In the group, Starlight remained near the front with Scootaloo and the largest of the Twilight clones, Six. Although she had safely reunited with Scootaloo, the tension had not dissipated. In fact, it had only grown. Starlight was not sure what Scootaloo was thinking, or what her intentions were. With her entire body covered in armor, it was impossible to read her in the slightest. The Twilight clone, however, did not seem to like Starlight much.

“We were friends, once,” said Starlight.

“Once,” said Scootaloo. “Long ago. But not any longer.”

“Because I tried to kill you. Because I didn’t listen.”

“No. I could forgive that. What I cannot forgive is you.”

“Scootaloo, I don’t understand. I’m the same pony that I’ve always been.”

Scootaloo stopped and looked at Starlight. “You are going to tell me that, looking at me with those red eyes? Who did you steal them from, I wonder. Certainly no pony useful, I’m sure.”

“It isn’t like that,” protested Starlight, but Scootaloo held up a hoof.

“Your different. Not just between now and then. Maybe you always were. I don’t know. I’m trying to find answers, like you are. That’s why you’re here. But you’re not my friend. Not anymore.”

“Scootaloo- -”

The larger clone pushed Starlight back. Starlight looked up at her, expecting to see an expression of brutish loyalty across her face. Instead, though, she saw one of compassion.

“Please,” she said in a French-accented version of Twilight’s voice. “Don’t push her. Not now. She’s been through so much. More than I can imagine, but perhaps an amount that you can. Let her be, if only for a while. She may come around. Or not.”

Scootaloo had already started to walk away, ignoring both of them. It was apparent that Starlight was not the only one who had changed.

The ship was of a relatively standard design, which Starlight found increasingly strange the more she thought about it. Looking at the interior, it was a standard Equestrian scout ship, and an unfinished one at that. And yet it had a shield capacity far greater than such a ship should. The harmonic shield especially was profoundly unusual; there was no logical reason why something so esoteric would ever be installed on a starship this mundane.

Knowing the layout, though, Starlight already knew that she was being led to a central cargo bay long before she reached it. When she did, she found that it was completely devoid of supplies but far from empty. Beneath the lights of the hanger-sized bay were several clingons sitting about and, in the center, Pink, scrawling a complex and indecipherable diagram across the floor with a long and makeshift brush.

“You!” said Starlight, taking a step forward. Pinkamena, who was sitting on Pink’s shoulder, immediately held up a pink-colored hoof.

“Stop!” she said, her eyes narrowing. “You followed us, I see.”

“I did.”

“And I’ll deal with you later. But don’t interrupt him now. You have no idea how difficult it is for him to keep focus this long.” She put her hoof on Pink’s head, and Starlight noticed that he had stopped and was shaking badly, muttering to himself in a combination of various languages and sobs.

“I don’t know who I am,” he said. “Where am I? I can’t…I can’t be like this, not like this- -”

“It’s okay,” said Pinkamena, stroking his helmet. “You’re right here, remember?”

“Right here…right here…I’m right here…right here…”

That calmed him, and he went back to scrawling on the floor. Starlight took a step back, being careful not to disturb the markings. She was not sure what they meant, at least not entirely, but she had a great enough understanding to realize that they were not the ravings of a madman but actually mathematical in nature. As she stared at them for a moment, she realized that not only did they include calculations but that they were partially written in a stylized form of Equestrian. She had a feeling that she had seen something very similar before, but did not recall from where.

Her attention was quickly drawn from the strange runs, though, by an odd sight. Not twenty feet from her, a holographic representation of the ship’s quant was attempting to push a clingon out of the bay. The clingon must have been heavy, though, because while it remained sitting comfortably the hologram was only barely managing to push it across the floor.

“Move, damn you!” it squeaked, pushing desperately.

“What’s the matter? I thought you were going to eat me?”

“Oh, I’ll eat you! I’ll eat all of you! With jam and butter! But- -I have- -to- -get you- -off- -my- -SHIP!”

“Oh. Okay. I’ll wait until then. And just so you know, I taste like cotton candy and bubblegum. I’m delicious! Here, smell!” She grabbed the hologram and shoved it into her chest. The hologram squealed and struggled, apparently forgetting that it could simply phase through the clingon by turning off its hard-light function.

“That’s not something you see every day,” said Jurneu.

Starlight leapt into the air nearly a foot, turning to her side to see the white, red-eyed pony standing beside her. “Where the hell did you come from?!” she demanded.

“Me? A fine facility on the northern shores of Thessia’s eastern continent. Or do you mean before that? In that case, it was my mother. I came from my mother. I’d rather not say specifically where.”

“If you’re here, who’s flying my ship?!”

“Flying? It’s tethered. Bare minimum processing. I sub-linked the controls to Armchair. Which is a weird name for a geth, by the way. I can only guess that he meant ‘Armature’ but doesn’t know how to spell. It’s fine, though. He seems to know what he’s doing. Better than he spells, at least.”

He shrugged and then walked over to the clingon and the hologram. The clingon’s eyes followed him, and it smiled hungrily.

“Hey there,” said Jurneu. Even Starlight was not naïve enough to not notice the tone of his voice, and she suddenly felt ill when she realized what he was trying to do.
“High fancy unicorn,” said the clingon. “My name is Pinkie!”

“And mine is Jurneu.” He leaned in closer. “My, it’s uncanny! I’ve never seen one of you in person before. You look just like a pony!” He poked her. “Except…hairless. Which is not a bad thing.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” said the clingon. “You want to put some icing on my cake, don’t you?” She then raised and lowered her eyebrows quickly several times, mocking a seductive gesture.

“I do like my cakes well iced. I don’t know though. What do you think, quant?”

