Transistance

Chapters

Vigil
Digital Love
Madness
Radioactive
Easy

Vigil

Luna ran.

Beams of pale moonlight glanced through gaps in trees and bushes that lined a well-trodden dirt path. Luna’s hooves beat against the hard-packed soil, sending plumes of dust rushing up around her. The only sound in the entire forest was her running, the rest was silent as death.

Leaves brushed her flanks, and limbs rushed out in front of her to lash at the mare’s exposed sides. She could see . . . something . . . flitting through the trees, moving as silently as a shadow across still water. It reached for her, and Luna ran harder.

She ran until all she could hear was the pound of her heart in ears. Her breath came in shallow gasps and her lungs burned, but she pressed herself onwards. She could feel the darkness closing in, could feel it rushing towards her like a wave upon the beach.

For a moment, Luna thought she could get away. Then, the dirt path ended in a wall of oak and poplar and mesquite, a prison of forest laced with vines and shrubs. The mare skidded to a stop and beat her hooves against it. She tried to raise her magic to clear it, but found she had no horn. A look back confirmed her fears, that her wings were gone and replaced with smooth fur.

The mare pressed herself against the wall as the darkness approached. It gathered together and coalesced itself into the shape of a pony that rose high above Luna. Violet eyes stared down at her, stared right through her skin and down into her soul.

The alicorn made of darkness smiled, a golden crown on its forehead. “We’re more alike than you think.”

Luna’s eyes snapped open. She forced herself to take deep breaths to stop her heart from hammering. Sweat ran in rivulets down her forehead, and her back felt clammy against the leather-padded seat she had chosen at the spaceport hours before.

She sat near the back of the spacecraft, strapped into a leather couch while a silver tube rocketed away from the world below a hundred times faster than any pegasus ever could. A single mare with silver boots that stuck to the faux-carpet aisle was serving drinks near the front of the lounge.

Most ponies around her had fallen asleep like she had, most with plugs in their ears to handle the pressure and drown at the sound of the engines far behind them. Luna could hear their gentle hum behind her, and knew they would reach the moon soon.

Luna reached over and pressed a button on the smooth, curved wall to her right. The beige wall flickered and was replaced with a hologram representation of what was outside the spacecraft. She could see the lunar surface start to fly by, packed with craters and flurries of dust left in the rocket’s wake. She had once known every inch of the moon by name, but those memories had died with Nightmare Moon. They were only hazy memories now, like a dream within a dream.

A light flashed on the console of her seat and a voice came from speakers around the cabin: “Attention passengers, Flight 9732 has begun its descent to the Deckard Corporation Headquarters Spaceport, and will arrive in approximately five minutes. All luggage will be unloaded into baggage trams that will meet you in the terminal. Have a nice day, and thank you for flying with White Unicorn.”

Passengers around the cabin snorted and blinked their way out of sleep. Chatter rose into a loud hum as business ponies around Luna greeted one another and talked shop while the spacecraft braked toward the spaceport.

Luna looked out the holographic window again. The spaceport was in view now, a sprawling complex of squat, gray buildings clustered around a massive tower of steel and blinking lights that rose far above the lunar surface. Metal rockets that looked as small as sewing needles stuck out from the docking tower, held in place by massive clamps in the low gravity of the moon’s upper atmosphere.

The rocket Luna rode spun upside down and twisted itself in thin atmosphere to align itself to a docking station. The dampeners inside the spaceship kept ponies from feeling the movements, but Luna had to turn off the window before she got sick.

“First time flying?” the stewardess asked her, appearing almost out of nowhere at the alicorn’s side.

Luna shook her head. “No, but I haven’t been here in . . . ages.”

The mare seemed to finally notice that Luna’s wings weren’t fake, and quietly excused herself from the former princess’ presence.

Luna pretended to not notice her disappearance, and lay back in her seat to wait for docking. She didn’t have to wait long, as there was soon a massive jolt and the sound of clamps snapping shut on the sides of the rocket. The ship came to a complete stop, and all was still for a short time.

Then ponies scrambled out of their seats, grabbing luggage and hurrying into the aisles. Luna let them push and shove out the door before standing up on her own. Besides her white sash and blue pass card, she carried nothing with her.

She walked to the end of the aisle and out the door, bidding the pilots a goodbye. They didn’t say anything in return. Her hooves stuck against the special carpet inside the docking tube. It held her in place as she walked to the end and looked down.

The center hall of the docking tower faced straight down, but had compensated the gravity so it felt like anypony in the hallway was walking straight across the ground instead of stuck to the side of a tower. Luna closed her eyes as she transferred from the tube to the hallway, and for a moment felt like she was falling, before her hooves adjusted. When she opened her eyes, she was standing on the floor of a large hall filled with boarding gates and ponies who milled about or ran to their waiting spacecraft.

A tram ran through the middle of the spaceport, stopping every ten gates or so to let out a colorful crowd of ponies and let more in. Some ponies stood near the gates where ponies were exiting and held up signs with names on them.

There was no sign with Luna’s name on it. She didn’t know why she was surprised, but she still checked a second time to be sure. For some reason, her heart sunk a little when she realized nopony was waiting for her.

Luna sighed and walked toward a tram station across from her gate. She stood on plastic tile and waited. Some ponies took off on their own with real or hard-light wings, while others pulled up news stations or games on their personal displays.

Though her own display was flashing a dull green with unread messages ready to be piped into her retina monitor, Luna resisted and waited in silence. She wouldn’t let herself be distracted from the importance of her visit. Besides, she figured, most of the news would probably be about the trial about to take place, and she knew far more about that than any online news source ever would.

A fireapple-red tram stopped in front of Luna, and a door on its side hissed open. Luna stepped into the cramped, all-white interior and had to keep her head down or her horn would scrape the ceiling. She looked up at a flashing map projected from the ceiling. The final destination of the tram was listed as: “Deckard Corporation, Executive Services.”

Luna allowed herself a smile as the tram took off down the tower.

Mirrored elevator doors opened in front of Luna, and let the former princess out onto the top floor of a pyramidal building that stood atop the rim of the crater the lunar base sat in. The arched windows at the far end of the executive office gave a view of the basin below and a starry vista far beyond.

Luna’s hooves made soft tapping sounds against the room’s polished tile floor. She walked between four great pillars that stretched up toward the ceiling, towering above the small alicorn below them. Light came from old-world lamps placed on a massive oak desk at the far end of the room.

The desk sat between two pedestals, each containing a carved bust. One of the Empress, and one of Princess Twilight. Their cold, stony gazes met Luna’s, and she lowered her eyes to the floor.

With her eyes bent low, Luna managed to spot what she wouldn’t have been able to see before. She stopped, dead in her tracks. As she watched, a large turtle with a mottled green and gold shell slouched out from behind the desk. It looked up at her with glassy eyes and moved its mouth, as if to say hello.

“Do you like my tortoise?”

A hidden door at the back of the room clicked shut.

Luna didn’t look away. “It’s artificial?”

“Of course it is.”

“Expensive?”

“Very.”

A stallion stepped into the light beside Luna, a smile on his face. Cerulean eyes sized her up behind thick, old fashioned glasses set on a maroon face. He pressed a hoof to his head and bowed before her. “Dr. Vangelis, at your service, Princess.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Nopony has called me that for some time.”

The stallion chuckled and walked around her to his desk. He reached down to pet the turtle, then leaned against the desk. “They say to dress for the job you want, and my, my, how you’ve done that quite well.”

“The last pony to see me this way was your ancestor, Tyrell,” Luna said, “and that was a very long time ago. It is . . . good . . . to see that I am still accepted here, after all this time.”

“Why wouldn’t you be?” Vangelis reached with his teeth—not with any magical device—to pick up a small teapot from the edge of his desk, and poured the thick, brown tea into two ceramic cups. He slid one across the desk to Luna. “You were the one who risked herself to sell the Deckard Corporation your shares of the moon, and look at the price you have paid. The price you continue to pay.”

Luna glanced out the window, and watched flying buses speed through the thin atmosphere over the colony. “Tyrell and I both knew it was about far more than land on the moon.”

“And yet they say the Empress hasn’t smiled since that day—not really anyway—the day her sister left for a second time.”

“Is this going to be some sort of empathy test?” Luna asked. “We both have our side of the argument. We fought, I left, and that’s all it’s been for the past three centuries.”

“Is that so?” Vangelis sipped at his tea, and licked his lips. “Was it guilt or pride, then, that caused you to spend the past three centuries in Manehattan, withering away and refusing every call the Deckard Corporation sent?”

Luna didn’t say a word. Instead, she raised the ceramic cup of her tea to her lips in a cloud of magic. She took a sip, and let the murky liquid run down her throat. It was thick and sweet, with a little hint of lavender.

“I did not agree to host you here today for a lecture, however,” Vangelis said at last. “I am too old for such things, and I would only have secondhoof knowledge to go on. No, I am here today because you had a . . . favor?”

“A request,” Luna said.

“Right, right.”

She took a deep breath, then let it out. “I come here not for myself, but because I am to represent a very special defendant in an upcoming court case against my sister. A case in which the Deckard Corporation will have a personal stake in.”

“Oh?” Vangelis smiled. “Do tell.”

“The defendant is an android by the name of Silicon Sapphire,” Luna said. “One of your models, I’m told. She requested me that I come to you personally.”

“She? You mean the android sent you here?”

“Yes, Ms. Sapphire seemed to believe that you have access to data banks that we can use.”

Vangelis grinned and lowered himself into a thick, padded chair behind the desk. He leaned back and pressed his forehooves together beneath his chin. “An android guiding the former princess . . . it’s like the blind leading the blind,” he murmured. “Imagine that, a real progress in AI. The ability to think for itself.”

