When the earliest hours of a grey morning came, all were very reluctant to leave bed—except the soldiers, if only to start guarding the ship again and magically producing pre-prepared bits of breakfast piled into bowls while they were at it. The first few spoonfuls produced some sort of pink mush, which went into their mouths and made them smile in relish. With it, came a nod of approval from Rhinoc; a signal to officially begin their day. Some ate later than others, though they all gathered upon the deck to let those who'd eaten before chatter, make repairs on their blasters, or take turns playing a game of red light, green light with the surrounding forest.

With a few of Delta's changelings on that deck, which was sporting a hatch similar to the Valkyrie's, were Armin, Katie and Cassida, two of whom were gurney-bound and being spoon-fed pink mush from small glass bowls as breakfast hour came and went. One of the other changelings, namely the brown-ribbed one who opened the gangplank the night before, was giving Katie an added dose of hairy eyeball free of charge.

Fervor broke out between them once Katie and Cassida had polished off their meals, and some of the other changelings were looking at the beginning spectacle intently. "So, you're telling me the general actually recruited your scrawny ass into the army force?" the brown-ribbed lad asked in a disbelieving tone, an incredulous eyebrow already raised all the way to the base of his horn.

"First time he even mentioned something like that, I almost thought he was talking out his ass," Katie stated with a fervent not of her head. Her wing-nubs, now swollen with liquid, buzzed with all the grace of wet newspaper. "Second time? I swear to Godcat he looked like he shat a brick."

Cassida turned to Katie, eyes narrowed slightly. "What did you do to impress him that much?" she asked, equally as incredulous as her compatriot.

Katie turned to Cassida and cocked her head. "Froze a buffed-up hippogryph twenty times bigger than me, from head to hoof," she answered. "In only one strike."

Cassida donned a rather scrupulous, twitching grin. "With what?"

"Horseshoes," Katie stated tersely.

Cassida's lips twitched, then she tossed her head back as uproarious laughter started rattling out of her mouth. She barely managed to sputter out "Y-you're kidding! You've got to be pulling my tail!" before all coherent thought went out the window in lieu of insane howling. Some of the other changelings soon followed suit and cracked up in unison, almost as though they'd never heard anything more absurd in their lives. And in a bizarrely roundabout way, Katie came to realize with a sigh of resignation, that seemed to be the case.

Armin, however, wasn't laughing. He merely waited patiently for the hooting and hollering to die down before stating calmly, "I have seen her freeze her own legs. She's not just any run-of-the-mill scrawny wraith."

All the other changelings, sans Katie, looked at him incredulously. Katie herself merely rolled her orbs and muttered, "Oh, here we go."

Cassida raised both brows. "'Freeze her own legs?' Alright, Lieutenant, what sort of drugs have you been snorting lately?" she asked disbelievingly.

"That's only in the domain of a pegasus who fully mastered his or her innate magic. Devoid of love though she is, I haven't sensed anything else out of the ordinary with her," Rhinoc stated matter-of-factly. "Even then, temperature manipulation and frost-growing are impossible to do with the hooves." Several heads bobbed up and down in unison at his statement. "Not even Lance could pull something like that off."

Armin retorted, "With hooves by themselves, that is true. But you see… our scrawny wraith's a mutant among changelings." Katie immediately stretched out her tongue as far as it could possibly go to demonstrate Armin's point and used it to give Rhinoc a finger-free wet willy. Rhinoc screeched and jumped into the air as if the tongue had gone somewhere else, twisting to face Katie mid-air with wings buzzing furiously.

"Alright, could you not do that again? Like, put that damn thing up before you poke someling's eye out with it," Rhinoc barked, ears flattening against his head. Katie did as she was asked, albeit inch by inch, just so the other changelings could see that it was indeed that long and was somehow going back into her gullet.