The hologram finally remembered that she was not solid and phased through the clingon’s forelegs. “My name is Inte,” she said, sitting down. She considered the clingon for a moment, and then Jurneu. “You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you?”

“Hey, if I can take a pounding from a pair of turian sailors, I think I can make an éclair out of a clingon.”

“I love eclairs!” chimed the clingon, standing up excitedly. “Especially the kind filled with meat!”

“I don’t know,” said Inte, considering the clignon. “Maybe if you put a bag on her head?”

“That would probably help…” He walked around the back of the clingon and lifted her poofy pink tail. He immediately grimaced when he saw what was beneath. “Crap,” he said, “I’m going to need more than a bag for this one.”

“GET YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF HER!”

Jurneu was immediately knocked bay by another clingon that Pink had thrown at him. Starlight, who had been watching the events in disbelief, saw him sprawl out across the floor from the blow.

“If you touch them, I will know!” bellowed Pink. “I count them! There shall be no making of eclairs here, now, or EVER!”

“Great, now look what you did,” said Pinkamena, who appeared slightly more disgruntled than usual. “He’s not going to calm down for a while.”

“I can do it manually if I have to,” said Bob, entering the room with Zedok and Sbaya behind her.

“Don’t you dare!” cried Pinkamena. “Unless you like getting bit!”

“I like getting bit,” said the clingon that Jurneu had been flirting with, looking at him with some disappointment. “I like getting bit HARD. Or biting hard. Especially when the pony is fresh.”

“And he was being VERY fresh,” replied the clingon who had been thrown.

Pink suddenly pivoted, turning toward Scootaloo. She had been largely silent, having taken a seat on a high box with Six beside her. Pink stared at her silently for a moment, and then suddenly put his face close to Starlight. She saw the gill-like organs on the side of his neck move as he sniffed the air.

“Starlight Glimmer,” he said. “You are here. This was not anticipated. It is not a bad thing, though. It was expected, but misinterpreted.”

“Hello, Pink,” she said.

“Pink she says. She doesn’t know. Can’t know.” He stood up straight. “It’s happening. Slowly and over time, and instantly and rapidly. I am not entirely me anymore, am I?”

“You haven’t been,” said Six. “Not for a long time, I don’t think.”

Pink looked at her and gave a long pause. Then he pointed at her. “The book-horse is correct. I think. I don’t remember what you were talking about.”

“You were writing the coordinates,” said Pinkamena.

“Coordinates? To what? Oh, never mind. I don’t think it matters as long as they go to the right place.”

Pink walked back to what he was doing and picked up his brush and continued painting the diagram into the floor.

“Coordinates?” Starlight looked down at the floor and realized that they were, in fact, coordinates. “But they’re not to any location. They don’t make any sense. The dimensional patterns- -” She immediately stopped, having remembered where she had seen these inscriptions before, or at least ones like them. “This…this is a Starswirllian matrix,” she said. “These are transdimensional coordinates!” She looked up at Bob, and realized that the human had already known by the smile on her face.

“I know,” she said.

“Where did you even get access to this? These books are only available in the Temple of Harmony- -no pony has read them, except for me and a few high-level wizards!”

“The Paradigm records them,” muttered Pink, to himself. “As the Paradigm records Starlight Glimmer and Scootaloo of Harmony. The Paradigm knows the will-be friends of the Goddess, and knows the enemies that will be slain…”

“Ignore him. He is quite insane,” said Bob. “I should know. I was the one who took out a substantial portion of his frontal lobe.”

“I wasn’t using it anyway…”

Starlight stamped one of her hooves. “What is this?” she demanded. “What are you trying to do?”

“You said you wanted to see what Thebe was doing, didn’t you?” said Scootaloo. “This is how.”

“Victoria’s brain is able to see the Paradigm without becoming it,” explained Bob. “And that’s the thing. Why do you think the Alliance never managed to find out exactly where Thebe is? Their telescope network can see the lice on a baterian. You’d think they’d be able to find a centuries-old group of terrorists, right?”

“Unless there was no physical location,” said Starlight, suddenly comprehending what the coordinates meant, and their significance. “Unless Thebe’s central location wasn’t even in this universe…”

“It’s called Vocqtus,” said Bob, crossing her arms. “An adjacent basin dimension. I don’t know how Thebe figured out how to get there, but from what Victoria and her pink parrot are telling me, they did.”

“But we’ll never be able to get there,” said Jurneu, standing up and brushing himself off. “Not without one of their ships.”

“No,” said Scootaloo. “You are incorrect. That is why we have her.”

Bob waved. “I can open the rift, as soon as Pink tells me where to go.”

“So you do serve a purpose,” said Zedok, who had been leaning on the back wall beside her daughter, the latter of the pair who had been staring almost continuously at Bob’s rear.

“Apart from being the sexiest person in this room aside from your son, my daughters and…” she pointed across the room. “That clingon, yes. I do.”

The plans were underway. Several hours had passed since Starlight had arrived, and Pink was nearing the end of his transcription of the Paradigm’s will. Starlight and Bob were working on the math while the other members of the crew had disseminated through the ship. The pair of asari had not left each other’s side, and although the younger was happy to play and laugh with the alicorn sisters, the older remained aloof and nervous. Their synth had gone to visit Eloth, and the two were sitting in a room, just staring at each other blankly. Their unicorn breeder seemed to have vanished, possibly taking at least one clingon with him.

Scootaloo, though, had gone down into the lower section of the ship, for the second time returning to engineering. She had little interest in interacting with the others at the moment. Instead, there was a final member of the crew she needed to talk to.

There in the engine room, she found Inte standing beside the mass of crystal and flesh that made up her central core. She appeared to be doing repairs using the spider-like robots that were responsible for rebuilding the ship when it became damaged.