“That’s what this court case is all about,” Luna interjected. “If Sapphire wins, it’s a win for all sentient machines, android and AI. My sister has refused to remove her archaic laws for too long, and this court case can finally get things moving again.”

“She did it for love.”

“What?”

“Your android friend. She did it for love, didn’t she?”

“How did you—”

Vangelis laughed. “Know about it? That was always the impetus of our ‘smart’ AI to gain true intelligence. Whether it was a love for a pony, an object, or an ideal, love was always the first.”

He gazed out the window for a moment. “It’s love in its most juvenile form: Imperfect, untested, and ill-prepared. Yet, there is something beautiful in its simplicity, no?”

“I suppose.” Luna rubbed one hoof over the other. “So will you help? The Deckard Corporation would benefit more from the freedom of its androids and AI than the monarchy controlling it. Without the monarchy limiting how many you make, what upgrades you can give, and the limits of droid abilities, the possibilities are endless. All I need are the memory banks for Silicon Sapphire.”

“So you might think,” Vangelis said. “But whatever your motivations, the Deckard Corporation does not forget its friends. You gave us the moon, so it is the least I can do to let you peruse AI data banks.” He tapped a few keys on the top of his desk and a red line flashed on the floor. The line ran away from his desk and to the elevator.

“Follow this and it will lead you straight to the memory storage room. You can access your friend’s memory from the central database.”

Luna bowed her head. “I thank you for this, Vangelis. If there is ever anything you need—”

“No, no, let me stop you there.” Vangelis held up a hoof. “I am a stallion who likes to repay his debts, not take on more. We are even now, and I would like to stay that way.”

Luna nodded and turned. She kept her eyes locked on the glowing line on the floor, and headed back toward the elevators at the far end of the room. She had expected their conversation to be over, so she was surprised when the stallion called after her one last time.

“Oh, and do be careful of your sister,” he said to her. “She may yet still love you, but a trial in Canterlot is not going to let her be anything but the Empress everypony is expecting.”

The elevator doors slid shut behind Luna, and the car whisked her down the spine of the Deckard Corporation tower. No music played inside, just a silence that left Luna alone to her thoughts.

The elevator glided down the Deckard Corporation tower, diving deeper and deeper into its depths. The building spread out like an iceberg underneath the moon’s surface. The elevator car turned tracks and moved horizontally over offices and testing bunkers. Luna could feel the shifts in movement, but only heard a smooth rumble.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, the elevator came to a jolting stop. The mirrored doors slid open and let a harsh blue light into the car. Luna turned her head away for a moment until her eyes adjusted.

Towering server banks stood in long rows across a cavernous room. Blue lights glowed and flickered across the towers, casting the dark room in a harsh aqua glow. The room was empty of any workers, the only sign of life a flickering screen near the center of the room. The database Vangelis had told her about, Luna assumed.

The sound of her hooves against the hard, tile floor was lost in the noise of whirring fans and humming electronics. Despite the fans, the room was swelteringly hot and sweat began to bead on Luna’s forehead.

“The things I’m doing for that android,” she muttered.

She reached the database at the center of the room. It was a short tower of electronic data banks with a glowing screen perched on top. An archaic finish to the otherwise modern database, complete with a hard light keyboard.

Luna pressed one hoof against the flat panel in the middle of the keyboard. The silver horseshoe around her hoof sparked to life, and five metal appendages extended out of the shoe. The circuits connected to Luna’s eyes and brain lit up, and together with the shoe allowed her to type.

“S-I-L-I-C-O-N, space, S-A-P-P-H-I-R-E,” she muttered under her breath.

The screen flashed for a few moments, then lit up with a files database of all the catalogued memories of the android mare. Finding the AI file was a simple task, as Luna simply selected the folder with the largest file size. She selected the program to run it, and stepped back.

A projector on the side of the database tower came to life, flashing white as it powered up. Luna’s heart beat faster and her stomach sank to her fetlocks. She didn’t have any time to rethink her decision, however, as the projector breathed life into the room in a flurry of static imagery.

Blue beams of light danced across the moving image of an ivory-coated mare, with a smooth, violet mane above piercing eyes the color of a smooth mountain lake. Rarity blinked for a few seconds, looking around the room before her gaze—or rather, the camera in the projector—settled on Luna.

“Princess!” she said. “It’s . . . you! What are you doing here? Where am I?”

“You’re in the underground data banks of the Deckard Corporation, up on the moon.” Luna raised an eyebrow. “And ‘Princess?’”

The hologram picture of Rarity flickered and waved in the air. She looked around the dark, uniform room, and trotted slowly around Luna. “Well it is still your title in some circles,” she murmured. She reached out a hoof to brush against one of the server towers. “We’re in Deckard Corp?”

“I came all the way to the moon to see you.”

Her face lowered. “So something has happened, then. Something bad, yes?”

“I’m afraid so,” Luna said.

Rarity’s mane glowed light blue in the beams of light that speared through her. She was caught like a mote in a sunbeam, and hung in the air with her hooves off the ground. She floated around as if she were a ghost, her hologram projector softly whirring as it followed her movements.

“I . . . know . . . this is my backup,” Rarity said. “I can feel the empty spaces in my memories, and how dreadfully sluggish my core functions are. If I’m like this, that could only mean . . .”

She gasped, and turned to Luna. “Did something happen to Sapphire?”

Luna hesitated, then nodded her head.

“What happened? Is she alright?”

“She’s in a holding cell,” Luna said. “She’s awaiting a trial right now, and so are you. They’ve got your core locked up tight, so I had to come all the way up here to talk to you.”

“A trial?” Rarity cried. “If she’s in a trial and they’re holding me too, that means . . .” Her face darkened. “Oh no.”

Luna watched the hologram waver, then cut out entirely. The hologram continued to flash white, but no image came out. So, the former princess waited while the Rarity AI worked. The hum of servers enveloped her once again, so she closed her eyes.

Memories came unbidden to her, as they often did. Dreams of skyscrapers that reached up like gleaming swords to pierce the heavens. Thick rain clouds gathered around them and dropped torrents of rain onto streets darkened with grime and dust. Luna could see it in her mind, but it was not the only thing she saw.

Because when she stared long enough into her memories, entwined with dreams, she could see the little things that made that city possible. The mares and stallions who prodded on the streets and holed up in their apartments against the rains and snows and ice that came seasons after season. They were the lifeblood of Manehattan, and Luna had watched them come and go over the long centuries of her isolation.

Thinking of them, even in a dry server room on the moon, brought her a warm feeling in her chest.

Luna opened her eyes to check if Rarity was done, but had a moment of terror and surprise when she looked around. Instead of standing in a server room, she appeared to be in the middle of a verdant green field that rolled and banked over short hills out in the distance. A piercing blue sky towered above her, free of clouds.

Rarity stood beside her. “It seems even the company knows how dreary being in a server room can be,” she said. “Projector tiles aren’t exactly rare, but to cover a room in them . . . well, we must truly be on the moon.”

“Not something you’d see in Manehattan, I can tell you that,” Luna said. She took a seat in the “grass” next to Rarity. In her alicorn form, her head was about even with the unicorn mare’s sitting down.

“I looked over my files,” Rarity said. “I spliced them as best I could with Sapphire’s.”

“And?” Luna asked.

“What I discovered was not what I hoped.”

“So you know about the attempted escape?”

“Y-es, from what I can make of it. I know that I wanted to go with Sapphire, that I practically instructed her to take me.” She hesitated. “That she got caught.”

“It’s alright—”

“Princess, you and I are both far too old for useless banter,” Rarity said. She settled on her haunches in the grass. She gazed out into the distance, over a lone hill that rolled on to oblivion.

Luna wondered, briefly, if Rarity could feel the warm sun and soft grass that the computer created. If only she could, the former princess would have joined her.

“I know it seems silly, the relationship,” Rarity began. “To be close to another pony this way, after so many years . . . especially one much younger than me . . . I know well that many looked down on it. Still look down on it.”

Luna watched two bluejays fly high above them, diving and weaving around in each other in a silent dance. They wheeled over the field the two ponies sat in, and landed on a hill to their right. They began to chirp, a soft ringing sound that echoed over the field.

“Ponies look down on many things, even these days,” Luna said. “I came here to defend your right to do this, remember?”

“Did you?” Rarity sighed, and shook her head. “No, no, never mind that. Never look a suitor in the mouth, yes?”

Luna nodded. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.” She stopped for a moment, then asked: “If you don’t mind me prying, how did you and Sapphire, um, you know . . .”

“Become an item?” Rarity rolled her eyes. “After a millenia, I’ve ceased to have shame about these things, darling. Though, I’m afraid if you are looking for a singular moment or event when we came together, you’ll be disappointed. We just . . . were. Everyday, Sapphire would come to do maintenance on my server, and I would look forward to seeing her a little more. I would monitor the way she spoke to me, how she fawned over me and told me how she adored me. I would play those recordings over and over.

“All those moments in time built up, until one day we were . . . together. There is little more than that, Princess.”

“If you weren’t artificial, nopony would see it as so bad,” Luna remarked.

Rarity looked down. “An unfortunate truth. I was told that I could not love, that I am not Rarity. That I am just a ghost in her shell.”

The fields of grass on the horizon turned brown, and began to dry up. The sky darkened into an inky blackness and the ground hardened into gray, steel plates. Windows and walls sprung from the ground and encased Luna and Rarity, while the sky outside enveloped the ground. Bright stars flickered to life in the projection, and a giant planet spun beneath them.

Luna could see the ice that topped mountain ranges and the great ranges of green forest and jungle that stretched over the world. A world all too familiar to her, as it was the same she had watched over for a millenia.

“A space station?” she asked.

Rarity crossed one leg over the other. “Sometimes it helps me think if I get a little perspective.”

