“Mjölna?” Sideralis lifted his head away from the straw sticking out of his bottle of root beer. “I thought of something… it’s bothering me… I keep thinking about Stout.”

“Are you feeling panicked?” Mjölna raised her eyebrow.

“No, not really,” Sideralis replied. He leaned on the table and his muzzle scrunched as he tried to put the pieces together. “Stout said she had phantom pains… she… she has the nerve cluster thingies for wings, whatever they are, already grafted into her body and she said that she has pains that aren’t there… but she also has the ability to turn off pain… so why would she feel it?”

Sitting across the table from Sideralis, Mjölna sighed. She reached up, rubbed her cheek with her hoof, then little fingers extended and she began to rub her own head. She looked at Sideralis and could see that he was staring at her with an intent quizzical expression, which Mjölna was starting to believe was his default expression. He was so very colt-like. Here was a big majestic alicorn, larger than life, and at times, he seemed like little more than a colt.

“Please, tell me?” Sideralis asked.

“Stout sometimes leaves her nociperception regulators off so she can feel pain. Look, Sideralis… I know that Stout seems like a happy go lucky pony, but she’s not always happy.” Mjölna paused. “She’s been a lot happier with you around though, now that I think about it,” the mare shook her head, blinked, then continued, “we all have our own ways of dealing with what we are. I work. I keep working. And then, after I work, I work some more. So long as I feel useful, so long as I feel that I serve some purpose, I feel okay. But if I’m not working, if I feel like I am not serving some purpose, I don’t feel okay. I start getting… troubling thoughts.”

Sideralis let out a sad sigh and then stared off at a group of ponies standing in line to get a meal. Their outlines were fuzzy. This cafeteria was like a school cafeteria or a hospital cafeteria. There were dozens of plates on shelves filled with sandwiches, salads, fruit, vegetables, there was a little bit everything. His eyes wandered. The tables were a pale shade of green and each of the chairs was a shade of sunny yellow. The floor was a mosaic of tiles that were all different shades of pink and white. The ceiling was painted to look like a blue sky with white fluffy clouds. Mjölna’s words disturbed him more than he cared to admit.

“Do you want some chocolate pudding? I’m thinking about getting some. I can feed you some on a spoon so you don’t make a mess,” Mjölna said after a long moment of silence.

“Yes, please,” Sideralis replied. He felt his stomach rumble. “Perhaps something soft for lunch too, if that’s okay.”

“Cottage cheese and fruit salad?” Mjölna gave Sideralis an encouraging smile.

“That works, I suppose.”

With his stomach full, Sideralis felt a little better, but was still feeling a little sad. He wobbled along behind Mjölna down a hallway that had a checkerboard of green and white tiles on the floor. A disembodied voice had called both him and Mjölna to the medical recovery wing and they had rode the moving sidewalk again. Then they had taken an elevator. This place was huge.

“The intercom takes a little getting used to, I suppose. You okay?” Mjölna, walking beside Sideralis, gave the stallion a good long look.

“I’m okay, I didn’t freak out that much,” Sideralis replied.

“I’m very excited… I know why we’re here.” Mjölna grinned.

“Oh?” Sideralis’ tail flicked as he walked, whipping from side to side.

“I get my helper.” Mjölna let out a happy sounding chuckle. “She’s gone through a number of upgrades. For some reason, we earth ponies take well to this augmentation and cyberisation process.” The earth pony mare paused outside of a door. “Section seven, floor three, room nineteen ninety one.”

Inside the room, Sideralis heard voices.

“Sweetie, it’s good to see you again… you look good.”

“Bloom, you look so… different.”

“I know—”

“I’m so proud of you and what you are doing!”

“Thank you, Sweetie Belle, that means a lot to me.”

Mjölna reached up and rapped on the door with her hoof.

“Do come in!”

Inside the room were two mares, one white, the other a creamy yellow colour, the colour of custard. The white one gave Sideralis a shy smile and the other one looked up at him with wide eyes filled with adoration.

“You look just like Luna,” the creamy yellow one said.

“Sideralis, this is Apple Bloom.” Mjölna pointed to the pony that had just said something. “And that is Sweetie Belle, she teaches magical kindergarten. Both of you, this is Sideralis.”

“Prince Sideralis,” a pained voice gasped from the doorway.

Sideralis, his tail flicking, turned to look at who was speaking. In the doorway was an orange pony with a violet mane. She had heavy looking braces on her legs and her hooves appeared to be plastic prosthetics. Her whole body trembled with the strain of standing up. She wore a vest that Sideralis guessed covered devoured wings.

