatest of them worked the spell that would unmake the shield.

For a defense Equestria had only those forces that were already here. That meant the Sons of Barsoom, at what strength remained, along with plenty of frightened civilians and recently-transformed humans with little knowledge of how to be a pony. Cadence had ordered her citizens to shelter in whatever basements and cellars could be found, and the upper stories of the tallest buildings were occupied now by ponies wielding cannons.

For Twilight Sparkle, all that was very far away. Pinkie Pie and Applejack were below, coordinating with the human defenses Twilight's apprentice and her friends had installed in the Crystal Empire only eight months earlier. The Sons' escort ships flew in gentle circles over the tops of the buildings, at least the few that had returned.

Princess Luna hovered not far away, along with half a dozen of the Lunar Guard. Her magical grip on Achelois showed no sign of faltering, and her armor glinted red in the light of evening. Their enemy outside seemed to be timing this attack precisely with sundown, when Celestia's power and the shield would be weakest. It was working. Even though Celestia had not actually lowered the sun, the world knew better. It would take the greater part of her magical might whether she consented or not. And she would consent, in the end. At least with the moon in the sky one of them would be at full strength.

Twilight's sister-in-law was not with them in the sky. Cadence knew little of violence, and so remained with her ponies. Celestia was there, flanked by two-dozen of the Solar Guard with glittering armor and sharp spears.

Even in the fading sunlight, even as her spell came away in the air above the castle, Princess Celestia seemed far more god than mortal. Her mane burned more than it glowed. She spoke in the air, spoke to all the ponies in the empire. Perhaps to all the ponies in the world. It was not a loud voice, neither was it a harsh voice. All who heard would later agree that it pierced them to the center.

"Ponies of Equestria!" Celestia seemed not to shout, yet the earth shook beneath her. Everything, from the rushing of the wind to the roars of the dragons outside, became suddenly muted. Less important. "We have all sacrificed much in this war, and lost more. I am proud of each of you, and have seen many rise to accomplish incredible feats."

"Yet I know many might look up now and feel fear. Do not be ashamed of your fear. Yet hear my promise! We will not fall! As sunset falls, so will the sun rise all the brighter. This war will end tonight! Have courage, and know that I am satisfied with what you have done. Now, make Equestria proud one last time! Stand proudly beside us! Our friends are with us, and victory is before us!"

Even knowing exactly what Celestia was up to Twilight still felt a little of the fear vanish from her mind. There was no room for uncertainty when a voice like that spoke comfort. Twilight drew a little closer in the air to her old mentor, nodding her appreciation and support.

Celestia nodded back, the gold of her regalia glowing furiously on, even as the sun passed over the horizon and soft moonlight took its place. Twilight had never seen the moon shine so brightly before, brighter than the largest and most spectacular harvest moon. The stars too seemed to be outdoing themselves, giving every ounce of light to the ponies below as they could.

The intricate spellwork wrought by the Father of Dragons sunk deeper into the barrier. Great cracks spread suddenly along it, as though the whole spell were a single chunk of ice dropped into a gigantic glass.

Celestia didn't wait for it to fall away and crush the city below. Instead, she dismissed the spell in a single golden flash.

"Remember to use the target acquisition system. With such limited resources, we can't afford to waste ammunition, or risk friendly fire." That was the voice of Washington, the Sons’ own OMICRON core and the one that had coordinated everything since Truth returned to Earth. Twilight, like Luna and Celestia, could not wear the Federation-made armor that depended on Nanophage integration. She could wear a little glass eyepiece and headset, stuck to the side of her head with temporary glue.

The barrier down, the enormous dragons began moving, each at least as large as the bigger structures in the city. As she watched, little red targets appeared to follow them through the air, along with the name and location of the pony or human targeting them. The Solar and Lunar Guard dispersed to join the fray, forming corkscrews of clouds and blasting little bolts of lightning. Of the princesses none moved, nor did any of the dragons seem to be targeting them.

This was an old code, far older than Twilight, yet she recognized immediately what was happening. The glory of slaying the rulers of Equestria would go to the Father of Dragons; even his oldest servants didn't dare interfere. So long as they didn't fight anyone else, Twilight was fairly certain the other dragons would leave them alone. Dragon combat customs were quite rigid.

So she put everything else from her mind; let the sounds of gunfire fade, the roars and blasts of fire. Ignored the sound of shattering crystal and the screams of ponies below. It would take all three of them to defeat this enemy, and she would be a very poor ally if she were distracted.

Twilight spared one last thought for her daughter, wondering when she might be making her way back from Earth. She had gone to bring the ship Aegis and to end the war. Twilight wished she could tell her how proud she was, how happy she was to have such a loyal and talented filly for a daughter. She couldn't though, and had to content herself with the knowledge that wherever Chance was, it had to be safer than here.

"What's the plan?" Twilight asked over the radio. Other than the other Alicorns, only Washington would be able to hear her. "How'd you beat this dragon last time?"

Luna chuckled. "There is no checklist, Twilight Sparkle. Even if we had one, it would do us no good. The last time we fought this dragon, we lost."

"O-oh."

She felt him before she saw him, like a patch of darker night drawing in moonlight. Scales of ebony had no reflection in the sky, and when he roared it was the voice of death.

Celestia seemed not to notice the great roar. Her voice sounded for all the world as though Twilight were still a filly and she was teaching one of her early magic lessons. "Have you studied anything about the way dragons duel, Princess Twilight?"

The dark shape was gaining speed. Celestia and Luna began to separate in the air. Twilight did likewise, even as she spoke. "I have, Princess. Like a dance and a debate at the same time, right?"

"Exactly right," Celestia said. "If we hold strictly to the pattern of the duel, he will spare his wrath from our ponies below and focus on us. Move and countermove, with each able to end the duel and surrender at any moment. Whoever surrenders must accept the terms of the opponent without objection. For this reason, we cannot surrender. Since we fight together, the duel only ends if all three of us are killed or surrender. He will focus on me, I am certain. Don't let my death distract you from victory."

The Father of Dragons had claws as long as Twilight's whole body, with eyes like the blackness between stars and teeth the only part of him that reflected any light.

Fire lit the sky, a fire made from blackness and magic unmade. Twilight was not the target, but even so she found herself flying furiously to avoid it. Rainbow Dash would've been proud of her sudden acceleration and the smoothness in her handling. She only wished Rainbow was here with her now. Would rainbow magic work on the Father of Dragons?

Celestia avoided the flames only barely, though as she did Luna brought Achelois in a wide slash through the air. Silver fire like hammered moonlight lashed out at the dragon, and he was far too slow to avoid it. There was a sound of shattering glass, and his scales rang out in protest. Yet aside from his roar, there seemed no immediate effect. No sign of a lasting injury, anyway. Twilight accelerated again, this time heading straight for him. She had no swords and no armor, but in her mind prepared a spell of hardened gravity.

She never got to strike. The dragon saw her coming, and the sky filled with crackling black death. Twilight avoided with a smooth teleport, appearing above the dragon as flames licked harmlessly at nothing.

The dragon laughed, his voice so deep it was hard to tell if she were really hearing words, and not the grinding of tectonic plates. "It comes to this, Celestia? Your kind were always feeble, but never this feeble. Has so much of the old strength been lost? If I had suspected, I might have come immediately and spared the investment of a war."

Celestia answered with magic, a spell so bright she had to look away. For a second, and only a second, it seemed as though the sun had returned. Twilight felt the warmth on her coat, and even looking away it seemed as though Celestia had hurled the sun itself at their airborne assailant.

When he screamed, Twilight had to shield herself to protect her ears. In that scream was the grinding of glaciers on continents, scraping them clean and dumping the excess into the sea.

Celestia was not fast enough to avoid the dragon's response, a wave of darker flames and a flash of night-black claws. She vanished into the flames with a flickering of magic about her.

Twilight couldn't help herself; she screamed, unleashing a gravity-spell so potent it drove the Father of Dragons tumbling to earth under his own weight. She didn't see Celestia alight on a nearby building with her mane scorched far shorter than it ought to be. Evidently Luna hadn't either, because she too roared and descended on the dragon like a falling star.

One of the great beast's wings seemed to have broken in the fall, yet he rose to four monumental legs as though he could not feel the pain. "I've got more like that!" Twilight bellowed, without any of the grace Celestia had managed when speaking to her ponies. "That was Jupiter! Surrender right now, or I'll show you what gravity is like inside a star!"

The dragon only laughed. "A draught of the old wine!" His eyes looking up at her were hungry now. "Your cause is vain, pony! Order will wait no longer. You should be relieved; the future I bring will be free of conflict forever. Free of pain, free of life. How else can you cure every soul of pain but to extinguish them? In oblivion there is no desire unfulfilled!"

At that moment Princess Luna struck like a bullet, with enough force to send them both tumbling. Twilight saw only the flash of armor and glint of scales. By the time she had drawn near enough to see what was happening, she saw Luna going flying through the air. Her sword flew past Twilight's head, where it stuck into the bare stone down to the hilt.

"Luna!" she gasped, though there was nothing she could do to catch the princess before she landed, digging a deep divot in the earth before she came to a stop.

"Your rulers are weak, just as your life is weak." He rose to his full height, head towering above her. It was like flying past Canterlot Castle, only the castle was the thing she was at war with. It was like battling Tirek, only she didn't have the Alicorn magic of all of Equestria in her this time. There were burns on his scales, and a few missing, though there was no blood and he didn't seem to limp. "Life is suffering, once-mortal Twilight Sparkle. You shall feel that suffering before the end, before We bring it to all you love."

