Hope looked around. She was surrounded by light. This was the great hall of the ship. Here, wooden furnishings, made from trees across Equestria, glistened a rich, polished mahogany. In between then, standing mightily and making a statement, were bas-reliefs cast in bronze, each one depicting a famous episode from Equestria’s history. But the greatest thing of all was the light. There was so much light. The light from candles and bulbs not only illuminated their own little areas, but reflected off of every surface, and every surface shined. Hope did not know if she had ever seen so much light. Even the Crystal Empire in its golden prime had never seemed to shine so bright.

These lights were soon added to by another, a turquoise one.

“Thank Celestia, dear girl!” Dr. Fie said. “We thought we’d already lost you!”

“This place is so big,” Hope said absently. “I don’t know how I’ll find anything.”

“Maybe we should come back during the day,” Dr. Fie said. “Then we can have a nice stroll, exploring the ship at our leisure, maybe stopping for lunch, and then getting rid of those nasty umbrum, hmm?”

Hope’s eyes were fixed ahead. “No. This ends tonight.”

“But why, dear girl?” Dr. Fie said. “Why do you insist on this?”

“It’s what I have to do,” Hope said.

“Where’s the Starswirl exhibit?” Starlight asked. “We need to get those scrolls and quick!”

“I was just trying to figure that out,” Hope said.

“There’s a room on the top deck,” Stirring said. “That’s where they’re keeping the exhibit. I’m sure we’re too late, though. The place is probably already locked up.”

Starlight gave Stirring a sideways glance.

“Oh, right,” Stirring said. “You’re just going to pop in.”

“Literally,” Starlight responded.

“Okay, let’s do that,” Hope said. “I’ll go with you two to get my spell. Dr. Fie, you stay down here. I’m sure this ship has a telegraph room or a pony at a night desk somewhere. You need to get a message to the princesses. Tell them what is going on. They’re going to need to know in case I can’t stop the umbrum.”

“Hope, dear girl, don’t you dare talk like that!” Dr. Fie said.

“I just want to be prepared for the worst, doctor,” Hope said.

Dr. Fie stood directly in front of Hope. “What could be worse than blowing yourself up? Hope, you have such a future ahead. Don’t throw that away.”

“I lost my future the day I met Sombra,” Hope responded. “It seems now like this was always going to be how my story ends. It’ll be okay, doctor. None of you will even miss me, probably.”

“Don’t say that, dear child!” Dr. Fie said. “”You can’t leave me! I need you.”

Dr. Fie fell to his haunches and grabbed Hope’s hoof in his own. “Please, Hope! You can leave Starlight and you can leave Stirring if you want. Just leave them behind if you think they don’t care about you. But don’t leave dear, old Dr. Fie! Please, Hope, don’t leave me! I’ve only had two real friends in my whole life. One was many years ago, and you’re the other. I can’t survive losing you!”

“You can, you will,” Hope said gently. “I know it seems hard now. But in a month or two, you’ll find some other orderly to boss around and then you won’t even remember me. It’ll be okay, doctor. You just need to find the next pony who’ll let you get away with not doing your own work. And then you won’t even think about me anymore.”

Dr. Fie was too distraught to respond.

“But please, doctor, if you want to do something for me, contact the princesses. That’s all I need now. Since this is probably the last time that we’ll see each other, that is what you can do for me.”

Hope’s hoof gently pulled away from Dr. Fie’s increasingly weak grasp. She turned to Starlight and Stirring. “Okay, let’s get those spells!”

Starlight’s horn lit up. There was a flash, and they were gone.

Dr. Fie got to his hooves and began wiping his eyes with his foreleg. “Was it just me,” he said to nopony in particular, “or did she seem so serene just now? Is she that ready to face death? How can anypony be that ready to depart this vale of tears? Oh, 'goodnight sweet princess!' And you’re wrong, dear girl. I will always think of you. Every day of my life, I will always think of you.”

“You’d think they’d have better security in this place,” Stirring said as he trotted around the different exhibits.

“Teleportation isn’t exactly a common skill,” Starlight said as she looked from glass case to glass case. “I’m sure they figured that between locking the place up and whatever alarms they have on the doors are sufficient. They didn’t count on me when they set this all up, after all.”

“I think this is the spell I want,” Hope said. Starlight and Stirring gathered round. The three ponies looked into the case, where an ancient scroll was unfurled.

Starlight read the little card beside it. “This has to be the one. The card says Starswirl never used it himself because he feared that the damage it caused would be irreversible.”

“Then why do they just have it in a glass case where anypony could read it?” Stirring asked.

