Luna ran.

Beams of pale moonlight glanced through gaps in trees and bushes that lined a well-trodden dirt path. Luna’s hooves beat against the hard-packed soil, sending plumes of dust rushing up around her. The only sound in the entire forest was her running, the rest was silent as death.

Leaves brushed her flanks, and limbs rushed out in front of her to lash at the mare’s exposed sides. She could see . . . something . . . flitting through the trees, moving as silently as a shadow across still water. It reached for her, and Luna ran harder.

She ran until all she could hear was the pound of her heart in ears. Her breath came in shallow gasps and her lungs burned, but she pressed herself onwards. She could feel the darkness closing in, could feel it rushing towards her like a wave upon the beach.

For a moment, Luna thought she could get away. Then, the dirt path ended in a wall of oak and poplar and mesquite, a prison of forest laced with vines and shrubs. The mare skidded to a stop and beat her hooves against it. She tried to raise her magic to clear it, but found she had no horn. A look back confirmed her fears, that her wings were gone and replaced with smooth fur.

The mare pressed herself against the wall as the darkness approached. It gathered together and coalesced itself into the shape of a pony that rose high above Luna. Violet eyes stared down at her, stared right through her skin and down into her soul.

The alicorn made of darkness smiled, a golden crown on its forehead. “We’re more alike than you think.”

---

Luna’s eyes snapped open. She forced herself to take deep breaths to stop her heart from hammering. Sweat ran in rivulets down her forehead, and her back felt clammy against the leather-padded seat she had chosen at the spaceport hours before.

She sat near the back of the spacecraft, strapped into a leather couch while a silver tube rocketed away from the world below a hundred times faster than any pegasus ever could. A single mare with silver boots that stuck to the faux-carpet aisle was serving drinks near the front of the lounge.

Most ponies around her had fallen asleep like she had, most with plugs in their ears to handle the pressure and drown at the sound of the engines far behind them. Luna could hear their gentle hum behind her, and knew they would reach the moon soon.

Luna reached over and pressed a button on the smooth, curved wall to her right. The beige wall flickered and was replaced with a hologram representation of what was outside the spacecraft. She could see the lunar surface start to fly by, packed with craters and flurries of dust left in the rocket’s wake. She had once known every inch of the moon by name, but those memories had died with Nightmare Moon. They were only hazy memories now, like a dream within a dream.

A light flashed on the console of her seat and a voice came from speakers around the cabin: “Attention passengers, Flight 9732 has begun its descent to the Deckard Corporation Headquarters Spaceport, and will arrive in approximately five minutes. All luggage will be unloaded into baggage trams that will meet you in the terminal. Have a nice day, and thank you for flying with White Unicorn.”

Passengers around the cabin snorted and blinked their way out of sleep. Chatter rose into a loud hum as business ponies around Luna greeted one another and talked shop while the spacecraft braked toward the spaceport.

Luna looked out the holographic window again. The spaceport was in view now, a sprawling complex of squat, gray buildings clustered around a massive tower of steel and blinking lights that rose far above the lunar surface. Metal rockets that looked as small as sewing needles stuck out from the docking tower, held in place by massive clamps in the low gravity of the moon’s upper atmosphere.

The rocket Luna rode spun upside down and twisted itself in thin atmosphere to align itself to a docking station. The dampeners inside the spaceship kept ponies from feeling the movements, but Luna had to turn off the window before she got sick.

“First time flying?” the stewardess asked her, appearing almost out of nowhere at the alicorn’s side.

Luna shook her head. “No, but I haven’t been here in . . . ages.”

The mare seemed to finally notice that Luna’s wings weren’t fake, and quietly excused herself from the former princess’ presence.

Luna pretended to not notice her disappearance, and lay back in her seat to wait for docking. She didn’t have to wait long, as there was soon a massive jolt and the sound of clamps snapping shut on the sides of the rocket. The ship came to a complete stop, and all was still for a short time.

Then ponies scrambled out of their seats, grabbing luggage and hurrying into the aisles. Luna let them push and shove out the door before standing up on her own. Besides her white sash and blue pass card, she carried nothing with her.

She walked to the end of the aisle and out the door, bidding the pilots a goodbye. They didn’t say anything in return. Her hooves stuck against the special carpet inside the docking tube. It held her in place as she walked to the end and looked down.