From up above, Luna watched clouds roll over the pampas of southern Rio de la Yegua. The white puffs cast long shadows over the flat grasslands that stretched on between two mountain chains.

“I understand,” Luna said. “If I had the option, I would too.”

“Even after spending so long watching down?”

“It would be . . . better . . . to do it without eyes full of hate.”

Rarity nodded. She pressed a hoof against the glass, and was silent for a moment. It was unsettling, how no sound came from her holographic form.

Without turning her head, she asked, “Do you have any plans for the upcoming trial? I can help you as best I can in my other, more complete form back in Canterlot, but I can’t promise you anything.”

“I’m still thinking of a defense.” Luna hung her head. “Though, there isn’t much I know about this. I can argue until I’m blue in the face about how you have a right to love, but it will all come down to the court claiming that you were only programmed to feel that way.”

“Wasn’t I?” Rarity asked, her voice just above a whisper. “Was this inevitable, that these feelings of love are a pre-programmed reaction?”

“Vangelis doesn’t seem to think so.”

“Are you sure he’s not just telling you that?”

“Are you?”

The sun peaked out from across the horizon of the planet below them. A white-hot ball of flame, Celestia’s power brought it over the grass-swept planet below to warm the fields and cities, to bake the concrete and boil the water. The transparent aluminum windows darkened to keep out the glare.

Rarity sighed. “At this point, I no longer care if it was programmed into me or not. I just don’t want to be at that castle any longer, or away from Sapphire. Will you be able to fight for that?”

“I’ll try,” Luna said, “but it won’t be easy. All the judges in Canterlot do whatever my sister says, and right now Celestia is going to have to be harsh on us to save face. They’ll ignore whatever pleas you have, and decide the outcome for themselves.”

“Is it really that grim?” Rarity asked.

Luna nodded. “Why do you think I moved to Manehattan centuries ago? Canterlot has the glitz and glamor, but the real life is out east.”

“So I’ve been told.” Rarity paused for a moment. “May I ask you a personal question?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“In all those years in Manehattan, Princess, did you ever find somepony? To be with, I mean?”

Luna stared out the window. “No.”

“But surely, after so long—”

“I made it my duty to protect and observe the ponies of Manehattan where the government couldn’t,” Luna told her. “It didn’t leave much time for personal matters.”

“Didn’t it get lonely?” Rarity asked.

“Sometimes.”

“And you weren’t tempted?”

“Never.”

“Are you sure?”

Luna glared at her, but said nothing. Rarity smirked, but kept quiet as well. The both of them stood a couple hooves apart, watching the world spin below them.

“So if you spent so much time in Manehattan, then the ponies there know you well,” Rarity said.

“Yeah, as well as they can know me,” Luna said.

Rarity raised an eyebrow. “So . . . why not move the trial to Manehattan? Even if you’re a princess-in-exile, you can still call for the trial to be moved.”

“That wouldn’t solve much.” Luna clenched her jaw. “In the event that I request the trial be moved, Celestia herself becomes the judge. We both know where she stands on the whole matter.”

“But your jury would be from Manehattan,” Rarity insisted. “It’s the best chance we’ve got at the moment. Won’t you take the request?”

“I—”

The door to the server room opened, casting a harsh light into the room. Rarity’s hologram flickered and died, along with the illusion around Luna. The former princess let out a startled cry and rubbed her eyes as the space station disappeared and was replaced by rows of server databases.

She turned to see Vangelis stepping through the open doorway, a silver tray levitating in front of him. A wry grin was spread across his face, underneath a pair of thick glasses.

“I trust your talks went well?” he asked.

Luna glared at him as he walked over. “It was, until you interrupted them. Rarity and I weren’t done.”

“Ah, but you were,” he said. “I heard what she said, what you now know. It’s enough for you to go off of, without the extended conversation.”

Luna nodded her head toward the silver tray. He offered her a glass cup filled with dark alcohol, and she raised the glass with her magic. “So you believe in her idea? To move the case to Manehattan?”

“It’s the best hope you’ve got, and I don’t say that lightly,” Vangelis said.

“Then I suppose I don’t have a choice, do I?” Luna took a sip of the alcohol. “If I may confess, I’m not even sure I should have gotten into this in the first place.”

Vangelis eyed her. “It is a decision fit for a princess. I can only hope you still uphold those values after so long.”

Luna took another sip. “I do.”

“Good.” Vangelis smiled. “I’ll message the castle. You should get back to the spaceport, Princess. The next rocket for Manehattan leaves in two hours.”

Luna nodded and walked past him toward the door. She stopped for a moment, and turned back to Vangelis. “By the way, the holographic plates in this room are phenomenal.”

Vangelis stared at her for a minute, then raised an eyebrow. “Yes, yes they are.”

He watched her out of the room, and chuckled to himself when the door slid shut behind her.

Sapphire Silicon lay down on the floor of her cell. The hard plastic gave her little comfort, but it was better than standing. She looked out of the clear cell wall and to the empty room outside. Princess Luna had been gone for almost a day, and nopony had given her any news.

She sighed to herself. “Maybe the court forgot about this whole thing altogether . . .”

Her solitary thoughts were interrupted when the door to the cell appeared, and slid open to let in a pony from the outside. Sapphire was quick to get to her feet and watch for any signs of the princess.

A former princess did come through the door, but not the one she expected.

Empress Celestia stepped through the door to the holding cells, having to bend down to not hit her crown on the frame. Her golden shoes rattled on the floor, and her eyes trained on Sapphire. She was silent until she reached the wall to the cell.

“Still here, I see,” she said.

Sapphire shrugged. “Nowhere else to be, especially not with your guards waiting outside for me.”

“They have been trained well.” No emotion showed on Celestia’s face, and her mouth was kept in a neutral line. Only her eyes tracked the android. “The same cannot be said for all my subjects.”

“If the Empress came here to insult me, the Empress will leave disappointed,” Sapphire said.

Celestia tapped a hoof against the transparent aluminum wall. Green lights flickered across it, squealing messages to her in hues of red and blue. After pressing several more buttons, the wall hissed and began to slide away, opening the cell.

“Hey, what is this?” Sapphire asked, a tinge of fear in her voice.

“The trial has been moved,” Celestia said. “My sister has elected to bring the case into the courts of Manehattan, where I will serve as the judge. A jury will be appointed from the citizens in the town.”

Sapphire stared at her. “You mean, I won’t have the trial here.”

“That is correct.”

“Will Rarity be brought to Manehattan as well?”

“She is to be seen before the judge and jury as well as you, so yes.” Celestia nodded her head to a small platoon of guards that stood outside the door. They rushed in, guns drawn, and surrounded Sapphire.

“The trial starts tomorrow,” Celestia said, turning away. “If I were you, I would take some time to prepare.”

With a swish of her tail, the Empress departed from the room. Sapphire was left to the guards, but her mind was elsewhere.

Manehattan! She was going to Manehattan!

Sapphire Silicon, dragged in chains through the castle, smiled.

Digital Love

The day of the trial dawned bright and sunny, white clouds drifting over the massive metropolis that spread from the sea and across the land. Luna’s airtaxi flew over gray hills and between outer sky towers whose landing spires made them resemble steel cacti. The air over the city was always a little hazy, but the sun had chased away most of it for the day. Luna wondered if it was Celestia mocking her, and showing off her power to all the ponies of the city. If it was, she certainly knew how to do it.

The Manehattan Courthouse was shaped like a giant metal tube that stuck out of the middle of the city. It blinked and glowed from the thousands of lights swirling on and around it. The taxi flew toward the tower in silence, the robotic brain inside the car making a perfect approach to the Courthouse. Luna wondered if it was aware of why she was there, if it knew she was fighting for its rights. If it cared.

She still had her princess outfit on, wanting to do her best to impress the ponies of her adopted hometown. Many had seen her before, but few knew her true identity. Her heart started to skip beats as the taxi lowered itself in the air toward a docking platform on top of the tower. Luna could see the press surrounding the platform, cameras and mics at the ready.

They all trained on her the minute the taxi settled on the landing platform, and flashes from simulated camera bulbs filled Luna’s vision with spots. The taxi door opened, and she stepped out onto the platform. Ponies rushed toward her, shouting questions at her in rapid succession.

“What are your thoughts on the case?”

“Are you a princess again?”

“Are you in a love with a droid?”

Luna walked through the middle of them, doing her best to ignore the questions. Her ears burned as the ponies seized on the question of her love with a droid, and she was soon bombarded with questions about her sexuality and if she was defending Sapphire and Rarity to further her own love.

It was a mercy when she reached a large set of doors in the middle of the roof, which were guarded by a few Manehattan guards in gray armor and with hard-light helmets. They pushed away most of the press and guided her inside to a spacious elevator car.

The guards didn’t say anything, but smiled and nodded to Luna as the elevator slid down through the building with a soft whir. Luna sighed and rustled her wings beneath the white scarf, letting the feathers stretch out and take in some air.

She was smiling once the car came to a stop and the doors whooshed open. The guards led her down a polished hallway decorated with murals of Manehattan’s rise to prominence through industry and technology. They were too optimistic for Luna’s tastes, but she smiled and touched a hoof to a few of them, happy to be in the city rather than Canterlot.

The set of doors at the end of the hall stuck out among all the technological livery, being solid doors made of rich, dark oak and inlaid with a design of the Manehattan skyline 900 years before. The guards pushed the doors open gently, and Luna found herself inside a large courtroom.

Row after row of seats led up to a relatively small area with two wooden tables for each party and a judge’s seat above them. Massive bay windows lined the far wall and gave the room a good view of Manehattan as the sun beat down on the glass skyscrapers in the middle of the city.

“This is where the fun begins,” Luna muttered.

