After returning to Ponyville once their dinner at Canterlot was quietly concluded, Twilight let Starlight and Trixie retire to their rooms. Trixie had been reluctant to remove the Arcanite ring from her horn, but Twilight had insisted, telling Trixie "I don't want you accidentally doing something in your sleep. You've only had it on for less than a day, and I'm not sure if your control is fully-established as yet."

Trixie had thought about that for a moment, and then slipped the ring off herself. "Tri... I will admit, you are right about that, Twilight." Trixie admitted. She turned the ring over gently in her magic, the ring not reacting anywhere near as powerfully to Trixie's handling as it had done to Twilight holding it. "Do you want to hold onto it?" She asked.

Twilight shook her head with a smile, holding out a small box made of Magicirium. "No, Trixie. Just keep it locked in here." Twilight answered. "I may have made this ring, but I am trusting you to be sensible with it, and to keep it safe." She added, smiling as she saw the delight in Trixie's face as the illusionist unicorn placed the ring in the box, and it sealed in a flash of Trixie's magic.

Trixie smiled with delight. "I thank you for your trust, Twilight... I still feel I do not truly deserve it on something this important, but I bow to your opinion on this." She said to Twilight, sliding the box away into her hat.

"Right. Now, let's go hook up the accumulators Stellar sent me, and we'll see how long it takes to fill them using the generators." Twilight led them back into the castle and to the casting room. Unrolling the scrolls, Twilight put the cover page aside for the moment and checked the Pocket pages. Everypony but Twilight were surprised when she pulled one of the big accumulators out of the pocket.

"That is big!" Trixie said.

Starlight nodded as Shining chuckled softly. "Yes, quite big." Twilight agreed. "From what Stellar told me, the outer casing is Adamant and the plates inside it are Magicirium. The plates have a mana storage circle engraved on both sides of them, that allows an incredibly-huge amount of mana to be trapped inside one of these units." She told them all as she pulled a second one out of the same pocket. "Looks like there's only two to a pocket." Twilight added as she put the accumulators next to the mana wells. Eventually she had all six out and lined up around the room, near the wells they would fill.

As Starlight helped Shining wire the accumulators into the wells, Trixie aided Twilight in plugging in the mana generators. Trixie shook her head. "Such... things as these!" She commented. "We had never dreamed of such things when I was learning magic."

"Yes," Twilight agreed, "and filling a mana well took close to a week of personal time for a normal unicorn, collecting and draining mana into a well through our horns." She grinned. "This should be much faster." She said to Trixie as she turned the first generator on to half-power, and the etherial gauges on the accumulator registered the flow. "Well... twenty hours to fill one accumulator at this level of mana generation. That's not bad."

"Yeah, not bad at all, considering it took you over twice that to fill just the wells last time." Starlight reminded Twilight.

"Ugh! Don't remind me." Twilight replied.

"And how many times can we fill each well from each accumulator?" Starlight asked.

"As far as I can make out from the specs Stellar sent... about eight times." Twilight answered with a big grin.

"Wow, no more waiting around to cast major spells, then." Starlight grinned back.

"Yes. That alone is going to be a very significant advance in sustained spellcasting." Twilight agreed as she connected up the last of the accumulators with its generator. "With these, I should be able to send out each of the mana beacons at five-minute intervals, once Stellar finds the first one."

"Hopefully, that means they'll be on their way home in short order." Shining added then.

"We can but hope." Twilight said back to her B.B.B.F.F. as she checked everything out, before they retired to the Library.

Stellar was going over the systems for the Fold Drive, when she saw Applebloom come trotting up, looking worried. "Something wrong, Applebloom?" She asked.

Applebloom nodded, looking very concerned. "When Ah made the last batch of Magicirium, the furnace housin' showed signs of bad overheatin' inside." She reported to Stellar. "Ah'm not sure what's goin' on."

Stellar frowned. "That shouldn't be. The reactor housing's absorption layer should have turned all the heat into energy and transferred it to the accumulators."