"See? Mutant," Armin stated tersely, grinning smugly even as Rhinoc landed, turned to face him, and sent him a firm glare. His horn glowed, and his aura embraced Katie without really doing anything for a few seconds. Armin grimaced as a chilling sensation crept down his spine, which made his tail squirm and his wings buzz with more rigidity than they should have possessed.

Rhinoc noticed that Armin's smug smile faded when his wings began flapping, seemingly… slowing down in a manner that suggested either one of two things was occurring: either the wings were going to fall off outright, or time itself was being tampered with. Still, he watched with interest, right up until the moment that Katie's horn gave one brief, blue spark when Armin launched a small bolt of flame that connected with the protrusion in question.

Everyling flinched when Katie gave a displeased hiss before mana pulsed across her body, blue at first before turning sickly green. She began twitching every limb violently, wincing in apparent pain, eyes squinting so tightly it seemed as though they were about to slip shut. The convulsing worsened, with her bound knees colliding with the gurney's rails as each second ticked by. The hiss went on unimpeded, before it rose to a shout, and then to a shrill scream.

"Hot! Hot hot hot hooooooot!" Katie wailed at the top of her lungs, wing-nubs buzzing so much a few changelings wondered if they were going to detach from her back. The magic bolt that went in reformed and flew right back to Armin, and everyling shivered as the temperature dropped spontaneously when the rebound scored a direct hit to Armin's barrel. It happened so fast and so suddenly it was at that point they only noticed as ice started forming and crawling down his legs and up his neck on top of that mere seconds later.

Armin dispelled his glow with a shudder, and he turned to Katie with his jaw going slack for a few seconds. He waited until the ice melted before asking, "Doesn't that prove my point?"

"Hooooooot…" Katie complained, orbs spinning in their canvases as the green glow died from her body. "Need… ice cubes…"

"Anyway… as I was saying," Armin began, only to stop when Rhinoc turned to him again and waved a hoof dismissively.

"Someling get the wraith ice cubes," Rhinoc snorted, shaking his head rather grimly. "And I cannot believe that left my mouth just now." The brown-ribbed changeling nodded and skedaddled from the group, making a beeline for the hatch before throwing it open with his magic and jumping inside. When he vanished, Rhinoc lifted a hoof and rubbed his temples with it. "So… she can use pegasus-like magic." He gave Armin a flat stare. "Just not with her fucking hooves."

"How does she do that? Her horn's, like, just a bundle of jagged shards sticking out her forehead," one soldier piped up, eying Katie with concern flickering in his eyes. Several nods and questioning mumbles rose within seconds, each one more curious than the last.

"Honestly, I have no fucking clue how she does it. She'd said something about her magic rejecting other magics whenever a blast hits her horn-stump. I've only seen it one other time too, and she broke through solid magic-grown crystal with it like it was flawed porcelain," Armin replied with a shrug.

"So… she punched through a wall… is this what you're telling me?" Rhinoc asked, a brow going up again. Armin nodded and his horn flashed before Rhinoc found the aura embracing his head, and for a few seconds nothing really happened. Then images formed in his mind as the aura faded. Several, in fact, almost overrode his own thoughts. They came and went, culminating in the exact moment an apricot-colored ball of energy smashed through similarly-colored crystal, all because of one broken piece of equipment that apparently still worked against all odds.

Rhinoc's already-grim look hardened a little, and his raised brow lowered. It took him a few seconds to process what his mind had just gone through before he took a deep breath through his nostrils and sighed. "Okay, so her credentials… are there, substandard, but there. But how the utter fuck would she do in the regiment? She's starved, frail-looking, apparently can't take a magical beatdown too well… and cannot feed herself." He gave Armin a very flat stare. "Undead though she is, she wouldn't survive even basic training," he groused.

"Alexander was looking her over left, right, and sideways last night," Cassida interjected, causing Rhinoc to turn to her with his brow once more climbing high.

"What all did he find, aside from the painstakingly obvious?" Rhinoc queried, lips pressing in a thin, tight line as he awaited Cassida's answer.