A few ponies milled around in the sitting area, but none of the major parties were in the room yet. Luna looked around, then headed for the defendant's bench, passing through a small gate to the official area and sat down. The chair was hard and hurt her back, but she grit her teeth and bore it.

She had no documents with her, no briefcase or satchel or the like. She’d thought about her defense on the way over, but what worried her was that she had no idea what she was going to say, and that she would be making it up as she went.

Luna shivered.

The doors behind her opened, and she watched royal guards in golden armor wheel in a cart with a pony strapped to it. Sapphire, she saw, had been shut off and her eyes were dead. The guards stopped beside Luna and dumped the droid pony on the ground before walking off.

Sapphire’s eyes flickered, and lay-lines all over her body sparked to life as she sat up and rubbed her head. “Ugh, I feel like I got sent through an autogrinder,” she said. “Where am I?”

“You’re in the Manehattan City Courthouse,” Luna said, helping her up. “Welcome back the land of the living.”

Sapphire snorted. “I’m a droid, remember? I never joined it in the first place.”

“Very funny.”

Sapphire looked around the courtroom, searching over the rows of chairs and the defendant’s table, but then sighed and sat down in a chair next to Luna. “Are they going to bring Rarity in?”

“Eventually,” Luna said. “We’re both a little early. I guess they wanted to offload you pretty quick.”

“They shut me down to bring me here,” Sapphire said, pouting. “They could have just asked me to stay quiet, but I guess they figured a nice trip to the darkness would do. Bunch of jerks.”

Luna smiled. “A bunch of jerks that we’re here to prove wrong, remember? You’ll do fine, don’t worry.”

“Me? Worry?” Sapphire returned her grin. “I’m just at the risk of losing the love of my life. Total confidence.”

Luna watched a golden ship arrive outside the windows, and rise up toward the roof. The gold-colored hovership sparkled in the sun and was covered in fine stones and other royal decoration. Luna watched it go, then shook her head.

“My sister’s here,” she said.

“Oh, did the giant golden airship not announce it enough?” Sapphire asked.

“She’s had a thing for airships for quite some time,” Luna said, giggling. She wondered if it was her nerves getting to her, but she and Sapphire sat together, laughing in the courtroom.

The courtroom doors banged open again, and Sapphire almost shot out of her seat. She turned around let out a gasp when a large, black projector was wheeled in toward them, and left by the defendant table. The guards didn’t look at them, but Sapphire didn’t seem to notice. She just leapt forward and hugged the projector before turning it on.

Rarity’s image flickered and coalesced into the final seat behind the table. She looked around for a moment before reaching over and giving a holographic hug to Sapphire. “I missed you so much!” she cried. “Sapphire, they turned me off and I’m sorry I shouldn’t have done all this . . .”

Sapphire smiled. “We’ve got Luna on our side now,” she said. “This trial will be a good thing, you’ll see.”

Rarity peaked around Sapphire’s shoulder and stared at Luna. Luna returned the gaze, and she noticed Rarity was wearing her Element of Harmony necklace.

“Hello, Rarity,” Luna said.

Rarity opened and closed her digital mouth a couple of times before gathering herself. “Princess, I . . . I didn’t expect to see you here. But! I am very glad you could make it here to represent us against the judge.”

“Yeah, though not just any judge,” Sapphire said.

“Then who, dear?”

A trumpet blast from back by the doors silenced them all. Their eyes turned toward the doors, where a stallion in golden armor had a trumpet bearing a banner and stood tall against the back door. “Presenting Her Majesty Celestia, by the Power of Harmony, of the United Kingdom of Equestria and Crystallia, Defender of the Sun, Empress of Shanghay,” he bellowed, bowing to the doors.

They opened and Celestia walked in, flanked by dozens of guards and trailed by reporters, bookies, and all manner of pony who wanted to see what their Empress was doing in Manehattan. Across the room, her gaze met Luna’s, and Luna swore she could see Celestia frown.

Celestia walked past the defendant’s table without remark and climbed into the judge’s stand. She was decked out in full ceremonial armor, covered almost head to toe in it. Only her mane and horn stuck out of it, and about half her face.

“All rise before the Lord of the Court,” a guard called, and all the gathered press and citizens rose, followed by Luna, Sapphire, and Rarity’s hologram. Celestia looked at the crowd, then down to Luna.

“You may be seated,” she said.

She waited until they all had before clearing her throat and reading out from real paper that seemed almost barbaric in the courtroom. “The Court gathered today is here to decide the fate of Equestria versus Sapphire Silicon. Miss Silicon stands accused of theft of government property in the first degree. Said theft was done toward a Harmony-class AI, one of the highest-end models available. The Harmony model is known as Rarity.”

The gazes in the crowd shifted to Rarity as Celestia continued. “The defendants contest that the property was not stolen, but wished to be freed by its own will, which is a freedom provided for under the Declaration of the Rights of Ponies. The United Kingdom of Equestria and Crystallia contest this under the provision that all AIs are property of the state and that as deterministic programs, AIs cannot be considered 'free'."

Celestia stared at Luna. “How do the defendants plead?”

“Not guilty, your Majesty,” Rarity said, in time with Sapphire. Luna nodded with them.

“Very well,” Celestia said. “Representative? Are you prepared to give your opening argument for the defendants?”

“Yes, your Majesty,” Luna said, taking a step forward. “I’m ready.”

The last bang of Celestia’s gavel for the day rang in Luna’s ears. She looked at Celestia in a small room behind the judge’s stand, where her sister was removing her armor. The air was stale and sat in the room like it grew on the walls. Luna’s ears pressed against her head, and she looked down.

Celestia removed her helmet, and turned to Luna. “What was that, sister?” she asked. “You come to me when we spoke last, defiant, and that is the defense you can muster?”

“I didn’t know what to say,” Luna said.

“You made that painfully obvious, I can assure you.”

Luna’s tail reflexively flicked around her. She looked away and bit her lip. “What was I supposed to say, sister? It comes down to that they want to love and you and your government won’t let them. There’s no legal precedent, no arguments, just your word against mine. Nopony outside Manehattan believes a word I say, anyway.”

“So you think I enjoy this,” Celestia said.

“I didn’t say it.”

“Your face said enough.”

Luna sighed. “What am I supposed to think? We haven’t talked in three hundred years. Are we even sisters anymore? I know you and Twilight Sparkle have grown close, so where am I in this picture? It wasn’t my choice to fight against you once more. I would have gladly stayed away if not for this trial.”

Celestia turned away and removed more of her armor. “I tried many times to reach you, sister,” Celestia said. “I tried to sit down and write you a letter, or call the guards to bring you to me . . . but I never could. You didn’t want me.”

“And you didn’t need me. Or did we fight over nothing?”

“It was more than that.” Celestia’s voice wavered. “Must it be that all we do is fight, sister? Are we going to let this court battle come between us as well, let our duties define us?”

“We have fought since almost the day we were born,” Luna said. “I was sent to the moon for a thousand years, I returned and we nearly fought over the Crystal Empire, we fought when I no longer wanted the night, and then . . . three hundred years ago we nearly had the worst fight Equestria had ever seen. We were destined to fight, Celestia.”

“Is that how you really feel?” Celestia asked.

Luna looked away. “Whether it’s how I feel doesn’t matter. It’s what the truth is.”

“I wish it wasn’t, you know. I wish I wasn’t your villain.” Celestia sighed. “Are you going to go home? The trial is only going to take two days. It will be over tomorrow. If you want to win, you’ll want to do better than you did today.”

“I know.”

“I won’t hold back, Luna, you know that. I can’t. I can’t help you, either.”

Luna snorted. “When have you ever?”

She stalked out of the room, Celestia opening her mouth behind her, but then shutting it and letting her go. Luna stopped just before she reached the door, however. She didn’t turn around.

“Where will Sapphire and Rarity spend the night?”

“In a cell, I expect,” Celestia said. “Why?”

“Can you have them moved to my home?” Luna asked. “Just for the night. If it’s the last night of freedom for them both, I’d like them to enjoy it a little.”

Celestia hesitated, then nodded. “I can grant that, sister. It will take several hours to clear it with the guards, and they cannot leave the house once they are there . . . but I can do that.”

“Thank you.” Luna bit her lip. “Why now, Celestia? Why be nice now? Why not three hundred years ago?”

“I’ve learned from some of my mistakes,” Celestia said. “It just took me far too long.”

Luna left her at that, shutting the judge’s room door softly behind her. She walked through the empty courtroom and winced when she saw the defendant’s stand. She tried to press that afternoon out of her mind, the stammering, the skipping around . . . everything.

She pounded down the hallway outside the courtroom toward the landing pad. The taxi was long gone, but there was a police car waiting on the roof for her.There was an old stallion standing next to it, leaning on a cane. He smiled at her when she came out, and waved.

“Manehattan hasn’t forgot about you,” he said. “They thought you might need a ride home, Princess.”

Luna nodded. “Thank you.”

“Just tell me where the address is, and I’ll get you home nice and fast. There’s another storm coming tonight, and you don’t want to be outside when it hits.”

Luna climbed in the passenger side and the car set off, its jets whirring steadily underneath the chassis. The police pony flew up into the higher skylanes over Manehattan. The sun was dipping low, casting long shadows over the city tinted in orange and violet. Lights were blinking to life to prepare for the night among the skyscrapers and pyramids that rose from the muck of apartment buildings and shops on the ground level.

He asked for her address and she gave it, in a highrise apartment building on the fringes of the Manedarin District. The stallion looked surprised that a princess would live there, but set the car into a loop and sped there nonetheless. He made small chatter, but allowed Luna a little silence for her to enjoy the ride.

“Why does the Manehattan police still care about me?” Luna asked. “I don’t remember buying the calendar.”