"Ah know!" Applebloom agreed. "Somethin's wrong, and Ah don't know what."

Stellar nodded. "Okay, let's go check things out." She replied, as she moved up beside Applebloom and they headed for the furnace. Once they reached it, Stellar disconnected the mana generator heat cannons, rendering them safe, then she opened the housing and they went inside. As soon as Stellar set hoof inside the housing, she could feel something was very wrong. Once three of her hoofs were on the inner surface, she felt her hoofs slide uncontrollably and Stellar squealed with surprise as she slid forward to the bottom of the housing. Lying on her belly, she lit up her horn and created a light sphere. What she saw made her gasp.

The entire inner surface of the housing was coated in a glass-like black coating that was almost frictionless. The light seemed to fall into it and absorb it. "This... is wrong." Stellar said as she managed to get her hoofs under her.

"Yeah... wasn't tha inside layer all wavy? Like, patterned to absorb energy?" Applebloom asked.

"Yes, it is." Stellar confirmed. She brought the light sphere much closer to the 'black' layer and realised she could see through it, with enough light. The new layer appeared to be barely thick enough to fill the wavy energy-absorbing layer up to a thickness of two millimetres above the highest of the patterns. "What is this...?" Stellar asked herself as she carefully leaned forward and touched it with her horn.

Applebloom jumped back as Stellar gasped loudly. "What is it?" She asked, peeking back into the furnace housing again.

"It's... it's carbon." Stellar answered, looking up at Applebloom. "It's pure Carbon-Fourteen, with the same signature as the Carbon we used to make the Arcanite." She informed Applebloom.

"But... how?" Applebloom asked.

Stellar's eyes frowned. "I'm not sure." She answered. "But we can work out the 'how' later. The main thing is going to be removing this layer from the furnace housing." Stellar gently began to trace a line with her horn into the carbon glaze, and the carbon parted for her horn's glow. Eventually, she lifted one hexagonal section from the surface of the furnace's lining and passed it to Applebloom, who laid it outside.

After several hours of careful work, the furnace's lining was cleared of the carbon 'glaze', and Stellar had inspected the entirety of the energy-absorbing lining, which was made from a very similar type of Meitnerium, almost-but-not-identical to her Magicirium. Stellar speculated this was what the Humans had managed to make with the formulae she'd found on-file for the Meitnerium. She stepped out of the furnace housing, satisfied but a little tired, and saw Applebloom looking over the pieces. She was putting them in a cargo bin that was sitting on a set of cargo scales. Stellar watched, resting, as Applebloom dropped the last piece into the bin, and the weight reading stabilised at nine-hundred-and-thirty-six-point-four kilograms. Applebloom frowned. "That's a lotta carbon." She told Stellar.

Stellar frowned, but nodded. "Indeed... That's almost all the Carbon-fourteen we put in the reactor to make the Arcanite. Why would so much of it be unused?" She asked herself. "Well, with the furnace clear, Applebloom, you can make up the next batch of Magicirium whenever you're ready." Stellar told Applebloom, who grinned.

"Okay!" Applebloom eagerly replied and started moving more bags of powdered magicite into the furnace, as Stellar reconnected the heat-cannons.

After taking four hours to sleep and have a good meal, Stellar sat down at the Captain's station on the bridge, watching over Sweetie Belle as she did her turn on the controls, and she delved headlong into the Xerxes' library on Nuclear Physics and Mechanics. It took her another four hours after that, but eventually she discovered the section on Atomic Weight and the measurement 'mols'. "So... I don't need equal amounts of Magicite and Carbon-Fourteen to make Arcanite." She said to herself. "Each tonne of Magicite needs only sixty-three-point-six kilograms of Carbon-Fourteen to convert it into Arcanite." Stellar sighed at that. "That explains why there was a lot less Arcanite than I thought there would be. And why the rest of the carbon was coating the interior of the furnace housing." Stellar snorted self-decapringly. "A good thing the housing was so strong, and the inner layer so efficient at absorbing heat energy, otherwise things could have been a lot different. I'm going to have to read ALL of this AND understand it before I do any more experiments." Stellar told herself, and continued reading...