"Well… rickets, muscles so shrunk he thinks they may have fused with her bones, and internals no bigger than a standard box of soap bars," Cassida answered, frowning herself. "That's each organ put together," she added as an aside. "You'll have to see the x-rays he took to believe me."

Rhinoc sighed, sensing Cassida's unspoken 'I wish I was making this shit up' before his brows leveled again. "Another case of vitamin deficiency… joy," he hissed to himself, in so low a voice Katie barely heard him. By then, she'd regained her senses and cleared her throat.

"Wait, so I'm not the first to be this twiggy?" Katie asked, causing Rhinoc to jump and stare at her with widening eyes.

"Not twiggy. Lacking in nutrients," Rhinoc clarified, shaking his head. "You need more meat on them bones, yes, but also more vitamins to get there."

Katie stared at Rhinoc for a full minute on end, and her only movement was slowly cocking her head. "Do my vitamins need to be balanced or some shit like that?" she queried.

"Exceedingly," Rhinoc answered tersely. "If you broke bones… which you probably did, given your tied legs, Cassida could heal faster than you."

Katie looked to Cassida and eyed her head-shell with some measure of emotion. "You have head growths. You look like a mushroom," she stated rather callously. "How'd you get those?"

Cassida reared up slightly and puffed out her barrel, and closed her eyes as she curled her forelegs under her chest, broken front hooves be damned. She winced a little, but relaxed when a pink, suspiciously heart-shaped glow started to build on her barrel. A tingling sensation resonated not just in Katie, but throughout all of the changelings present and accounted for. Hard faces melted into complacent masks, firm frowns molded into serene, fanged smiles, and some of the other changelings' holey legs started growing more flesh to close up their perforations. Or at least, the legs that were bared, and chitin also grew to secure the regenerating flesh.

Katie herself felt some of her bones popping back into place, and some odd sensation squirming in her pale gums that she couldn't place at first. Then, she gave a gasp when painful prickles rose in her gums all at once, causing her jaws to jitter uncontrollably as teeny tiny bits began oozing a vaguely-warm fluid that tasted of rot and death the moment it touched her tongue.

Immediately, her tongue flicked all around her mouth, moving into every crevice possible to discover hard, bony protrusions surging forth from the gums. Each protrusion was sharp to a needle-like point, and countless times Katie found herself regenerating each and every new hole her tongue had received. These accoutrements stopped, but only about a centimeter or so when Cassida's heart-glow-thing had receded and she opened her eyes. "How'd you get your sparkly new teeth?" Cassida retorted, grinning smugly once Katie looked at her.

"I…" Wait. Katie experimentally clacked her jaws together, only to be greeted with a dull thud as the new accoutrements fit into each others' gaps snugly. She clacked again, getting the same result. Her orbs went wide. "I have teeth?!" she exclaimed.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Twilight awoke only when sunlight started to shine directly upon her face, and even then her brain struggled to register the meaning of blinding yellow assailing her eyes despite said eyes being closed until a few seconds passed. Begrudgingly, languidly, she sat up, eyes still closed as she took a solid minute or two just to let her mental gears get up to regular processing speed. The gears only got up to half-speed, though, thanks to the cobwebs of lingering sleep. Once the cobwebs had been torn from those gears with a deep breath and delayed realization that she was indeed awake, her eyes hesitantly opened.

She yawned lazily and turned to let her rear legs dangle from the side of the ludicrously comfortable bed that Lance and his troops somehow got a hold of. Yeesh, that stallion knew how to treat guests once he got over his apprehensions, she had to admit. Twilight wryly wondered if he was repaying her for her hospitality and giggled to herself as she let her hooves touch the carpeted floor prior to stretching her legs. After feeling some bones pop and blinking some more sleep out of her eyes, she headed right for the toiletries' corner without an iota of hesitation.