“You’re not a unicorn, Stirring, so you probably don’t understand,” Starlight said. “Anypony can read the spell, but its complex magic. It would take a very powerful magician in order to actually activate it.”

“I thought it didn’t matter what a pony was. If all ponies are equal, then magic shouldn’t be any harder for a pegasus or an earth pony than a unicorn. Just like with everything else.”

“I never said the three races didn’t have their own natural specialties,” Starlight said. “Just that cutie marks stood in the way of accessing those specialties.”

“That’s not how I understood it, ma’am,” Stirring said. Despite his respectful tone, it was obvious that he was somewhat upset by Starlight’s words.

“So, Hope, you want to get that out of there?” Starlight asked, raising her hoof.

“No,” Hope said without taking her eyes off of the spell. “There might be an alarm. But I think I can memorize it if I just have a moment or two.”

“Okay,” Starlight said. “Stirring and I will look for that other spell.”

“You never told me what that one does,” Hope said, still not taking her eyes away from the words on the scroll.

“It can’t be that important to you now,” Starlight demurred. “You are planning to give up your life in the next hour, so what’s it really matter?”

“I was just curious,” Hope answered.

Starlight led Stirring toward the other glass cases, where other spells were on display. They studied each one rigorously, just as Hope studied this one spell. She knew she had to be quick but she also had to be thorough. After all, she would only get one chance at this.

“I don’t understand it!” Starlight said after a while. “We’ve looked at every spell here. I don’t see it anywhere!”

“My informant couldn’t be sure that they would actually bring it,” Stirring said. “She just thought they might.”

Starlight let out a deep growl. “But it has to be here! We can’t have come all this way from Seaddle for nothing!”

“But it wasn’t for nothing!” Stirring said. “We’ve made great strides for the cause!”

“None of that will matter if we don’t find that spell!” Starlight snapped.

“We don’t need the spell, ma’am,” Stirring said. “We just need to redouble our efforts on building a following. Then we can start to change things.”

“What I want to change doesn’t come from spreading messages and holding hooves,” Starlight responded. “Besides, Twilight Sparkle–”

“Ma’am, I’m angry at her too for what she did to our town,” Stirring said. “But I don’t that paying her back is as important as you make it out to be.”

Starlight whipped her head around. Stirring took a few steps back. Starlight’s teeth were grit in a hard scowl and her eyes burned. “It is the only important thing!” she hollered.

“Ma’am….” Stirring said. It was all he managed to say.

Even Hope took her eyes off the spell long enough to look up at Starlight.

“What are you looking at?” Starlight snapped. “At least you have a spell that will fix things!”

“Starlight, after I’m gone, I don’t want you to be so consumed by revenge,” Hope said. “I know you think what Princess Twilight did to you was wrong. But if you keep letting that rage grow inside of you, you’ll just do something much worse than what she did.”

“What do you know about rage, Ms. Woe-is-Me?”

“I’ve felt rage,” Hope said. “I felt rage for what fate had done to me and Sombra. For what I thought the crystal ponies had done to the umbrum. And maybe that was where I first went wrong. Maybe that was when I stopped being the innocent pony I once was and became the Radiant Hope that nearly destroyed Equestria. I don’t want you to go down the same path.”

“Oh, be quiet, Hope!” Starlight said with a snarl. “You don’t have the right to talk to me that way!”

“But, as your friend–”

“We were never friends! It was always just an arrangement, remember? It only worked because we were useful to each other. Well, you’re no longer useful to me! And you were right earlier. Now that I can’t use you for anything, I don’t care anymore what happens to you! Finish with your little spell and go blow yourself up so that I don’t ever have to see your face again!”

“I’m finished,” Hope said, speaking nearly in a monotone.

“Then just get out of here!” Starlight said.

“I just have one more thing to ask,” Hope said. “I know you’re not in the mood to do anything I say, but please do this, Starlight. There are a lot of ponies on this ship. You need to get them all out before the ship blows up. Can I trust you to do that?”

Starlight didn’t answer. She would not even look at Hope.

“If I die tonight, I want it to be without adding a single pony more to my total,” Hope said softly, almost pleadingly. “I need to know that I can trust you to do this.”

“You can trust us, Hope,” Stirring said, his voice low and shaken. “I’ll make sure that we get everypony out.”

“Thank you,” Hope said. “Thank you both for everything. Goodbye.” The blue light appeared, and she was gone.

“Hope, wait!” Starlight called out. But it was too late.

Starlight looked to the floor in shame. “What if that was the last thing I’ll ever say to her? She was right. We are friends. And now I’m losing another friend. It always happens this way….”

A tear began to form in Starlight’s eye. “You know, maybe I have let my obsession with Twilight Sparkle go on too long.”