Stellar and Sweetie Belle spent the next day tuning the sensor systems to also detect mana signals, since that was part of the plan to find the spot where they emerged.

Stellar was now standing on the bow of the Xerxes, in her exo-armor, her horn charging up as her mana generators charged her mana pool to its maximum capacity. "Ready... Sweetie Belle?" Stellar asked, her horn almost fit to burst.

"Ready, Captain!" Sweetie Belle replied as she sat at the control panel in the Forward Sensor Room.

Stellar grimaced, then let the huge mana sphere she'd created slowly drift away from her, with an audible sigh of relief. It had been difficult to just let the huge sphere move away slowly, rather than fire it off like a missile, but the lessons in spellcasting Twilight had coached Stellar in showed in her finesse with her magic. Stellar felt her Itineris system relax from the strain and she asked "Do we have a reading yet, Cadet Belle?"

"Uh... I'm getting something off the bow, Captain, but it's not very distinct." Sweetie replied, working at the tuning controls. "Oh blast, I just lost it.... wait, there it is." She then said. Stellar teleported down into the Forward Sensors Room and moved up to where Sweetie Belle was working. "I've got a lock on the mana sphere, Captain, but it's... indistinct." Sweetie reported. "I can't get more than a general ranging on it, within five hundred metres."

"That's not good." Stellar agreed. She looked over Sweetie Belle's shoulder as the younger mare was working the controls. "Try raising the Theta gain." Stellar suggested.

Sweetie Belle nodded and did so... and she grinned as the readings clarified. "It's down to within ten metres, Captain, and the sphere's diameter is much clearer as well." Sweetie Belle replied.

Stellar nodded, smiling. "Good, Sweetie. Now, what else do you think we should try to clarify the detection even more?" Stellar asked.

"Umm..." Sweetie Belle's eyes narrowed as she checked all the settings and parameters. "The Xi parameters?" She asked.

Stellar just looked at Sweetie Belle, a questioning look on her face.

Sweetie looked again at the control board. She adjusted the Xi parameters a little, and she grinned as the sphere's diameter came into sharp clarity. It didn't improve the ranging to the sphere, but the monitor was showing the sphere very clearly and giving its diameter to the millimetre, if she wanted it. Sweetie grinned at Stellar, who smiled back and nodded. "Okay. What next?" Stellar asked.

"Uh..." Sweetie looked over the control board again. After discounting a number of the operational parameters, Sweetie settled on one of them. "The Delta parameters?"

"Give it a try." Stellar suggested to Sweetie Belle.

Sweetie Belle slid the control away from her, and the image of the sphere, instead of clarifying, swelled and bloomed until it was dozens of kilometres across.

Stellar was trying to stop smiling as Sweetie Belle scrambled to pull the control back the other way. Eventually, the sphere seemed to shrink and clarified its position to within ten centimetres. "Yay! I got it!" Sweetie Belle exclaimed.

"Very good, Cadet Belle." Stellar replied. "Let's get back to the bridge and you can track the sphere to ascertain direction and course."

"Aye, Captain!" Sweetie rose and saluted, after locking the parameters into the sensor systems. Then she raced out of the room, Stellar following at a slower trot. Reaching the bridge, Sweetie Belle jumped up into the now-modified chair at her station and began running sensor scans for the sphere again. As she locked onto it, its image appeared on one of the holographic screens that floated above the bridge's lower floor. "I've got a positive lock on the mana sphere, Captain." Sweetie Belle reported as Stellar climbed into the Captain's chair. "Speed is thirty kilometres an hour faster than our own, slowly retreating on a course parallel to our own."

Stellar nodded. "Very good, Miss Belle." Stellar replied. "Okay, Cadets, it's time for rest period." Stellar told them all.

