"So, that's the place?" I looked down from the deck and saw a mountain. "It doesn't look like much."

"No, it doesn't," Shamrock agreed as the ship started descending. "The ruins and our campsite are inside the mountain. It should be warmer in there. Always has been, for some reason. Never saw a hint of frost."

"That sounds good. I'll help set up camp. What do you need me to do?"

"Can you knock down a tree?"

"I have explosive rounds and my fists."

"Sounds good. Go get ready. I'll have Ark get you."

"Sounds good."

During the descent, I changed my clothes as quickly as I could. The bodysuit I'd been hibernating in was switched with a fresh one, which felt nice. I put the Hunter outfit on over that, and took a moment to admire how I looked. "Oh yeah. I'm looking good."

A knock came from the door. "You ready, Yang?" Ark asked.

"Ah, one moment." I quickly logged the outfit in the buckle and left the cabin. "Okay, I'm ready to punch down a tree."

"That's a pretty frilly setup you've got. You sure you don't want to put something more durable on?"

"Trust me, it's fine," I assured her.

Ark shrugged. "If you say so. No fur off my back if it gets damaged. Come with me." I followed the diamond dog up to the deck. For a bit, she just looked across the trees. "There's a good one! Come!"

I leapt overboard with Ark and nailed the landing on the forest floor. "So, are we getting firewood?"

"Yep. I also want to see you punch a tree down." She tapped a random tree with her paw. "This is the one. Go for it."

I expanded the Ember Celica and loaded the explosive bands into them. As soon as Ark was out of the way, I went up to the tree and threw a full power punch at it. The sound of the explosion was almost drowned out by the fragmenting tree, which started falling towards me a few seconds after I stepped away, which I took as my cue to get out of the way.

Ark popped up from behind the felled tree and I looked between her and where she was. "How did. . . When. . . Don't think about it." She went to work on the tree, snapping off branches and bundling them up with some twine from her jacket. Not wanting to just stand around, I followed her lead.

We wound up with a dozen bundles of twigs and branches. Ark ran some more twine through the bundles, and when she was done, we hefted the tree up, the bundles hanging between us, and I followed her to the campsite.

It felt pretty good to work and use my strength again, and in spite of the cold, I was smiling.

When we passed the ship, I saw Adamantine, Queen, and Shamrock taking the table and chairs from the mess hall out while Selene carried a chest on her back. All six of us filed through some thin foliage and into a cave that, by the sound of it, had water running through it.

Finally, Ark and I set the log down and I looked around. There was barely any natural light coming in, so I made a flame and looked around. Aside from a wooden sign showing which way went outside and which way went deeper, there wasn't much to see. It also felt a lot warmer, even without a flame going. Almost comfortably warm.

It didn't take long for things to be set up. Six, well, calling them beds would have been a bit generous, since they were more like short wooden frames or boxes that kept a sleeping pad off the ground, were arranged off to one side. A fire was going in a ring made of random stones. The table and chairs weren't far from the fire pit, and a few other tables with tools were set up as well. All in all, it looked more like an archaeological campsite than anything a pirate would arrange.

"So, when do we go in?" I asked over a late lunch.

"As soon as we clean up here and hide ourselves a bit," Shamrock said. "I'll grab some torches before we go in, and you can be a light source too."

"That sounds like a plan. Is there anything I should know about this place?"

"Welllll. . . I think it might be haunted."

"Haunted?"

"There's a voice that speaks occasionally. It comes from everywhere, but nobody's there. I can't tell if it's male or female or what."

"Huh. Sounds interesting. Well, I ain't afraid of no ghost~" I let a few bars of the music play before letting it fade, leaving everyone with confused looks. "References you don't get aside, what's it like inside?"

"Well, these ruins, believe it or not, are made mostly of metal. Surprisingly, it's not all that rusty. And if you think the temperature out here is good, it's even better in there. Hot or cold outside, it's always the same inside." A few ideas started running through my head. Everything he was describing sounded like modern things from Earth, though having seen and experienced all kinds of magic, strange stuff, and Pinkie Pie, I couldn't come to a conclusion so easily.

Once lunch was cleaned up and the few leftovers were packed up, I stayed with Queen to clean the dishes while everyone else went out to conceal the ship a bit, along with the entrance. It didn't take long for the dishes to be done, so I milled around for a bit before sitting down on the large chest that held my clothes and playing with my fire magic.