The center hall of the docking tower faced straight down, but had compensated the gravity so it felt like anypony in the hallway was walking straight across the ground instead of stuck to the side of a tower. Luna closed her eyes as she transferred from the tube to the hallway, and for a moment felt like she was falling, before her hooves adjusted. When she opened her eyes, she was standing on the floor of a large hall filled with boarding gates and ponies who milled about or ran to their waiting spacecraft.

A tram ran through the middle of the spaceport, stopping every ten gates or so to let out a colorful crowd of ponies and let more in. Some ponies stood near the gates where ponies were exiting and held up signs with names on them.

There was no sign with Luna’s name on it. She didn’t know why she was surprised, but she still checked a second time to be sure. For some reason, her heart sunk a little when she realized nopony was waiting for her.

Luna sighed and walked toward a tram station across from her gate. She stood on plastic tile and waited. Some ponies took off on their own with real or hard-light wings, while others pulled up news stations or games on their personal displays.

Though her own display was flashing a dull green with unread messages ready to be piped into her retina monitor, Luna resisted and waited in silence. She wouldn’t let herself be distracted from the importance of her visit. Besides, she figured, most of the news would probably be about the trial about to take place, and she knew far more about that than any online news source ever would.

A fireapple-red tram stopped in front of Luna, and a door on its side hissed open. Luna stepped into the cramped, all-white interior and had to keep her head down or her horn would scrape the ceiling. She looked up at a flashing map projected from the ceiling. The final destination of the tram was listed as: “Deckard Corporation, Executive Services.”

Luna allowed herself a smile as the tram took off down the tower.

---

Mirrored elevator doors opened in front of Luna, and let the former princess out onto the top floor of a pyramidal building that stood atop the rim of the crater the lunar base sat in. The arched windows at the far end of the executive office gave a view of the basin below and a starry vista far beyond.

Luna’s hooves made soft tapping sounds against the room’s polished tile floor. She walked between four great pillars that stretched up toward the ceiling, towering above the small alicorn below them. Light came from old-world lamps placed on a massive oak desk at the far end of the room.

The desk sat between two pedestals, each containing a carved bust. One of the Empress, and one of Princess Twilight. Their cold, stony gazes met Luna’s, and she lowered her eyes to the floor.

With her eyes bent low, Luna managed to spot what she wouldn’t have been able to see before. She stopped, dead in her tracks. As she watched, a large turtle with a mottled green and gold shell slouched out from behind the desk. It looked up at her with glassy eyes and moved its mouth, as if to say hello.

“Do you like my tortoise?”

A hidden door at the back of the room clicked shut.

Luna didn’t look away. “It’s artificial?”

“Of course it is.”

“Expensive?”

“Very.”

A stallion stepped into the light beside Luna, a smile on his face. Cerulean eyes sized her up behind thick, old fashioned glasses set on a maroon face. He pressed a hoof to his head and bowed before her. “Dr. Vangelis, at your service, Princess.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Nopony has called me that for some time.”

The stallion chuckled and walked around her to his desk. He reached down to pet the turtle, then leaned against the desk. “They say to dress for the job you want, and my, my, how you’ve done that quite well.”

“The last pony to see me this way was your ancestor, Tyrell,” Luna said, “and that was a very long time ago. It is . . . good . . . to see that I am still accepted here, after all this time.”

“Why wouldn’t you be?” Vangelis reached with his teeth—not with any magical device—to pick up a small teapot from the edge of his desk, and poured the thick, brown tea into two ceramic cups. He slid one across the desk to Luna. “You were the one who risked herself to sell the Deckard Corporation your shares of the moon, and look at the price you have paid. The price you continue to pay.”

Luna glanced out the window, and watched flying buses speed through the thin atmosphere over the colony. “Tyrell and I both knew it was about far more than land on the moon.”

“And yet they say the Empress hasn’t smiled since that day—not really anyway—the day her sister left for a second time.”

“Is this going to be some sort of empathy test?” Luna asked. “We both have our side of the argument. We fought, I left, and that’s all it’s been for the past three centuries.”

“Is that so?” Vangelis sipped at his tea, and licked his lips. “Was it guilt or pride, then, that caused you to spend the past three centuries in Manehattan, withering away and refusing every call the Deckard Corporation sent?”

Luna didn’t say a word. Instead, she raised the ceramic cup of her tea to her lips in a cloud of magic. She took a sip, and let the murky liquid run down her throat. It was thick and sweet, with a little hint of lavender.

“I did not agree to host you here today for a lecture, however,” Vangelis said at last. “I am too old for such things, and I would only have secondhoof knowledge to go on. No, I am here today because you had a . . . favor?”