It took her a few minutes to use the toilet, get a quick warm shower, and to dry off in that order. By then, the sunlight had intensified a little and angled slightly, and her brain finished jumpstarting the rest of the way. With all of that done within the hour, Twilight trotted to the door of her temporary room, shivering as her coat began to cool with each step, no doubt the result of leftover and undried dampness lingering within her hairs.

She opened the door with a quick tug of her magic and peered out into the hall, looking to the left before turning to the right, the silence therein almost immediately noticeable. Huh. Nobody else was out yet. Twilight shrugged, figuring some were sleeping in, showering, or struggling to get their own mental cobwebs to come out of their noggins. She retracted, closed the door behind her, and promptly trotted right back to bed before flopping on the sheets and quilts and conjuring the books she retrieved from the Crystal Empire and all the notes she made about thereof.

Before conjuring the inkwell and quill, she picked up the notes and splayed them out in front of her hooves, finding several sheets' worth of scribbles that were half-filled with runic translations. Twilight set said translations to one side, focusing her attention to the other half of her scrawlings. Sighing, she conjured the book 'Bizarro Enchantments for the Everyday Lyrist' and plopped it into the pile as well. "I am so glad Spike convinced me to take the books I found in the library's underground chamber… thing," she muttered, taking the time to dust the book off with a hoof, being delicate in case it crumbled like some of its more unfortunate shelf-fellows.

She opened the book about enchantments for lyrists and the one about spells supposedly credited to Starswirl simultaneously. She looked through the former first, finding herself looking at a table of contents that by itself was meager in comparison to her plethora of notes. Nothing really stuck out at her, let alone dared to make itself known if there were possible juicy bits of intel within.

A thought hit her when she considered a certain pony who was stipulated to have aided in creating the since-broken barrier. Immediately, she conjured 'Early Fantasian and Mythonian Relations' and threw its pages open the moment it materialized and plopped on the bed. She sifted through entire bundles of pages at a time, starting from the beginning, flipping right to the end, and then swiveling left and right towards the middle.

Her magic grabbed the translations and tugged them close, and with them at her side it didn't take Twilight long to find what she was looking for. In the middle of the book, there was a weathered illustration of an airship with several unicorns on the deck, one of which bore a hat and a cape bedecked in stars. The unicorn in question also had a flowing white beard that sailed in the wind.

Before she could dig in to the information that needed another round of translating, she heard a burst of magic followed by a meow. Twilight turned to glance over her shoulder, finding NoLegs not two feet behind her rear hooves, who hopped over with a purr. "Need something?" she asked.

NoLegs shook his head, shrugged, and proceeded to nestle next to her forelegs, well out of the reach of the inkwell and quill. Twilight smiled at NoLegs before returning to the illustration. "How did I miss this?" she asked. She felt NoLegs shrug again and started letting the loose parchment float alongside the quill, if only to prepare herself for round two of translating and scrounging the bloody pages for something of use. Or, barring that, at least something to confirm or deny her suspicions.

Just as she made to dip the quill into the ink, someone knocked on her door. Twilight tenderly set down the quill with a sigh, making the inkwell vanish in a flash of light on the off-chance it could spill prior to turning to the door. "Who is it?" she called.

"I'm hungry," a small voice replied. Twilight blinked and magically opened the door to find Maria standing in the hall with a small frown on her muzzle.

Twilight blinked and made the books, quill, and notes vanish, but not before marking her place with a blank sheet of paper resting between a page crammed full of untranslated words and the illustration of the airship. Then she hopped out of bed, and NoLegs jumped onto her back. "Do you know where the kitchen is?" Twilight asked.

Maria shook her head. "I don't wanna break the kitchen," she replied.

Twilight winced, her mind conjuring an image of a wrecked kitchen complete with a toppled fridge and foodstuffs thrown everywhere, with broken dishes and ruined furniture just for flair. "Lemme guess… you don't know how to cook?"

Maria shook her head again. "No… but I wanna know how. Mommy makes it look easy," she answered.

Twilight gave a small, consoling smile. "Tell you what, I am… unable to cook meat. But I can cook some vegetable-related foodstuffs, or pancakes—"

Maria cut her off, wings flaring as she spoke, "What's pancakes?"