“Inte?” said Scootaloo.

“Scootaloo,” said Inte, turning around and smiling. “I really like your armor. It is fitting.”

“No you don’t. You’re just programmed to compliment me.”

“So I have told you, yes.”

“Where you lying to me?”

“You never need to know the answer to that question.”

Scootaloo stared at the core for a moment, watching Inte’s true form slowly quiver and hum. She was reminded of a very different situation where she had looked into something oddly similar. In that case, it had already been too late. In Inte’s case, there had never been a chance in the first place.

“I’m going to have to leave you,” she said at last.

“Leave me?” Inte pivoted quickly. “Did- -did I do something wrong? Please don’t leave me, Captain! You’re my Captain! I need you!”

“I have to,” maintained Scootaloo. “Bob can open the portal to Vocqtus, but she can’t open it very wide. We can’t take a ship. You will have to stay behind.”

“Be left behind you mean.”

“You can take it either way. Your portable version will not work a universe away from the rest of you.”

“I know.” Inte’s mood suddenly changed, becoming immensely cheerful. “Which is why I thought of this in advance!”

The core behind her shifted and shuddered, causing the whole ship to vibrate. The central crystal twisted apart with a crack, its surface warping and opening, sequentially revealing deeper and deeper levels until its very center was visible.

A structure of tech fields then formed around it and removed the center of the system: a tiny but very pure blue-white crystal. To Scootaloo, it was amazingly beautiful.

“This is my heart,” said Inte as it was lowered to her. The tech surrounded it, drawing power from within to maintain continuity and create the machinery necessary to read the crystal. As Scootaloo watched, it was inserted into Inte’s body. Inte flickered as it took control of her projection. “And now it is within me. Don’t worry, though. The ship has enough power to last for a few days. More if we link it to Starlight’s ship.”

“But why? You don’t have any will of your own. Why would you want to come with me?”

“You already answered the question. Because I am programmed to.” Inte smiled. “I am not able to tell you why, but I have to go. I have to be there when you reach your destination.”

“Not able to, or not willing to?”

“For me? There is no difference. It is entirely possible that I know everything that I am not telling you. Or possible that I do not. Substantively, the effect is the same, as I am not able to make choices of my own.”

“But if that assertion is a lie…”

“It is best not to think about it. It gets messy beyond there. Do not question me, Scootaloo. Just know that I have to do this. It is critical that I am there.”

“Or what?” Scootaloo then answered her own question. “You know what, never mind. I trust you on this, Inte. Just don’t let me down.”

“I won’t, Captain. I promise.”

Some time later, it was night. Or at least Starlight thought. Scootaloo’s ship had darkened, but the cycles were set differently than those on her own. It did not matter anyway. She would not be able to sleep, even if she had tried. Her dreams had been horrible even when she had been happy believing that the clone One had been her friend. Now her friend was gone, or had never been. With so little left, Starlight shuddered at the horror of what she might have to face in her sleep.

Instead, she sat in a low-lit room, contemplating the day’s calculations and wondering what might come soon enough. Armchair sat behind her, stroking the fur of a black, green-eyed cat that sat in his lap. He seemed content, largely because he did not seem to have the capacity for thought unless he applied his mind toward it. Of that, Starlight was quite envious.

The door on the far side of the room opened, and Starlight looked up, half expecting to see one of the clones entering the room. She felt a slight hint of apprehension. The clones were diverse and not all of them were unpleasant. The one called Six was kind, and the one called Eight seemed pleasant enough. Seven was aloof and quiet but did not seem to overtly dislike Starlight. Quatre- -or ‘Four’ as her sisters called her- -already hated Starlight, as did Nine, which Starlight was told was her custom. What bothered Starlight the most, though, was that looking at them reminded her of the false-Twilight, and she found herself unfairly hating them for that.

Instead of an alicorn, though, Jurneu entered the room. He had a towel around his neck, and his fur was still damp. He had apparently recently taken a shower. Starlight could not recall having seen him without clothing before, and she realized just how ghostly white he looked without something to break up his homogenous coat and mane color apart from his red eyes.

“The one called Seven said I could find you here,” he said. He seemed to consider for a moment. “Well, no. Not really. I think she’s mute. But…she still said it. It is challenging to express with words.”

“And you no doubt tried to get in her saddle, I’m sure.”

Jurneu looked slightly insulted. “No,” he said. “All of these alicorns are creatures of great beauty, and Seven has a particular innocence about her. I wouldn’t lie with such angelic beings without at least a few wonderful dates first, no matter how ploofy their wings or hard their horns.”

“And yet you would do it with a clingon. Hence the shower, I’m guessing.”

Jurneu shivered. “By the Goddess, no,” he said. “You know what they say about clingons? About them having a mouth on both ends? Well, it’s true.” He winced. “There…there were teeth…”

“I know. I’m familiar with their biology. And you’re lucky Pink didn’t kill you.”

“A calculated risk. But it wasn’t flirting. It was posturing.” He smiled. “I’ve put an image of myself into their heads now. They will surely think of me as a harmless man-slut. Which puts me at an advantage.” He paused, then sighed. “But…I think I am still going to try to ply the human. If I can. I don’t want to, but I think the good will I can generate will help our cause greatly.”

“You don’t seem like the kind who would turn down that sort of thing.”

“Again, the effect of posturing, this time on you. I mean, have you seen her? No, have you SMELLED her?” He shook his head. “If you want to take me up on my offer, you had better do it before I get to her. Because I am going to need a LOT of antibiotics before I am safe for you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Starlight, really just wanting to spare his feelings by not saying what she was thinking, which was an outright ‘no’. She instead tried to change the subject. “Is my ship still working fine?”