“You think?” Stirring said, angry.

“Stirring?” Starlight was genuinely surprised and taken aback by this outburst.

“Why does everything have to be about Twilight Sparkle?” Stirring snapped. “We didn’t even know who she was a year ago. Why has she suddenly become so important to you?”

“You know what she did, Stirring,” Starlight responded. “She nearly destroyed our cause. Everything we’ve done has been to try and repair that damage.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of lying?” Stirring asked.

Stung by these words, Starlight began to regain some of her usual haughty bearing. “Excuse me?”

“The cause? Equality? You don’t care about that at all, do you?” Stirring said. “I’m the one here who genuinely wanted to make your vision a reality. But all you’ve ever cared about since you got thrown out of our town is getting even with Twilight Sparkle!”

“I need to get even with her, Stirring!” Starlight fired back. “After what she did to me, to all of us–”

“No, only you, Starlight. And if your ego wasn’t so large, maybe you could see that this has all been about your personal vendetta. You aren’t Starlight Glimmer the Incorruptible anymore. You’re just another sad pony who blames others for her mistakes.”

“How dare you talk to me like that!” Starlight bellowed. “I’m the one who made you what you are! You’d still be writing sappy love sonnets if I hadn’t showed you a better way to live!”

Stirring’s voice managed to outdo hers for noise and intensity (which was quite an achievement, given the power of Starlight’s vocal cords). “You turned me into a liar! You made me write so much that I knew wasn’t true! And it was alright when I thought we were doing it for the cause, when I thought a little lie would help them see the larger truth somewhere down the road. But it was never about that. You made me a liar so that I could help you hurt Twilight Sparkle! What were you going to do once that was done? Send me to blow myself up like you sent Hope?”

“You’re on thin ice, Stirring!” Starlight said. “You just saw how I lost another friend!”

Rather than put him back in place, this just riled Stirring up to a crescendo. “I saw, alright. You know, I really used to admire you. I looked up to you for so long. And because of that, I forgave you whenever you went against your own stated principles. I just ignored it or pretended it didn’t happen or justified to myself by saying that every great cause requires a little bending here and there. But now I see the pony you really are. I saw how you lost your friend just now. And, let me tell you, Starlight Glimmer, you just lost another one! Probably the last one you’ll ever have!”

Stirring stamped his hoof hard on the floor, visually capturing the exclamation point that ended his tirade. Starlight’s face, had it not been covered by her lavender coat, probably would have looked white. Her jaw had dropped. Her eyes were wide with disbelief. She seemed almost catatonic.

“No, not more friends lost,” Starlight whispered, entirely to herself. “I can’t lose anymore….”

“Come on,” Stirring said, his voice calm now, but still hard. “We have lives to save.”

Stirring walked into the other room. Starlight did not follow. Instead, feeling tears starting to well up in her eyes, she made for the back of the room. She had noticed a small nook there and felt that it would give her some privacy until she processed everything that had just occurred.

Starlight put her forelegs on an antique cabinet in the nook and buried her head in them. Tears flowed freely. “All my friends…” she sobbed to herself. “I always lose all my friends….”

She pounded her hoof on the cabinet and felt it shake from the force. But she did not care.

“Sunburst and Double Diamond and the other townsponies and Radiant Hope and now Stirring.... I lose them all!”

The tears continued to flow. Starlight held her head down, her eyes closed, as the tears spilled out. But then, her expression changed. From sorrow, it went to anger.

“Twilight Sparkle caused all of this!” she said, quietly but fiercely. “She’s the cause of all my pain! Had she never showed up in my village…. Had she never interfered with Hope and Sombra in the Crystal Empire, Hope would still be alive…. Had Twilight Sparkle never become a princess, never met those friends of hers, I would never have lost mine!”

Starlight slowly picked her head up. She opened her eyes. They were full of water, but she could still see with moderate clarity. And what she saw made her almost gasp.

There, on the cabinet, was another case. It was dark over here and she had not noticed it initially. But now, here it was. And she saw the spell inside. Starlight quickly read it through. It was Starswirl’s time-travel spell. It was what she was looking for.

“Are you coming?” Stirring called from the other room. “We don’t have all night to get this done!”

When Starlight and Stirring reappeared in the main hall, security guards were already running every which way.

“I guess they got the alarm,” Stirring said.

One of them, who had just noticed Starlight and Stirring, ran up. Starlight turned her body so that she was visible only in profile to the guard. That way, he could not see the two scrolls held up to the right side of her chest.

“Haven’t seen you two around before,” the guard said. “You wouldn’t happen to be involved in the break-in that’s just occurred on the sun deck, would you?”