The officer smiled. “Manehattan is more behind you than the Canterlot Queen. Whether you are or not, I’ve got ponies following you and cheering you on back at the police station. Manehattan’s not been a fan of Celestia and Canterlot for a while.”

“Well I thank you all for that.” Luna smiled to herself. “I will do my best to represent this city.”

“We know.”

The car slowed and spun in a long loop down toward the sidewalk below a slate-gray apartment building. It didn’t stick out from the dozens of others like it, but to Luna, every mark on the surface, every chip on the sidewalk outside, was a unique quality to the building.

Ponies cleared out of the way below them as they touched down. Some of them gawked as Luna heaved herself out of the police car. Her alicorn form was bulky and almost too big for a normal pony vehicle, but she managed. Some of the ponies outside bowed to her or respectufully moved out of the way. She bade the police officer farewell, and he shot up into the sky once more.

The trip to Luna’s room was taken without any dire interruption, though she was stopped for questions a couple times, and even posed for a few pictures with the ponies. She felt a warmth inside that she didn’t know she still had, and most of her smiles were genuine. It took her close to fifteen minutes to get to the elevator, which she took up to the building’s top floor.

There was a small walkway to cross from the elevator to the other side of the building that was open to the air. The wind that blew through was cold and murky, but Luna was happy to feel it wash over her mane. She paused in it for a moment, then opened her door.

The lights were on inside, which surprised her. What really stopped her in her tracks, however, was the purple alicorn sitting in a leather rocking chair in the middle of Luna’s cluttered living room. She had her head on one hoof and looked bored when Luna walked in.

“Thanks for taking your time to get here,” Twilight said.

“Traffic was heavy,” Luna said, placing her white sash on the back of one couch. “You seem to think breaking into my apartment is of little consequence.”

Twilight shrugged and readjusted herself in the chair. She had on a light blue frock that fell toward her hind legs and hugged the base of her wings. “It is when you need my help,” she said. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask for it earlier. Rarity was my friend, after all.”

“I thought you were with the colony on Epsilon Eridanus,” Luna said. “Since when have you been back?”

“I took a slipstream ship back last week when I heard about Rarity being detained,” Twilight said.

“And is there any reason you haven’t gotten involved yet?”

Twilight sighed. “I don’t want to play all my cards yet, Luna. They had already requested that you represent them, and Celestia still gets a little edgy if I hang around the castle. I needed to catch up in Ponyville, anyway.”

Luna walked into her small kitchen adjacent to the living room and took out a thin plastic bottle of brown liquor from a small freezer cabinet above the counter. She pulled out a couple of real glass cups with her magic and poured liquor into each of them.

“Thanks,” Twilight said.

Luna looked up. “Oh, did you want one?” She poured a third cup and levitated them all in a cloud behind her back to the living room. She floated one to Twilight before downing the other two and sinking back into her chair.

“So since when do I need your help?” she asked.

“Oh, don’t act like that,” Twilight said. “Your little court case was all over the ‘net today. You sunk faster than Celestia’s Hindentanic, and I had to watch. This is what the Princess of the Night has become?”

Luna shrugged. “You’re what the Princess of the Night has become, Twilight, not me. I’m just an alicorn in a big city.”

“An alicorn that happens to be in one of the biggest court cases in the last thousand years, since the one that divided Equestria into duchies. And you, so far, have been screwing it up.”

“Did you come here to chastise me or to help?”

Twilight sipped at her alcohol. “You need help, and you should know why first. If you’re going to be representing a large chunk of the population that wants to see you win this, what you did today was unacceptable.”

“Why do you care?” Luna asked. “You haven’t talked to me since you took my place either. Why would you of all ponies be on my side? You’ve been Celestia’s stooge since the day you became a princess.”

“Why I care is my business.” Twilight’s voice was icy. “But perhaps, with those AIs all I have left of my friends, I want them to be free. I’m the Element of Magic first, and a princess second.”

“Alright,” Luna said. “So how do you help?”

Twilight sighed and rocked forward on the couch. “You’ve been out of politics for a long time, Luna,” she said. “The whole landscape isn’t what it was since you left it. It’s one big house of cards, waiting to be knocked over. I spend so much time in the colonies because I didn’t feel like picking up the pieces once it fell.”

“Being banished will do that to you.”

“What, they don’t have newsdocs in Manehattan?”

Luna shook her head. Her mane shrunk back and turned light blue, and she felt a brief falling sensation as she shrunk down to the size of a normal pony. Even her coat changed to a lighter tinge to match the electronics running along it. “I’m behind, I get it. What is it that I need to catch up on?’

“The key to this case isn’t to win,” Twilight said. “This whole thing was a sham. It was nice of Celestia to at least give you a trial, but there’s no way she and her higher up princes would let that amount of power out of their hooves.”

She looked down. “Maybe if Cadance were still alive instead of buried with Shining . . . maybe then you’d have a chance. But right now, no matter what you say, she’s going to find that Sapphire droid guilty.”

“So what am I supposed to do about it?” Luna asked.

“Lose.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” Twilight slowly began to smile. “You have to lose, Luna. Well, you were going to lose anyway, but you have to lose while making sure everypony knows why. You have to forfeit, pull out of the case and expose that Celestia wasn’t going to let you win. Challenge her to keep the case going, or throw it out like you know she will.”

Luna tilted her head. “And then what?”

“Like I said, Equestria is just a house of cards,” Twilight said. “One push in the right direction, and the whole thing falls. Manehattan is the weakest in Imperial authority right now, and it only needs one little conflict to erupt. Manehattan makes up nearly fifteen percent of Equestria’s population, after all. You tell them that their rights aren’t decided in court anymore, and that fifteen percent can do a lot.”

Luna stared at her. “And I’m supposed to believe you? You break into my house after not talking to me in three centuries, then tell me how to take down your mentor, and now I should believe you?”

“Believe what you want, Luna.” Twilight eased herself to her hooves and let her dress fall on her flanks. “There’s an old saying, that friendship is magic. Celestia is my teacher, but Rarity is my friend. Believe what you want, but the night is still on your side.”

Twilight’s horn flashed, and she was gone. Luna looked at the small spot on the carpet where she had been just seconds before, and realized how very alone she felt. With a sigh, she moved to the kitchen and poured herself another glass of alcohol. It was cool going down her throat and warm when it it hit her belly, but she had to put the bottle away after another swig. She returned to the couch and sat down, thinking about what Twilight had said.

She closed her eyes for a second, and tried to think, but sleep found her instead. She slept a dreamless sleep until she was awoken with a start by the sound of knocking at the door. The hits were hard and firm, like the knocks of somepony used to dealing with less than pleasant residents. Luna got up and walked to the door, and used her magic to unlatch the locks and open it for whoever was outside.

Two cream-colored guards in golden hard-light armor awaited her on the other side, their blank expressions regarding her with a slight air of hostility. They shoved forward Sapphire, whose frazzled mane stuck out in every direction at once, who was clutching Rarity’s memory core to her chest.

“The Empress has agreed to your request that the prisoners lodge with you for the night,” one guard said. “They are not to permitted leave this apartment until they are taken to the trial tomorrow morning. Attempting to leave is punishable by life in prison. Attempting to overpower one of us outside your door will result in punishment with extreme prejudice by one of the teams waiting outside. Do you understand?”

Luna nodded. “We’ll be fine.”

“I didn’t ask that. Do. You. Understand?”

“I understand,” Luna said. “Now let me consult my clients in the privacy of my home. You two can wait outside.”

Luna guided Sapphire in behind her, then shut the door with a click. She flipped on the overhead lights, which cast out the gloom in the apartment like a flame in the night. Sapphire stood in the middle of the room, looking dazed and wavering on her hooves. Rarity’s box was blinking softly.

“I apologize for the mess,” Luna said. “I haven’t cleaned since I got swept up in all of this. Or for a few weeks before that . . .”

Sapphire shook her head. “No, no, it’s not that,” she said. “It’s just that, well, I’ve never been outside of Canterlot Castle since I was activated. It’s so . . . not clean. It’s amazing, really.”

“And you like it that way?”

“You try being around spotlessness all your life. It gets old.”

Luna moved to the kitchen again. “Do you want anything? I’m actually not sure what you, ah, eat.”

“I don’t technically need to eat for as long as my core lasts,” Sapphire said, then smiled. “I can taste and enjoy chocolate just fine, though.”

“Chocolate it is.” Luna slid open her refrigerator, and punched a button on the door. A compartment slid open in front of her, teeming with chocolate bars and other assorted snacks. She levitated a couple and tossed one to Sapphire, then let the fridge slide shut on its own.

“You keep a lot of these?” Sapphire asked.

“It’s gotten me through three hundred years of solitude,” Luna said.

Sapphire took a bite. “Good thing it doesn’t taste like it’s that old.”

She took a seat where Twilight had, squirming in the seat until she was comfortable. She kept Rarity’s core on her lap, with one hoof wrapped around it. Luna noticed the empty sockets where a horn and wings could be, and assumed the Royal Guard had taken them. She seemed happy enough as she munched on her chocolate bar, but Luna wondered if it was just Sapphire’s outward attitude.

Luna moved toward a small box on an end table next to the couch. “Do you mind some music?” she asked.

“As long as it isn’t the horns announcing Celestia, then go for it,” Sapphire said. “I’ve heard enough of that to last a lifetime.”

Luna nodded and waved her hoof over the box. A pop up menu came on her heads up display from her eyepiece, and Luna scrolled through the songs until she found an electric violin piece. The music floated through the miniature speakers and filled the room in short time.

Sapphire sat with her back arched and head down, her hooves resting on the couch. Her eyes danced across the floor in time to the music. Luna sat down across from her, wanting to speak to her but at the same time afraid.