Twilight didn't stop to question how the Dragon had come to learn her name. Instead she turned all her fear and fury into fuel for her spell. True to her word, it was a gravity spell, save that it had nearly enough intensity to crush whatever it struck into a singularity.

The spell didn't even close half the distance. The energy was enough to nearly drop her from the air, yet as it moved the dragon worked a spell of its own. With words of far blighted wastelands the spell fizzled away. What had already began to tear the topsoil from the ground couldn't even stir a leaf by the time it struck. Yet the dragon didn't seem angry, only amused. "Such strength! Yet a fool's strength is vain, and the works of the mighty turn to dust!" It advanced on her. "We are entropy! We are the end and the beginning!" His mouth still open, dark fire crackled and leapt at her through the air. She teleported again, yet this time she found the energy following her, flames gliding after her like a great wave possessed. The sound of laughter followed her as she teleported several times, as far away from the dragon as she dared. The energy seemed to be gaining speed with each jump, as though feeding on the spells themselves.

She wasn't the only one who could teleport, either. Suddenly Luna was before her, sword in her grip and light glinting on her armor. She dug her hooves into the ground and extended her sword into the flames. Words of ancient power coursed through her, and the awful spell was grounded into the earth. A pool of something like tar opened where Luna's sword touched the earth, the liquid within reaching up at them like something alive.

Again the dragon roared, and the battle was on again. Twilight felt as she had when Pinkie Pie had taught her how to ice-skate, nowhere near as graceful as Luna and without half the power of the dragon. Every failed spell and every dodge sapped the strength from her, yet it seemed no blow caused anything more than an annoyance for the dragon.

Twilight couldn't have said if it had been minutes or hours, but it felt as though she had been in the air for days. The next thing she knew, she could barely keep herself aloft anymore. All her training and all her spells meant nothing in the face of such an adversary. Only one blow seemed to have made a difference, the very first that had driven him to the ground. Either that, or the dragon chose not to fly again simply because it suited him. It was hard to say for sure.

Yet even as she panted, even as she thought the next blow he sent her way would be the last it would take, because she was far too weak to resist anymore, she saw something she never imagined she would see again.

Princess Celestia, only slightly charred and with most of her strength intact, flying down so quickly she could've easily been mistaken for a comet. Her spell did not make the same mistake that Twilight and Luna both had so persistently made, however. It did not target the dragon at all, but the ground he was standing on. In the heat of a thousand July afternoons came the words written on the world, words that cracked the world open and let the outside in.

Only this time, the outside wasn't coming in. The Father of Dragons clawed and scraped at the ground, struggling for purchase as its hindquarters were dragged inexorably downward toward the madness at the center of creation. Claws dug grooves deep enough for ponies to use as trenches as they struggled, and fire blasted from his mouth in one mad, constant curtain. Everything it touched, be it tree or structure or living pony, crumbled to nothing without ever catching fire.

Of course none of them was close enough for him to strike, not accurately. The Father of Dragons could do nothing but whimper in the end as he was drawn down into the long-benighted blackness, and the opening that sunshine cut closed with the clap of divine thunder.

The city was in ruins, yet of the mighty dragons that had descended on them there was no sign. Twilight heard the cheering of Equestria's ponies like a distant dream. She was too weak to stand, so she sat in the earth and stared at nothing and waited for nothing.

She hardly heard the ponies around her. Even Celestia's praise couldn't get through to her. Not until her friends were around her did she recover enough to really hear what they were saying. "You did it!" Pinkie Pie's armor was pockmarked and half-melted in places, yet for all of it she seemed unharmed. Applejack was limping, yet none of the others seemed the worse for wear. "That was the most amazing dragon fight I've ever seen!"

"Pinkie, I believe that was the only dragon fight you've ever seen." Rarity's voice hadn't changed in the least, and in that Twilight found some comfort. Even at the end of the world her fashionista of a friend was unflappable.

"Not true!" Pinkie argued from Twilight's other side, suddenly defensive. "That's the second dragon fight I've ever seen, and the most amazing by miles!"

"Good job, Twilight." Fluttershy's voice was easier to hear, and her embrace far softer. Soon all of her friends had joined in, along with Spike. There were only two missing from her life now, the two she longed for most of all. No victory would be complete until she saw them again.

"You don't have to come with me." Rainbow Dash wasn't exactly happy to be in a wheelchair. Charles wasn't sure there were words to accurately describe how uncomfortable she evidently was. Yet all of that had been mixed with a twinge of excitement. The doctors, human all, were absolutely uncompromising when it came to Rainbow not being ready to be on her own hooves yet. As a Technocratic Order surgeon had so gruesomely put it, her insides were basically tied together with twine and a bit of prayer, and if she jiggled them about they might come spilling out all over the floor.

Yet she had balked at the idea of her friends seeing her for the first time as an invalid laying passively in bed. "I ain't never taken life lying down, and I'm not gonna start now!"

This was the middle way. Rainbow could see her friends without seeming completely helpless, and the doctors could be satisfied that someone trustworthy would be there to make sure she didn't try to skimp on the rest of her treatment. "There are plenty of ponies who would push my wheelchair."

Charles had to take the handle out of his mouth to reply, though the wheelchair had enough momentum that it kept going along the grass for some distance yet. With so much of the city in ruin, much of the official function of Equestria had moved to the tents in the camps, where he spent almost all the time he didn't spend at Rainbow's bedside.

"Maybe I'm being selfish. The Federation has thousands of ponies now, but the Tower only has me. Getting to meet the Elements of Harmony would be a great way to jumpstart my new equine career. Isn't that what the Federation mare did, that green one?"

Rainbow winced. "You haven't heard?" She lowered her voice, twisting backward to whisper up into his ear. "She died. Probably shouldn't mention her. She was Twilight's daughter."

"Thanks for the heads-up." He started pushing again.

Rainbow went on. "I'm so glad your king-whatever let you stay a pony. It wouldn't have been fair to make you into a robot again now that you're finally alive."

Charles braced one of his hooves on the back of the wheelchair, pushing with that instead of his mouth. It worked, but only because the path had been carefully graded. "You're part machine now too, Rainbow Dash. With the Federation infrastructure destroyed the way it is, it will probably be years before you could go in for an organic organ replacement. By then, you might not want to." He looked away. "Just because you're sure of something at first doesn't mean you'll still feel that way when you really understand it."

Rainbow Dash humphed, but she didn't argue.

"So does that mean that offer of a flight teacher is still open? If I'm going to stay like this, I could really use some help with my technique."

"You could say that again!" Rainbow giggled. "You fly like a goat taught you!" Then, a little more seriously, "I might be able to find the time. Apparently there's going to be lots of something called physical therapy? It doesn't sound very awesome, but if you came then at least one part of it wouldn't be so lame."

"Just don't tell the goat that." He shivered all over. "I don't want remedial lessons from him."

The tent her friends were all sharing was one of the largest and grandest, more a tent in the Middle-Eastern sense of a home made from cloth than the Western understanding of an uncomfortable survival shelter. It was all lavender and lace, with the outer section serving as a heatrap and a second story supported by wooden beams. "I've never seen a tent this nice in my whole life."

"Oh, don't be so kind dear, it's nothing near my best work. Just a little something I whipped together a few years ago, so I could spend some quality time with my sister." A white mare was reclining in a chair outside, sipping at a glass of something she occasionally levitated to her mouth. Charles couldn't help it if the unicorn magic still made him a little uncomfortable.

"Oh, now you got her started." Rainbow's voice from the wheelchair was exasperated, but there was something like joy in it too, as though this were such a long-standing argument it had become something cherished. "She won't stop."

"Well we can't all be as tasteless as you are, dear," she said, with something like humor. "If anything, I'm surprised you brought someone along who has a modicum of good taste." She nodded demurely, and rose from her reclining position. "I'm Rarity, by the way. Pleasure to make your acquaintance." Charles shook her hoof, and in a way he shared Rarity's opinion. How the hell had Rainbow Dash become friends with a pony like this?

Rarity answered the question herself, for once she had politely shaken his hoof, she wrapped her hooves so tightly around Rainbow's neck that Charles feared the embrace might crush her larynx. The mare seemed to realize he was staring, because she immediately broke contact with Rainbow Dash, pushing herself away and clearing her throat. "Yes, well. I suppose we best head inside. I imagine everypony will be eager to see our guest of honor."

Rarity turned and vanished into the tent without another word, heading so quickly inside that Charles immediately felt nervous. It was exactly the sort of feeling he might have seconds before an ambush. "You sure these ponies are on the level?"

Rainbow shrugged. "I don't have a clue what that means. If you mean are they about to do something unexpected, no. You don't have the gun with you, right?"

The question made him wish he had a different answer. "No, uh... I didn't think I would need a gun as a politician."

"Good. Because if I know anything, it's that we're about to be surprised." She grinned. "Come on!"

Charles pushed Rainbow Dash through the flap, and managed not to jump when they were assaulted with confetti and sound. He just kept pushing until Rainbow Dash was in the center of the room.

Really, there weren't that many ponies. He counted five, along with a scaly creature not at all unlike a dragon. This one was smaller though, and the noisemaker he rotated hardly seemed threatening. "Welcome back, Rainbow!" Charles managed to jump out of the way as the ponies descended on her in a dogpile of truly momentous proportions. He was surprised he didn't hear the snapping from parts of the wheelchair unable to stand under the enormous strain.