“You can’t be familiar with everypony who comes and goes,” Starlight said. “There must be a thousand or more on board.”

“Only a few hundred,” said the guard. “We’re still having trouble filling up the rooms. And I think I would have remembered you.”

“We just got in today,” Starlight said. “We’re touring the ship. But how could we have broken into something on the sun-deck? That’s two decks up. You’d have to be able to teleport or something to get up there. Have you ever heard of a unicorn teleporting?”

“Princess Twilight Sparkle can teleport,” the guard responded.

Starlight gritted her teeth and forced herself to say the words, “Princess Twilight is… special….”

The guard nodded. “Well, you’re right, there. Sorry to bother you folks.”

“Wait!” Stirring said as the guard began to walk away. “Don’t you think you should evacuate the ship? If somepony’s breaking into something, they could be very dangerous!”

“Evacuate the ship? Where you from, mister?” the security guard said. “We aren’t going to evacuate hundreds of ponies just because there’s a thief on board. We’ll get the sun-deck cordoned off in no time, and then that thief will be as good as caught!”

“This isn’t working….” Stirring muttered.

“Bravo, Stirring,” Starlight said. “But let me try.”

Starlight’s horn glowed and, across the room, the fire-alarm lever pulled down. The alarm that now sounded made the ones in the sun-deck sound like toy whistles. It rocked the whole vessel.

Starlight teleported herself and Stirring to the deck below, where the first long corridor of rooms was. They stood in a large area that doubled as that floor’s desk, the lobby, and the sitting room. To the right of them was a large ramp that led to a platform and stairs which in turn led all the way down to the pier. There had been a similar ramp to one side of the main hall and, Starlight assumed, there would be others on the lower levels.

Ponies in their night-clothes were sleepily coming out of the doors to see what was going on. “Fire?” one of them asked to the two ponies in the lobby.

“It's not a fire,” Stirring said. “But there is something very important you need to know. You are all in grave d–”

“So, there’s no fire?” another pony said.

“Well, no, not exactly,” Stirring said, a little taken aback. “But there is–”

“What do they think they’re playing at, doing a fire drill this late at night?” somepony from further down the corridor yelled.

“I’m going back to bed!” said somepony else. There were general nods and voices of approval as all the ponies returned to their rooms.

“You’re just batting zero today, aren’t you?” Starlight said with malicious enjoyment. “Once again, let me try.”

Starlight stepped in front of Stirring. “Everypony, can I have your attention for a brief moment?” she bellowed.

All the ponies paused to look at her.

“Thank you,” she said. Her horn lit up and turquoise light surrounded everypony in the hallway. Starlight was certain its range stretched to cover anypony in the rooms beyond, and possibly anypony on the floor.

Suddenly, dramatically, the cutie marks of all the ponies were torn off and came to float in the air above Starlight.

“Now that I have your attention, please take the ramp to my right and then take the stairs down to the pier. Once there, get as far away from the ship as you can.”

Zombie-like, all the ponies grunted and slowly made their way for the ramp to the outside.

“A little more quickly, if you please,” Starlight said, causing all the ponies to pick up their pace considerably.

“Wow,” Stirring said. “I knew your cutie mark spell could make ponies a little more docile. But how did you know it would put everypony on the floor into such a mindlessly obedient stupor?”

“Simple,” Starlight said. “They’re tourists. Days of lying in the sun for hours and eating too much food did most of the work for me.”

Afterward, Starlight and Stirring traveled to every floor, using Starlight’s cutie mark spell on every pony they could find. Finally, they had completed their sweep of the hotel rooms and reappeared in the main hall.

Starlight and Stirring paused at a small table in the middle of the hall. Starlight leaned against it, letting the explosive spell fall onto the table itself. But she dare not do the same with the time-spell, which was still held very close to her chest.

“That takes care of all the guests,” Stirring said. “But what about the employees?”

“They should have already evacuated, except for those softheaded security guards who refuse to leave the sun-deck,” came a refined voice behind them.

Starlight and Stirring turned around.

“Did you do what Hope asked, doctor?” Starlight said.

Dr. Fie nodded. “Yes. I sent several messages. And while I was chatting up the night clerk, I happened to inform him that somepony may have put a bomb on board the ship and that it was in immediate danger of exploding.”

“And he believed you?” Stirring asked.

“I might have casually mentioned that my name is Swift Strike and I work for the Equestrian Intelligence Service.” Dr. Fie looked up to the legion of cutie marks floating overhead, strange stars in the great heavenly vault that was the main hall’s ceiling. “I see you’ve used your usual method of persuasion on the guests; brute force.”