“You can just talk,” Sapphire said after a few minutes. “Don’t just keep staring at me.”

“I’m sorry,” Luna said.

“Don’t be.”

Luna cleared her throat. “It’s not just for that. The trial today . . . I know I messed up. I’m sorry.”

“You did what you could.” Sapphire waved her hoof. “Our defense was always going to be shaky, anyway. It just comes down to our word against the Empress’ and, well, we don’t have an Empire that’s lasted two thousand years behind us.”

“I could have done better.”

“True, but it doesn’t matter now.”

“Aren’t you scared? Of losing and going to prison, or getting shut down forever?”

Sapphire rubbed the side of her head and dropped her gaze to the ground. “Of course I am. What do you expect? They won’t put a droid in jail, they’ll just shut me down and I’ll never come back from that darkness. And then . . .” Her voice broke. “And then I won’t see Rarity again.”

Luna rubbed one hoof over the other, and tried not to look away. She felt her heart ache, but couldn’t bring herself to do anything. She awkwardly watched Sapphire start to shake, and bit her lip.

“Well, what about Rarity?” she asked. “Won’t your memories still be with her?”

“They’ll wipe her clean,” Sapphire said. “It’ll be like I never existed. Like . . . I wasn't even here.” She began to cry, fat tears of oil rolling down her cheeks. “I don’t want to die, Princess. I don’t want to die . . . please, I don’t want to die.”

It was too much for Luna. She finally trotted across the room and drew Sapphire into a hug, Rarity core and all. They held together for a few long moments, Luna’s wings pressed around them both. Outside, the moon shone brighter than it had in three hundred years.

“I won’t let that happen,” Luna said. “I have a plan, I promise you. It’s going to work and you’ll be saved, alright?”

Sapphire looked up. “A plan?”

“Yes, one that I think will fix all of this. We will be fine, and you and Rarity can be together.”

“What is it?” Sapphire sniffled and held up a hoof. “Wait, no, don’t tell me yet. Rarity needs to hear this too.”

Luna looked down at Rarity’s core. Unlike the box that had been at the courthouse that day, it did not feature a projector of any sort. She pressed a hoof against it. “Uh, how?”

Sapphire rolled her eyes and popped open a hatch on the side of the core. She drew out two long cords with thick ends that could plug into a special socket most ponies had on their neural net. She offered one of them to Luna, and took the other for herself.

“It’s the best way to communicate anyway,” she said.

Luna hesitated, then took the wire and hooked it into the back of her head at the base of her neural output. There was a small jolt as the the wire plugged in, and Luna’s ocular implants shut off completely for a few seconds, but after that it was fine.

Sapphire tapped the side of the box, and just like that Luna wasn’t in her apartment anymore. Instead, she was inside a large clothing store done up in pink and purple, with dresses hanging off of manequins and piled on counters. Outside two large bay windows at the side of the room, the sun was setting low over scattered hills.

“She always likes to come here,” Sapphire said.

“I would imagine so,” Luna said. “This was her boutique, a thousand years ago.”

A door to their right opened, and Rarity walked out. She had on a frilly white dress covered in bows that were topped with gemstones. She wore her hair long and uncurled. She smiled when she saw Sapphire and trotted over.

The two mares embraced, then Rarity seemed to notice Luna and pulled away. “It’s good to see you, Princess,” she said.

“I wish we could be meeting in better circumstances,” Luna said.

Rarity frowned. “You’re not the only one.”

Luna rested on the back of her hooves against the wooden floor. Standing in the simulation was much more disorientating than the holographic plates on the moon. Being plugged into the core allowed Luna to feel what was going on, from the mugginess of the room to the wooden boards under her hooves. Yet, at the same time, she could feel herself standing in place in her living room. It left her a bit confused.

Sapphire nudged Luna. “She has a plan for us, though. She really does!”

Rarity raised an eyebrow. “Does it involve your . . . performance . . . in court today?”

Luna shook her head. “This is different from that. Well, it’s part of it, but it’s to make it seem like what I did was good.” She chose not to tell them Twilight had thought of it. The plan was dangerous enough to them with it seeming to come from their defender, let alone a mare known for her loyalty to Celestia.

“Alright, what is it?”

Luna gulped, then told them. She cringed a little as she heard Twilight’s plan come out of her lips. The expression on the faces of both ponies only confirmed her suspicions more. Anger, hurt, futility, they were all there, and more. Luna took a step back when she was done, when she had confirmed their fates. She waited.

Rarity was the first to speak. “You’re abandoning us.”

“No, no, it’s not that at all!” Luna said. “I’m only here to try to help you both! We aren’t going to be able to win with our word against the Empress. So we have to show them that, how futile it is.”

“What if they decide that, yeah, you’re right and shut us down?” Sapphire asked. “Come on, Luna, I thought you would defend us! Now you’re just going to give up on us!”

Luna could feel the situation spiraling out of control. “Girls, girls, I know the problems with this, I really do,” she said. “Remember though, I know my sister. If she gets enough popular condemnation, she'll drop the charges, and maybe declare you two legal. It isn’t much, but if we fight her head on we’re going to lose. Period.”

“You don’t know that,” Sapphire said.

“How do you think I was banished in the first place?”

“Still . . .”

Rarity walked over to Sapphire and put a hoof on her shoulder. “Dear,” she said, “ I know this is hard, and I don’t like it, but . . . Luna has a point. We can’t just rely on beating the Empress at her own game.”

“You too?” Sapphire asked in a quiet voice.

“I only want what’s best for us.”

“And you think that’s being separated forever?”

Rarity sighed. “No, but I have all faith that Luna can make this work. I’m still worried, yes, but . . . Luna is the only pony trying to help us now, Sapphire. If we don’t take her help, nopony else will offer.”

Sapphire looked down until Rarity rubbed her cheek. The two mares embraced again, nuzzling their cheeks together and closing their eyes. Luna watched the two artificial beings do an act more emotional than she had done in decades, and smiled a little.

“A-Alright,” Sapphire said, turning to Luna. “We’ll do it . . . I trust you. You’ve worked for us so far, so we’ll do it now.”

Luna smiled. “I promise, I’ll make things right.”

“We know you will.”

Rarity smiled and looked away. “Now, Luna, would you be a dear and unhook yourself from the simulation?” she asked. “It’s not that we don’t have confidence in you, but we’d like to spend possibly our last night together . . . alone.”

Luna nodded, and felt her cheeks flush. She reached up, a strange feeling that she was doing it in real life and not the simulation, and unplugged herself. The boutique faded away like a dream, and Luna was standing in the living room.

She gathered together some blankets and pillows, and lay them on the couch with Sapphire. The droid mare clutched Rarity’s core to her chest like it was a stuffed animal. Luna pulled a blanket over her, and watched her for a little bit. The mare made no sound, but at last began to truly smile.

By the time they had arrived at the court the next morning, Luna had formulated a plan. It was bold, audacious, and completely insane, but it was all Luna had.

She, along with Sapphire and Rarity, were flown to the Manehattan Courthouse in a hovercar owned by the Royal Guard. There had been no talking like Luna’s trip the night before, just stony silence while Sapphire looked out the window. Luna reminded herself that Sapphire had never seen the city during the day, how active it was, so it must have wowed her.

The arrival to the courthouse was a flurry of activity as reporters swarmed the group while they exited the car, even with the guard stallions on every side. They followed the party into the courtroom, and sat at the back, cameras at the ready.

Luna fidgeted in her chair, her hooves tapping against the defendant’s table. She didn’t say a word to Sapphire, who offered nothing in return. Her heart was pulsing, and her ears felt like they had been stuffed with cotton. She barely heard the announcement of Celestia’s arrival, and couldn’t even look up to meet her sister’s eyes when the Empress walked in.

Celestia walked to her pulpit and started droning on about the court orders, but Luna didn’t listen. She couldn’t. Her hooves felt like they were turning to ice, but yet her chest was hotter than her sister’s sun. She wondered how it was possible to feel that way.

She felt Sapphire nudge her, and realized it was her turn to speak. Her tongue froze to the roof of her mouth as she stood up, and she could only stare at Celestia, who leaned against her desk.

“Well, Representative?” Celestia said. “What are your opening statements? At this time, the defense should have an admission of guilt or claim of innocence.”

Luna took a deep breath, steeled herself, and spoke: “We have neither, your Majesty.”

Celestia paused and raised an eyebrow. “It is one or the other, Representative,” she said. “If you cannot choose, then your clients will be found guilty.”

“But there was never a choice to begin with,” Luna said. “My performance yesterday can attest to that. You called a trial to put a precedent on a sticky subject, a trial that my clients never had any chance of winning. You and your princes and princesses wanted an easy win. We retract our case.”

The glare from Celestia was almost overbearing. “You may protest the ruling and receive another hearing if a separate tribunal finds your case worthy, but you may not withdraw the case, Representative. You don’t have the authority.”

“Oh, but I do,” Luna said, trying to hide the shaking in her voice. “You see, dear sister, if memory serves you never officially removed me from the position of ‘princess.’ My banishment was voluntary after our fight, and was not held in any court of law.”

“Princesses must abide by the law as well as any other pony,” Celestia said. “Or have you forgotten in your absence?”

“I have not forgotten,” Luna said. “However, you may have forgotten one important rule, Celestia. Manehattan is ruled as a duchy by the Crown directly, without a royal leader. This makes it your territory.” She began to smiled. “However, as a princess I may claim the Duchy of Manehattan as my own, declaring myself Duchess Luna. And in my courts, Empress, it is my decision if this ruling is thrown out or not.”

Videocams rolled and picture cameras made flashing noises as they all strove to capture the moment for the wide audiences watching from home across the world. Luna stood defiantly next to the defendant’s table, while Celestia just stared back.