In the end a purple mare was the last to break apart, the one that had both wings and a horn. Charles smiled his biggest, friendliest smile, before turning and going the way he had come. He had no place at this party. No matter how nice these ponies were, he didn't belong at their reunion.

Charles slipped almost silently from the tent and set off down the path at a trot, not really seeing where he went. The next thing he knew, there was a hand on his shoulder. "I was hoping I would find you here."

Charles looked up, then lowered his head into a bow. "Your Grace! If I had-"

"Relax, my boy." Richard smiled. He seemed to do more and more of that lately. "I just wanted a word. Will you walk with me?"

Charles nodded. "I live to serve, Your Grace." It took two steps to every one of Richard's enormous strides, but that hardly mattered.

They walked through the enormous pony sections of the camp, but not towards the Tower or even the Federation districts. "I have never had a servant more faithful or more true. The native woman with the bright mane apparently had quite the tale for her princess, of all your adventures."

He gulped. Charles had been exactly and completely honest in his own report, omitting nothing. He had not embellished the truth, or twisted anything to reflect better on him. But Richard wouldn't be meeting with him unless he had done something wrong, right? What was this about? "Nothing you did not expect, I hope." Charles found himself speaking louder to King Richard then he would to another pony.

"She had quite the talent for embellishment, from what Celestia tells me. To hear her tell it, you single-handedly ended the war, and all the battles we fought were mere accessories." They were slowing as they reached the crest of a hill, the last that separated the camps from the wilderness beyond where battles had been fought and won. Richard stopped before the crest, so Charles did also. He could hear something strange, like thousands of leaves rustling in the wind. "I think now perhaps you were understating your achievements, and it was the native who was frank with her monarch."

Charles shivered involuntarily. "I... I would not deceive you. In all the years I have been in your service, I have never failed to speak the truth."

Richard laughed, and loudly. Somehow Charles doubted the Equestrian princesses ever laughed like that, least of all in front of their servants. "And yet, someone evidently neglected to tell all of them you had been exaggerating." He gestured up over the hill. Of course, Richard was more than double Charles's height, so no doubt he could already see over the hill. Charles moved up to the edge, looking out over the wilderness.

There were so many goblins waiting Charles almost couldn't see the ground through them all. Tens or even hundreds of thousands. His eyes couldn't rapidly count things the way they could when they were silicon. The crowd, which had all been sitting patiently, rose immediately to their feet. They cheered. By the hundreds, by the thousands, and finally so loud that their cries drowned out the fierce arctic wind.

Where had they learned the word? How had they recognized him? Charles would never know. He would never forget the word though, twisted as it was by reptilian mouths. "GRAY! GRAY! GRAY!"

Author's Notes:

Still not over! I keep feeling like it should be, with all the ending stuff that's happening, but ignore that impression! I've got finals next week, but if I survive, I shall be posting the last chapter from sunny California. I think I've seen enough snow for one winter.

Epilogue

The party was winding down by the time Gray Vigil returned, the festivities having settled right along with the sun. It was too cold after dark for his coat to keep him comfortable, one more painful reminder of what he had given up by staying a pony. Charles was grateful there had been nothing permanent in the promises he had made to King Richard. The moment being biological was too much for him, he could always return to the Tower. And if being alive proved less overwhelming than he expected? The Steel Tower would still be there after one pony lifetime.

Vigil let himself into the tent, following scent as much as sound. His nose told him Rainbow Dash was still here. After she had made such a big deal about inviting him, it was the least he could do to show up again at the end. She hadn't really had the chance to introduce him to any of her friends.

Though he had no proof, he was quite certain that more of what Rainbow called "magic" was at work on the tent. Was he imagining it, or was it bigger on the inside? How did they get a second story to stay standing like that without any apparent structural support? There were far fewer ponies up and about when he returned. Rarity was gone, along with the orange one and the yellow one. That left the purple reptile and the bright-pink pony, sharing shots of something he was sure couldn't be alcoholic at one table.

He didn't see Rainbow at a glance, though he did see her remaining organic wing stretched over the back of a sofa facing away from him. There were purple feathers there two, and a hoof hanging awkwardly off the edge. He found himself wishing he could see whatever was going on there; he was quite sure it would've been adorable.

He didn't get a chance, because the pink pony that had been facing away from him and downing another shot of something golden was now inches away from him. How had she moved so fast without him hearing? Even more frightening than her speed was the look of anger in her eyes, focused quite intensely on him.

"Well look who it is," she said, glowering. "Somepony decides he wants to come to the party after all. Too bad he's been gone for FOUR HOURS and almost everypony has already left." Before he could reply, she reached out towards him with one hoof. He flinched, but his gesture was in vain. Instead of striking him, the pink pony was securing a bright paper hat atop his head with elastic. Impressive dexterity for just using one hoof, not to mention the fact he hadn't actually seen her carrying it.

The dragon rose to his claws, moving over to stand beside the pink pony. He was nearly at a height with her, though that was on two legs. On four, he would've been some distance shorter. He had the disproportionate look of a puppy whose paws were far too big for its body, and his voice cracked like someone fighting a losing battle with puberty. "I'm sure you had all sorts of important things to do Vigil, but you could've at least stayed to introduce yourself." He leaned in closer, lowering his voice. "Rainbow was so bummed when you left."

"W-was not!" a familiar voice called from the couch, half-clouded with sleep. No small wonder, with all the healing Rainbow still had to do. Yet Charles had learned in the month or so he had known her never to underestimate her willpower. If she wanted to be awake again, she would be. He would soon face her wrath.

"She told us all about you, Sir Charles Gray Vigil." The pink one extended a hoof, in the gesture he had since learned served in lieu of a handshake here. He returned it as best he could, trying not to seem awkward. He failed. "If you'd stayed, you would've learned that my name is Pinkie Pie, and this is Spike." She gestured, and Spike extended a claw. That was even stranger, since Spike had something like "fingers" and he didn't. Why did ponies even have a gesture like this? "You'll have to meet the others tomorrow. Rarity and Applejack and Fluttershy went to bed. Rainbow wanted to introduce you to Twilight. She was sure you would show up. I wasn't so sure, and neither was Spike, but I guess that's why she's loyalty and I'm not."

Rainbow Dash emerged from behind the couch, sitting alert in her wheelchair and looking very sternly in his direction. A purple mare was pushing it, her own mane in a frizzy mess and her face streaked from crying. He pretended not to notice, because he could also see the wings and the horn. The purple mare was larger than Rainbow, though not so large as some of the stallions he had seen. That put her at an equal height with him, if he didn't count her horn.

"Where did you go?" Rainbow was indignant, every sign of tiredness gone. "I wanted you to meet everypony, Vigil. You missed the party!"

The mare behind her didn't seem fully awake yet, though she was doing her best impression of stern and suspicious. This was the one Rainbow had talked about, the one called Twilight. The one whose opinion she had valued most of all. "It didn't seem like I belonged," he said, without a trace of irony. "Your friends had been missing you for a long time, I thought you ought to be able to enjoy the moment. I stepped out, and King Richard was waiting for me. He... needed me for a few hours."

There was no need to go into detail about the goblins, or the lengthy discussion of what was going to happen to them now that the war was over. Charles had already given his reports about what had happened while in the Badlands, but he hadn't expected the consequences to manifest so quickly.

Twilight parked the wheelchair perhaps two meters from him. This close, it was easy to see that Rainbow's expression was even harsher than Pinkie Pie's had been. "Vigil." She leaned towards him, holding herself in the chair with two of her hooves. "You saved my life. You gave me my wing back. We went through Tartarus together, and we made it back. If that doesn't make us friends, I'm not sure what would."

He had no answer, and so he just stood still, his mouth hanging half-open.

Twilight proved she was more alert than her appearance suggested, because her voice had nothing of sleepiness to it. "We were actually quite eager to meet with you after hearing all of Rainbow's stories." She moved closer to Charles, though a possessive wing never left the edge of the wheelchair. "I can't thank you enough for bringing her back."

"Most of her," observed Pinkie Pie, who had moved away. She seemed to be doing something at the refreshment table, yet she reacted as though she had clearly heard every word. "All the important parts, anyway."

Charles lowered his head, respectfully. "She brought me as much as I brought her, Princess Twilight Sparkle. When we crashed, my human body was broken. If I had my way, I would've died and left her to continue on alone." He lowered his voice a little, avoiding her eyes. "She's the strongest mare I've ever known." Then, louder. "Whatever good I did, I did for the Tower. Every man is guilty of the good he did not do."

"You were right, Rainbow!" Spike interjected, from not far away. "He does sound like a knight. Right out of those books Twilight used to read." He looked pointedly at her, as though he expected his words to embarrass her.

They did. The mare did look a little flustered, her wings half-extended at her sides and her eyes darting about for a moment. "There's nothing wrong with enjoying fiction, Spike. Besides, the books I've been reading over the last decade have been for research. Somepony had to learn more about humans, and their stories were an excellent source."

Vigil couldn't help but smile at that, not feeling the least put-off by this news that Twilight apparently had an appreciation for human fiction. "You read fantasy? Have you read the Mi-"

"No." Rainbow stomped her hoof down on the floor, as loudly as she could. "You're not getting out of this with egghead stuff, Vigil. You ran away, and I want an apology." She folded her forehooves across her chest, in a gesture so incredibly human he barely believed what he was seeing.

He didn't hesitate. "I'm sorry for leaving. I assumed you would prefer to be without me, and I was mistaken. I won't leave again without warning you, I promise."

She glared darkly back at him for another few seconds, only reluctantly allowing a smile to spread across her face. "Okay, Vigil. I forgive you." She learned a little closer, across the wheelchair. "This time."