“It’s what was called for at the time,” Starlight said. “As a ‘pony of action,’ you should understand all about that.”

“Oh, I do,” Dr. Fie said. “But I’m sure, had I been there, such coercive methods could have been avoided. Never use the fist when you could use the open palm, dear lady.”

“‘Fist’? ‘Palm’? What strange words are you using now?” Stirring asked, seriously confused.

“Ah, tut!” Dr. Fie responded. “As usual, my language is too cultivated and worldly for a simple pony like you, dear boy.”

“I know all about your methods of persuasion, doctor, and I’m not really in the mood to deal with them,” Starlight said. “If you’ll excuse me, I have some blockheads to get off this boat before it explodes.”

“I suppose we should get out of here, too, doctor,” Stirring said. “There’s nothing else for us to do but maybe keep order with the ponies outside.”

“I don’t think they’re in much of a state to complain,” Dr. Fie said. “Does Starlight Glimmer not intend to keep them in cutie mark-less serfdom indefinitely?”

Stirring glared at Starlight. “Not this time.”

Starlight returned his glare with an even harsher glare. Meanwhile, Dr. Fie had noticed the spell on the table. He read through it quickly. As the staring contest between the other two continued, he discreetly began to use his magic. The scroll glowed purple, disappeared, and reappeared in the inner pocket of his tweed suit.

Dr. Fie, with narrow eyes, turned his gaze back to the Equalists. “Oh, is there trouble in paradise now? Such a shame, such a shame.”

“No, doctor,” Stirring said, keeping his eyes locked with Starlight’s. “Everything is now perfectly clear for the first time in a very long while.”

“Oh, good, good!” Dr. Fie said, sounding far too chipper for the situation. Ambling up to Stirring, he began to push him toward the floor’s exit ramp.

“Then you had better get going, dear boy. Don’t want to be caught in the blast, do you?”

Dr. Fie pushed Stirring all the way to the ramp and then began ambling back to Starlight.

“But what about you, doctor?” Stirring asked.

Dr. Fie looked back casually over his shoulder. “I’ll be right behind you, dear boy. There’s just something that I want to speak to Starlight about before she goes off on her noble errand.”

Stirring Words shrugged and trotted out onto the ramp. Starlight and Dr. Fie were left alone.

“What is it, doctor?” Starlight asked impatiently. “I have lives to save.”

“I know,” Dr. Fie said. “I wouldn’t dream of keeping you from them. But there is something I have to tell you.”

Starlight rolled her eyes. “If you want to get back at me for that jab about your methods of persuasion, it’ll have to wait. We’re on a clock here.”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Dr. Fie’s voice suddenly friendlier than Starlight had ever heard. It worried her.

“I just have to tell you this one thing,” Dr. Fie said.

Starlight raised her brows, her expression halfway between interest and skepticism.

Dr. Fie fell back on his haunches and rubbed his hooves together. “I need to tell you this. I did know your father. He wasn’t a sterling character by any means, but he did come to my aid when I needed it, when there were questions about certain top-secret plans for newly-developed weapons mysteriously disappearing and reappearing in the hooves of the zebras.”

“So it was you,” Starlight said. “I figured.”

Dr. Fie nodded. “Yes, it was me. Your father helped me out of that. To this day, I still have no idea why. I had never behaved with particular kindness to him. I’ve never behaved with particular kindness to anypony. But I suppose that, despite his many faults and the many, many despicable things he had brought himself to commit out there, there was still true nobility in him. I’ve always felt like I owed him a debt of gratitude. I like to think that we were, however briefly, friends.”

“Why bring this up now?” Starlight asked, apparently unmoved.

Dr. Fie fidgeted a little. “Because…. Well, because, dear lady…. As I said, your father was no saint. I know you think that what you’ve been doing honors his memory in some way, that it makes up for what he was and the hardships he endured. But I am certain that, his failings aside, your father would be much prouder of you for what you’re doing now than any of the things you’ve done with that Equalist nonsense.”

Starlight nodded. Dr. Fie thought he could see the barest trace of emotion, the subtlest hint of a tear, in those steely indigo eyes.

“Thank you, doctor,” Starlight said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me….” One teleportation spell later and Dr. Fie was on his own.

“No, thank you, dear lady,” Dr. Fie said. “Maybe with you, I’ve somehow managed to repay that debt. I suppose only time, that great vindicator, will tell.”

Dr. Fie put his hooves to his chest and felt the scroll there. “And as for you, dear Hope, I hope you haven’t done anything too drastic yet. Poor girl. Please wait just a little longer. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.”

Dr. Fie set off on the long, circuitous path that, he had learned, led to the boiler room.