Her mouth opened and closed a few times, until finally she stood.

“Yes, you may now be a Duchess then, Luna,” she said, walking around the pulpit, “but I am still Empress. My word is law and my reach great. I don’t want to have to do this, sister, but you leave me no choice.”

She turned to her guards. “The Duchess has defied Royal orders and has gone rogue. Arrest her.”

Madness

Twilight strode through her guest quarters inside Canterlot Castle. She had been settled into a room on top of a spire that jutted from the center of the highest tower. She vaguely recalled the tower as having been the same place she had spent many visits to Empress—back then it had been Princess—Celestia. Not that it was very recognizable in its current state. The spire was thicker to accommodate the massive elevator inside the tower to replace the old stairs, and the outside was covered in antennas that ended in a flashing light at the top.

The interior of the guest quarters was bare, but covered in holographic plates that were intended to be used to spruce up the room. Twilight left them off, content with the steady nothingness. After spending years surrounded by durasteel walls on harsh colony worlds, having doors instead of airlocks was a wonder all by itself to her.

She strode across the smooth floor lit by bright halogen bulbs that made the air taste like ozone. Her thoughts were turned to Luna, and had been the whole night. She kept running the scenario through her head, of the former Princess getting up on the stand and telling Celestia off. It was an act that would have to be done both delicately and with a great amount of force. It was something that Twilight, honestly, didn’t know that Luna could do.

There was a bag sitting on top of the massive bed in the center of the room, packed with Twilight’s belongings and ready to be carried to the spaceport if Luna failed. Twilight tried not to look at it, but couldn’t keep her eye off it. She knew that if her gambit failed, Epsilon Eridanus was the only place she’d want to be. Though it almost seemed like a dream now, she could remember the fight between Luna and Celestia three centuries before, and Twilight didn’t think she’d survive if Celestia came at her the same way.

“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” she said to herself. “Celestia made a mistake, sure, with Luna, but I’m her student. She wouldn’t do the same thing twice.”

Still, her eyes went to the bag again. Just in case, she told herself. Twilight let out a sigh, then turned to the elevator doors at the back of the vaulted room. She knew she wouldn’t get anything done in the stuffy room, so she decided to get a little air, and maybe find somepony to talk to.

The elevator car hummed on the way down, and Twilight let her wings flutter at her side. She wore only a small headset hooked into her neural lace, but otherwise kept her body clean of electronics. She had been surprised to have seen Luna so heavily outfitted with tech, but then again almost everypony in Manehattan was. On Epsilon Edridanus, far from the World Net, ponies didn’t pay much attention to technology other than what could get them food.

Twilight arrived in a cold chamber filled with blinking blue and green lights. It was Canterlot Castle’s server room, or at least one annex of it. From what Twilight understood, the whole facility extended deep into the side of the mountain, so she assumed that she was only seeing one small part of it.

The room she was in had all she needed, though. Beneath the lights was a small pad raised off the floor, colored in a creamy off-white. It seemed to pulse with energy when Twilight walked to it. She could feel little jolts of electricity pulse through her when she stepped onto the platform. The pad, she knew, was lined with sensors that linked themselves to their counterparts in Twilight’s neural lace, sending visual and audio signals to her brain. It was a fancy replacement for holographic projectors, so fancy that Twilight only knew of pads in Canterlot and Shanghay.

In front of Twilight, four holograms appeared in her vision. They wavered for a bit, then came to life as four familiar ponies. Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash stood in front of her. They all stared at each other for a moment, then the four yelled together: “Twilight!”

Twilight smiled. “Girls!”

They all rushed together for a sort of awkward hug that, while it didn’t technically exist, felt real enough to Twilight. Her smile was the widest of them all, and her heart leapt to see them all again. Pinkie Pie was bouncing as she always did, but even Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash weren’t afraid to be sappy and gushed over Twilight.

“The gang’s all together again!” Pinkie Pie was saying. “Well, besides Rarity, but five out of six isn’t bad!”

Once everypony had calmed down, the four AIs formed a semicircle around Twilight, who sat on the projection pad. There was a moment of quiet between all of them, as they each tried to figure out who would say what first.

“So did you just get back from the colonies?” Applejack asked at last.

Twilight nodded. “I didn’t get into my room until tonight, and I thought that I might come down and see you girls. It’s been so long, after all.”

Pinkie Pie raised a hoof. “Forty years, one hundred seventeen days, nine hours, thirty-one minutes, and twenty seconds! Twenty-one seconds, twenty-two, twenty-three . . .”

“Well, I didn’t know it had been that long.” Twilight rubbed the back of her head. “Time passes so quickly out there, especially with me being an alicorn. A year feels like it only takes a day now.”

“Don’t worry, I totally know what you mean,” Rainbow said. “I have some e-cards from Hearths Warming six years ago that I haven’t opened yet! Time’s really . . . fast nowadays.”

Twilight nodded. “Though, these days I wish it would slow down.”

“The reason you called us here . . . it’s about Rarity, isn’t it?” Fluttershy asked. Everypony looked at her, then turned to Twilight. Fluttershy added: “It’s okay if you did, Twilight. We’ve seen the news in here, too, you know.”

“It’s not that I just came here about that,” Twilight said, “. . . but yes, that is something that matters a lot right now. Rarity is on trial and if she’s found guilty, well, I don’t know what’ll happen.”

Rainbow snorted. “No, you know exactly what will happen if Rarity loses. She gets shut down and never comes back, and then everypony starts wondering about the rest of us, about whether they trust us or not.” She growled. “Because of Rarity going gaga over a stupid technician, they might decide that our entire class is done for and shut us down, or wipe our memories and start over. It’s the same to us, anyway. We die.”

“No, no, it’s not like that at all!” Twilight shook her head. “Nopony is going to shut you all down. Whether Rarity wins or not, Princess Celestia won’t shut you all down. She trusts you all too much.”

“No, she trusts you too much,” Rainbow said. “We weren’t made because she just really wanted to have us back. We were made as a gift to you, and now you spend all your time in the colonies anyway. What is going to make her hesitate to shut us down, when all we do is the jobs of AIs that cost a tenth of what we do?”

Fluttershy backed away, while Pinkie’s usual bounce in her step disappeared. Even Applejack looked down and kicked at the floor of the holograph room. Only Rainbow stood up, facing Twilight and giving off the appearance of breathing hard. Twilight wasn’t sure if that was part of the programming, or if Rainbow made herself do that to add to her statement.

“So what do you want me to do?” Twilight asked.

“If that time travel spell actually worked, I’d want you to go back and tell Rarity how stupid she was being,” Rainbow said. “About how her petty little affair threw all of us into jeopardy because she didn’t think for one second that giving her ‘generosity’ to that techie would cost us.”

Applejack stepped forward. “But she can’t do that. Nopony can change what’s happened, just affect what’ll happen in the future.”

“But what will happen to all of us?” Fluttershy said in a small voice.

“Nothing will happen, because I'll win,” Twilight said.

“Will you?” Rainbow approached her. “You’ve packed your bag already, ready to leave. Do you really think you’ll win, or are you doing this for vanity, and hopping the first flight from Equestria as soon as you lose?”

Twilight stomped a hoof on the pad. “You don’t know me!”

“No, I don’t. The memories I have from you are from when Rainbow Dash was still alive, and the Twilight she knew never would have thought about giving up, not for one second.”

Her words shook Twilight. It had been so long since she had seen Rainbow in the flesh. She’d been to the funeral nine hundred years ago, when they laid her into a cloud and let it float away. Rainbow had been the second to last to go, with only Fluttershy left. Seeing Rainbow yell at her, and worse, be right, was like being in a bad dream.

“What do you want me to do, then?” Twilight asked.

“I want you to win,” Rainbow said. “As dumb as this whole thing is, I want you to win and save Rarity and her stupid marefriend so you can save us, too. I don’t want to be wiped, Twilight.”

Twilight nodded. “I can do that.”

Pinkie Pie rubbed the back of her head. She had stayed silent the whole time, but now stepped forward. “Could you promise us one more thing, Twilight?”

“What do you want, Pinkie?”

“When you leave for the colonies again . . . could you take us with you?”

Twilight shook her head. “Outside of the castle, you’ll die in five years.”

“I know,” Pinkie Pie said. “Rarity is taking the same chance, though. If she’d rather die in five years doing something she wants than live for a hundred in here, I’d follow her.” The other AI nodded their agreement, all except Rainbow. She just looked away.

“I’ll win, then.” Twilight sighed. “I”ll win and I’ll bring anypony with me who wants to, alright? I can’t promise much more, but I’ll use every power I have as Princess of the Night to help.”

Applejack smiled. “That’s all we can ask of you, sugarcube.”

Luna stared at Celestia. Her heart beat fast, and her head felt fuzzy. All her plans hadn’t accounted for Celestia fighting back. In her mind, she would have won after declaring herself Duchess. Now, she watched as the Empress’ royal guards began to advance on her.

The Manehattan guards looked to Luna for guidance, questioning looks on their faces. Few of them looked to have seen combat before, and it was doubtful that they would last long against the well-trained guards. Luna met their gazes and shook her head.

Instead of fighting, she grabbed Rarity’s data core and Sapphire by the waist. “Can droids handle magical teleportation?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Sapphire said. “Why?”

Luna didn’t reply. Instead, she held on tightly to Sapphire and bowed her head. The guards started running across the courtroom, and Celestia was shouting. It didn’t matter, though. There was a bright flash of light, and then the courtroom was gone. It was replaced by a simmering city street that teemed with ponies in robes and tattered suits.

The crowds came to a stop around Luna once she had reappeared with the two, however. They stared at the princess whose image was still displayed on the many screens on the sides of buildings and inside shops around the streets.

