"I'm fine," insisted Luna, standing tall and rigid, her control back. "If I am free to go, take this off." She pointed up at the band on her horn. "And I'll just be on my way."

One of the serviceman looked to the president, who didn't immediately rush to do that. "They told me that stops you from doing magic. What does it do, in your eyes?"

Luna's teeth set. "It is a perfectly efficient machine."

"That hurt you."

"Every day." Luna stepped towards him. "Remove it."

On one hand, no prisoner should legally be treated that way. On the other, how was magic inhibited safely? "Please don't leave yet." He reached for her horn. Luna was a larger pony, making reaching her horn easy. There was a catch, but it was easy to manipulate with clever human fingers that ponies lacked and a pony without magic was unlikely to circumvent. "Here we are."

She let out breath she hadn't realized she was holding, eyes locked on the accursed device lifting up and away in the human's hands. "I need to go." She had meant to teleport instantly, but she was still there. Her long period with that thing had beaten some hesitation in her to glow at all and she scowled at her own weakness.

"May I ask, for the future, how should a unicorn be held in a safe and reasonable way that isn't cruel to the unicorn or unsafe for those around them?"

Luna's ears pricked up. "In all my time here, none asked that question. There are devices of our creation that can inhibit the magic of a unicorn without harming them." A little cheeky smile appeared on her face. "You are not the only creature to have invented something."

"We would like to purchase some of those, just in case, so no unicorn has to wear what you did." He gestured back the way he had come in. "We don't have to talk here in a cell. It's been a while since you've seen the sky. Let's fix that."

"You collapsed the tunnels?" she asked, upper lip peeling back a little to expose a sharp fang.

"Yes, all tunnels gone," insisted a diamond dog with a bobbing head. "Look what we found!" He waved eagerly at their massive pile of stuff that other dogs were practically dancing around. "Without us, you get nowhere. Owe us big time. We get first dibs."

A vulpine figure stepped up next to the cat. "How do you plan to take this to... the next level? We're dealing with a force that we fear even meeting." He waggled a few fingers at the pile of loot. "This won't make us suddenly good enough."

"In a direct fight? No." She licked her lips lightly. "But it's more than enough to strike with more... subtlety. They are packed so very tightly into such small places." She brought up a hand, two claws practically touching. "A few explosions will rock them so much more easily than other races."

"What for?" challenged the fox man. "We could hurt them, certainly, but what do we get out of that?" He gestured at the weapons. "Why don't we just take these and use it on anything that isn't the new people? We could rule the rest of the world pretty easily."

"And not ponies," chimed in the diamond dog. "Ponies have boom booms. Ponies also loud, I hear. No, leave ponies alone."

She frowned softly, but did not argue with the two. They would relish in their small victory for the time.

Distant flashes marked the presence of the media at the gate, trying to capture images of Luna and the president emerging from the facility. They were not permitted on the grounds itself, however.

Crane was walking next to her. "There are other prisoners. When you are safely returned, we will need to negotiate a proper method for deportation."

Luna kept an ear trained on him solidly. "You speak almost as well as a native. Considering there were so many who don't understand Ponish at all, or who speak like unknowing foals, how is this the case?"

"I was part of the first wave of people to learn the language, and it seemed critical to my job. Do you know a Queen Novo?"

Luna perked up at that. "What of her?"

"She is an ally of ours, and I gather an ally of yours?"

"We... How did we come to blows with a friend of a friend? If you--" She inclined her head, squinting a little. "--made friends with them, why were ponies met with cannons?"

"What I was doing, what America was doing, was cut off from Alaska."

"Alaska?" She hiked a brow before they fell in a crunched frown. "What is that?" She glanced behind herself, seeing the servicemen casually shadowing them. "You have guards as loyal as Celestia's own.

A balloon touched down gently in the snow. Pinkie hopped free. "I'm here!" She wore her proper yak's horn and rushed for the gate of Yakyakistan. "Anyone home?!" She knocked, with her head, headbutting the door with her mighty horned helmet.

"Who there?" asked a voice from the other wise.

"Pinkie!" she chimed, bouncing in place. "Open up already!"

The doors opened just a crack, one eye becoming visible before other eyes came into view, stacking high to peer at the pink ambassador.

Pinkie tilted her head left and right at the mighty stack of eyes. "Is something wrong in there?"

"No!" came the chorus of yak voices.

"Everything fine," claimed the voice of Rutherford.

Pinkie nodded. "Good, because I have so much news! I'm coming in!" She pronked forward towards the pile of eyes, but they vanished. The door closed and she slapped up against it. "Ow, hey! C'mon! It's good news!"

The gate creaked open just a hair. "Good news?" asked an unknown yak.

"Yepperooni! The war's over!"

The gate opened a little more. "War over?"

"Yep, all done." She wiped her forehooves against one another as if dusting them free. "No more fighting."

