“Remember, girls,” said Dad. “I’m technically not supposed to be doing this, so don’t tell your friends.”

Dad had his own way of telling jokes.

“What is this, the tenth time?” asked my big sister, Compass.

Dad smiled his funny smile - it wasn’t too big, but just enough to show a faint row of shiny teeth in the darkness. His quiet chuckle wasn’t very loud, either, but it bounced all around the room, so that it felt like there were a thousand Dads talking to you at once.

I peeked over Compass’s fuzzy yellow mane from where I sat on her back. In the concrete-covered darkness, there it was - Dad’s precious Predator Submarine. The Zynthonite-reinforced carapace was painted a dark green, covered in places with bands of black and blue. Dad’s cutie mark lay over the smoothly curved bow of the vessel, a white moon and two stars balanced between the Predator’s frontal diving fins.

“It can’t be... must be the eleventh or something. Some big number that would get you in trouble of I told somepony.”

“Dad!” said Compass, but he only snickered, and waltzed up the curved side of his third child.

There was a little red light on the side of the conning tower, barely visible against the paint. Dad reached into his cargo vest and pulled out a card. Compass stared at him with a lovingly annoyed expression while he flipped the card over his head and caught it in his rear hoof. He then bucked the side of the submarine with the card still in it. Flying off the sub, he landed gracefully on the deck while the tiny access hatch hissed open and the conning tower’s light turned on.

Compass stomped her hooves idly, the sides of her mouth curving upwards. I tried to clap my hooves, but I almost fell off, so I didn’t.

Dad gave a little bow, then waltzed back up to the now-open access port and suck his head in. Compass turned her blond locks around and winked at me. Dad stuck both his hooves into the chute, and pulled his torso in. However, his moon-spread flank smacked against the edge of the craft, and left his legs dangling in the air, flopping away.

Compass began to snicker under her breath. I just put my biggest, widest smile on my face.

A little wiggling and pushing later, and his flopping legs finally managed to fall through into the actual vessel. Instantly, he popped back up, poofy hair and all.

“Looks like you’re getting fat, Dad,” said Compass, climbing up to the side with three hooves, one of them trying to balance five-year old me.

Dad said nothing, only smiling.

Compass hoisted me off her back and pointed me headfirst into the access port. I felt Dad’s soft hooves catch me on the other side, and passed through the sixteen-millimeter thick armor plate in one swift strike.

Dad sent me down, winked at me, and turned back to the access port. He beckoned to Compass.

Being a five-year-old blank flank puts me at the weaker end of the strength spectrum, but even so it took every ounce of force we could muster to pull Compass into the sub. Her flank simply would not budge. Dad must’ve at least dislocated one of her legs trying to pull her in. I still have a few of his curly tail-hails.

“Now who’s the fatty?” said Dad once Compass had fallen in, chafe marks all over her compassy cutie mark.

“Har, har, har,” said Compass, trying to get up and nearly smacking her horn against the periscope.

I hopped after Dad, who had already trotted downstairs. The crew area was a bit messy - Dad’s bunk in particular still had a yummy-looking plastic carton of cupcakes on it. Others had miscellaneous bottles and magazines on them, with pictures of things Dad told me not to look at.

There was a viewscreen at the bow end of the sub with a set of control sticks and a wall of buttons. To the left, there was the door to the torpedo room, which Dad never let us enter. To the left of that was a brightly-lit metal table that was bolted to the solid metal floor. Maps and papers covered every available inch, fighting for space with a bottle of cider and a weathered bobblehead of a night-blue alicorn.

Next to that there was a computer terminal mounted on the wall with a bunch of numbers and letters on it that I couldn’t read. The only thing I could make out was the word “TORPEDO”, and Dad told us not to play with anything that said torpedo.

As Compass fell down the rickety metal stairs, Dad sauntered up to the viewscreen and pressed his keycard against it. A small light flickered on in the back of the sub, revealing the tiny door that held the engine and batteries. Then, the metal beast began to shake as the engine turned over and the propellers began to churn in the water.

Dad smiled and patted the captain’s chair.

Compass immediately plastered a nervous smile on her face.

“Oh, come now, it can’t be that hard.”

“Um... yeah, uh, don’t you remember what happened last time?” she said.

“But you’ll never learn if you don’t try,” he said, patting the chair again, his teethy smile growing a bit longer.

