A week after the equestrian researchers arrived and settled in, Twilight received two letters. One of them was clearly from Celestia, the other was unmarked on what looked like scavenged parchment. She opened Celestia’s first, smiling at the contents. There was a ticket to the next wonderbolts show enclosed, including a few +1s, and the letter explained that Equestria was celebrating the renewed peace with the changelings and the dragons at the same time with it. It told her to come a few hours early if possible, the tournament was in three days.

She looked through a mental checklist and moved a few things around to fit it in. She looked at the second letter and was surprised at the penmanship. It was from Crystarium, she had successfully convinced the other sane queens to hold a Queen’s Dinner after a month of trying. The Dinner itself was to be held in a month’s time, but she was welcome to visit as soon as a week prior to speak unofficially with the arriving queens. It was a large event and usually spent at least a week preparing on site. This time it was being held in a land uncharted by Equestrians, but she recognized the area from maps made by the Dragons and Griffons. They called it the Barrens and apparently there was an old changeling monument smack in the middle of it.

“Is something the matter, Twilight?” Nictus asked, having called out for her queen twice now with no response. Twilight finally snapped out of her thoughts at the concern. She quickly waved the concern away and put a smile on her face.

“I’m fine, just an interesting letter. I’ve got room for three people to come with me to a wonderbolts show in three days. I’m taking Kree and Shrike for sure, you in?” The queen asked. Nictus chuckled but shook her head.

“Take Nilan, she hasn’t quite been able to find what she’s good at yet. Seeing something like a Wonderbolts performance might spark something.” The huntress replied. Twilight put a finger to her chin in thought.

“That’s right, she’s the only wraith that doesn’t have a specialization yet. I do remember she helped diffuse the tension with my parents last we were in Canterlot. I’ll have to make sure she attends a few of Celestia’s or Luna’s courts while we’re in Canterlot to see if she has a taste of diplomacy and politics.” Twilight mused to herself. Nictus shrugged.

“I’ll of course be part of your escort, but I can entertain myself for a while once we’re there. We may have better wine, but their liquor puts carapace on your chest.” The huntress said, earning a snort from her queen.

“Alright, let everyone know we’ll be leaving soon. Samuel’s team made a breakthrough with R&D’s help, they have something to show me about how to reinforce our carapace and possibly a way to add it on after birth.” Twilight said. Nictus nodded and flew off out of her chambers. Twilight made sure Chrysalis was topped off on love before she followed her captain and went down a different path.

What she found in the main research lab was Samuel with a stupid grin on his face and a very flustered medic.

“You’re lucky it didn’t kill you! We were supposed to wait for the queen’s go ahead for life experimentation!” The medic huffed, scanning him with a spell for the fifth time.

“Relax, it worked didn’t it?” The young man replied almost ecstatically. He noticed Twilight and his grin fell to just a smile, but even his inevitable reprimand couldn’t lower his spirits now.

“What’s this about live testing?” Twilight asked. Samuel got up and extended his battle plating in response. His was very basic compared to the hunters and defenders, but it was obviously different. It looked denser and it sounded almost like metal sliding out than the usual creaking of carapace.

“It’s a little heavy, but now that I know the imprinting screen works the changed shouldn’t be too hard to add in.” Samuel replied confidently. Twilight wanted to nag his ears off for attempting something as dangerous as a live experiment on an untested glyph array, especially since it was something they had only just finished making sense of. The scholar in her decided against it, wanting to instead know more details.

“Talk to me then, what exactly did you do and how did you do it? I expect a full report with at least five pages by the end of the week, but give me a sneak peek.” She said to him. His grin returning at not being immediately reprimanding, his retracted the plating to go into scientist mode.

“Well, as you know, Crystarium didn’t give us the whole spiel. You agreed it made perfect sense, she wanted us to know what to do but not her exact brand of it. Keep her exact secret to herself. Well, our boys and R&D figured out what the hell it all meant and how to put it together. They were using the idea behind alchemy to alter the carapace itself, and how the body generates it, and then figuring out the formula to make it stronger with as little drawback as possible. We unfortunately had to use steel as a base, so as I said it’s a bit heavy, but it should be outweighed significantly by the extra protection -pun intended.” He explained quickly. Twilight was able to keep up, though. She gave him the ‘go on’ motion with her hand and he happily continued.