“Scootaloo!” Sweetie Belle rushed forwards and lifted up the orange pegasus in a soft green levitation field.

“Put me down!” Scootaloo snapped.

Biting her lip, Sweetie Belle did as she was asked, setting Scootaloo down upon the floor. She glanced at Apple Bloom and then looked back at her friend, giving her an apologetic expression.

“Prince Sideralis… Princess Luna… told me… that you… would come… and I… would be… made whole.” Scootaloo wobbled closer to Sideralis, each step causing her to suck in a pained breath and gasp. She stopped walking, glanced at the nurse following her, and then looked up at Sideralis. “I have been waiting such a long time for you.”

“I don’t even know what to say… it seems like too many ponies knew about me before I knew about me.” Sideralis looked down and felt his heart breaking. This was one of his little ponies. She had been ravaged by disease. She was missing an eye, she looked very thin and frail. His back legs buckled and he sat down upon the floor, hitting hard. His tail flicked, whipping up against his legs, and he reached out with his wings. With clumsy effort, he pulled Scootaloo close. There was a creak and then a clatter of metal as Scootaloo sat down in front of him. He pulled her in for a hug, not knowing what else to say or do.

“We’re the Cutie Mark Crusaders,” Scootaloo whispered as she leaned in against Sideralis’ neck. “We have long been Princess Luna’s friends. It’s funny… She’s guided our way in dreams… all of us… but I think she has a special connection with me. I don’t know why. I get most of the dreams. The doctor says it’s because of all the drugs.”

Sideralis could feel Scootaloo against him. She trembled, as if she had a palsy.

“Princess Luna promised me that she would send help… and she always keeps her promises.” Scootaloo closed her eye and settled against the much larger blue stallion. She could feel wings wrapped around her, wings like a fortress. She couldn’t be certain, but it felt as though some of her pain had faded away. “I’m going to be the test subject for pegasi… the first. If the augmentations will work for me… then they’ll work for Rainbow Dash… and she can be revived.”

Sideralis felt noses against his wings. He looked up and saw the two other mares. He opened his wings, allowed them in, and watched as they sat down and cuddled close to Scootaloo. He wrapped his wings back around them, trying to reach around them all, but couldn’t quite close all the way.

“I have waited so long for this moment,” Scootaloo said in a low whisper.

And then, Sideralis felt dampness against his neck. It took him a moment, but he realised that Scootaloo was crying. He felt somepony clutching one of his front legs, he did not know who was doing it.

“Rainbow Dash is like her big sister.” Sweetie Belle lifted up her foreleg and stroked Scootaloo’s mane. “She kept saying that Princess Luna kept promising to send help… Apple Bloom and I kinda thought that Scoots might have been a little crazy… it’s been a little over twenty years.”

“But Princess Luna sent help, just like she promised,” Apple Bloom said.

“I told you so,” Scootaloo sniffled and snuggled closer to Sideralis, “we just had to be patient… it’s been absolutely awful waiting though.”

“I don’t know how much help I will be.” Sideralis shook his head and his tail swished against the floor. “I don’t know what I can do.”

“Princess Luna said that you would lead us… that we would be a new tribe… she said that we’d be guardians and we would liberate Equestria.” Scootaloo, still sniffling, rubbed and wiped her nose against Sideralis’ neck.

“I don’t know how to do that,” Sideralis said.

“Which is why you are the only pony who can,” Scootaloo replied. She coughed and cleared her throat. “Princess Luna said that Princess Twilight is too hurt and to affected by the past. You… you’re a blank slate. You only know what is happening right now… you have no connection to the past. You can think and make decisions for the future without the past influencing them. She said that we would need somepony that could understand us, connect with us, and see us as more than just a machine, a weapon, or a tool. We need somepony that remembers that we are ponies.”

“But I have no idea what I’m doing… I don’t even have a cutie mark… I’m just a clone… I don’t know what I’m good at—”

“Oh hush, you big whiny blank flank!” Scootaloo sniffled and snorted, trying to clear her snotty nose. “We’re going to help you find a cutie mark. Well, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle will. I’m stuck here. We’re cutie mark counselors. Listen up girls, we’ve got a lot to talk about. Princess Luna has sent us the mother of all cutie mark challenges and we’ve got a lot to do…”

“What happened to Sideralis?” Stout asked as she looked at the stallion curled up into the fetal position on the bed. She turned her gaze upon Mjölna. “I leave him with you and I trust you with his body… his life and I come and find him and he’s like this.”