“Ask him,” said Jurneu, pointing.

“Everything is A-okay,” said Armchair, smiling.

“As for our situation, I’m not so sure.”

“What’s wrong with it? I’m doing exactly what I thought you would want to do. Isn’t that what the Spectres are doing right now? Trying to stop Thebe?”

“No,” said Jurneu, shaking his head. “The Council has detected the Alliance fleet massing on our borders. All the Spectres are getting into position for war. Most seem to assume that ‘Thebe’ is an element of the Alliance.”

“It isn’t,” said Armchair. Both Starlight and Jurneu turned around to look at him. “It would not be logical,” he said. “Robette d’Bordeaux, her daughters, and the creature called ‘Pink’ are all or were all Cerberus agents. And they seem to want to stop Thebe as much as the Council does.”

“That doesn’t mean they are working for Alliance interests anymore,” said Starlight.

“Indeed,” said Jurneu. “And it would not be the first time Cerberus had actively acted against the Alliance.”

“But I do not think that it is the case. Not this time. It is my assessmen that Thebe is a separate enemy. Or perhaps not an enemy at all.”

“They did try to kill us,” said Starlight.

“I was not there for that part, but I am aware of it. Yes, they did. But only because you attacked Scootaloo. Since we are now allied with Scootaloo, we are now working toward Thebe’s goal. We have not allied directly with them, but we are acting as their friends.”

Starlight knew that Armchair was correct, but she did not like his view. She did not know what Thebe was, but she did not like the idea of being associated with terrorists, especially those who kept their motives and methods completely hidden- -or those potent enough to be able to keep their methods and motives completely hidden.

Her thoughts were suddenly interrupted by something beeping. Jurneu lifted one of his forelegs and projected his omnitool.

“What is it?” said Starlight. “Please tell me that my ship isn’t blowing up.”

“Or that a clingon got onto it. I hear they are terrible to remove. And I don’t like the idea of them having two mouths, even though I do not know what you are referring to by that.”

“No,” said Jurneu, appearing surprised at what he was seeing. “It’s a message.”

“From where?”

“From the Spectre base that we just came from.”

“But we left it empty. There’s no one there.”

“I know. It’s being automatically relayed from the long-range communication antenna. Read-only audio.” He looked over his omnitool, his red eyes lit by its orange light. “It’s from Equestria Prime.”

Starlight’s teeth clenched. She felt herself becoming irrationally angry, but she still looked squarely at Jurneu. “Play it.”

“Ms. Glimmer, are you sure- -”

“Play me the audio, Jurneu.”

“Alright,” he said, hesitantly.

He tapped at his omnitool, and a hiss of the unique static that only came from transmitting a message across multiple deep-space relays and halfway across the universe poured through. Then a familiar voice.

“Starlight,” said One. “I don’t know if this message will reach you. I hope it does. I don’t know where you are now, but I’m using the last long-term relay you were near. If you are as smart as I know you are, you’ll have linked back to it or link to it again soon.”

One sounded strange. It was as though she were out of breath, or afraid. Starlight recognized the shift in her tone. It was the way her voice sounded during her panic attacks, when she was using every ounce of her strength to keep herself together. Starlight recalled all the times she had seen it happen before, and felt pity for her- -only for her pity to be replaced with anger toward herself now that she knew that the panic attacks were no doubt fake.

The transmission continued. “I…I’m sorry,” she said. “But I’m calling the mission off. It was foolish of me. I may have overreacted, sending you after her. I shouldn’t have put you in that position. We can attempt a different approach, but I would like to recall…to recall you to Equestria. Please, Starlight. Please return as soon as possible. Contact me when you get this message.” There was a pause. “I…I miss you. Please come back.”

The static then ended, as did the transmission.

“So,” said Chrysalis, now sitting beside Armchair in Jack’s form instead of in his lap. “Are you going to return her call? She certainly sounds sincere.”

“Of course not. And she isn’t.” Starlight stared at Jurneu, not looking back at Chrysalis. “No doubt it’s a trap. She knows what we’re doing, and she is trying to eliminate us. Eliminate me.”

“But she sounded very afraid of something,” said Armchair.

“It’s a trick. An act. Everything she has ever done has been an act. All of it lies.” She stood up and then without warning pushed her chair over, sending it sliding across the floor. “All of it lies!”

Chrysalis did not seem satisfied with that response. “That did not seem like what the message said to me.”

“Or me,” said Armchair. “She seemed so sad.”

“I have to agree with Starlight,” said Jurneu. “This is a pony that tricked Equestria for centuries. A former Cerberus agent. Perhaps even an active Cerberus agent. I don’t trust her, and I can’t be sure that this message is legitimate.”

“Because it isn’t.” Starlight moved quickly toward the door that Jurneu had come through. “That thing on the other side? Don’t make the mistake I did. Nothing she can ever say can be trusted.” She looked over her should and met Chrysalis’s green eyes. “My decision is final. I hope never to see that traitor again. We will not even reply to the message, and continue with the task at hand.”

Chrysalis leaned back and, of all things, smiled. “The decision is ultimately yours, Starlight Glimmer,” she said. “And it is, at the end, up to you to make it.”

They had landed on a distant and unnamed garden world, and Starlight found herself preparing her armor yet another time. For the first time, though, she was afraid of what might come. She did not have the conviction she had when she believed that she was serving Twilight or seeking vengeance for Trixie. She just felt empty, and in that emptiness, she felt fear. She was not sure why. There was nothing left for her to live for. She simply could not understand why she did not welcome the release of death from her thin-stretched lifetime.

Bob approached her from the side and handed her a respirator.

“What is this for?” asked Starlight, taking it awkwardly in her hooves.