The young mares gave Stellar sad eyes, but they turned and shut down their stations without protest, knowing the routine now by heart. Then there was a flash of green magic, a puff of smoke, and a scroll fell before Stellar. She grabbed it and opened it, then grinned.

"Well?" The Trio asked.

Stellar chuckled. There was a lot of information about Twilight's experiments with the Arcanite, but the most important information was there as well. "Twilight has the mana beacons ready, girls. She can start sending them out as soon as we're in position and ready." She informed them.

"Yeah!" The Trio yelled and clopped their hoofs together. "Cutie Mark Crusaders Ship Crew and Starfarers!" They cheered together. "To go where no Pony has ever gone before!"

Stellar laughed at that, as she put her forehoof to the others and nodded. "Indeed. If any of our ancestors made it out into the Universe at large, we may never know. But we are here and now, and when we return home, then we will have made History in a way no other Pony has ever done before us in recorded history." She smiled at them all. "You three are going to be immortalised for more than just creating havoc, from now on."

"Yeah..." The Trio smiled at Stellar, then hugged her close.

Stellar returned their group hug with affection, then broke away. "Okay. Bed-time now. I want you three at your best-rested and brightest for tomorrow... for when we awake, the last phase of our journey home begins."

The young mares lined up, came to attention and saluted Stellar, who returned their salutes. Then they broke ranks and headed for the pile of mattresses and blankets that they used to sleep together on the bridge, and soon they were all snoozing soundly together, as their ship drifted along, heading to a hopeful rendezvous with their course home...

It had taken them close on a week after they'd reversed direction and course to slowly drift back towards the area of space where they'd found the Xerxes; the greater speed they'd boosted the ship to making the journey that much quicker. Now, as Stellar watched, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and Applebloom worked together to bring the Xerxes to a crawl.

"Are we still on course?" Scootaloo asked Sweetie Belle.

"According to the navigation systems, we'll be within fifty thousand kilometres of the exact spot's estimated location in fifteen-point-three minutes." Sweetie answered.

Stellar nodded. "Very good." She picked up a scroll she had pre-written from a pile of them, lit the green and purple candle again, and concentrated on Twilight as she burned the scroll. "Now, we can only wait." She stated to nopony in particular, as the smoke curled and vanished.

As Twilight was waiting, ready, a belch from Spike ejected another letter with Stellar's clasp on it. Opening it, Twilight nodded to herself.

"I take it that means it's time, Twilight?" Spike asked.

"That it is, Spike. Stellar says that, by their calculations, they should be very close to where she and the C.M.C. originally appeared." Twilight confirmed. "Let's get things moving." And she headed for the Casting Room. Inside, the six mana wells were full and glowing powerfully, ready to be used; the transport spell was also ready as well, the three large arrays spinning slowly around the object caught up between them: one of the large mana beacons. Twilight and Spike stepped into the protection circle and Twilight picked up the tome with the spell in it and, after activating the protection circle, Twilight added the last parts of the incantation. The arrays floating above the main circle powered up completely, the wells glowed brilliantly as they funnelled the mana they contained into the main casting circle and, with a brilliant flash, the beacon disappeared.

As the protection circle dropped its field, Spike raced off to bring in another beacon, as Twilight released the next charge of mana into each of the wells. The mana storage accumulators that Stellar had sent back meant that Twilight could fill the wells many times over at a much faster rate than before, making these castings far more rapid... something that was needed now. As soon as Stellar wrote back and said they'd found the mana beacon, she could send the rest of the group out there, hopefully making a trail for the Xerxes to follow... straight back to Equestria.

As they slowly drifted along, down to under a thousand kilometres per hour, Stellar was sitting on the bridge, watching the three cadets doing their duties. Applebloom was watching over the idling mana reactor, making sure the trickle of mana it was giving out wasn't filling the accumulators faster than they could use the energy; Scootaloo was waiting for the directions from either Stellar or Sweetie Belle as she manned the helm; and Sweetie Belle was monitoring the readings from the retuned sensors that watched for concentrations of mana, like those from the beacon Twilight would be sending out.