“Now normally we’d have to inject the formula into the current formula for our birthing fluid so that the drone is born with the changes, but I decided that neither of us would want to risk a life before it is even born, so I got with Mari and we invented an imprinting screen. It took a lot of arcane power, but the batteries fixed that problem. The array uses a series of scanning glyphs to gather the genetic data and turn it into something that can be made sense of, then we pick and choose what stays and what’s modified. We were even able to take out the bad genetics causing my astigmatism, but I like glasses.” He continued, taking his glasses off and winking for effect at the end. Twilight would have rolled her eyes if she wasn’t intrigued by the possibilities this array could lead to.

“And then the rest of the array, after carefully altering the data, used the energy to basically deconstruct and reconstruct what was changed. I was admittedly blind for a few minutes and sore as all hell, but as soon as it passed I knew that was the worst of the side effects as my brain adapted to the new inputs and stimulations.” Samuel finished. Twilight smirked.

“Well, Samuel. You know how completely idiotic and dangerous this was so I’ll let your medic talk your ears off in that respect. I’ll anxiously await that report now, so I’m changing the deadline to before I leave for Canterlot.” The queen said, happy with the researcher’s work. Samuel would have groaned if he wasn’t already going to do that and instead bowed with a grin.

“In the meantime, Ceren. How goes your research?” Twilight asked, turning towards the young changeling who had moved next to her to listen as well.

“Painfully slow, but with this new array I may be able to scavenge part of it to help me along. We don’t currently have much in the way of scanning unliving material, but if this thing scans things on an atomic level it may be useful yet.” She said with a smirk. Twilight chuckled.

“Get with Mari on it as soon as possible then. I expect progress by the time I return.” She replied. Ceren just nodded, giving Twilight a quick hug before leaving towards the other research departments. Twilight looked at everyone else and they all almost immediately returned to their duties. She smiled and turned to head for a mess hall, she needed a drink.

The three days came and went, no major progress had been made with the research but Twilight had poured over Samuel’s combined findings. She forwarded it to Ceren when she was done with it and she and the wraiths left before the sun had even risen. The flight to Canterlot would see them there a little before noon, giving them six hours before the performance. She had calculated bathroom breaks, breakfast, and a quick trip to her family’s home beforehand so they would still arrive two hours early at the tournament grounds where they would be performing again. Twilight, Kree, and Shrike left the other wraiths at a pub to head to the stadium at around 4 pm.

Twilight looked ahead in the sky as they walked down the road to find a few formations of wonderbolts practicing their maneuvers. Once flew directly over them, corkscrewing towards the ground. They all pulled up quite a ways up, except for one. Twilight only recognized the familiar rainbow trail left behind as Kree and Shrike were too slow to block the potential attacker from slamming into Twilight with enough force to send them both skidding back down the road a few feet.

“Ughhhhhh.” Twilight groaned, barely able to breathe as the rainbow haired valkyrie squeezed the life out of her. “Good to see you too, Dash.” She wheezed, barely able to get her arms to work long enough to return the crashing embrace.

“Twilight I knew it was you! Or at least I hoped it was, otherwise this would be pretty awkward.” The Valkyrie said happily as she got up and pulled her friend to her feet. Twilight had to admit, Rainbow Dash looked good in a wonderbolts uniform.

“I dunno if anyone but a defender could have survived that. You could have just landed and said hello you know.” Twilight retorted, working her shoulder that had a kink in it. She popped it and sighed in relief afterwards. Dash rubbed the back of her head as she pulled her goggles off.

“Yeah sorry, I just got so excited… We were doing the thing and suddenly I see you and I couldn’t help myself… I should get back to them actually before they get pissed at me again. Come find me after the show!” The Valkyrie said quickly, hugging Twilight again before shooting off into the air.

“I’m sorry we were too slow to react mother…” Kree said softly.

“Although now that I think about it, we might have died if we got in the way in time…” Shrike continued for her sister.

“Don’t worry about it girls, she’s the fastest creature alive. At least that I’ve seen. She’s the only one to break the sound barrier with enough speed and power to create a sonic explosion and NOT kill herself in the process. I’ll let it slide this one time.” Twilight replied almost teasingly.