"Alright, we should be good," Shamrock said when he and his group returned, which I took as my cue to kill the snowflake shaped fire I had going. "Grab anything you may need. We'll probably be in there for a few hours."

The ruins were further into the cave and down a dark chasm. Shamrock and Queen flew down with a lit torch each while Adamantine secured a length of rope to a rock. I rappelled down first, feeling the air get warmer as I went. When I hit the ground, it sounded like I landed on a catwalk. Ark came down next, followed by Adamantine with Selene catching a ride on his shoulders.

We followed the catwalk, which sounded and felt very sturdy, despite being so old. Eventually, we came to the end, which had a tall, narrow archway in a ring leading into a facility. "Great. It's a vault." I never played the games, but I knew the story. "I hope it's just loot inside."

"These ruins are fascinating," Shamrock eagerly said as we passed the archway and entered a reception area, a sense of foreboding coming over me. "They're so old, yet so durable. It's almost like time forgot about this place."

Adamantine lightly rapped a hand against a wall. "It's very tough. I'd like to make a new weapon out of this stuff."

"Like what?" I asked. "A hammer?"

"No, though a hammer does sound glorious. It would be a matching cannon for Iron Debt."

"A cannon? Artillery?"

"Handheld."

"A hand cannon?" A smile graced my face. "Okay, that sounds cool. I want to see it." We came to a broken sliding door, both sides just hanging there. Above the doors that would need to be held open or broken so Adamantine could get through was a sign in English characters. "Shamrock, you said you couldn't read the writing here?"

"Yeah," Shamrock answered. "Wait, you can?"

"Yeah. This is the Helios Biothaumechanical Laboratories." The implications of the name set me even more on edge than the vault icon shaped entrance did.

"Gesundheit," Ark said.

"Well, that's. . . That changes things a bit," Shamrock said. "Well, I've been in here before, so it should be okay."

The doors were easy enough for Adamantine to hold open, though he had to duck a bit to get through them. The hallway we were in had multiple doorways in it, all with a few names next to them. I looked into one that the door had fallen off from and saw an office setup. "Hey, they have computers in here." They didn't look as fancy as the gaming rig I'd gotten from the weather machine, but they were similar enough that I could tell what they were.

After brushing off an ungodly amount of dust from the office chair, I sat down and hit the power button. The core slowly lit up and filled the room with a dim yellow light. The monitor was even slower to come to life, but once it did, it filled the room with its glow. "Okay, that's cool," Shamrock said.

To my surprise, there was no login screen, instead just going straight to the desktop screen. One folder on there, labelled 'Video Diaries', caught my interest, so I opened it up. There were more folders inside it, organized by topic. Personal, Personal Projects, Not Personal Projects, Rumors, and Other. I opened the Personal one and opened the first video. It was a young adult pegasus mare, bright white with blue eyes while her mane and tail had a smooth gradient of warm colors, almost looking like flames. She also had a similar gradient on part of her wings.

She looked and sounded excited as she was recording herself. "Hi, diary! It's my first day at Helios, and I'm just so happy to be here! The academia was not easy, and it wasn't cheap, but here I am! I've got soooo many experiments I want to try out." She held up a thick binder overflowing with papers. "I guess I'll just pick one at random." She set the thing down with a heavy thud and flipped it open with one hoof. "Let's see. . . Hmm. Crystal based muscle replacement. That sounds good. I'll tell you how it goes later, diary! Bye bye!" She happily waved at the camera before the video ended.

After a few seconds, Selene spoke up. "What did we just see?"

"A video," I said a little breathlessly. "And some history."

"Is there another one?" Adamantine asked.

"Yeah, I think so. Let's see if there's anything on that crystal muscle stuff." I browsed through the the project folders until I found a folder just for the crystal muscle project, and opened the first one.

The pegasus looked tired, but still had a smile on her face. "This is my first entry on the crystal muscle project. To make a long story short, it took over a month of testing and synthesizing to actually make a type of crystal that could work like a muscle. Maybe." She picked up a strand of something green and played with it between her forehooves. "I still need to figure out how to attach it to someone's bone, though. I don't think it would do too well between connecting a strand of muscle, so it would need to be a full length thing. Joint to joint. I'm going to go to my little apartment here and sleep for three whole days! But first, I've got to put out a call for test subjects. I'll end this entry, do that, get a steak dinner, and get some sleep. Bye bye!"