Their conversation greatly relaxed, moving to the circle of comfortable sofas. There was no need for Charles to struggle with Rainbow's weight when Twilight could move her easily with a subtle glow from her horn, and more of that strange force that ponies called magic. The one called Pinkie Pie brought refreshments for him, which he ate with relish. Pinkie Pie was apparently every bit as talented a baker as Rainbow had led him to believe.

"What do you prefer we call you?" Twilight asked, before too long. "Most of the humans I've met who are ponies now are keeping their names, like Admiral Alexi. But some... Some didn't." She looked down then, her ears flattening a little. Princess or no, it seemed that ponies just weren't very skilled at hiding their emotions.

Of course, he had already considered this, so it didn't take him long to come up with the answer. "I figure humans can use my human name for me, and ponies can use the pony one. They're already mostly the same, thanks to Rainbow. Gray Vigil is fine."

"Psh. He just doesn't want to admit that pony names are better."

"No, I don't. I'm not certain they are, but I'm sure they're easier for ponies to remember than what probably seems to you just a string of random sounds. I think it's easier for humans to remember pony names than for ponies to remember human ones. Phonetics, I guess."

Twilight nodded. "Wise, Gray Vigil. Is it true you're a knight?" At his nod, she continued. "Just what does that mean? Equestria has the royal guard, but we haven't had knights in centuries. What would a knight even be in the context of a modern society?"

This sort of answer was even easier than explaining which name he preferred. Now he was just presenting facts, and there was no danger of having to defend them. "The only thing all knights share in common is that they're all free citizens and none selected the career themselves. You can't make yourself a knight, you can only be made one by another knight or by a lord. That's like a governor, rules a large portion of Tower lands, the parts that used to be countries. And no, it isn't inherently patriarchal. A woman can be a lord if she's the eldest daughter of whoever ruled before her, and she can be a knight if she is chosen."

"But the king's knights are different. Our authority isn't limited to one particular area; we were responsible for the whole of the realm. There are only a few of us at any one time, the same as the number of lords. When we're chosen, we take an oath for the rest of our lives." He leaned back in the comfortable chair, enjoying the furniture built for organics and for ponies. "I will to my lord be true and faithful. I will be a knight of the Steel Tower, and uphold the honor of my lord through my actions. I will strengthen the weak. I will comfort the fearful. Confidence without arrogance. Truth without deception. Peace without oppression. Compassion without restriction."

"You've really done all that?" Spike asked, through the sounds of breaking glass coming from his mouth. It looked as though he were crunching on whole gemstones, though Vigil was fairly certain that couldn't be the case. Rock candy, perhaps?

He nodded without hesitation. "I've done my best. I would've died before breaking it. I was willing to, after the crash. 'Till Rainbow convinced me I'd actually do a better job keeping it if I wasn't dead."

"Well that seems pretty obvious." Pinkie Pie removed an empty plate from his lap, replacing it with one brimming with food. This one didn't have sweets, for which he was grateful, but what must've passed for standard party fare among ponies. How she had reheated what looked deceptively like a burger so quickly he didn't know. Was there a kitchen somewhere he couldn't see? "Can't do anything if you're dead, no matter what you promised."

Twilight winced, though even Rainbow seemed aware enough not to comment further on that particular line of reasoning.

The awkward silence lasted until Twilight herself spoke. "The stories..." she sniffed. "The stories I read talked about ponies like you. They said you were called a True Knight. Even Equestria hasn't had very many of those over the years."

"Well, now it has one," Rainbow said, as though she was stating something incredibly obvious. "Right, Charles?"

He was taken aback at the name, if not for long. "Yes." He rose, glancing briefly over his shoulder. Through the flap in the tent, he could just make out the Crystal Palace, rising like a tower into the night. "I think it does."

Of all the cities in Equestria, Canterlot was one of the most intact. No battles had been fought within its walls, and the Draconic army had been far too invested in their advance to do a very thorough job sacking it. As a result, almost all the structures were still standing, and the only thing anypony knew for sure was missing was food.

By the time the Army of Three Nations reached Canterlot, opposition was far more a matter of scattered bandits than a conflict between armies. And while it was true that many of Equestria's other mighty cities had not fared half so well, there was no sign of that discontent at the Victory Parade. Never before had Canterlot been so packed with ponies. The streets had become so full that pegasi were politely asked to find buildings to roost on. Looking down from the balcony on the city, Amber could scarcely see space in the city below that didn't have a pony in it.

The city boiled with emotions she had not felt in such profusion since days of peace. There was enough happiness and love down there to sustain every changeling in the world for a year. Perhaps far longer, since as far as she knew the only Changeling left alive in the world was her.

With the Father of Dragons gone, the millions of almost-changelings had simply died right where they were, dropping from the air and beginning to rot. Amber had heard the stories and pretended to share the joy of her fellow soldiers.

She didn't of course. As they celebrated, Amber found herself wondering how intelligent they had been. Had they ever tasted love the way Amber had, as love freely given to a friend? She did not know what it was like to be one of them, but she knew what it was like to go to bed hungry.

Celestia's voice carried well over the crowd. As she spoke, a great military procession passed by, marching through the millions of Equestria's ponies to assemble themselves in orderly blocks within the castle courtyard. Naturally there were plenty of Equestrian soldiers, but there were plenty of humans as well. Marching in perfectly drilled formations, or riding in massive steel vehicles with huge cannons that kicked up clouds of dust as they hovered along the ground.

Ponies had been afraid of humans once, and justifiably so. Amber knew better than most ponies exactly why humans were a race to be feared. A species of contradictions, of love pure as God's and hatred like eternal ice. Yet she sensed almost no fear from the ponies of the city below. When the ponies looked at the huge war-machines and the legions of humans in their glinting armor, they weren't thinking "will the invaders turn on us next?" but "our friends helped save us."

Plenty of the ponies in the crowd closest to the castle weren't ponies at all, but Federation soldiers forced to shed their humanity to escape an Outsider virus. There was no telling if the technology to return them to their bodies would be discovered in their lifetimes.

"Our eternal gratitude goes to those friends brave and good enough to put their own lives in the same danger as our own," Celestia was saying. "Our eternal gratitude is their reward, our welcome and our friendship." She took a gleaming scroll from a padded cushion even as Princess Luna lifted another, levitating them through the air towards the others on the balcony with them.

Each group had three members, with two humans and one pony. One, the Federation assembly, seemed led by the pony. Alexi Colven accepted the scroll in her mouth, and passed it into the hands of a white-uniformed captain of the Lunar Navy. The man unrolled it before her, and she looked it over. With a nod, exaggerated so the crowd could see, Alexi called, "The United Earth Federation graciously accepts Equestria's friendship and the terms of this treaty, and pledges to honor them faithfully."

If she said anything else, it was utterly drowned by the roar of the crowd, human and pony alike. Alexi took back the scroll, rolled it up, and slipped it into a pouch on her back.

Celestia passed the other scroll into the waiting hands of King Richard, who stood shorter than Celestia only with the aid of a carefully placed platform. He opened the scroll, spared not even a second to read it, then looked up over the balcony. "On behalf of the Steel Tower and all its Dominions, Principalities, and Powers, I accept the terms of this treaty. We shall prove ourselves to be as faithful allies in peace as we were in war!"

The applause, the hooves stamping and cheering beneath them, was almost deafening. Amber stepped back a few paces, until she was safely off the balcony and into the shade of the little drawing room beyond. The voices of the crowd were less distinct in here, more like the crashes of distant waves than the voices of people and ponies. Aside from the couches and sofas and tables packed with refreshments, the room was empty. There were no guards; aside from Amber, they were all outside watching the parade.

That might've explained the strange-looking unicorn reclining in the chair and sipping demurely at a glass of tea. Amber recognized her immediately, and stumbled backward. "Y-you? What are you doing in here?" It was the unicorn that had impersonated a transfer from the Royal Corps, the same unicorn that had filled her full of love and then vanished without a trace. "Doesn't matter. You can't be here!" She gestured over her shoulder, at the open doorway and the event going on just outside.

"Yes, well." She set the cup down, then rose. "I have a talent for getting into places I don't belong. It's a family weakness." She rose to her hooves. "Don't worry, I'm not here for them." She flicked her tail towards the open doorway. "I'm here for you."

"Why?" Amber demanded, moving between the intruder and the open doorway. Not that she thought she could make much of a difference against a truly powerful enemy. But then, after the defeat of the Father, Amber doubted anything would attack Equestria's diarchs for a very long time. "I'm nobody. Not worth wasting your time over. Just get out."

"Really?" The unicorn tossed her head, her mane cascading over her shoulder. "That's not what the 301st said. Those ponies swear you must've been Princess Luna in disguise. What was it they said? Evacuated your entire unit and the village nearby without losing a single pony to the Outsider's puppets?"

She didn't know how to reply to that, so she said nothing. It was true she had managed to evacuate her entire unit without losing a single pony. It was less true that she was responsible for the safety of all of Ponyville as well. Princess Twilight Sparkle had been the one to make the portal; she had only used her ponies to make sure all the citizens got in before her soldiers evacuated.

"There is a new world opening to us, my daughter." In a wave of magic, the unicorn vanished. Amber had little first-hoof experience with Changelings, but she knew enough to know this was no mere drone. She felt it in her soul, and knew with certainty that she was in the presence of a queen. "I have turned my attention to this new world; where none have ever known to fear us and love will be plentiful. I expect it will become a new bastion of safety for our people, even if I cannot travel there myself. I did not come to ask anything of you, for that is not our way. I came to tell you, to inform you, that every Changeling who remains will be looking to you for a queen."