Compass did not like piloting submarines.

She reluctantly slid into the captain’s chair. Dad stood behind her, one hoof leaning on the chair’s edge. She slid her hooves into the control harnesses, and wiggled them around. I felt the sub shake as the control surfaces flopped around.

She glanced up at Dad, who winked. She then pulled both steering columns back as hard as she could. The engines revved up noisily. I felt movement - the cloppy swish-swish of the propellers hitting water echoed from outside. Then, the bump as Compass smashed the aft against the other side of the dock.

I looked at Dad, who was laughing with his eyes closed. Compass gave me a nervous smile, mouthed the word “sorry” and began to turn the beast to the side.

Dad flipped a switch on the side of the viewscreen, and the camera displays came up. Small holographic controls floated up at the end of Compass’s outstretched hooves. Compass weakly smiled as the rear-view camera popped up on the left side of the screen, where it was blank before.

“Remember, you can’t drive blind.”

Using the compression jets and a few more bumps, Compass managed to squeeze the Predator out of its berth and into the open water of the pen. Then, shakily, she formed a magical aura around the stick sitting in the middle of the captain’s console. As she pulled down, the little needle to the left of it began to go down, and I felt a strange sinking feeling. Indeed, we were sinking.

The camera display was large enough for me to see, even if I was barely taller than the family dog. The dark, stagnant water made way for the bubby depths as Compass dived. Dad flipped another switch, and the lights turned on, one in front, the other in back.

Compass let go of the diving column and began to steer the vessel towards the egress port - a wide, circular tunnel made of concrete. She switched the frontal camera display to the swivel camera on top of the conning tower, and followed the trail of embedded wall-lights all the way out into open sea.

The tiny sub slid out of the monster’s mouth, lights shining all the way. Compass turned both control columns to the right, and the floor began to tilt slightly towards me. The blue holographic nav-ball on Compass’s right hoof also began to spin, the small yellow heading marker shifting around the blue sphere.

“That’s it,” said Dad. “Keep going, just don’t run over every bump in the way.”

“This is the ocean, Dad,” said Compass. “There are no-”

Bump.

“Ahh...”

“Yeah... sorry Dad.”

“Okay, so, just line up the targeting marker in your left hoof with the target.”

Compass shifted her left hoof - the holographic ball that the control harness was projecting shifted with her. Her right hoof also began to shift, taking the submarine with it.

Dad put a little grin on his face. Compass sighed meekly and set both control sticks down.

“Here, how about this,” said Dad. He placed Compass’s left hoof back in its control harness and began to move it with his own. This time, the submarine didn’t turn, but instead a small whirring sound emanated from the torpedo room. Slowly, Dad adjusted Compass’s arm until the yellow targeting marker on the targeter ball lined up with the red marker signalling an enemy.

“Now, check the cameras.”

Compass used her free hoof to switch to the periscope cam. There was only blackness. She began flipping through the view options, adjusting the filters, the brightness, the opacity, but all she got was a dull grey.

Dad sighed and flipped the switch next to the camera select. Immediately, the infrared view came up, and the bright orange outline of the targeter-buoy came up,

“Lock on, fire away.”

Compass smiled, pressed the big red button right below the dive column, then slammed her hoof into the tube select. I felt the sub shake as the two frontal torpedos left their tubes.

Both Compass and Dad stared at the infrared display. For a second, nothing happened. A few bubbles sailed past the camera.

A few bubbles sailed past the camera.

Compass threw up her hooves and sighed exasperatedly, but Dad still eyeballed the screen excitedly.

A few bubbles sailed past the camera.

Dad’s smile grew wider.

A few bubbles sailed past the camera, and nothing else happened.

“Dad,” said Compass. “You can stop no-”

BOOM.

A torpedo found the target buoy, and the spherical piece of metal went soaring into the sky in a ball of fire. The sea shook with the resulting wave. A few splashes landed directly above us. The sonar locked on to the falling debris, tiny red dots showing up on the 3d map cube.

“aaand there we go!” said Dad, throwing his hooves up into the air. “Always love myself a good explosion.”

The computer began to howl, and a launch report squeezed itself out of the printer. Dad cut the paper off with a swish of magic and brought it before him.

“Well... Rosy... you certainly improved your aim. Didn’t waste any torps this time.”