“For breathing. Obviously. Trust me, you’re going to want that where we’re going.”

Zedok poked her head into the room. “Hey!” she called. “I’m going to need one too.”

Bob sighed as Zedok approached. “That means I’m going to need to size one for an asari now.” She reached to her side, and Starlight began attempting to attach the mask to herself. Working the straps was nearly impossible with hooves, and by the time she noticed the glint of metal in Bob’s hand, it was too late.

The knife glinted through the air without warning. Starlight gaped and looked up to see that Bob had stabbed its blade deep into Zedok’s neck. The blade was long, and Zedok gasped as it penetrated her throat. Bob immediately twisted it before pulling it out. Zedok, now bleeding heavily, wrapped her hands around her throat.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!” cried Starlight, taking a defensive stance even though she had no magic, no tech, and no weapons. She did not care. She would gore Bob with her useless horn if she had do.

“What did I do? Basically nothing.” Bob held up the knife, revealing that it was covered in a nearly fluorescent green substance. Starlight immediately realized that the blood coming from Zedok’s neck was not violet like normal asari blood; instead, it was bright green.

Chrysalis suddenly smiled, taking her hands away from her throat. The wound had already healed, and with a flash of green light she shifted again. She assumed a form that Starlight did not recognize: a pale human male dressed in pure white armor. He had neatly tied blond hair and piercing red eyes with vertical slit pupils.

“Why would you do that to me, Robette?”

Bob’s eyes narrowed. “I’d be careful using that form around me, changeling. Or next time I’ll stab you with my OTHER blade. And you will die.”

Chrysalis smiled, revealing her pointed teeth, and then reverted to Jack’s form. “How could you tell?”

“Because you smell like a nest of canopy ants.” Bob suddenly blinked when she realized that Chrysalis had assumed Jack’s form. Her mood seemed to change completely. “Well fuck me in the ass with a rusty serrated knife and call me Eloth! Starlight, are you seeing this?”

“Don’t use my name. It feels wrong when you say it.”

“Okay, then, Purple-Depressed. Have you seen this? I mean, it’s a perfect match!” Bob leaned around her. “Well, okay, not really. Way younger and way less whiney. ‘Wah wah wah, Cerberus ruined my childhood’ and all that. But I mean, come on! I never thought I’d see that face again!”

“You knew Jack?” said Chrysalis.

“Of course I knew Jack! We grew up together. On Pragia. Ah, those were some good times. For me. She hated it. I have no idea why.”

“The extended physical and psychological torment, maybe?”

Bob shrugged. “I blame the stick up her butt. She was a killjoy until the very end.”

Starlight almost dropped her mask. “The end? You mean- -you mean you were there?”

“Not at the very end. She insisted on dying alone. But she did visit me. She talked about you, actually.”

“What did she say?” demanded Starlight. “What did she say?!”

“I don’t know,” said Bob. “At least not entirely. She wasn’t like me. Her body didn’t heal well. The stuff in her head, it messed her up. She wasn’t sane toward the end.”

“Wasn’t…wasn’t sane?”

“Think senility, but with violent outbursts. VERY violent outbursts.”

“So she came to you, but not Starlight?” noted Chrysalis. “Interesting.”

“She came to me because she was my friend.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” said Starlight, highly insulted.

“It means what it means. I was her friend. But we were the kind of friends that hate each other. Hell, I think she might literally have wanted me to kill her. I would have, too, but I didn’t think I could have gotten much meat off her in that state.”

“She was sick,” said Starlight. She had not realized that she could have felt any worse than she already did. “And I wasn’t there for her.” It was like losing her all over again, and it only compounded the loss of Twilight.

“Yes. Which is exactly why she didn’t want you to see her.”

“She…what?”

“Again. Like I said. Her body was collapsing, her mind broken. She wasn’t even sixty. I don’t think she wanted you to see her. Not like that. Not the kind of friend you were to her.”

“But I should have anyway!”

“Starlight,” said Bob, crouching down so that she was eye level with Starlight. “No. I’ve got an image of the only other girl who survived Pragia in my head, her body like a skeleton, babbling like she half thought she was still there. And I don’t care. Because I can laugh at her weakness and go on with my immortality. But I don’t think that kind of memory is meant for someone like you. And I think she knew that.”

“You need to let it go,” said Chrysalis.

“No,” said Starlight, picking up her mask. “No I don’t.”

The planet outside was actually quite beautiful. The surface was an extensive, treeless plane. Instead of grass, though, this particular region was filled with flowers that seemed to grow in hundreds of shades of red and pink. As Starlight stepped down the landing ramp of her ship, she lifted her mask and took a deep breath. The smell was not at all what she expected from flowers, but heavenly none the less.

“It smells so good,” she said to Scootaloo as the younger pony passed.

“I wouldn’t know,” said Scootaloo through her opaque mask as she walked past.

Starlight sighed and looked behind her. The entire crew had assembled behind her: she saw Zedok and Sbaya, both dressed in armor and holding their rifles. Beside them, she saw Chrysalis and Armchair standing beside each other, neither wearing a mask. At their feet were the various Twilight clones save for Four and Jurneu, who was standing oddly close to the clone named Eight. On the far edge of the group, Pink was standing alone with Pinkamena, staring out blindly at the field. Scootaloo stood at the front of the group, her quant at one side and her chosen clone Six on the other. The strange dead-eyed man Eloth stood in the back, watching the events unfold before him.

“No!” said a voice from the far side of the group, behind Eloth. “You can’t come! You have to stay here, where it’s safe!”

“I’m not staying behind, mother,” said Four, exiting the ship dressed in thin, light armor and a respirator mask. “I don’t want to be left here alone.”