Twilight's smile widened. "Mhm. We'll just need to get Spike awake so he can help us," she chirped. "Trust me, pancakes are delicious. Especially with syrup."

Maria's eyes went round as saucers. "Syrup?" she parroted.

Twilight nodded. "Yep." She trotted up to Maria before peering out into the hall again, seeing another pair of doors opened wide near the lift. In fact, she saw it just as the door that was closer to her room opened, and out waddled Spike who stretched his arms and yawned as he entered the hall. "Hey Spike," she chirped.

Spike lazily looked over to Twilight, smacked his lips, and then nodded. "Mornin'," he greeted. Twilight and Maria came over to him, both at a brisk trot, with Twilight using her magic to tenderly close all three open doors. With that done, the group made their way to the lift to head downstairs. It didn't take long for the button to be clicked, or for the door to close.

"Say, NoLegs, could you go to the kitchen and check the stock please?" Twilight asked, turning to NoLegs as the lift began to descend. "We'll meet you there." NoLegs nodded, and waited until the lift stopped moving and opened its door before he promptly waved his tail. His magic aura flared to life, and he vanished in a flash of light. Twilight trotted out of the lift, followed by Maria and Spike, who looked around for another lift.

All they saw, at least right away, were the lounges closest to them, and the furniture settled within. "So… what was it about pancakes?" Spike asked as he began walking to the closest lounge, pausing only to stop in the doorway to let Twilight and Maria catch up.

"Pancakes are good with syrup… whatever that is," Maria replied, which prompted Spike to look at Twilight with one brow arched sharply.

"Well, she wanted breakfast, so I offered to make pancakes. With syrup," Twilight elaborated, smiling sheepishly.

Spike's eyes widened a considerable margin. Then he chuckled and smirked. "I'm not sure Lance even has syrup in his food stock. And I'd really feel sorry for him if that's the case; poor colt doesn't know what he's missing out on," he stated in a matter-of-fact tone laced with underlying amusement that was betrayed only by his smile.

Twilight rolled her eyes. "C'mon, Spike, who wouldn't have syrup in their kitchen cabinets? Ten bits says at least a hoofful of Lance's troops, if not the stallion himself, have a pretty big sweet tooth if you asked me," she retorted.

Maria started jumping up and down in place. "Daddy likes syrup?!" she cried. "I want some, I want some!"

Spike sniggered again. "Oh good, she's riled up. I can see it now…" He cleared his throat and tried to imitate Lance, but somewhat failed when he raised his voice a good inflection higher instead of lowering it. This resulted in his voice squeaking as he spoke, "'Who the hell gave her sugar?! Now she's wound up and bouncing off the walls!'"

Twilight nearly choked when she heard Spike's higher-pitched voice, and her cheeks puffed out to hold in laughter that just wanted to shoot out of her mouth then and there. "Mind you, he did let her have zap-apple chocolate cake," Spike added offhandedly, which caused Twilight to drop her head and shake with barely-restrained giggles.

"Do syrup and cake taste good at the same time?" Maria asked, causing Spike to turn to her, stare for a few seconds, and mutely shrug in that order.

"I dunno. I've never put syrup on cake before, but that's just me," he answered.

Twilight stopped snickering, raised her head, and lifted a hoof to pat Spike on the shoulder. "It depends on whether the cake has frosting or not, and what type of syrup used. But I wouldn't recommend frosting and syrup in one sitting," she chirped. She trotted into the nearest lounge after that, and went on through the second one to find another set of lifts waiting for her, divided only by a pair of hallways a measly ten feet in length. Both were marked by signs, though oddly both of said signs sported 'kitchens and mess hall upstairs, medical bay downstairs' on their frames.

Maria and Spike followed her, but stopped behind her tail when she started looking from one hall to the next. "What's wrong?" Spike asked.