Amber did not retake her natural form, though something deep and primal seemed to demand she do exactly that. Amber did not submit to the instinct. She had seen war, and was mightier than flesh. "No! I refuse! I won't be like you! I won't invade Equestria, I won't be a parasite! My food was justly earned!" She stomped her hoof, hard. Over the speeches and the crowd outside, it was difficult to hear. "With iron and blood! I've fought hard to be a pony, I won't let you take that away!"

The Changeling, the greatest and mightiest of all their queens, acted as though she had not heard. "You will lead them well because it is in your nature to do everything well." She shrugged. "If you don't, they'll die. My sons and daughters are safe in your hooves. Perhaps... you will make of them something better than I could."

She turned, moving past Amber to the door to an antiroom. Amber had always assumed it was a closet or a storage chamber, since she had never seen the door open. Chrysalis the Changeling Queen opened the door with a flourish, and shoved Amber a little way inside. "Help them become like you."

Amber blinked, stumbling to the ground as she looked up at the room. There were no windows, and the shelves had been chewed and clawed to nothing. A thick green slime covered every surface, stretching back perhaps fifty meters or so. Cocoons hung from the ceiling, from the wreckage of the shelves, or just sat on the ground.

There weren't many, perhaps a hundred in all, though most of them looked nearly mature. How did she know that?

There were living changelings in here too, foals stumbling about nearly blind and totally confused. Amber looked over her shoulder for the queen, but she had gone.

There was a gentle pressure on her front. Amber turned her attention back in front of her, and saw the face of a foal only inches away, its multi-faceted eyes glinting in the sunlight and fluid dribbling down its fangs.

"Oh, I'm..." She got to her hooves, avoiding its eyes. "I'm sorry, I'll get-" She turned around, poking her head out of the storage room. "Comeback! Queen Chrysalis, they need you!"

Only silence answered.

Silence, and a pathetic mewling sound from behind her. "Hungry," that voice said, in her mind. A voice of innocence and fear, a voice that had never seen a face that was not hers. "Hungry."

Amber sighed, and turned back to face the foal. She reached out with a wing, brushing a wispy green mane away from its eyes. She thought about a cold cell deep under Canterlot Castle, and a book thrown at her hooves through the bars. She thought about Princess Celestia, giving her shelter even from her own citizens and caring for her even though her mother had nearly killed her own niece. She thought about the love she felt from outside, love enough to drown her.

"Okay." She nudged the little changeling gently back to where it had come, but followed, shutting the door quietly behind her. It was far darker than night inside the room, but that was fine. She didn't need the light any more than the foal did. She brought the foal into her embrace. "Do you have a name?"

There were only a few others awake, and all of these gathered close to watch. Somehow, without knowing how, Amber knew their minds were as fresh and blank as this first. They had never seen another living soul, not until this exact moment. Chrysalis had made sure they would not see anypony until they saw her. They would be her swarm, not her mother's. "Hungry."

It wasn't a word; they were far too young for that. Amber heard the idea and understood it without having to think. It was the feeling of hunger, the gnawing at the insides that was their bodies tearing themselves apart from magical deprivation. "Well, hungry, let me help you. I'm Amber... I'll make sure you're never this hungry again."

Somehow everypony had always known that when it was time for Equestria to send an ambassador to Earth, Second Chance would be the one to go. It would have been hard to find a pony better suited for the job, even though it would have been quite difficult to tear her from her friends and the castle laboratory. But then, even the lab felt empty. In a way, the loss helped Twilight relate to her subjects. Everypony had lost someone. It meant when she consoled, her compassion was genuine.

In the end, Twilight was selected to serve as the ambassador, at least for awhile. There was talk of one Alexi Colven filling the position once her Equestrian citizenship cleared, if Celestia could persuade her to leave her starship behind.

It had taken months to clear the last vestiges of resistance from Equestria, and to purge those pockets of stubborn troops who hadn't figured out their war was hopelessly lost. There were other questions too, such as how they could be effectively returned to their own lands. Most ships bound from Equestria these days were so stuffed with goblins they could barely stay airborne.

Her friends had all offered to come along for the ride, but ultimately the only offer she might've accepted could not truly be honored. The doctors were quite clear: Rainbow Dash couldn't leave the planet for six months, minimum. All of them knew she wasn't just traveling to Earth to present the final version of the Equestrian-Terran Alliance Pledge. Her real reason for taking the assignment was the opportunity to pay her respects. There were far more important tasks for a princess than acting as a diplomatic symbol.

The trip through the rift was uneventful, except for the awful sensation of having her magic ripped away. Earth's moon was not magically moved in its orbit, nor had it been passively soaking up stray magic for millennia. The instant she stepped through the gateway Twilight lost all her magic. It felt like dying the slowest possible death, and she was more than eager to leave Luna Prime as quickly as she could.

As fast as she could ended up being about three days before she was finally riding something called a quickship for a two-day journey to the planet. Those two days felt like forever, with almost no perceptible increase in the magic. Twilight slept restlessly and barely ate. She had at least one recommendation to pass to Celestia when she returned to Equestria: their embassy was going to have to be built on the planet.

It was better. Fire burned as the quickship descended into Earth's atmosphere, and immediately Twilight felt her strength returning. If she had a mirror, she would have expected to watch the color pour back into her body like water from a pitcher. It was easily weaker than the magic field anywhere in Equestria, weak enough that her most difficult spells would have taken days instead of hours, but she didn't care. After utter deprivation for so long, stepping out of the quickship and onto the sparse grass of Earth's surface felt like coming home.

The sky was blue, with little fluffy clouds like Ponyville’s most perfect day. As she watched, a pegasus weather team passed overhead, driving the dark clouds away.

Alajuela spaceport might very well have become the greenest part of the entire planet in the last few months. Just as humans had construction teams in Equestria rebuilding pony cities, Equestria had teams of their own on Earth, rebuilding the planet. It was going to take a very long time, perhaps entire generations. By the time the massive undertaking was done, there were likely to be as many ponies living on Earth as there were humans living in Equestria.

Twilight might have been an Alicorn Princess at home, yet to the humans all around her she was nopony. That was precisely the way she wanted it; precisely why she hadn't taken an escort. She had to stop three people before she found someone who spoke Equestrian. "Excuse me," she had begun, her voice only slightly more terse than it had been for the repetition. "I'm looking for the peace monument. Could you give me directions?"

The young man who answered had dark skin, just as many of these humans did, and his Equestrian had the sound of a language "downloaded", overly formal and not naturally learned. Humans thought they were so clever to be able to cheat knowledge into their heads, but Twilight Sparkle could always tell. "Peace monument? I thought you folk called it the 'tree of harmony.'" He muttered on, almost as though he thought Twilight couldn't hear him. "Tourists. Don't have a damn clue why it matters." He gestured at a path brightly marked in a human language, one Twilight couldn't read. "That way."

Of course, Twilight was just bothered enough to say something about his attitude, and so instead of walking away she took a step closer, looking the young man up and down. He seemed to be some sort of guard or policeman, though he only wore the non-lethal device humans called a "stun stick." She forced herself to sound out the letters on his nametag. "En-reeque. What did you mean?"

"Enrique." His voice was clipped now, annoyed.

"Enrique." She got it right the second time. "What did you mean, Enrique? That tourists don't have a clue why it matters."

He shrugged, one hand on his hip as he scanned the crowd. Even in the packed crowd there seemed to be no sign of violence or crime; like the guards who stood outside the gates at Canterlot Castle he seemed very bored. From his expression, Twilight wouldn't have been surprised if some sort of altercation would've made him happy. In a way, his frustration was to his advantage. Enrique the guard was just frustrated enough to tell her the truth. "Lots of people come here," he said, gesturing at the crowd. "All over the world. Look at those faces. A good third are androids, you know. Metal men! Like, from the Tower and everything!"

"Everyone comes here, and they know it's important, but they don't know why." He shook his head. "They come here acting like the world just got better all by itself, like it was magic or something."

She couldn't stop herself. "It was magic," Twilight said. "A complex, detailed, and intricate Worldweaving spell. Fifth-degree master level, if I understand correctly."

He groaned. "See, that's exactly what I mean! People think it just happened. Magic." He said the word with contempt. "People come here, and lots of them think we built the tree. Built it, just because we wanted to. Well, I know better." He folded his arms. Even on a human face, Twilight recognized smugness when she saw it. "I was there. I know, you don't believe me. I'm just spaceport security. Well, you're wrong. I've already got my spot in the first class of Lunar Officer's School. Once April gets here, it's straight to the Moon! What do you think of that?"

Twilight thought nothing of it, because she hadn't heard a word past the word "there." She found her eyes watering involuntarily. She took another step closer. She was by far the youngest of the Alicorns, yet she was almost tall enough to look this human in the eye. Apparently this part of the world didn't grow humans as large as in some other places. She wasn't casting a spell exactly, yet the humans all around seemed to sense something was wrong. Without anyone saying anything, everyone nearby stepped away, and none got within five feet of them as they spoke. People walking past found themselves in a sudden hurry, never looking too closely.

"What do you mean you were there?"

Enrique gulped, but continued bravely on. "Exactly what I said. I was there; with five just like you. Well..." He paused, glancing briefly at her. Suddenly he found himself unable to look for too long, though.

Twilight recognized what was happening, and almost gasped from the shock. These humans were sensing her magic. Sensing her magic. This would have to be investigated further when she wasn't talking to one of the last people who had been with Chance before she died.