Stellar was relaxed, not showing the tension she felt. They needed to find that beacon. Although she knew the way the ship had been travelling and the approximate distance they'd travelled before they'd turned around, the beacon would give them a positive point to begin their trek home again. After that, all they needed was a direction to travel in for a jump-course; they knew they were just barely over 1206 light-years from Equestria, so they would set the ship to jump that far through fold-space. Once it emerged again, then they could seek out where the Firmament was and head for it.

Then Sweetie Belle sounded out: "Captain! I have a mana signal! It's coming from sixty degrees off our starboard bow, approximately twelve thousand kilometres away." She reported.

"Come to all-stop, Miss Scootaloo." Stellar ordered.

"Aye, Captain." Scootaloo replied and fired the main forward thrusters. The Xerxes slowed down until she was barely moving.

"Bring us on course to intersect the beacon; Speed, twelve thousand kilometres per hour." Stellar told Scootaloo.

"Aye, Captain." Scootaloo answered, as the Xerxes rotated around her vertical centerline to face the beacon, which Sweetie Belle had highlighted in one of Scootaloo's screens. When she had the ship aimed directly at the beacon, Scootaloo fired the main engines, and they sped up fairly rapidly. "On course and at speed, Captain." Scootaloo reported once they'd attained the proper velocity.

"I concur, Captain." Sweetie Belle also told Stellar.

Stellar nodded. "Very good. Miss Scootaloo, when we get close to the beacon, I want you to put us over it, with the beacon under the keel and in-line with our vertical centerline. That way, when Twilight sends the other beacons, we can align the ship with the course they show us, and we can follow it home." Stellar said with a smile.

"Yes, Ma'am!" Scootaloo replied, her voice filled with anticipation. She angled their trajectory so they wouldn't hit the beacon, but slide over it, as Stellar had ordered.

Stellar already had the next message in the series written and ready to send to Twilight, the special candle sitting right beside her as well. Now they just had to be in position...

Twilight was waiting, another mana beacon ready in the arrays over the central casting circle and the teleport spell ready to activate. Spike was sitting beside her, snacking on a few gems Rarity had given him to munch on. The small basket-load was hardly a snack out of the hoard of gems the white unicorn had provided for him, having found an entire vein of flawed gemstones several days before. Twilight had taken time out to also have a fish wrap or two; ever since Stellar had introduced her to eating fish, she had developed a taste for it that the young alicorn had had to admit was one of the better things Stellar had done for her twin sister.

The funny thing was that, although Cadance followed Celestia's dietary habits of not eating animal flesh at all, Shining Armor had also developed a taste for mountain-stream-fresh fish, against all odds. One time when he and Cadance had been visiting, on the banquet table had been a number of fish wraps. Shiny, not noticing, had picked one of the salmon wraps up and munched it down without checking what was in it. After he'd eaten three of them, he'd asked Twilight why they were so good. Twilight had tried to stop giggling as she informed her big brother that he'd just eaten fish.

"Fish? Really?" Shiny had asked, surprise more than shock in his voice. Picking up another wrap from another plate after being told by Spike that it contained Tuna meat, Shiny had eaten it, his eyes wide as he realised how good it tasted. "Wow. These are really good, Spike." He had complimented Spike on his culinary skills. "I had no idea fish tasted so good." From that day on, Shiny had made sure that he ate fish of some kind at least twice a week.

It had always made Twilight and Stellar smile that all three of them now had a love of the succulent sweet meat of fish. Unfortunately, their parents had not been enamoured of fish meat in their diets, more than just the occasional canapé at formal dinners; and Cadance was emphatic that meat would never be a part of her diet... even if she loved the new 'Sushi' and 'Sashimi' dishes that Spike had learned to make... just the vegetable ones, though. Luna, however, adored Sushi and Sashimi, even insisting that one of the unicorn cooks from the Royal Kitchens attend to Spike and Stellar, to learn how to make her new favorite snack-time munchables. It was often that Luna would sit at court, a plate of fresh sashimi or sushi rolls at her side with a large jug of soy sauce to fill a shallow bowl, for dipping her delectables.