The gate suddenly burst open, yaks spilling out to surround Pinkie with a loud cheer. She was lifted up and away from the snow and tossed up into the air in a wave of jubilant yak flesh.

"Whee! Wait, I thought you guys were still fighting?"

Rutherford, following along with the crowd, snorted softly. "What? Of course. Yaks always win. But fight is over. We win! Yes, we happy."

"We win!" echoed the crowd in a great roar of happy shaggy citizens, throwing Pinkie about.

"So--" Pinkie had to talk between her bounces. "You... were... ready... to... call... it... quits?" She suddenly slapped to the ground, snow flumping from the impact spot. "Ow."

"We not quit!" insisted the prince of the yaks.

"Oh, um, of course not." Pinkie nodded quickly. "But that fighting was getting pretty boring, right?"

"Yes, boring. Glad over. Now do more fun things." He nodded sagely, agreeing with the excuse handed to him. "Little ponies alright?"

"We're also happy that boring fighting is all over. Phew! Let's do more fun things now."

"Yes, more fun!" He brohoofed her quite without warning, sending her tumbling. "Oops. We have party. Pink pony is invited!"

"Yay!" cried Pinkie from beneath the snow pile she had been buried in.

The mare let out a happy sigh. She had sold most everything she could sell, that wouldn't catch on fire. "So you're saying that stuff isn't worthless, eventually?"

"No," insisted the human engineer. "We'll have to get adapters, but they exist and aren't even that expensive. How did you do?"

The mare flopped over to the side, landing on a large bag of jingling bits. "I'm a happy mare... I'm going to have to give most of this away back to the people who lent me money, but. But! I won't have to borrow so much the next time I go. This was a success!" She hugged her bit sack tightly. "Call all the boys in, we have a party to throw. Oh, you're invited."

The human seemed surprised at that. "I'm not one of your employees."

"So?" She sat up, perching on the bag. "You helped us get this far. And... maybe you want to join us? There's room for you. Either way, you earned a bit of celebration. Go tell everyone to finish locking up the ship and we'll get this party rolling!"

She suddenly giggled. "My ship! Mmmm, all mine, all paid... I'm a captain now..." She let out her breath in a happy sigh, sinking down onto the bag of her wealth. "We have so much more to do..."

There were bills to pay and loans to settle out, but she owned the ship, the most expensive part of the whole journey. She had done it.

"(We need to launch another probe.)"

"(We haven't launched a single probe,)" countered another scientist with a shrug. "(We have weather and communication satellites, sure, but all they're getting are atmospheric conditions of the planet, not much more.)"

"(Which is why,)" insisted the first. "(--we need to launch more. Is space even space? We can't say for sure. With how bizarrely things behave, we can't even be certain the universal constants are the same. All the rules we thought were ironclad? We can't trust them anymore.)"

"(I hear,)" noted a female. "(--that the return portion of the rocket was far off course. If they had been using a boat to catch it, Musk would have missed the catch, again, but by even wider of a margin than usual.)"

"(That was smart thinking on his part, enlisting the Seaquestrians.)"

A man thrust up a lone finger. "(Am I the only man here that's a little disappointed he didn't opt for biology at a time that we're surrounded by new sapient and advanced species?)"

The woman waved his complaint away. "(We won't be alive long enough to study all the new things. We have plenty on our plate, let's focus on that. Astrophysics. What is astro at this point? Do we know? We really don't. The proper height to get something into an orbit seems to be largely unchanged, thank God.)"

A man nodded softly, tapping at a chart posted to a wall. "(The moon and the sun act as if they're under constant drag. They're always slowing down, unless they are being directly sped up again. And this, by at least one report, is done by a single person. Can I emphasize how... insane that seems at a glance?)"

"(What? You can't imagine a person producing enough force to shove a moon around?)" The man who said that was laughing as it came out. "(No, it's pretty crazy, but it's also what's happening, so far as we can tell.)"

The woman rolled a hand. "(Are you ignoring the other part? We can assume alien creatures work in alien ways that allow this, fine, but if she's shoving the moon, why isn't the world being shoved in return? Why isn't she being shoved in return? Where is the preservation of momentum!?)"

"(We need to see her.)" He hiked a thumb at the picture of Celestia which was placed at the center of the mockup of their new geo-system. "(Biologists or not doesn't matter. We need to see what forces she produces. What kind of energy does she radiate? We need eyes on the moon and sun when she does it to see exactly how quickly it happens.)"

The woman lifted her shoulders as she wandered towards a window. "(And how, exactly, do you plan to get her to come over and be examined?)"

"(We could... ask?)" proposed one man with a wry smile. "(Couldn't hurt, right?)"

Author's Notes:

The yaks actually figured out this was going poorly when the bombs fell. Who knew they'd be ahead of the curve for a change. Pity they didn't tell anyone else about it.

Scientists are postulating wildly. But will answers come?

Business Mare is happy!