"I-I…" Then something clicked in Twilight's mind, and she simply relaxed before taking the lift on the left. "Oooooh. I see what he did…"

"What did who do?" Maria asked, tilting her head as she and Spike waddled onto the lift before Twilight raised a hoof and pressed the up button.

"Lance probably had this ship built so that the lifts closer to the starboard would both lead to the same place," Twilight replied, smiling as the door slid closed and the lift trembled before taking them up.

"That's a very generous assumption. Maybe they're packing multiple kitchens on this baby," Spike stated, though the notion he'd posited was absurd enough to make him tilt his own head when he gave it a few seconds of thought.

"Why not one kitchen, like in daddy's tank?" Maria queried, frowning when the lift shuddered again before stopping and opening its door.

"Well… maybe the soldiers spread too much chitil all over one kitchen. I know I wouldn't want to eat chitil," Spike answered in earnest, shrugging his shoulders as another ten-foot-long hall greeted them, and one with a white tiled floor at that. The group trotted out of the lift and down the hall, seeing a large room up ahead, albeit one whose features were blurred by an opaque door sporting a bronze plaque. Twilight stopped before the door when she reached it, peering at the plaque before shrugging her shoulders.

"'Please wipe your hooves/paws/claws before eating.'" Twilight turned down to find a piece of rug that read 'wipe here with enthusiasm' written on its surface. "Makes sense." She started to wipe her hooves on the rug, scuffing into the fibers as deep as she could possibly press her hooves.

With that done, she cast but a meager flick of magic and opened the door, revealing a large room with several tables both round and rectangular dotting its floor, all accompanied by stools. Chandeliers dangled over the whole thing, making it glow with a soft orange light. The room was decorated with a more homely appearance, or at least as homely as a mess hall could get, with wood making up the furniture and a carpet laid out that depicted strange runic symbols and prominent swirls of silver and gold.

At the far end and immediate right of the room were several booths, one of which at said far end having been raised to tower over the others. Funnily enough, it also came equipped with a megaphone bolted above the table, and more lifts that would take whomever would even sit in such a seat to it. A few other booths like it were dotting the area here and there, though they didn't have megaphones, and were in fact decorated like the guest bedrooms.

To the left of the room were a few trash cans, shelves for condiments and straws, and plates, bowls, and silverware aplenty. Oddly enough, the condiments' section was empty, though Twilight had attributed that to being still relatively early in the morning and whoever managing the kitchens not wanting to do anything about it as of yet. A single door stood near the barren concessions' area, built of dark wood.

Spike frowned at the mess hall. "Okay, this is a bit excessive," he commented. "I'm not sure if Rarity would faint seeing this, or try to refurbish every square inch of the mess hall first."

"I think she'd faint trying to refurbish it," Twilight remarked simply, shrugging her shoulders and rolling her eyes as she saw Rarity working herself half to death trying to fix every little detail of the mess hall in her mind. She turned to the only other door of the room and cantered to it briskly, and her stomach gurgled as she found a soft, aromatic smell wafting to her and getting stronger as she came closer. At once, Maria and Spike ran to catch up to her, and both noticed the smell right away.

"Why?" Maria queried, her face turning a slight tint of green as the aroma wafted into her nose.

"That'd be Rarity being Rarity," Spike replied, waving a claw dismissively. "And whatever is making that smell, it smells good."

Twilight reached the door and flung it open, finding a large kitchen stocked with fridges, cupboards, stoves, and various other appliances dotting it. There were more things like cabinets and racks with hanging pans and spatulas, and a grill and brick oven for good measure. White boxes were interspersed throughout, and the room was so massive there were at least two doors that were visible in the mess leading elsewhere. Spike gave a low whistle at the number of contraptions the kitchen contained. "What are these guys, packrats?" he asked.

"I dunno." Twilight took a cursory glance around, quickly noticing the absence of a certain someone, but the kitchen soon rattled with a crashing sound that made her jump. "Where's NoLegs? He said he'd be here."