Compass, always nervous, smiled her rosy-cheeked smile.

“Could use some work on maneuvering and shooting... torps weren’t going fast enough. Speed dial’s over there,” he said, pointing at a little black knob above the tube select.

“Other than that, pretty good. I’d give you an awesome out of five.”

Dad stuck the piece of paper in his poofy hair and hoisted me onto his back.

“Dad, Skyla’s only five.”

I wanted to drive too, you know.

“So? I started piloting when I was barely out of diapers. Age don’t matter, so long as you can reach the controls.”

“Only one way to find out,” he said, levitating me off his shoulders. “Aft torpedoes are still loaded.”

Compass slid out of the seat, leaving the plush couch unoccupied. Dad set me down on it. Immediately I reached for the control harnesses.

“Woah there, grabby,” said Dad. “I’ll get that for you.”

He bent his head underneath the console and adjusted the console towards me. I placed my hooves into the harnesses - legs about half as thick as Compass’s.

Instantly I pushed them forwards, and the submarine smoothly began to accelerate.

“Huh. Better start than Compass.”

I pulled the left stick back, and the sub began to lean to the side. The cube map and the nav-ball began to rotate along with the metal whale.

A blip suddenly appeared on the sonar. Before Dad or Compass could cry out, I pushed the left stick forwards while pulling the right one back. The submarine swerved to the side vigorously as it narrowly missed a marker buoy.

I had the biggest smile on my face.

I flared my magic and pulled the dive column up as fast as I could. Instantly, the sub started to rise, nose pointed upwards. If the cabin wasn’t overpressurized we would’ve been feeling the nitrogen boiling in our blood.

The camera suddenly broke the surface as the Predator lept into the air like a breaching whale and crashed down onto the surface of the ocean. With a swipe of my horn the camera swiveled around, and the third target buoy was directly behind me.  

Dad and Compass watched intently as I flipped the pink target-ball in my tiny filly hoof, locked on to the target-buoy, and pressed the fire button. The aft tube discharged its explosive payload with a trail of bubbles.

Hurriedly, Dad climbed up into the conning tower and threw open the hatch. In a second, he started cheering. Compass simply stared at the camera display with a raised eyebrow. The target buoy was gone, smashed to smithereens by a single torpedo.

Dad poked his head back into the main bridge. I sat on the captain’s chair, grinning, while Compass simply continued to stare.

“Well, well, well... looks like we have ourselves a natural-flavored, chip-off-the-old-block cupcake.”

Whenever Dad took Compass and I out in the sub, there was one place he would always show us. There was an old ruin sitting stagnant in the water a few clicks away from home. It was just on the edge of the mists, close enough to feel the rain without actually getting wet.

Dad said this was something called a “relay hub”, back when the Draconians were still in control of this sector. When they left, they scuttled most of the relays, except this one.

The relay was still active, albeit weakly, and Dad’s sub was just light enough to use it without getting torn apart.

We would always fire it deep underwater, and the rush of speed would throw us forward. Dad always did the piloting here instead of us - I never really understood why. Compass didn’t complain, though, so neither did I.

The sub would slow down two or three minutes after the relay fired, and Dad would surface it with the residual speed. It was always in the middle of the ocean. The calm, lapping waves would always wash against the sub’s green metallic outside. Dad would pop open the hatch, carry me outside while Compass slept, and under the brilliant light of the moon he would tell me stories.

No matter what he told, the last story was always about the tiny dot of light in the distance. It looked like a star, but brighter - and it had six points instead of four.

“That there is Paramount,” he would always say. “That’s the capital of our greatest enemy, the Draconians.”

I was a late bloomer - at 5 years old I still didn’t know how to speak.

“Paramount was a great mountain in the past, when the seas were still low.”

He would tell a story about the mountain - it changed every time. Sometimes it was about heroes and heroines, sometimes it was about parties, and sometimes it was funny. No matter what, he would always bring it back to the tiny point of light in the sky, underneath the bright gaze of the moon.

“The mountain is covered in water now,” he would say. “ But the stories live on.”

I would usually snuggle against him, letting his poofy hair wash over my own.

“Deep beneath the surface of the sea, there is a vault. The vault where the stories come from. The vault where the light shines on. The vault where the harmony hides.”

Next Chapter: Etude - Siege Estimated time remaining: 20 Minutes