“A request,” Luna said.

“Right, right.”

She took a deep breath, then let it out. “I come here not for myself, but because I am to represent a very special defendant in an upcoming court case against my sister. A case in which the Deckard Corporation will have a personal stake in.”

“Oh?” Vangelis smiled. “Do tell.”

“The defendant is an android by the name of Silicon Sapphire,” Luna said. “One of your models, I’m told. She requested me that I come to you personally.”

“She? You mean the android sent you here?”

“Yes, Ms. Sapphire seemed to believe that you have access to data banks that we can use.”

Vangelis grinned and lowered himself into a thick, padded chair behind the desk. He leaned back and pressed his forehooves together beneath his chin. “An android guiding the former princess . . . it’s like the blind leading the blind,” he murmured. “Imagine that, a real progress in AI. The ability to think for itself.”

“That’s what this court case is all about,” Luna interjected. “If Sapphire wins, it’s a win for all sentient machines, android and AI. My sister has refused to remove her archaic laws for too long, and this court case can finally get things moving again.”

“She did it for love.”

“What?”

“Your android friend. She did it for love, didn’t she?”

“How did you—”

Vangelis laughed. “Know about it? That was always the impetus of our ‘smart’ AI to gain true intelligence. Whether it was a love for a pony, an object, or an ideal, love was always the first.”

He gazed out the window for a moment. “It’s love in its most juvenile form: Imperfect, untested, and ill-prepared. Yet, there is something beautiful in its simplicity, no?”

“I suppose.” Luna rubbed one hoof over the other. “So will you help? The Deckard Corporation would benefit more from the freedom of its androids and AI than the monarchy controlling it. Without the monarchy limiting how many you make, what upgrades you can give, and the limits of droid abilities, the possibilities are endless. All I need are the memory banks for Silicon Sapphire.”

“So you might think,” Vangelis said. “But whatever your motivations, the Deckard Corporation does not forget its friends. You gave us the moon, so it is the least I can do to let you peruse AI data banks.” He tapped a few keys on the top of his desk and a red line flashed on the floor. The line ran away from his desk and to the elevator.

“Follow this and it will lead you straight to the memory storage room. You can access your friend’s memory from the central database.”

Luna bowed her head. “I thank you for this, Vangelis. If there is ever anything you need—”

“No, no, let me stop you there.” Vangelis held up a hoof. “I am a stallion who likes to repay his debts, not take on more. We are even now, and I would like to stay that way.”

Luna nodded and turned. She kept her eyes locked on the glowing line on the floor, and headed back toward the elevators at the far end of the room. She had expected their conversation to be over, so she was surprised when the stallion called after her one last time.

“Oh, and do be careful of your sister,” he said to her. “She may yet still love you, but a trial in Canterlot is not going to let her be anything but the Empress everypony is expecting.”

The elevator doors slid shut behind Luna, and the car whisked her down the spine of the Deckard Corporation tower. No music played inside, just a silence that left Luna alone to her thoughts.

---

The elevator glided down the Deckard Corporation tower, diving deeper and deeper into its depths. The building spread out like an iceberg underneath the moon’s surface. The elevator car turned tracks and moved horizontally over offices and testing bunkers. Luna could feel the shifts in movement, but only heard a smooth rumble.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, the elevator came to a jolting stop. The mirrored doors slid open and let a harsh blue light into the car. Luna turned her head away for a moment until her eyes adjusted.

Towering server banks stood in long rows across a cavernous room. Blue lights glowed and flickered across the towers, casting the dark room in a harsh aqua glow. The room was empty of any workers, the only sign of life a flickering screen near the center of the room. The database Vangelis had told her about, Luna assumed.

The sound of her hooves against the hard, tile floor was lost in the noise of whirring fans and humming electronics. Despite the fans, the room was swelteringly hot and sweat began to bead on Luna’s forehead.

“The things I’m doing for that android,” she muttered.

She reached the database at the center of the room. It was a short tower of electronic data banks with a glowing screen perched on top. An archaic finish to the otherwise modern database, complete with a hard light keyboard.

Luna pressed one hoof against the flat panel in the middle of the keyboard. The silver horseshoe around her hoof sparked to life, and five metal appendages extended out of the shoe. The circuits connected to Luna’s eyes and brain lit up, and together with the shoe allowed her to type.

“S-I-L-I-C-O-N, space, S-A-P-P-H-I-R-E,” she muttered under her breath.