"Not quite like you. Two had the..." He held one of his hands in front of his forehead. "Those things. One had wings. Two had neither, but none had both. Anyway... We were riding in a cargo crawler we stole from-"

"What did they look like?" Twilight interrupted. "The ones with horns. Was one of them white, with a pinkish mane?" He nodded. "What about the other one?"

He took a step back. "Green, I think. Yellowy hair, like bananas. Why do you care?"

Twilight met his eyes. "Because... Because... That was my daughter."

"Oh."

That was the end of Enrique's attitude. Instead, he ordered a private car to take her immediately to the monument, and rode with her down the trail. Twilight smiled in spite of herself as they passed a crew of hardworking earth ponies, coaxing life back into a copse of long-dead trees.

"So you tried to get her to stop?"

He nodded. Apparently word had got around about who she was, because a different guard had replaced him without reprimanding him even a little for leaving his post. He seemed a little uncomfortable in the pleasantly cool and dark interior of the car, though Twilight couldn't have said why. Was she still putting off the vibe of dangerous magic? "I didn't have the language program then, so I don't know exactly what they said, but the others all tried to stop her. Of course I did too, it didn't seem right to watch anyone throw their life away like that."

"You didn't think she could do it?"

Enrique seemed to find the padded cushions suddenly fascinating. "She didn't explain what she was doing. And no, I didn't believe in magic. Thaumaturgy, they're calling it now? Whatever. All I got was that the radiation detectors started going crazy, and I wanted to know why we had stopped on the edge of the old city." He gestured out the windows, where the wreckage of old buildings rose from the dusty soil.

The closer they got to their destination the more vibrant and alive the world seemed; vines were already starting to choke off some of the structures, while trees sprouted in gutters and on the soil collected on roofs. They were barely saplings now, but in a generation or two they would reclaim this old city.

"Thank God she was right." He sat back against the seat, more subdued. "I never thought I would live to see anything like this. Radiation was supposed to take thousands and thousands of years before it faded enough for anything to grow. But she takes it all away in a day, and next there are magic horses coming out of the sky and the rainforest is coming back. The whole world's upside down." He smiled. "Better this way."

There was a sizeable crowd around the tree, mostly humans. There were a few ponies mixed in with the crowd, mostly keeping to themselves. Someone had erected a fence about three meters all around the tree, so that the press couldn't get close enough to touch. This close to the tree, Twilight felt magic almost equal to that in Equestria. It radiated outward steadily, in waves like a heartbeat. Though none of the humans seemed to know what they were feeling, machine and flesh alike practically preened in the light.

This was a sacred place, and they could all feel it.

Enrique watched her eyes."I could disperse the crowd for you, if you want some time alone."

"N-no." Twilight slid along the seat towards the door. "You've done a great deal, thank you. I think I'll just wait until it closes for the night. Could you pass the word along so they don't throw me out after nightfall?"

He nodded. "Of course, Princess Twilight Sparkle." He gestured, and the door opened automatically. "I'm sorry for my rudeness, earlier. Didn't know I was speaking to royalty."

No, you didn't, Twilight found herself thinking, a little frustrated. Humans with implants don't play fair.

Twilight found herself some shade as far from the crowd as possible, waiting for the day to end and the "monument" to close. Unfortunately it was impossible to stay hidden for long, and soon every pony leaving the monument found her behind a nearby structure. Plenty of them brought refreshments, clear bottles of water and a strange human snack of dried fruit. She was grateful for that, though less grateful for all the conversations when what she really wanted was to be alone.

Not that she didn't enjoy learning about the rebuilding. Earth ponies and pegasi alike seemed highly enthusiastic about the work. "It's the rules!" seemed to be the universal response. "In Equestria, everything's so strict. Weather schedules and crop rotations and agriculture committees. Humans are so much easier to please! Show them something green, and it's all smiles! Doesn't matter if you can only grow thorn-bushes or none of your flowers come up symmetrical!"

She met more than one couple who announced proudly that they would be "settling" here. "After all, the old village burned down. If we're rebuilding the planet, might as well put up a village while we're at it!"

Hearing remarks like this, it was all Twilight could do to act regal and not start to cry. Chance would've loved to hear these things. All her dreams were coming true, and she wasn't around to see it.

Eventually it grew dark, and a chill wind began to blow. The last group of ponies offered her a spot in their transport and the finest of their accommodations. Twilight politely declined both, and waved politely as they left.

Just to be safe, Twilight waited until the murmurs of tourists and conversation had gone completely quiet. There was no moon, but a simple dark-seeing spell and she wasn't tripping over her own hooves anymore. Twilight made her way out of the ruins and back onto the path, walking calmly toward the tree. There were rows of raised benches erected around it in semicircles, and she hardly noticed a human child hiding behind one of them, his hands wrapped tightly around a portable gaming device.

The tree was even more beautiful by night. The crystal trunk caught the starlight and twisted it into a fantastic kaleidoscope of colors, while delicate crystal leaves seemed almost to sing as the wind passed over them. Twilight saw the tree for what it was, and was not fooled for a second by the fact it looked solid. Like Luna or Celestia, the tree was no being at all, but a creation of pure magic. The cutie marks were different. Not Celestia's, not Luna's, and not hers. She only recognized one of the symbols; the stylized version of this planet Twilight had long come to associate with Second Chance.

Twilight slipped under the fence, sat back on her haunches, and cried. She cried harder than she ever had, harder than when the crusaders had told her the news all those months ago. The wound was fresh now, and deep.

"What's wrong?" The voice came from behind her, and nearly made her jump. She gasped and wiped her eyes, since the voice had spoken in Equestrian far too perfect to be chip-downloaded. A pony had been hiding somewhere. She had to be presentable. Yet when she turned it was not a pony standing behind her, but a human child.

Twilight still wasn't very good at gaging ages, but she clearly wasn't fully grown. Her voice had been a squeak, and she was shorter than Twilight by almost a full head. Was she eight years old? That felt like a respectable guess. The girl was a thin wisp of a thing, with dirty shoes and long stockings that hid the skin of her legs. She wore a gigantic sweatshirt, so big it hung past her hands, the hood pulled up so Twilight couldn't see her face.

"Oh. Hello there." She glanced around, searching for this girl's parents. Like ponies, humans didn't like it when their children got too far. This one's parents would be looking for her. Yet her eyes saw nopony, nopony except the face of a guard walking past a fence and a glow and faded fabric from the bleachers. She almost called out, until she realized whoever was sitting in the bleachers was no bigger than the girl. Humans this young couldn't have children, so it couldn't be that one.

She sniffed. "Where are your parents?"

The girl turned away from her, gliding under the barricade so she stood beside Twilight and not behind her. She reached out and touched the tree, exactly as Twilight had done with her hoof. Her skin was pale, nothing at all like the olive that seemed natural to the humans in this part of the world. "That's a difficult question," the child said, slowing down as she said "difficult" as though it were a word she had only recently learned.

"Oh?" Twilight smiled in spite of herself. This child reminded her a little of the crusaders, back when they had been fillies without cutie marks. "Is that your way of saying you shouldn't be here? That they're probably looking for you." Twilight gestured past her, to the figure on the bleachers. "Your twin sister? You've got matching jackets."

"Twin brother!" The child corrected. He shouted loudly enough that Twilight was surprised the guard hadn't heard.

The girl shook her head so vigorously her hood nearly came off. Twilight caught a glimpse of more pale skin, almost glowing with the reflected light of the tree. "Some of them are dead." The girl said this without the pained emotions one might expect from a child discussing something so awful.

"Oh." Twilight swallowed. "I'm sorry." She looked away. This wasn't going at all as she had expected. Maybe she should call the guard, so somepony could start looking for this child's guardian.

The girl seemed almost not to hear her. "Not all, though." She reached out, and Twilight felt tiny fingers wrap around her mane, clinging tight enough that it started to hurt. "Not one. The one I've been waiting for. I can't leave, because then I wouldn't be with her."

"Who are you?" Twilight reached out with her magic, lifting the little girl's hood away from her face with one gentle push.

The young face that gazed back at her was human in the same way Celestia and Luna were ponies. Her hair was long, cascading behind her and down her back. Some of it was bright blonde, though an equal measure seemed transparent, thin strands of what humans called fiber-optic cable. Light shone from the tips of these strands, like little yellow stars in her hair. There were strange patterns on and under her skin, very faint. They looked a little like the tracings of human circuits. As Twilight watched, light seemed to pass between them, like some complex machine. Only there was nothing cybernetic about her. The fibers grew from her scalp with no sign of having been put there just as the circuits seemed to have grown as part of her.

The girl's eyes were gray, and the strange circuit patterns were quite pronounced. No wonder this girl had been hiding her face. To Twilight's magical senses, it was as though a veil had been lifted. Scales fell from her eyes and she saw this girl was wrought as much from the magic of the tree as she was flesh. "Second Chance?"

In answer, the little girl wrapped her arms around Twilight's neck, and clung to her like a monkey on a tree. As though she were afraid Twilight would vanish if she didn't watch Twilight every second.

Twilight responded by wrapping the girl in her wing, sheltering her as she had done so many times before. "You've been alive? All this time, and you've been alive?"

She could feel the child shake her head. "Only the last... while." She turned, looking out through Twilight's feathers. "How long has it been, Truth?"