“I wonder if she’ll do it if she’s performing.” Nilan said inquisitively. Twilight replied with a shrug and they started back up the path. When they finally arrived they found the two princesses and Spitfire talking in the entrance. Spitfire waved them over and the princesses turned to wave them over as well. Twilight was happy to do so. She was finally able to put her thoughts about the Queen’s Dinner into the back of her mind. At least for now, she’d have to tell Celestia about it of course.

Time went quickly, all parties speaking of their various weeks and progress made in their respective fields. The performance was truly an incredible experience, as it always was. The Wonderbolts had a way with flying that made even the same tricks seem incredible time and time again.

After the performance, Twilight found her way to the Wonderbolts staging area to find Rainbow Dash chatting with her formation. The Valkyrie eagerly introduced them, Twilight was happy to meet Dash’s new friends. She left Kree and Shrike to chatter with them further as Dash took her aside.

“So, how’d you like it? For realsies since it’s just me, you know you can be honest.” Dash asked her. Twilight giggled at that.

“Rainbow please, it was incredible. Your influence on the formation is obviously an improvement, and a significant one at that.” Twilight replied. Dash grinned at that.

“Good, I just had to make sure. But anyways, I took you aside to talk to you about two things. The first thing is that last week we found out one of our own was a Changeling. They didn’t know it, a Harvester I think Spitfire called them. The Princesses said they’ve seen harvesters that weren’t yours and they were very different, so this one had to be one of yours. Anyways, that sparked an idea for me and I took it to Spitfire. We want to start a pet project of training some of you guys up for flying. From what Nel and Charon told me about the Hunters they’re like the best fliers, and I’ve seen you fly. It’s nowhere near me or even the new recruits, but it’s the potential we see. What do you think?” The Valkyrie explained. Twilight was actually a little impressed at how professional Dash’s tone was for most of it. She smiled.

“That sounds like a wonderful Idea. I’ll make sure to talk to Spitfire and Celestia about it while I’m still in town.” Twilight replied. Dash’s grin intensified at that.

“Awesome! Now, the second thing. I was talking to the girls about it, and we all want to come and visit you. With your new peace treaties, you’re under Equestrian protection right? Well I convinced Spitfire that having a small group over in Ponyville to look after the Scarred Forest and the other towns around is a good idea. Afterall, we had to take that ursa in our own hands if you remember. It would have taken days to send someone from Canterlot or another nearby outpost. Guard or Wonderbolt. When we’re off duty they don’t care where we are as long as they know where to find us, so during my off duty weeks I can come stay with you.” The Valkyrie continued on to her second topic. Twilight’s eyes lit up at the prospect of getting everyone together again. She hadn’t seen anyone but Dash since the ursa.

“You’ll have to tell me when, so I can have a path cleared for all of you, but there will always be a place for you all in my home.” Twilight responded. That caused Dash to hug her again.

“Awesome! We’ll get it all set up. It’ll take me a few weeks to get a leave since the Ponyville outpost will take awhile to get approved and built but damn will it be worth it.” Dash exclaimed happily as she let the lavender queen go. Any further conversation was cut short as Spitfire entered.

“Hey sorry to do this Twilight but can you and yours scram for a bit? I gotta talk to my guys.” The captain asked Twilight politely. Twilight nodded her head.

“Of course, we were just catching up. I’ll have to come and find you before I leave, according to Rainbow Dash we have a few things to discuss.” Twilight said as Kree and Shrike moved to her side without being told. Spitfire nodded and they made to leave.

“You can find me either here or at the Solar Flare Inn next to the palace. Oh! I almost forgot, Princess Celestia had to go and take care of something but she said she wanted to talk to you. It was important, I think.” The captain said, catching Twilight as she was almost out of the door. Twilight inclined her head in acknowledgement and Spitfire turned to her Wonderbolts.

Author's Notes:

I'm starting to worry this is getting a little dry, to read not to write. There's just so much to get through though so I hope you guys can forgive an absence of action or major plot for a little while. I hit quite a burst of inspiration today, but the next chapter will take a while coming out since I work for the next week straight.
Hope you enjoy.