I opened the next one and the mare's mane and tail were frazzled. She also seemed a bit nervous. "Well, hehe, the crystal muscles. . . Got mixed results. All my test subjects had some kind of muscle damage that fit my criteria, and the installation went seamlessly, but. . . Well. . . It fixed some wings, fixed some legs, and even fixed a minotaur's hand, but it also destroyed some wings and legs. One unicorn, a retired soldier, with severe muscular damage to all four legs had the crystal muscles installed in two, and he's asking for the other two to be fixed." She chuckled a bit. "Well, if nothing else, he's happy. Maybe the crystal muscles can be used as a last resort fix, when the damage is so bad that nothing else can be done."

A new male voice came in. "Hey Firebrand!"

Firebrand sighed. "What is it, Piston?"

"Can I borrow some of that crystal muscle stuff? Like, a couple hundred feet of it?"

"Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Not like it'll get approved for medical use at this rate."

"Hey, you'll do fine. And thanks!"

"I wonder what he's got in mind. Well, that'll do for now. Bye bye!"

The next one opened with Firebrand plopping into her seat and spinning once, and she looked very happy. "Good news! Piston repurposed the crystal muscles for industrial use! They're much more powerful and lighter than anything else for heavy duty lifting, especially when they're braided together. And he even credited me with the muscle development! Oh, I can practically hear the money coming my way already! The potential applications are limited only by the number of things with hinge joints!" Firebrand turned somber. "In not so good news, the unicorn we fixed with the crystal muscles, Umbra Shade. . . He's showing some issues. The crystal muscles seem to be working a bit too well with him, and he wants more and more of them, even where he has no damage, like his diaphragm. It's more than a little concerning, but he's insisting on it. Truth be told, I kind of want to see what happens too. Well, that's it for now. Bye bye."

"So, what do you think happened to that crystal unicorn?" Ark asked.

"I don't know," Queen said. "He's probably dead by now, though."

I opened another video in the folder. Firebrand had a big mug of some kind of drink with her, probably hot chocolate, and looked depressed. "Ohh, today. . . Wasn't the best. Umbra Shade's gone mad. He almost got into one of the liquid shadow vats over in the shadow labs after charging through all the security measures in his way, including a 4 inch thick steel door or two. Overseer Celestia, thankfully, was able to banish and anchor him to the far north. I wish I hadn't approved his continued crystal muscle replacement plan. When Celestia told me that the crystal muscle was to never be used for medical purposes, I had no argument. Umbra Shade, all those permanently crippled in the tests, and all the damage that's been done, there was no defense." She took a long drag from the mug, leaving a hot chocolate and whipped cream mustache on her muzzle for a moment before licking it off. "I'm going to go out for a week, get plastered, and come back with a soggier conscious. Maybe I'll go back through my binder for another idea. I still want to find ways to help those with severe bodily damage, though. It's not my talent, but dammit, it's my passion!" She started shaking and tears appeared in her eyes. "Both my parents' wings were crippled when I was young, and they couldn't fly after that. I'm not going to give up, though. I will figure out a way to help amputees, cripples, and more." Another dreg of hot chocolate. "I know the Helios labs are supposed to be cooperating with the Artemis labs on the west coast, but I still want us to outdo them. They grew four more wings on a pegasus soldier. They call him the King of the Sky now, and he's starting to turn this global war in our favor. I will find some way to outdo that. Well, enough ranting. I'm going to get something stronger now. Bye bye."

"A pegasus with six wings?" Selene wondered. "Where would they fit all of them?"

"A war. . ." Shamrock said. "And these things they did."

"Do you think the Celestia she mentioned is Princess Celestia?"

"Twilight would have a field day with this," I said. "I'm glad she's not with us."

"What can we do with this stuff, though?" Adamantine asked. "None of it's relevant anymore."

I snapped and pointed at the minotaur. "Gather up as much of it as you can and sell it to Twilight. You'd get a fortune from her, no questions asked. Then you could all live easy lives wherever you want."

Shamrock clapped. "Let's do that. Queen, Ark, you two come with me. We're going to get some crates from the ship and build some more. Yang, Adamantine, Selene, you three keep exploring, see what you can find."

As I watched the retreating forms of the pegasus, diamond dog, and griffon, one thought crossed my mind. "I'm not part of your crew, Shamrock." A different thought followed that one. "Where have I seen the name Firebrand before?"

Author's Notes:

It approaches. That's right.

HISTORY TIME!