“Stout, the Cutie Mark Crusaders got ahold of him. Scootaloo laid out some heavy stuff. Princess Luna has a strong, strong connection to Scootaloo—”

Stout snorted. “Look at him!” Stout waved her hoof.

“I’m okay, please don’t yell at Mjölna,” Sideralis said in a low voice. “You weren’t there. I got overwhelmed. It was all too much. So much is expected of me. I don’t know how to take it all in. You’re not the only one who has been having dreams about me for years and years and years.”

Fuming, Stout tossed her head around, causing her mane to whip about. After a few moments of venting her anger, she calmed and then looked Mjölna in the eye. “Thank you, Mjölna. I knew that I could trust Sideralis with you.”

“Well, I would hope so,” Mjölna mumbled, “cause he’s our prince.”

Sideralis wobbled alongside Stout and Mjölna led the way. The silence that had persisted for who knows how long was uncomfortable… unbearable even. It seemed that a bigger picture was emerging. Sideralis didn’t know how he felt about it. He had no idea how he should feel about it. His mother had sent helpers, ponies to guide him. As he walked, his tail flicked behind him.

“Sideralis, if you want to go home, just tell me. Don’t feel bad about it if you do. Nopony will think any less of you. Twilight was hoping to see you today, and we’re about to see her now, but if you don’t think you are up for it, you just tell me,” Stout said.

“No,” Sideralis replied, “we came here for a reason. I will do my part. I’m okay, really.”

“Sid—”

“I’m okay,” Sideralis insisted.

“It occurs to me that alicorns are really damn powerful.” Mjölna shook her head. “Our princesses, the both of them, are sealed away in changeling pods on the other side of the world. It appears that Princess Celestia is still running the show and that Princess Luna is still manipulating world events in her sister’s favour. Princess Twilight busts Sideralis out of his cocoon, rescues him, and now, a whole bunch of well laid plans are converging. He’s got an evangelist who preaches about his coming, and she is a true believer. My helper, my apprentice, the pony that was supposed to be helping me keep The Ouroborus maintained tells me that she will do whatever she can to help me, but she has a higher priority now and that is helping His Highness over here if he becomes lost, confused, or doesn’t know what to do—”

“Hey, I didn’t ask for this!” Sideralis stopped walking and almost fell over.

“I know.” Mjölna turned around, her expression kind and sad. She sighed, letting it out in a huff, her sides heaving like bellows. She lifted one front hoof and then pressed it down where a green tile and a white tile met together on the floor. “This has to be hard on you. What I want to say is, I’m in your corner too. Things that Scootaloo said made a lot of sense. If this gets to be too much for you, I’m here and I’ll be with you.”

“Thank you, Mjölna.” Sideralis looked at the mature earth pony mare and gave her a nod.

“Yes, thank you, Mjölna. I’m sorry I got snippy earlier… I got treated like a piece of hardware by some of the technicians. I was in a bad mood and I took it out on you. It always gets under my skin when I’m treated as a thing rather than a pony.” Stout snorted. “They were impatient and rough with me.”

“Stout, I understand that. It happens to me all the time.” Mjölna moved towards Stout, reached out a foreleg, and took the younger mare into a hug.

“Sometimes, it seems that Fluttershy is the only one that remembers I’m a pony.” Stout’s words came out a soft, pained murmur. “I can’t complain about it because it feels like nopony cares. ‘Oh look, the machine is squeaking again, somebody get the oil and grease it until it stops.’ Sometimes… sometimes… sometimes it feels almost like we are treated as slaves. We all have inhibitors. We have no way of protesting if we are treated badly, or if the technicians are rough with us. Or if we are treated as a machine. If we complain, we are told to remember our duty.”

“Which is a load of minotaur shit.” Mjölna pulled away from the hug and gave Stout a knowing sad smile. She turned and looked at Sideralis. “But you… you want us to be happy, right?”

“Of course I do… but I want all ponies to be happy… it’s like something inside of me that I can’t ignore,” Sideralis replied.

“The way I figure it, You’ve got programming too. He’s not so different than us, Stout.”

“Hello again, Sideralis.” Twilight Sparkle was sitting in a large, comfortable, overstuffed seat. She gestured at some chairs. “Have a seat. I have root beer.” When Twilight saw Sideralis’ ears perk up, she could not help herself, she laughed.