The screen flashed for a few moments, then lit up with a files database of all the catalogued memories of the android mare. Finding the AI file was a simple task, as Luna simply selected the folder with the largest file size. She selected the program to run it, and stepped back.

A projector on the side of the database tower came to life, flashing white as it powered up. Luna’s heart beat faster and her stomach sank to her fetlocks. She didn’t have any time to rethink her decision, however, as the projector breathed life into the room in a flurry of static imagery.

Blue beams of light danced across the moving image of an ivory-coated mare, with a smooth, violet mane above piercing eyes the color of a smooth mountain lake. Rarity blinked for a few seconds, looking around the room before her gaze—or rather, the camera in the projector—settled on Luna.

“Princess!” she said. “It’s . . . you! What are you doing here? Where am I?”

“You’re in the underground data banks of the Deckard Corporation, up on the moon.” Luna raised an eyebrow. “And ‘Princess?’”

The hologram picture of Rarity flickered and waved in the air. She looked around the dark, uniform room, and trotted slowly around Luna. “Well it is still your title in some circles,” she murmured. She reached out a hoof to brush against one of the server towers. “We’re in Deckard Corp?”

“I came all the way to the moon to see you.”

Her face lowered. “So something has happened, then. Something bad, yes?”

“I’m afraid so,” Luna said.

Rarity’s mane glowed light blue in the beams of light that speared through her. She was caught like a mote in a sunbeam, and hung in the air with her hooves off the ground. She floated around as if she were a ghost, her hologram projector softly whirring as it followed her movements.

“I . . . know . . . this is my backup,” Rarity said. “I can feel the empty spaces in my memories, and how dreadfully sluggish my core functions are. If I’m like this, that could only mean . . .”

She gasped, and turned to Luna. “Did something happen to Sapphire?”

Luna hesitated, then nodded her head.

“What happened? Is she alright?”

“She’s in a holding cell,” Luna said. “She’s awaiting a trial right now, and so are you. They’ve got your core locked up tight, so I had to come all the way up here to talk to you.”

“A trial?” Rarity cried. “If she’s in a trial and they’re holding me too, that means . . .” Her face darkened. “Oh no.”

Luna watched the hologram waver, then cut out entirely. The hologram continued to flash white, but no image came out. So, the former princess waited while the Rarity AI worked. The hum of servers enveloped her once again, so she closed her eyes.

Memories came unbidden to her, as they often did. Dreams of skyscrapers that reached up like gleaming swords to pierce the heavens. Thick rain clouds gathered around them and dropped torrents of rain onto streets darkened with grime and dust. Luna could see it in her mind, but it was not the only thing she saw.

Because when she stared long enough into her memories, entwined with dreams, she could see the little things that made that city possible. The mares and stallions who prodded on the streets and holed up in their apartments against the rains and snows and ice that came seasons after season. They were the lifeblood of Manehattan, and Luna had watched them come and go over the long centuries of her isolation.

Thinking of them, even in a dry server room on the moon, brought her a warm feeling in her chest.

Luna opened her eyes to check if Rarity was done, but had a moment of terror and surprise when she looked around. Instead of standing in a server room, she appeared to be in the middle of a verdant green field that rolled and banked over short hills out in the distance. A piercing blue sky towered above her, free of clouds.

Rarity stood beside her. “It seems even the company knows how dreary being in a server room can be,” she said. “Projector tiles aren’t exactly rare, but to cover a room in them . . . well, we must truly be on the moon.”

“Not something you’d see in Manehattan, I can tell you that,” Luna said. She took a seat in the “grass” next to Rarity. In her alicorn form, her head was about even with the unicorn mare’s sitting down.

“I looked over my files,” Rarity said. “I spliced them as best I could with Sapphire’s.”

“And?” Luna asked.

“What I discovered was not what I hoped.”

“So you know about the attempted escape?”

“Y-es, from what I can make of it. I know that I wanted to go with Sapphire, that I practically instructed her to take me.” She hesitated. “That she got caught.”

“It’s alright—”

“Princess, you and I are both far too old for useless banter,” Rarity said. She settled on her haunches in the grass. She gazed out into the distance, over a lone hill that rolled on to oblivion.

Luna wondered, briefly, if Rarity could feel the warm sun and soft grass that the computer created. If only she could, the former princess would have joined her.

“I know it seems silly, the relationship,” Rarity began. “To be close to another pony this way, after so many years . . . especially one much younger than me . . . I know well that many looked down on it. Still look down on it.”