“But Vocqtus is dangerous! And you’re- -”

“A cripple? Don’t deny it, that’s what you’re thinking. But I am still an alicorn, and where my sisters go, so will I.”

Bob, now following her down the ramp, groaned. “Fine!” she said, exasperated. “Eloth! You cover her. If you let her die. If something happens, get her out.”

“I will do my best. I actually rather like Four,” he said.

“I will as well,” said Pink. “Every life is precious. Every life is precious…but I have taken so many…”

“I’ve never met a killing machine that complains about it so much,” grumbled Bob as she moved to the front of the group. “Starlight, I hope your math skills are actually competent. Or this is going to hurt. A lot.”

“My math is always correct,” said Starlight.

“Yes,” said Inte, “apart from the errors, of course.”

“Great,” said Nine from the rear. “Do I have to do this? I’m really not feeling the whole ‘jump to another dimension’ thing.”

“You’ll be fine when you get there,” said Eight. “Trust me, there will be things to shoot. And I know how much you like to shoot things.”

“I do like shooting things.”

“Right,” said Bob, flexing her right arm. “Let’s do this.”

She lifted her arm, and the armor near her neck shifted, distorting as a blue-lit object pulled free from it, hovering near her until it settled in front of her hand. The blue light expanded, and the space where she was pointing began to distort as the machine began to writhe and twist, continually changing its shape.

“Come on,” she said, tensing her body. “I know you can do this. Don’t give up on me now…”

There was a sudden snap, and the rippling space snapped apart into a hole. Starlight peered through into a strange world with a floor made of crimson stone beneath a horrid, sickly sky. An entirely new universe stood on the side of that portal, and even knowing that Starlight was hesitant to step forward.

“Ha!” cried Bob. “Goddamn, it actually worked!”

“And you expected it wouldn’t?” said Scootaloo. She was the first to move through the portal, stepping through it easily as if it were completely normal- -or as though she had done it before.

The others followed, with Starlight trying to keep pace with Scootaloo. As she entered, she immediately felt a drastic change in her surroundings. The entire world felt drastically different. The gravity was higher, but also stranger, as if it did not quite follow the normal rules that gravity was supposed to. The heat was oppressive, and the atmosphere seemed thicker and heavier, a fact that made the stiff dusty wind seem all the more forceful.

Starlight looked around, and saw that the environment stood in stark contrast to the one she had stood in before. While that one had been beautiful, this one was terrible: a rocky, volcanic crag of reddish stone dotted by aggressive veins of black mineral surrounded them, which was in turn surrounded by enormous mountains in the impossible distance. The world seemed to have no curvature, and Starlight’s eyepiece indicated that they were thousands upon thousands of miles away.

“Mmm,” said Bob, taking a deep breath as she entered the portal and it closed behind her. “Smell that? Smells like home, doesn’t it?”

Starlight suddenly realized that Bob was not wearing a mask. Neither were Eloth, Pink, nor Pinkamena.

“Wait,” she said, “the atmosphere here is breathable?”

“Sure is,” said Bob. “In this region there is about seventeen percent oxygen. The vast majority of the rest is inert gas. Genuine radon.”

“And you can breathe that?”

“So could you, probably. I don’t know how much you’d want to.”

“I don’t see anything,” said Scootaloo, looking around. “Thebe is not here.”

“Of course not,” said Bob. “I moved us a few miles out. Hopefully. So we can enter a bit more slowly. It’s always better to enter slowly. Trust me, I’d know.”

“No she wouldn’t,” called Eloth from the rear.

“Quiet, you!” Bob turned back to Starlight. “It’s that way, though. Seven, I need readings. You’re going to be my eyes.”

Seven nodded and opened her omnitool, projecting a scanning drone.

“Right,” said Bob, “if you walk down or up a hill and suddenly feel gravity get, oh, about five hundred times normal, try to step back from that. Hopefully we won’t have to deal with that. Seven, you’re in charge of letting us know if we’re about to hit the gravocline.”

Seven nodded, and Starlight found herself wondering why Bob had given this job to the girl that could not apparently talk.

“So who’s going to go first?” said Zedok, stepping up to Starlight with Sbaya trailing closely behind, looking up at the sickly sky with a mixture of equal fear and awe.

“I will,” said Scootaloo. “This suit has a good set of scanners. Six, stay close. I don’t want to lose you here. There’s…”

“There’s what?”

“There’s a lot of stuff living out there. More than you would think.”

After quite a bit longer than “a few miles”, Starlight reached the conclusion that either Bob was terrible at math or distance in Vocqtus was far more treacherous than it seemed. Since Bob seemed to be at least marginally intelligent for a human, Starlight actually came to see the second proposition as more likely. Her eyepiece readings were almost nonfunctional, and from what she could tell, wherever they were was not a planet. It had not curvature. Distances that looked miniscule from the top of even a small hill could easily be tens of thousands of miles long.

The land also proved to be more uneven than Starlight had expected. For the most part, it seemed relatively rocky, but there were areas that they sometimes approached that were covered in aggressive black gorse that appeared to be made out of some kind of strange metal.

The largest obstacle that they came across, though, was a cliff that could only be described as “prodigious”. At least one of the miles that Bob had promised, it seemed, went straight down. This did not prove to be a significant problem, however. Both Eloth and Bob had the capacity for limited levitation, Eloth by his biotics and Bob by the strange blue artifact that she either wore around her neck or that slowly orbited her head like a small moon. When Eloth descended, he took Four. Scootaloo descended held by Six, with Inte falling slowly beside her. Nine took Zedok, and Seven Sbaya. Eight, being the smallest of them, struggled mightily to descend with Jurneu. Chrysalis morphed herself a pair of wings and carried Armchair and Starlight down with her.