There was the brief sensation of a spell, and suddenly the other child was beside them. His hood was down now too, and Twilight recognized a face the perfect twin of the girl. His hair was shorter, but had it not been for that it might have been difficult to tell them apart. "Sixteen days, three hours, nine minutes, fifty-eight seconds." He folded his arms across his chest. Wearing his jacket, the gesture only made him look more absurd. "Not that I've been counting."

"We waited," Chance's voice went on. Now that Twilight heard it, she wasn't sure how she hadn't recognized it immediately. "I thought you'd come. You, or one of my friends. I didn't want to go anywhere, in case I missed you."

Twilight wasn't sure how long she held on, except that it wasn't nearly long enough. She let go. "You could come back with me." She glanced at the girl again, sizing up her strange appearance, though she didn't actually remark on how strange she looked. A living machine was not something you saw every day. "It wouldn't be hard."

Truth moved to stand beside the girl Chance had become. They were exactly the same height, despite the apparent difference in their sexes. Of course, they weren't old enough for the biggest sexual differences to have become obvious yet. Humans were confusing that way. "It wouldn't be hard," he repeated, his tone too sounding familiar despite being so much higher in pitch. "It would be impossible. Twilight, have you ever seen Luna or Celestia leave your universe? What about the others who worked that spell?" He shook his head, not giving her a chance to answer. "You never will."

Twilight's ears drooped at this news. "Oh. Well... what will you do? If you can't come back to Equestria... your star seems to be handling itself just fine, and the moon looks steady."

They shrugged, a perfectly timed and unified gesture even though neither of them could see the other from where they were standing. "Earth isn't Equestria," Truth said, after a time. "It doesn't depend on us doing anything to remain functional. But..."

Chance gestured up at the sky. "It's a big universe." She sat down beside Twilight, resting her back on Twilight's flank. Truth manfully remained standing, though he was clearly shivering no less than his... what, sister? "I always liked the idea of exploring it."

"And that leaves me to keep an eye on things here." There was no delay between them, and when they spoke like that, it seemed almost as though she was hearing two halves of the same being, and not two distinct beings. Magically speaking, that was exactly what they were.

"Once you figure out a way to bring magic with us on our starships."

Twilight stayed with them through the night, ignoring her desire to sleep for the company of those she had thought lost and now were found.

Eventually it was starting to get light, as planets with stability in their orbits were wont to do without prompting. "I'll tell everypony you're okay," Twilight said, sweeping Chance into one last hug. "But is there anything specific I should tell anypony?"

The girl seemed to think very seriously about this for a long time, her face wrinkled with intense concentration. "Tell Celestia this city would be a great place for an embassy." She glanced over her shoulder towards the tree. "The magic's better than on the moon. I have a feeling that the humans living there are going to want to come back down here, the more magic they feel from the ponies passing through."

Twilight nodded. "What did you do? About humans, I mean. Some of the people I've met seem to be responding to magic. They don't seem to be mutating, at least not that I can see."

Truth put a hand on Chance's shoulder as he answered. "We're still figuring that out."

"Really?" Twilight raised her eyebrows. "You mean you don't know something?"

Truth said nothing, but Chance did. "The spell doesn't seem to know the difference between the ones with real brains and the ones with circuit brains. The spell hasn't been around long enough to see what it's going to do over time, though."

"Ponies were around before the Tree of Harmony." Truth seemed to recover a little of his confidence. "It took time for the effects of long term magical exposure to be manifest. I'm excited to be around long enough to watch."

"Tell Alexi to visit!" She learned closer, grinning. "Is it true she's an earth pony?" Twilight nodded, and she giggled. "Oh, I hope it takes them forever to work out the kinks in that body-growing stuff!" Then, somewhat more subdued. "Could you tell Scootaloo I'm sorry for crashing her ship? We'll make her a new one."

"A better one!"

Chance nodded. "And of course... tell my mom I'm gonna miss her."

Twilight sniffed. "I... I think she knows." To her great pride, Twilight managed not to cry again. "I would stay if I could. Two days back are going to feel like years."

Truth tilted his head quizzically. "Why are you flying? Don't you know the gating spell?" He gestured around. "There's magic here. Just because the human portal opens onto the moon doesn't mean you have to use it."

Twilight smiled ruefully. "Why didn't I think of that?"

"Because you're an inferior organic. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

Chance shoved him sideways. "Ignore him, he's just mad that he can't call me that anymore. For the longest time that was all he said, and now he doesn't know what to do with himself."

"Oh, she's still inferior, just not strictly organic." Truth pushed his twin right back. Chance was ready for him though, and stepped sideways as he shoved. As a result he stumbled, and very nearly fell. Twilight caught him in her magic, setting him on his feet.

"You've been alive for sixteen days, and you already forgot everything I taught you about friendship?"

Chance looked down, as many a child caught in the act of disobedience had done before her. "We just aren't used to talking. We don't really do it unless someone else is around."

Twilight rose to her hooves, and tried to look as stern as she could. "Well, if you can't come with me, then I'm going to expect you to start writing letters; regularly. Letters about friendship." She fixed her eyes on Truth. "Is it safe to assume you can get a data connection with Canterlot?" At his shame-faced nod, she went right on. "Every week, Chance. Unless you think you're done being my apprentice."

Chance shook her head. "I... don't want to be."

"Good." Twilight closed her eyes, concentrating. She hadn't actually performed this spell before, certainly never by herself. She didn't let that stop her. She never had before.

"Twilight?"

She stopped, opening her eyes. "Yeah?"

"If I write letters, will you write back?"

She nodded.

"Then I'll write one every day."

There was a crack, and Twilight stepped through to Ponyville's receiving platform. Humans and ponies alike moved back and forth, each busy with their own business. Twilight glanced over her shoulder at the opening, watching as the light of Celestia's sun shone through the doorway onto Chance's face.

In that instant, with the sun shining on golden hair, Twilight found she couldn't quite tell if she were looking at the face of a pony, or that of an alien. Perhaps both.

This isn't going to work.

So you keep saying.

Just because you want something doesn't mean it will happen that way.

Chance ignored Truth's words, her hands moving rapidly over the half-finished components. There had been a time in her existence where work like this required tools, but those days were gone. Now she could trace her fingers and leave microcircuits in their wake, weld with a pressure and solder with her will. She still had no idea whether she was "alive" by the definition she had always been taught. She had a heartbeat, but sometimes her hands felt more like silicon than skin. She felt no hunger, yet sometimes she snuck a fruit-kabob or small container of popcorn and munched on them anyway.

Truth never ate of course, nor did he sleep. They seemed to need neither, so he left all the "biological" functions to her. Those included hair-brained schemes and wastes of their very limited resources.

There had been a time where Chance's knowledge of hardware engineering was basically zero, when she had depended on the inventions of others. After all, her formal training had first been in quantum computing architectures, and later in thaumaturgy. She was no electrical engineer, no materials scientist.

The being that now thought of herself as Second Chance had no such disciplinary restrictions. Like Truth, she could now simultaneously access all knowledge humanity had ever recorded, without having ever lost her human capacity to combine unrelated information and innovate. As a matter of fact, she had shared that capacity with Truth, along with her ability to cast spells.

Were they the only humans who could use magic? If so, probably not for much longer. In the moment of their spell, they had changed all the radiation on earth's surface into thaumic energy. That action would have consequences, even if the present mechanism they used to do their actual spellcasting was somewhat nebulous. It wasn't like they had horns.

If it doesn't work, we'll salvage the parts for something else.

At their speed of consciousness, words were infuriatingly slow, so they never spoke unless there was someone else around to hear. That didn't happen very often.

We can't salvage the time.

Pft. You're already thousands of years old.

And maybe when you're half my age you'll have the same appreciation for time that I do.

Chance kept right on working, securing the last of the scavenged components to a worn-looking cot, half eaten by mildew and damp. I'll never be half your age, Truth... Unless you sleep for a few millenia. You don't even sleep through a few nights.

Truth might be mocking her, but they both knew it was in kindness. However he might be saying Chance was wasting her time, he also hadn't left her side, and there was no doubt in their mind that he would help her with the actual spell when the moment came.

The conditions are hardly relaxing. These buildings are collapsing. You know how easy it would be to put in a work-order for a shelter. One that won't collapse on us while we're inside.

That was only once. Chance completed her work and climbed onto the cot, folding small arms across her chest. I got us out in time. That rubble couldn't have crushed us if it wanted to.

Truth ignored the remark. This isn't going to work. Just because the science of rifts isn't well-understood yet doesn't mean you can just make them do whatever you want.

But you're going to help anyway. It wasn't a question. Truth answered by helping secure the electrodes to Chance's forehead, brushing long strands of plastic hair out of the way. You know I appreciate you.

Good. Truth sat down, his back sliding against the old bricks. The building they had chosen as their shelter was one of the oldest in the city, one of the most remote, and also apparently one of the most stable. It had been a school, but either the bombs or the climate had done for most of the roof. Only two walls remained, and it was in that corner they sheltered from the wind and the rain.

Not that the cold really bothered them, but being wet hadn't become any less unpleasant.

Might as well do your thing. I'll wake you when it gets light, so you can admit how wrong you were.

She grinned mischievously. We'll see soon enough. Chance closed her eyes, and let herself begin to drift into something like sleep. She didn't know if it was close enough to real sleep to count, but she knew she could dream and that ought to be enough. There was little waiting, no tossing and turning on the positively miserable bed. She willed herself to sleep, and so she slept.

Truth worked calmly, stretching his hands over the empty air and forming the spell there. What took a team of trained unicorns took only one hyper-intelligent personality construct. With the working of his will the world split open. Equestrian starlight came through the opening. Almost lazily, he levitated Chance's homemade transmitter through the opening next to the wall. He could only hope the night would mean no pegasus would fly into the probe while his twin set about her mad purpose.