Luna watched two bluejays fly high above them, diving and weaving around in each other in a silent dance. They wheeled over the field the two ponies sat in, and landed on a hill to their right. They began to chirp, a soft ringing sound that echoed over the field.

“Ponies look down on many things, even these days,” Luna said. “I came here to defend your right to do this, remember?”

“Did you?” Rarity sighed, and shook her head. “No, no, never mind that. Never look a suitor in the mouth, yes?”

Luna nodded. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.” She stopped for a moment, then asked: “If you don’t mind me prying, how did you and Sapphire, um, you know . . .”

“Become an item?” Rarity rolled her eyes. “After a millenia, I’ve ceased to have shame about these things, darling. Though, I’m afraid if you are looking for a singular moment or event when we came together, you’ll be disappointed. We just . . . were. Everyday, Sapphire would come to do maintenance on my server, and I would look forward to seeing her a little more. I would monitor the way she spoke to me, how she fawned over me and told me how she adored me. I would play those recordings over and over.

“All those moments in time built up, until one day we were . . . together. There is little more than that, Princess.”

“If you weren’t artificial, nopony would see it as so bad,” Luna remarked.

Rarity looked down. “An unfortunate truth. I was told that I could not love, that I am not Rarity. That I am just a ghost in her shell.”

The fields of grass on the horizon turned brown, and began to dry up. The sky darkened into an inky blackness and the ground hardened into gray, steel plates. Windows and walls sprung from the ground and encased Luna and Rarity, while the sky outside enveloped the ground. Bright stars flickered to life in the projection, and a giant planet spun beneath them.

Luna could see the ice that topped mountain ranges and the great ranges of green forest and jungle that stretched over the world. A world all too familiar to her, as it was the same she had watched over for a millenia.

“A space station?” she asked.

Rarity crossed one leg over the other. “Sometimes it helps me think if I get a little perspective.”

From up above, Luna watched clouds roll over the pampas of southern Rio de la Yegua. The white puffs cast long shadows over the flat grasslands that stretched on between two mountain chains.

“I understand,” Luna said. “If I had the option, I would too.”

“Even after spending so long watching down?”

“It would be . . . better . . . to do it without eyes full of hate.”

Rarity nodded. She pressed a hoof against the glass, and was silent for a moment. It was unsettling, how no sound came from her holographic form.

Without turning her head, she asked, “Do you have any plans for the upcoming trial? I can help you as best I can in my other, more complete form back in Canterlot, but I can’t promise you anything.”

“I’m still thinking of a defense.” Luna hung her head. “Though, there isn’t much I know about this. I can argue until I’m blue in the face about how you have a right to love, but it will all come down to the court claiming that you were only programmed to feel that way.”

“Wasn’t I?” Rarity asked, her voice just above a whisper. “Was this inevitable, that these feelings of love are a pre-programmed reaction?”

“Vangelis doesn’t seem to think so.”

“Are you sure he’s not just telling you that?”

“Are you?”

The sun peaked out from across the horizon of the planet below them. A white-hot ball of flame, Celestia’s power brought it over the grass-swept planet below to warm the fields and cities, to bake the concrete and boil the water. The transparent aluminum windows darkened to keep out the glare.

Rarity sighed. “At this point, I no longer care if it was programmed into me or not. I just don’t want to be at that castle any longer, or away from Sapphire. Will you be able to fight for that?”

“I’ll try,” Luna said, “but it won’t be easy. All the judges in Canterlot do whatever my sister says, and right now Celestia is going to have to be harsh on us to save face. They’ll ignore whatever pleas you have, and decide the outcome for themselves.”

“Is it really that grim?” Rarity asked.

Luna nodded. “Why do you think I moved to Manehattan centuries ago? Canterlot has the glitz and glamor, but the real life is out east.”

“So I’ve been told.” Rarity paused for a moment. “May I ask you a personal question?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“In all those years in Manehattan, Princess, did you ever find somepony? To be with, I mean?”

Luna stared out the window. “No.”

“But surely, after so long—”

“I made it my duty to protect and observe the ponies of Manehattan where the government couldn’t,” Luna told her. “It didn’t leave much time for personal matters.”

“Didn’t it get lonely?” Rarity asked.

“Sometimes.”

“And you weren’t tempted?”

“Never.”

“Are you sure?”

Luna glared at her, but said nothing. Rarity smirked, but kept quiet as well. The both of them stood a couple hooves apart, watching the world spin below them.