Using her magic, she levitated several bottles out onto the table, popped the tops, and after a moment of thoughtful consideration, included a straw, sticking it down into the open bottle. She watched as everypony sat down.

“Sideralis… I understand that you have met the Crusaders,” Twilight said, her face becoming serious, which caused her many scars to crinkle.

“Yes I have,” Sideralis replied.

“Good. This makes me glad. Princess Celestia wanted this to happen. As I am sure you are aware, things aren’t quite as they should be. I need your help… you look a little out of sorts, so I’m just going to leave it at that. But we’ll talk about this later.”

Sideralis looked upon the wall. There was a map of Equestria. In the middle, there was a word written in bold red letters. He stared at it as he thought about what Twilight had said. It looked as though somepony had scribbled it with a red marker. It was very large. It was the only thing in the room that was decorative. The rest of the walls were all plain grey paint with nothing.

Can'terlot.

“Why is there an apostrophe in the word?” Sideralis asked.

Leaning over the table, Twilight rubbed her front hooves together. “It started off as a joke… and then became something else. Can’terlot. The one place we can’t go. We can’t go home.”

“Oh.” Sideralis’ tail flicked as he lowered his head and tried to catch his straw in his lips. Nopony helped him, this was part of his occupational therapy and he had to suffer this indignity alone.

“I’ll try to keep the heavy stuff to a minimum.” Twilight cleared her throat. “There is going to be a big briefing in just a few days. I was informed about it this morning upon my arrival. This is a very big deal, Sideralis… a very big deal.” Twilight peered at the blue alicorn who was now slurping root beer through a straw. “I want you to be there, and it is my intention to introduce you to the council as Prince Sideralis.”

“Uh oh, I don’t like where this is going,” Mjölna grumbled.

“Me neither.” Stout’s face sank into a scowl and her muzzle wrinkled.

“I need to show that the Princesses are still a major power and that their wishes must be respected. There are those who have spoke openly about abandoning Equestria and letting it become a changeling homeland.” Twilight tapped one hoof upon the table. “There is much at stake. War weariness is becoming a major problem. Some ponies are starting to believe that all the resources we are spending fighting the war could be better spent elsewhere and that we should try to sue for peace with Queen Mariposa.”

“NO! NEVER!” Mjölna spat. Her voice held a faint mechanical growl, sounding more machine than equine. Realising her outburst, the mare bit down upon her lip and silenced herself.

“I don’t know what I can do,” Sideralis said as the straw slipped from between his lips.

“For now, a reminder that Princess Luna walks among us. It is perhaps the best we can do at the moment. I hope to do better.” Twilight’s face contorted with anger and she turned a darker shade of purple.

“There is no way that Sideralis will be attending this meeting unless I am there with him. I’m sorry, but I will not allow it, and if you try to throw your command around, I’ll tell Fluttershy that you’re putting Sideralis into danger.” Stout leveled her stare at Twilight and waited for a response.

“I’ve already made arrangements for you to be allowed in. You and Mjölna both will be at his side as his ‘royal guards,’ along with Apple Bloom. There are provisions that state that those are allowed.” Twilight watched as Stout calmed down and her hard stare became a softer look of respect.

“This is going to be a bad meeting, isn’t it?” Stout asked.

“I’ve heard some rumours. There are those who wish to dissolve Equestria as a nation and move on. The issue might even be forced.” Twilight blinked a few times and then closed her eyes. “I don’t know if this will happen or not. If it does… if this becomes an issue… I need to know who my friends are…”

Mjölna’s lone eye narrowed. “Do you want us to attend this meeting armed?”

Stout’s eye went wide. “Are you suggesting—”

“I’m not suggesting anything,” Twilight said with a dismissive wave of her hoof. “But yes, I’d like both of you armed and primed. Mjölna, see that you have a full reservoir of flamer fuel. Stout, your telekinesis projector is now fully functioning again. I had your targeting system upgraded today as well. Off the books, of course. Sideralis… I know this is overwhelming, but I need to know that you are with me.”

“I will serve my mother’s wishes, and she sent me to help you,” Sideralis replied, “but I draw the line at killing ponies. We have enough enemies as it is.”

“I really hope that it doesn’t come down to that,” Twilight said as she opened her eye.

Author's Notes:

This chapter has a lot of big reveals. I hope lots of folks are still with me for the ride, cause now it gets interesting as things kick into the next gear.