Spike burped and another scroll appeared, dropping into Twilight's magical grasp. She opened it and nodded. "Okay, Spike! Have those six other mana beacons ready. Stellar has the ship in position."

"Got it!" Spike replied, the first of the six Twilight was going to send out in position as he retreated from the Casting Room. Twilight powered up her teleport spell, this time shortening the distance by a million kilometres. The arrays powered up, there was a flash and the beacon was gone. Spike raced in with the next one and put it in position, then retreated again as the Mana wells charged...

Sweetie Belle was watching the sensors carefully, as the flash of a powerful teleportation appeared in the distance. "Captain, there's been another appearance... It's another mana beacon, a million kilometres away."

"Very good, Miss Belle. Mark the location of its appearance, then draw a line between the pair and wait for more appearances." Stellar replied.

"Aye Captain." Sweetie Belle replied as Scootaloo was waiting somewhat impatiently, her rump stirring on the seat as if her cushion was covered in itchy-weed.

Applebloom looked at Stellar. "Captain, the fold drive is fully-charged an' ready for activation. Navigation deflectors also ready for power-up an' all drive systems are showin' Aay-Oh-Kay for fold insertion." She reported.

Stellar nodded. "Excellent, Miss Applebloom."

Over the course of twenty minutes, five more beacons appeared in a straight line thirty million kilometres long. "I have the projected course, Captain. Feeding it to Helm now." Sweetie Belle reported to Stellar as she grinned at Scootaloo.

"Very well, Miss Belle. Miss Scootaloo, do you have the course?" Stellar asked.

"Received and... locked in, Captain." Scootaloo replied.

"Excellent. Fix re-emergence distance at twelve hundred and six Light Years precisely." Stellar ordered.

"Emergence distance fixed. Ready to execute space fold." Scootaloo reported.

"Confirmed, Captain, the reactor is powering up to its nominal power setting, and we're ready to execute space fold." Applebloom confirmed.

"Then on my mark..." Stellar said to them. "Execute!"

Scootaloo shoved the fold drive control lever forward, and from the outside, the ship seemed to stretch to infinity, then the stern vanished to catch up with the bow. But as they fully entered fold space, all four ponies felt something horrible. Stellar hadn't experienced quite this sensation before, but the trio had. It felt like what they'd experienced when Tirek had stripped all their magic out of them. They got weak and slid from their seats, slowly slipping into unconsciousness.

Stellar managed to keep her head. Sliding to her hoofs, she staggered across to the helm, fighting the sensation as mana arrays appeared around her, feeding mana directly into her mana pool and sustaining her as she reached the helm station and pulled back on the Fold control level. Outside, the Xerxes slid out of Fold Space and came to rest, drifting along at a slow speed, still on course...

On the bridge, Stellar slowly collapsed onto the floor as her mana arrays fought to recharge her. She lifted her head to receive her Exo-armor's red-and-gold helmet and her armor wrapped around her. Once she was encased, the mana generators in the backpack flared brightly and she was flooded with mana again. Gripping Scootaloo's and Sweetie Belle's hoofs in hers, she fed them mana, while her back hoof touched Applebloom's and charged her up the same way. When everypony was slowly waking and getting to their hoofs, Stellar moaned as she rose and shook herself all over.

"Wha-what in Tar-tar-nation w-was that?" Applebloom asked in an unsteady voice as she sat up.

"Argh..." Scootaloo agreed as she rose to her rump as well. "I dunno... but it felt... like something else I've felt before." She said as she climbed up into her seat. "You okay, Stellar?" Scootaloo asked.

"Yeah, better than you three at the moment." Stellar answered. "Are we still on course?"

"Uh..." Scootaloo checked as Stellar helped Sweetie Belle up into her seat. "Uh, yeah, we still are, just drifting along in Normal Space, though."