“So if you spent so much time in Manehattan, then the ponies there know you well,” Rarity said.

“Yeah, as well as they can know me,” Luna said.

Rarity raised an eyebrow. “So . . . why not move the trial to Manehattan? Even if you’re a princess-in-exile, you can still call for the trial to be moved.”

“That wouldn’t solve much.” Luna clenched her jaw. “In the event that I request the trial be moved, Celestia herself becomes the judge. We both know where she stands on the whole matter.”

“But your jury would be from Manehattan,” Rarity insisted. “It’s the best chance we’ve got at the moment. Won’t you take the request?”

“I—”

The door to the server room opened, casting a harsh light into the room. Rarity’s hologram flickered and died, along with the illusion around Luna. The former princess let out a startled cry and rubbed her eyes as the space station disappeared and was replaced by rows of server databases.

She turned to see Vangelis stepping through the open doorway, a silver tray levitating in front of him. A wry grin was spread across his face, underneath a pair of thick glasses.

“I trust your talks went well?” he asked.

Luna glared at him as he walked over. “It was, until you interrupted them. Rarity and I weren’t done.”

“Ah, but you were,” he said. “I heard what she said, what you now know. It’s enough for you to go off of, without the extended conversation.”

Luna nodded her head toward the silver tray. He offered her a glass cup filled with dark alcohol, and she raised the glass with her magic. “So you believe in her idea? To move the case to Manehattan?”

“It’s the best hope you’ve got, and I don’t say that lightly,” Vangelis said.

“Then I suppose I don’t have a choice, do I?” Luna took a sip of the alcohol. “If I may confess, I’m not even sure I should have gotten into this in the first place.”

Vangelis eyed her. “It is a decision fit for a princess. I can only hope you still uphold those values after so long.”

Luna took another sip. “I do.”

“Good.” Vangelis smiled. “I’ll message the castle. You should get back to the spaceport, Princess. The next rocket for Manehattan leaves in two hours.”

Luna nodded and walked past him toward the door. She stopped for a moment, and turned back to Vangelis. “By the way, the holographic plates in this room are phenomenal.”

Vangelis stared at her for a minute, then raised an eyebrow. “Yes, yes they are.”

He watched her out of the room, and chuckled to himself when the door slid shut behind her.

---

Sapphire Silicon lay down on the floor of her cell. The hard plastic gave her little comfort, but it was better than standing. She looked out of the clear cell wall and to the empty room outside. Princess Luna had been gone for almost a day, and nopony had given her any news.

She sighed to herself. “Maybe the court forgot about this whole thing altogether . . .”

Her solitary thoughts were interrupted when the door to the cell appeared, and slid open to let in a pony from the outside. Sapphire was quick to get to her feet and watch for any signs of the princess.

A former princess did come through the door, but not the one she expected.

Empress Celestia stepped through the door to the holding cells, having to bend down to not hit her crown on the frame. Her golden shoes rattled on the floor, and her eyes trained on Sapphire. She was silent until she reached the wall to the cell.

“Still here, I see,” she said.

Sapphire shrugged. “Nowhere else to be, especially not with your guards waiting outside for me.”

“They have been trained well.” No emotion showed on Celestia’s face, and her mouth was kept in a neutral line. Only her eyes tracked the android. “The same cannot be said for all my subjects.”

“If the Empress came here to insult me, the Empress will leave disappointed,” Sapphire said.

Celestia tapped a hoof against the transparent aluminum wall. Green lights flickered across it, squealing messages to her in hues of red and blue. After pressing several more buttons, the wall hissed and began to slide away, opening the cell.

“Hey, what is this?” Sapphire asked, a tinge of fear in her voice.

“The trial has been moved,” Celestia said. “My sister has elected to bring the case into the courts of Manehattan, where I will serve as the judge. A jury will be appointed from the citizens in the town.”

Sapphire stared at her. “You mean, I won’t have the trial here.”

“That is correct.”

“Will Rarity be brought to Manehattan as well?”

“She is to be seen before the judge and jury as well as you, so yes.” Celestia nodded her head to a small platoon of guards that stood outside the door. They rushed in, guns drawn, and surrounded Sapphire.

“The trial starts tomorrow,” Celestia said, turning away. “If I were you, I would take some time to prepare.”

With a swish of her tail, the Empress departed from the room. Sapphire was left to the guards, but her mind was elsewhere.

Manehattan! She was going to Manehattan!

Sapphire Silicon, dragged in chains through the castle, smiled.