Second Chance did not have a habit of proving Truth wrong. After all, until very recently a comparison of their intelligence would have left her at a woeful disadvantage. When it came to knowledge she would have drawn the short stick every time. Not now, though. Now she had all his knowledge, all of his intelligence. Nevermind that she didn't understand how to properly utilize either, these days she was about as likely to be right about something as he was.

She found Luna on the moon.

Not Equestria's moon, though, where Luna had tracked the days with a tally that stretched for miles. No, this was the Sea of Tranquility, dark soil broken by the prints of human boots, and the base of an ancient lunar lander that would likely stand in place until the sun ran red and devoured Earth in its orbit.

There had been a time when Chance's entry into a dream came only with the greatest of clumsy effort, and she could only manage when Luna opened the way. That might be true of most dreams still, but not Princess Luna's. Luna had been teaching her oneiromancy for a decade now, and she slipped inside as easily as a ghost. There was no atmosphere, so no footsteps to be heard as she closed the distance.

Luna sat on the edge of a crater. A pile of small stones sat beside her, and with her magic she lifted each in turn, hefting them into the void towards the distant glint of steel and fabric. The rocks tumbled through the void, but none made it so far as the other side of the crater. In that way this was rather like a nightmare, hooves trapped in mud and unable to run. If throwing a stone that far was possible, then it would not be a nightmare.

As she watched, Luna rose angrily to her hooves, lifting a nearby boulder with her mighty magic and roaring in frustration. The bolder shot through the air like a cannon, but stopped short of the edge and began to tumble silently down the side of the crater. "You'll never make it." There was no air, but this was a dream, so such things mattered little.

Just because Chance could slip into a dream did not mean she could conceal her presence. Luna in her own dreams had often been difficult to distinguish from the other characters. Princess Luna, Dreamweaver, recognized an intruder at once. Her stance became defensive, her horn glowing faintly with a spell ready to fire. Chance knew very little of dream combat, except to know that dying meant you woke up. If she did that, the experiment would be a failure and Truth might not help with a second time.

"Who are you?" Luna no longer depended on antiquated language, but that did not mean she sounded any less menacing. "I have not seen your like before; you do not belong here."

Chance wasn't offended. After all, her present form was hardly recognizable. A human child, with flowing golden hair as much data-bearing cable as natural. She had no cutie mark, and wore about as much as she ever had as a pony. Worse, her core, her spirit, her essence, had changed as much as her appearance. She was more than a pony, more than a human, and more than an AI. Had it not been for this last, Luna would have recognized her at once, no matter what body she had.

"I am not a stranger," she squeaked, gesturing around at the endless gray sand, which clung to her skin wherever it touched with a pleasantly cool sensation. "This was my dream before it was yours."

"What?" Luna closed some of the distance, baring down on Chance with eyes like dead stars. "Do not lie, stranger. You cannot be that pony, for the dead never return."

"She didn't die!" Chance protested, indignant. "Not for that long!" Her fear forgotten, Chance folded her arms across her chest and glared up at Luna, full in the face. They had never argued before, not once. "She was only separated! That's not the same thing!"

Some of the fire was suddenly gone from the Alicorn's eyes, though she didn't back away. "Death is not the end of vital functions in a body; it is a separation. Of the living from the world, the body from the spirit. A friend from a friend."

"Then I'm not dead." Chance nodded, calling upon her own magic. With the memory and precision of a machine, it was easy to recall exactly what her old body had looked like, and recreate it almost instantly. She couldn't help it if many of her spells came off like computer programs these days.

In the change, her height had remained about the same. Everything felt the same. There would be no changing shape for Chance, at least not really. She was what she was, and making herself look like a pony did not change the underlying reality that she was not a pony, and could not be ever again.

Chance had not changed for her own benefit. Luna's eyes widened, and the spell faded from her horn. She stared as though she were just seeing her for the first time, and her eyes cut to the quick. Chance did not resist as she felt Luna's magic on her spirit. Instead she held still, as though a dangerous insect had landed on her and the slightest twitch might provoke it to sting. Luna was no insect, but her words would hurt Chance deeper than any poison.

"You."

She nodded. "Me."

"How?"

Chance gestured at the ground in front of them. Her horn didn't glow; even the dream seemed to know she didn't have one anymore. Still the sand rose at her command, forming as though it were the damp soil beside a beach and being carefully shaped by skilled hands. A sculpture of a girl in an overlarge hoodie on her back on a mostly-rotten cot, along with Truth beside her and the opening in the Equestrian sky. It was far more precise than her oneiromancy had ever been, but precision was no longer something Chance lacked.

"Like that. I'm tied to the spell, just like you are. But as you can see, I haven't left Earth." She let the illusion fade, returning to the body that was more truly her own and sitting down on the edge of the cot, legs swinging under her. "I thought it was a good idea. Truth said it was stupid, but... Just wait until I tell him! I bet he won't call me inferior again for an hour, maybe two!"

Luna abruptly closed her wings around her, squeezing the child in a protective embrace. It wasn't quite the same as the sort of hug Twilight might give. Instead of imparting strength to Chance as Twilight had done, Luna clung to her like the last survivor of a disaster. It was as though Princess Luna were the filly, and Chance herself was a stuffed toy. It was a good thing her body was tougher than a real child's, or else she might've had the wind crushed from her lungs.

"You never lacked for ingenuity, Second Chance. Even the immutable is plastic in human hands."

Chance did not squirm or struggle, only wrapped her arms around Luna's neck and waited for the wings to release her. Eventually they did. "Why are you..." Luna took a step back, smoothing her feathers with a wave of magic, and suddenly she was her dignified self again. "The spell we used left its participants largely unchanged. Why aren't you a pony?"

The girl shook herself out, waiting for the feeling to return to her toes. Those wings were stronger than they looked. "It's Earth's spell, we had to make it for Earth's people." Then, somewhat more quietly. "My people." There was a flicker around her, and she was suddenly dressed in the crisp uniform of a Lunar Officer, tailored perfectly and gleaming in the reflected sunlight all around them. "Someone had to speak for them. If I had stayed a pony, I never could have. That was the price I paid."

Chance walked past her companion, back over to the edge of the crater. Luna had sent her favorite sitting bolder miles into the distance, so she leaned against another one. Looking up over the horizon, she could see Earth. It was green now, not gray. The real one didn't look like that yet, but it would. A few centuries, and it would be as green as ever.

Luna followed her, to the edge of the crater and the slope beyond. "You seem younger. That was no part of the spell."

"No." She admitted. "Truth didn't put it in either. He didn't put in anything about keeping us alive, yet here we are." Chance leaned a little to the side.

"I guess it's because we're kinda like humanity itself. Truth and me, I mean." She turned her head, looking up into the trillions of familiar stars. "For two hundred and fifty thousand years we barely scraped by, and there was no guarantee your kids would have a better life than you did. Then, few hundred years ago, we go from almost all farmers to an industrial society, accumulating knowledge faster and faster every day. Prometheus put the ember in our hand and we don't really understand how to use it."

"Sometimes people got hurt. Not all our inventions were good ones. Sometimes we mess things up pretty bad, and it never took much to get us killing each other." She sat up, and the uniform was gone. "Ponies... Ponies know what they are. You've already decided... and to me, you're something pretty good. But humans haven't yet, and we might be anything. We might be good, or we might not."

She shook her head, sending little glowing plastic strands all down her back. "It's not really up to me what humanity grows up to be. But I can pick what I choose to be. If it's okay with you-" she reached out, extending a small hand. "Friends?"

Author's Notes:

Well, that's it. Seven months in the making, and Harmony Defended has finally come to a close. I'd like to thank those pre-readers who made it through the whole story for their fantastic efforts, as well as the wonderful Zutcha for the artwork. I'd also like to thank those readers devoted enough to stay with me through this adventure, particularly those who spoke up with how they felt every now and again. It's more true than you know that this story wouldn't exist without you. Many of the plot-developments we ended up seeing actually have their roots in the comments and discussion of this story and of MLA, though I won't go into specifics. I feel derivative enough as it is just writing human-in-equestria.

Next week I'll release this story's oneshot sequel, Pax Humana, to gauge interest in future installments in the chronology and to tie up a few of the last loose-ends this story left behind. The story is told entirely from the perspective of Sweetie Belle, about a decade after the war is over. I very nearly included it as part of this story, except that it's entirely disconnected from the events and really forms a coherent narrative of its own.

Following that, I'm going to take a break for the first week of January (Birthday gift to myself?), before setting to work on revising My Little Apprentice. I've already made most of the changes; I'll probably post the new prologue and edit most of the chapters as a single week's update, or perhaps two weeks. Starting next year, I think I'll post my updates on Monday instead of Saturday, in order to give more time to my editor-peoples, as well as giving people something to read during downtime at work/school instead of competing for limited leisure time on weekends (and competing with new episodes come spring).

I have a little passion project I may post before My Little Apprentice: Apogee (current working title), a retelling of Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Insmouth" starring the human world's Twilight Sparkle as she investigates the strange occurrences in Canterlot as described in the two Equestria Girls movies. I'm not really sure anybody is interested in reading this, but it seems like such a good idea I'd like to write it anyway, so I might. Guess we'll see. And in case you're wondering, no that wouldn't be considered part of the cannon of the MLA-verse.

To the devoted reader, thank you. You shall be hearing again from me shortly, I have no doubt. There are many stories yet to tell.