"Well, that's something." Stellar said, as she helped charge Sweetie Belle up a little more. As a unicorn, her mana pool was bigger than her friends' pools were. Stellar smiled at Sweetie Belle as her armor retracted again, and Sweetie Belle started looking through what the sensors had recorded.

"Is it me, or did that feel like when Tirek drained us that time?" Applebloom asked the others.

Scootaloo's eyes widened. "Yeah! Yeah, that's exactly what it felt like!"

"But the effect wasn't quite the same." Sweetie Belle butted in. "Captain, the ship's interior is completely drained of mana energy." She reported.

"What about the reactor?" Stellar looked at Applebloom.

"Umm..." Applebloom looked over her Engineering station. "Tha reactor's fine. It's still producin' energy."

"And the accumulators?" Stellar asked.

Applebloom tapped a few controls. "They're fine as well. All the mana accumulators are still at seventy percent, as they were after we entered Fold Space." She answered Stellar.

The Trio watched Stellar as she walked off the bridge platform down to the forward floor and started walking. "So... the hull was drained of mana... as were we. But the reactor and the accumulators weren't drained." The girls could tell Stellar was thinking very hard at that moment.

"Well... what's different about the reactor and the accumulators?" Scootaloo asked.

"Ah don't know about tha reactor, but tha accumulators are made of Magicirium an' encased in Adamant." Applebloom remembered.

Stellar stopped and looked at the Trio. "Yes, they are..." She confirmed. "Get into your suits." Stellar told the Trio as her exo-armor reappeared around her.

The Trio lifted their heads, and their exo-suits' helmets slid out from above them and onto their heads. Their suits then extended and encased them, just like Stellar's armor. Once they were encased, Stellar got back up into her chair and said "Okay, let's do that again." She told the Trio.

"Aye, Captain." They chorussed back, and turned their attention to the controls.

"Emergence distance recalculated and fixed, Captain. Ready to execute space fold." Scootaloo reported.

"Confirmed, Captain. Fold Capacitors recharged an' ready ta execute space fold." Applebloom added.

Stellar nodded to them. "Execute!" She commanded.

Scootaloo slid the Fold control level forward as they all braced, and the Xerxes once again shot forward into Fold Space.

Sweetie Belle didn't feel the draining effect this time, though, but she said "Captain, all the sections of the ship are showing signs of mana drain, especially the bridge." She reported.

"I can confirm, Captain." Applebloom replied. "But tha reactor and the accumulators ain't showing signs of being drained more than the nominal power out-flow." She said. "In fact, I can report the accumulators are charging up slowly, as expected." Applebloom told Stellar, her accent fading under the stress.

Stellar thought about this. "Miss Scootaloo, what's our estimated time to reach the end of our course?"

"Uh... nine days, Captain." Scootaloo replied.

Stellar looked over the readings from around the ship as they raced along. Something was draining the mana from every part of the ship that wasn't sealed in "Adamant..." Stellar said softly.

"Captain, does this mean we'll have to stay in our suits for the whole time?" Scootaloo asked.

Stellar smiled. "Maybe." Stellar replied. "Would that be so bad?" She asked. The C.M.C. whimpered pitifully, and Stellar chuckled. "Don't worry. If we examine what's happening, I'm sure we can find a solution... maybe even before we get home." Stellar suggested.

"That ain't helping, Stellar." Applebloom replied, and the other fillies giggled.

Stellar also chuckled a bit louder. "Yeah, I know, girls. But until we figure out what's causing the mana drain, at least our suits will protect us from it."

The trio just nodded inside their helmets and returned their attention to their systems, as Stellar and Sweetie Belle walked over to one of the bigger science stations and started to investigate...

Author's Notes:

Our intrepid crew finally find the way home and head off... to find things aren't as easy as they thought they'd be. Will they find a solution to their current problem, or will travel in Fold Space require the crew to suit up every time they go into Fold? Only time (and maybe the next chapter) will tell...