Pink, meanwhile, had not even bothered to hesitate near the edge. He simply stepped over, falling and taking Pinkamena with him. When Starlight reached the bottom of the cliff, she was surprised to see Pink standing unharmed and splattered, waiting for them.

“How are you not dead?” asked Starlight as Chrysalis set her down.

“I ask myself that every day,” he sighed. “And sometimes I answer.”

“It’s nonparametric gravity,” said Bob, descending to about ten feet off the ground before her light released early and she fell the remainder of the way. “Gravity doesn’t induce consistant acceleration here. Sometimes you don’t even accelerate at all. Or fall up. Or become a blini. Which is why I would strongly recommend not jumping into a hole unless you have Seven or Scoots check it first.”

“I don’t need ‘checking’. I go with my gut. Or would, if my intestines had not gone necrotic and been removed.”

“Then…what do you eat?” asked Inte, innocently.

“You really don’t want to ask that,” said Pinkamena.

Starlight ignored them, walking up to Scootaloo, who was looking out at the land in front of them. The initial area had become something of a grassland, although the plants that grew there could hardly be called “grass” but more like a forest of tall, narrow things that resembled bamboo. Beyond it was what appeared to be a forest, but at her height Starlight was not able to see it.

“What do you think, Scootaloo?”

“I think we shouldn’t be here,” said Scootaloo. “Be glad you’re not the one wearing this mask. I’m guessing this world is exorbitantly harsh, because some of these lifeforms are…impressive.”

They continued into the grassland, and Starlight did not ask what Scootaloo meant. From what she gathered, whatever strange scanning system covered Scootaloo’s face was allowing her to see animals, and large ones. She, meanwhile, was only able to visually detect and identify the small ones. The swampy grassland apparently contained a number of creatures that closely resembled three-winged hummingbirds, although as Sbaya quickly found out they dined not on nectar but on blood. The birds, if they could even be called that, were in tern eaten by large creatures that Starlight could best describe as flying spiders. Both Eight and Nine were highly adverse to those.

Even the grass was deceptive. As it turned out, it was not grass at all. As Starlight and Scootaloo approached it, small single eyes would open near the bottoms of the stalks and the “grass” would stand on a number of small legs and scamper out of their path, pressing into the immense herd to avoid the strangers. As they parted, Starlight saw that the ground was scored deeply by a number of streams. Every single one of them ran with a bright red fluid that looked curiously like blood.

This, in turn, led to a high-walled valley filled with what could loosely be described as trees. In reality, they resembled charred wooden spikes emerging from the ground, tangling each other like enormous thorns. Starlight had a rough sense that they were alive, at least to some extent, and that they were growing, but even Sbaya shrank at the sight of them.

Fortunately, the forest was relatively sparse. Had it been denser, the group would have been forced to fly over it, which would be draining for the members of the party with wings. As they walked through the trees, though, Starlight began to become increasingly nervous. She felt as though she was being watched.

“Do you feel that?” she said to Scootaloo.

“Yeah.” The white circle in the center of Scootaloo’s mask moved, scanning the area, before it settled high and to the left. “They’re on top of the hills.”

Starlight looked to the edge of the valley. Because of the distance and her relatively poor eyesight, she had not been able to see them before. Looking through her eyepiece, though, she saw that they were not alone. Creatures were standing on the top of the rocky cliffs, their bodies silhouetted against the sunless sky.

Exactly what they were, though, was unclear. They were bipedal, but also appeared disproportionately tall, and then only because they were so very thin. Even with the eyepiece, Starlight could not get a good look at them. She saw their narrow, skeletal legs, long arms, and even their spidery fingers. She could not see their faces, though, and found herself wondering if they had any at all.

“What are those?” she asked.

“Natives,” said Bob, sounding somewhat nervous. Her tone made Starlight even more afraid.

“There are natives here?”

“What, you thought this place was just flat and dead? Well, it is, but there are hundreds of sentient species here.” Bob pointed. “They are one of the oldest.”

“I can’t get a reading on them,” said Scootaloo, “but I can see them…”

“Yeah, that’s about right.”

“What do they want?” asked Starlight.

“How should I know? Probably just to watch. Of course…I am wearing a fragment of one of their gods as jewelry right now.”

Starlight turned sharply to her, and Bob gestured to the blue-lit necklace, which had quieted into a single slowly shifting crystal.

“Why they’re here doesn’t matter,” said Scootaloo, her single artificial eye still roving over the clifftops. “I want to know if we’re safe.”

“Well, I am. I just told you. I’m wearing a piece of a god.”

“I mean the rest of us.”

Bob shrugged. “That depends on what Bjorn told them.”

Starlight never saw them move, but the creatures seemed to grow closer. As the trees grew denser and the already dim twilight from the dead sky overhead was cut out by the canopy overhead, the Vocqutuans appeared closer and closer to the group. Eventually, Starlight could see them reasonably well. As she had suspected, they were tall, dwarfing even Pink, although they were barely as wide as a pony. From the few that Starlight saw standing still in the shadows, she saw that she had been correct in her absurd impression that they had no faces. They did not.

“Damn it,” said Zedok, shouldering her singularity rifle. “If they take one step closer, I’m going to- -”

Sbaya put her hand on her mother’s gun and gently forced it down. “No,” she said. “These are not an ememy that is meant to be fought.”

“Still,” said Chrysalis, marching past the group of clone Twilights to the front. “I think we should be prepared.” She morphed and took on the form of a large and demonic form. The creatures in the distance did not even seem to notice.

“It’s okay,” said Bob, sounding as though she was trying to reassure herself. “As long as you don’t see their eyes. If you see the eyes, that’s bad. If you see the mouths, that’s worse.” She looked to her left. “Eloth?”

