Twilight sighed and scratched her head, then put her hands on her face and slid them down in frustration. "GAAH! Why won't this work! The spell matrix is solid! I should be able to do this with minimum impact to my personal reserves!"

She groaned and set the schematics aside, making a fresh copy and tweaking here and there. If these were made of paper, her small room would be half buried under the designs. The designs for that project... And the six others she was working on independently of what Dr. Tygan and herself were working on at the lab.

She had given up on creating checklists at all, working a little bit on this, a little bit on that. She wondered briefly when she had lost control of things, but then her mind wandered back to the project at hand. Just as she was about to start typing, Sunset's Diary started vibrating.

"Just when I was about to start again." Sighing in exasperation, she decided to ignore it for now. Soon, the vibrations stopped and she was able to concentrate more fully on her project. "Hm… hmm! Aha! Maybe that's—"

The diary started vibrating again. Twilight closed her eyes and counted to ten. The vibrations stopped. "...anyway, where was I? Ah yes, the flux… so if I define the parameter of the spell in ADVENT's programming langu—"

The diary vibrated again.

Twilight waited until it stopped. "...ADVENT's programming language, I should be able to emulate a unicorn horn's flux! That means that Gremliniscious should be able to cast the sp—"

More vibrating.

"I'M WORKING HERE!"

Twilight glared at the diary and waited even after it had stopped vibrating, waiting for it to betray her again and vibrate again just as inspiration struck.

It seemed that the messages had stopped for now. Somepony really needed to learn to give her space. Geez.

She turned back to her computer. Where was she? She analyzed the design. "Yes. Yes… that's what I'm talking about! So now I need a reliable input of energy that's not me… ambient charging? Hmm… why not—dammit!"

She was interrupted, yet again, although this time it wasn't the diary. Someone was knocking on her door.

Twilight balled her fists and gritted her teeth before slowly standing up and walking rather stiffly to the door. She let it slide open, glaring at the person that interrupted her. "What?"

"Moody today?" Jane asked, raising an eyebrow. Then she shook her head. "Never mind that. Rainbow Dash is just about to go pick up Sunset's team…"

Twilight noticed then that Jane was in full gear, and even had her GREMLIN activated. "...good?"

Jane's eyebrow twitched and she seemed genuinely angry for a second before she visibly forced herself to relax. Her voice was a bit colder, however. "We lost someone, we don't know who, yet."

It took Twilight a few seconds to really process what she had heard. "Is Sunset…"

"We don't know," Jane repeated a bit more softly. "Bradford, Laetitia and I are going. Do you want to come with us?"

Behind Twilight the diary buzzed again, somehow stronger than before. She was suddenly reminded of the way she had been feeling about Sunset. "I-I don't… I don't know..."

Jane shook her head turning around. "Well, I asked."

Twilight bit her lip. She was still angry. She still didn't want to do anything with Sunset. She had tons of work to do. Things to explore…

She swallowed. Hard.

"W-wait! I'm going with you!" she called, running into her room to grab her armor. She slid it on in record time, reactivating Gremliniscious and having him follow after her after closing her door and rushing after Jane.

In her room, the diary vibrated once again.

They were several miles away from their objective, or any form of civilization at all. Safe enough for a quick pickup, and thus, a few hours earlier, they had sent the signal in short boosts until the single required pingback had happened, then they had turned the relay off and set out to wait.

At the moment, there was no danger that they were aware of, so the trio had separated a litte to think and recuperate. Several hours together in a box car, followed by the short battle, followed by a long march, had left them exhausted emotionally, intellectually and physically.

Still, this mission had been successful, strictly speaking on the objective alone, and the stepping stone for the next move was set.

But Sunset's thoughts were not on the base they had found, or on the ride home, or even on the mission that would follow. She held Mox's helmet in her hands, staring at the eye slots as if she were looking at the eyes of an oracle that held all the answers in the universe.

She knew there were several issues going on with her right now. She had lost a subordinate—truly lost them—for the first time. Not a fellow soldier under someone else's orders… one of her own. On her call.

That was one thing. She had had leadership classes where that kind of thing was… explained, even if it didn't solve anything. Second thing… she hadn't just lost a subordinate. But a friend. Her first friend. Her first sponsor and mentor and tutor in this world.

There were things to be said about forging such strong friendships with your team. It used to be, Bradford had once told her, that commanding officers would not have meals with non officers. In part because of rank, in other ways because fostering that kind of friendship… made making the right call harder, sometimes.

That wasn't the case anymore of course… and she was both glad for that and slightly jealous of others who made decisions without being that close to their troops.

She chuckled. That's sort of how she had imagined things at first, some years ago. She'd be the respected leader, making the tough choices, and sending faceless troops to fight.

But that wasn't reality and she had learned that some time ago. She had dreaded this thing from happening… her close call with Jane had both made her more paranoid, and yet, her success in healing her had been a boost to her ego.

It was a dangerous trap.

This time around, her counterpart hadn't played a part. She hadn't left a note and equipment to heal Mox. There had been no instructional video with a sexy doctor in it. And her personal failures had cost her Mox.

Her body shook, but she quickly reigned it in. She was not going to cry right now. They had things to do. Get picked up. Pick up Mox's body. Drop off Angel… take Mox's body to Betos.

How many others would she lose? An inch in the shot's direction would have instantly killed Jane. Laetitia had only survived exposure to the magical energies through sheer luck.

Maybe Paula and Shintaro had the right idea when they stepped down. No one, not even Twilight had the healing powers that her Blood Magic gave her. As proven earlier, her body's instinctual use of Blood Magic to heal itself to such an extent as to not even feeling sore now… that meant that she had a much higher chance to survive battle and just watch her friends die.

She didn't want to outlive her friends.

She didn't want to outlive Bradford. Or Twilight. Or Jane… Elena… Angel… too many. Was her healing going to increase to that point? She shook her head. Maybe… since she wasn't going mad yet from the Blood Magic… maybe that was her punishment for practicing a forbidden art.

She heard the Skyranger before she saw it, and she slowly stood up, looking up into the sky and covering her eyes from the glare of the sun with her forearm.

It was time.