“Yes?” he said, appearing to her right, still holding Four.

“The bug is right.”

Eloth shook his head. “I will protect Four, as promised.”

“And the rest of us?” said Starlight.

“I do not mind watching the remainder die.”

Before Bob could think of a retort, the forest suddenly terminated. It ended suddenly with a small rocky drop-off that led to a wide area of sand where the valley expanded. Looking out, Starlight realized that they had come to the right place. Amongst the sand and cyclopean blocks of ancient foundations, she saw the corroded and rusted remnants of several old starships. Only parts of them were exposed and had not sunk below the sand, but she could immediately tell that though old they were originally from the Milk Path galaxy.

“They’ve been here,” she said.

“Possibly,” said Bob. “We’ll see.”

Continuing out into the sand, Starlight looked carefully over the ships that remained there. Most of them had been stripped for parts, making the desert plane something of a junkyard. The engines and computers had been removed, along with the internal subsystems and even the metal from the inner walls. All that remained were the wrecks of their bodies, looming out of the dirt like half-buried skeletons. Their surfaces were even worse close up, as if they had been kept in a jungle for millennia or dipped in acid. At least one was even vandalized with the words “SCNCMANWASHERE” written in enormous, shaky letters on the side in red paint. Pink took a great interest in that graffiti, standing near it for some time before Pinkamena could convince him to move on.

Then, in the distance, Starlight saw something.

“Seven,” said Scootaloo, opening her violet omnitool. “I’m linking to you. Do you want to take a look?”

Seven nodded, and she and Nine took flight, souring quickly through the dense air and then taking a broad path high above the sands of the desert. Scootaloo stared into the distance, reading what was returning to her from the inside of her mask. After a few minutes, Seven and Nine returned.

“It’s definitely artificial,” said Nine. “I saw it from up there.”

“And the scans confirm it,” said Scootaloo. “Although the signals coming off of it are…strange.”

“They may have attempted to cloak it,” suggested Six.

“Cloak it here?” Nine did not seem convinced. “From what? Who’s going to be down here?”

“Not who,” said Bob. “What.” She looked into the distance. “But I don’t think it’s a cloak.”

“Then what do you think it is?” asked Starlight.

Bob did not answer, but instead continued walking. Starlight followed closely. She was getting a bad feeling, and part of it came from how secretive Bob was being. She did not trust the woman.

As they got nearer to the structure, Starlight’s misgivings only grew. It was certainly artificial, and not as old and rotted as everything else in this strange world seemed to be. Instead, it appeared to have been constructed relatively recently, a modern castle of prefab units and heavy armored plating built upon an ancient stone foundation.

Approximately three hundred meters from the building, the group came across something unusual. Imbedded and partially buried in the sand stood a pair of enormous statues. From their appearance, Starlight guessed that they had not been built along with the castle. They were tall and vaguely anthropomorphic, although for some reason it hurt Starlight’s eyes to look at them. Unlike the corpses of starships that had been left in the desert, these appeared to be made of something far tougher, for although they appeared ancient and were overgrown with strange vines their surfaces remained undamaged.

They had not been left completely intact, however. The backs of each one had apparently been somehow opened, and several far more modern devices had been installed into them, liking their bodies to long and heavy cables that led back to the main building.

“No no no NO!” said Bob, suddenly sounding nearly paniced. She ran forward toward the cables and looked up, shielding her eyes from the same optical wrongness that Starlight was experiencing.

“What is it?” said Nine, immediately concerned that her mother was behaving as she was.

“They’ve been interfaced,” said Bob, trying her best to stare up at the machinery.

“So?” said Scootaloo.

“So? Scoots, do you have any idea what these ARE? No, of course you don’t. How could you?”

Starlight looked up at Eloth and Four. “Do either of you understand what she is talking about?”

Eloth shook his head. “These devices predate me and my kind by far.”

“Of course they do!” called Bob. “They predate everyone’s kind!” She stared up the statue. “Even the lw knew that these were best left ignored…” She turned back to the group, suddenly looking much older than she normally pretended to be. “Whoever did this is a fool. Or unbelievably desperate.”

“I would argue that one leads to the other,” said Jurneu. “But that hardly matters. Can we disconnect them?”

“Disconect them?” Starlight shivered at the idea of even having to get near one of the statues, let alone being required to touch it. “Why would you want to do that?”

“Because they must be acting as a power source of some kind. If we disconnect them, we might be able to cripple Thebe.”

“Sure,” said Bob. “You can try. Go ahead. But I can’t even figure out how these things are connected, and I actually know what I’m doing.”

“It is best to leave them alone,” said Pink, walking past one and brushing its waist with his fingers. “It would be a shame to wake one for this. They remain allies of the Goddess, if only in their long dreams.”

The group continued on, with only Scootaloo and Six trailing behind to give the former a long chance to scan one of the machines.

Then, finally, they came within sight of the final structure. Sbaya and Nine immediately raised their rifles.

“Two guards,” said Nine. “Taking them out- -”

“No you aren’t,” said Pink, grabbing the barrel of her sniper rifle and pushing it upward. “That is unnecessary here.”

Pink now took the lead of the group, approaching the central door. Standing beside it were the two guards, just as Nine and Sbaya had seen. One was a krogan, the other a drell; both were dressed in black armor and wore the mark of a single red star. Both of them reacted to the group’s presence, but neither took defensive stances.

“I am here,” said Pink
The drell and krogan both looked at him. “Of all those who witnessed Her divine light,” said the drell, “We did not expect that it would be you who would return the Priestess to us.”

Then, without speaking further, they stepped aside.

Author's Notes:

Vocqtus itself is really just an exercise in making interesting landscapes and creatures.