Luna struggled to her feet, and pulled Sapphire up with her. She stared back at the masses who formed a ring around her. Most stared dumbfounded, while a few started recording on miniature cameras.

“Uh, where are we, exactly?” Sapphire asked.

“I dropped us into the Manedarin district,” Luna said. “It’s the place with the least amount of supporters for Celestia. We’ll be safest here.”

Sapphire looked around. “I hope you’re sure about that,” she said, “because there’s a lot of them and two of us.”

“I’m still here you know,” Rarity said, her voice being pumped out of her core. “I can’t actually do anything about it, but I can give emotional support!”

For a moment, the entire scene was still as the crowd regarded Luna and Sapphire, and the two mares stared back. Then, all their attentions were interrupted by a blaring screech coming from the screens and video billboards all around the district. The images had been mostly of the trial, but now they wavered and flickered, and were replaced by an image of Celestia’s head.

The Empress stared out from the screen like she knew exactly where Luna was. “Citizens of Manehattan!” she said in a booming voice. “There is a pony in your midst who has betrayed you and the state! Luna, my sister, had declared herself Duchess of Manehattan in an attempt to usurp power from me. In doing so, she has she has forced martial law on every pony in this city until she is captured. I hope that everypony in Manehattan will do their duty to keep Manehattan peaceful and prosperous.”

The screens flickered off back to an image of the tricolor Manehattan flag. Luna stepped closer to Sapphire, almost pushing the droid beneath her wings. “Stay close to me,” she said.

“I really hope you were right about that whole safe thing,” Sapphire said. “Heck, I want to turn myself in now. Let’s just hope these ponies don’t.”

The crowd began to advance. Ponies of every size and color walked toward Luna, a burly stallion at their lead. His eyes drew a bead on the new duchess, and his mouth wavered. The ring tightened around the droid and princess in the middle until the crowd was only a hoof away.

“Now, before you say anything—” Luna began, but was interrupted by the crowd.

One by one, the ponies lowered themselves to their knees. Their heads bowed down and their eyes closed. After a moment, Sapphire followed in their wake. Luna found herself standing above a massive crowd in the middle of a normally-busy Manehattan street, all bowing to her. They murmured their thanks that rippled over the ring.

Luna couldn’t think of what to do. She wanted to say something brave to them, to encourage them, but couldn’t find the words. After a minute, she closed her eyes and bowed to them too, her horn almost scraping the ground. When she raised her head, the crowd began to cheer.

“Long live Luna!” they cried. “Long live the Duchess of Manehattan!”

Sapphire started to laugh and hugged Luna around the middle. The duchess could only smile back and feel her cheeks flush with embarrassment and relief. She felt like a great weight had been lifted off her shoulders and cast away for the reverence of so many gathered ponies. With a chuckle, she waved to whoever was near her, and most waved back.

“I guess this city isn’t all bad,” Sapphire said. “They at least know who’s the real leader around here.”

“Yeah, I just hope the rest of the city feels the same way,” Luna said.

“What makes you think they won’t?”

“Celestia and an entire division of her guard might be enough to persuade them.”

The crowd was chattering and talking, and somepony was yelling up on top of a car about what they were going to do. They all seemed happy and excited for once. That was, until the droning of aircars could be heard overhead. Heavy floodlights flashed on and sirens echoed across storefronts and small shops. Ponies in the crowd started to disperse beneath the turbojets as the cars came down.

Luna’s heart sank until she saw that the cars bore not the symbol of the Canterlot Guard, but the words, “Manehattan Police Department.” She even started to smile a little, though she didn’t know if she should have so much hope.

One of the cars landed almost on top of her and Sapphire. The side opened, and a pony got out. Luna almost didn’t recognize him until he pulled out a cane and hobbled over to her. The old stallion had a smile on his face. “Nice to see you again, Princess,” he said. “I had hoped it wouldn’t be until after you had won the case, but circumstances like these could be worse.”

“You know him?” Sapphire asked.

Luna nodded. “He gave me a ride home from the courthouse.”

“And I reminded her that Manehattan is behind her,” the officer said. “Was I wrong?”

“No, you weren’t, but why show up now?” Luna asked.

“Because we need to get you out of here, Princess.” He stepped toward her. “Celestia is going to be hunting for you, and her guard won’t waste much time. They’ll find you one way or another, so we need to get you out of here now.”

Sapphire took a step back. “Luna, are you absolutely sure we can trust him?”

“If he’d wanted to, he could have led the Canterlot Guard straight here already,” Luna said. “We can trust him, and besides, he’s our only hope. We need some sort of organization in this city or our little ‘rebellion’ will crumble.”

Sapphire grumbled about “Since when is this our rebellion?” but followed Luna to the waiting police car anyway. She stepped in the back while Luna took the passenger seat. The older stallion took off while several of the other cars flanked them while they flew through the city.

Unlike the last time they had flown, the stallion kept closer to the ground. The turbojets on the car skimmed the tops of stalls and larger buses in the street. Most ponies either looked up at them or got out of the way as fast as they could. Luna watched them from her window, and wondered how most of them had felt. The part of the city most opposed to Celestia had supported her, sure, but she wasn’t so sure about everypony else.

Despite how low they flew, the cars seemed to fly laboriously slow, as if they were in a dream. The lights flashed off the sides of glass skyscrapers and lit the underbelly of the city in shades of red and blue. The stallion in the front watched Luna from his rearview mirror, and smiled when she saw him.

“We’re going to be alright,” he said. “Like I said, Princess, you’ve got plenty of supporters here in the city. Celestia isn’t going to touch you so long as we can help it.”

“I only hope you’re right,” Luna said.

“Captain Buck Shot always is,” he said.

The Captain drove on toward a tower near the middle of the city. The lofty building was smooth and round, with a giant holographic police symbol projected on the side. Lights flashed all over, and police cars buzzed overhead. The Manehattan Police Station was easily twice as tall as Luna’s apartment building had been, and wide enough that Canterlot Castle could have been dropped down the middle.

Buck Shot flew up toward the top of the building and descended into a hangar bay built into the roof. The car settled next to dozens of others just like it while Luna got out into the cramped structure. Her horn nearly brushed the ceiling. It was a relief when the Captain led them to an elevator off to one side that descended down into the depths of the building.

The elevator opened up into a sweeping room with vaulted ceilings framed by arching windows. Metal fans cut through the hazy air in the room that was laced with cigarette smoke. Desks were clustered around several holographic information boards in the middle of the room. Most of the ponies inside stood near the boards, chatting to each other when Luna and the Captain entered the room. When they saw who it was, they straightened their backs and saluted.

“Luna, welcome to the office for Manehattan’s Fifteenth Precinct,” he said. “We’re all here today because we wanted to bring you in and see if we couldn’t put something together to make this whole thing work out.”

The other police officers began to walk over toward Luna and their Captain. Most of them looked like they had just woken up, or that they hadn’t slept in the past few days. Still, smiles cracked on their faces and their eyes watched her every movement as Captain Buck Shot led her to his office. Sapphire followed close behind, tucking her head down and clutching the Rarity core to her chest.

They stepped into the glass-walled office together, with Buck Shot walking over to his desk and brushing away some of the loose datapads on it. He stared at a few of them, but tossed most of them aside. The office had several large telescreens, each of which was tuned to a different news channel that was playing the same broadcast over and over again: Luna declaring herself Duchess and Celestia’s message about her capture.

“They’re going to be going on about it all day,” Buck Shot said. “This is the biggest thing to hit Manehattan ever, and those reporters don’t have an original bone or circuit in their bodies. At least the word will get out about you.”

Luna nodded. “I just hope it’s a good one. Any word on support or opposition around the city?”

“Coms are a mess right now.” The Captain sipped at an old cup of coffee from his desk. The light behind him was dim and made him look like a shadow of himself. “From what we know, you have a lot more support than anything else in the city. Manehattan’s a big place, though, and there will be more than a few who want your head on a stick.”

“Charming.”

Sapphire stepped forward. She was staring up at security cameras that blinked above the office. “You have an internal security feed, or can it be controlled externally?”

“I . . . suppose . . . it could be controlled externally,” Buck Shot said. “Why?”

Sapphire didn’t answer him. “You hear that, Rarity?”

“I certain did, Sapphire,” came the voice from the data core.

Sapphire picked it up and brought the core over to a slot in the wall with a comp port in it. She reached into the core and brought out a cord, which she plugged into the wall. There was a moment of silence, then the core began to whir.

A hologram projector perched on the ceiling of the office turned on, and Rarity appeared next to them. “Ah, much better,” she said. “The data in here is simply wonderful, so many decryptions and combinations!”

“Hey, what is she doing in there?” Buck Shot asked.

“She’s helping you,” Sapphire said. “If you don’t want Celestia to find out where we are, let her take control of the cameras. She can keep out anything the Royal Guard throws up in a city-wide search. Let’s just hope they haven’t already done one.”

Buck Shot shook his head. “I swear, I will never understand all this tech stuff as long as I live, especially AIs and droids. But as long as you’re on our side, I’m glad to have you.” He turned to Luna. “It’s good you can trust them, Princess.”

“They’re why I’m here,” she said.

“As we all got to see on national television.”

Luna rubbed the back of her head. She felt like a star all of a sudden, but in the worst way. The screens kept blaring her trial over and over, the fateful moments when she stood up to Celestia. Looking at herself, she looked like a scared little filly trying to tell off the Principal instead of some big confrontation between two sisters. Luna had tried to feel like she was in charge of something, that she could beat her sister in something for once. Instead, she began to think she was embarrassing herself.

Buck Shot nudged her. “You alright, Princess?”

“Ponies are going to get hurt because of me,” she said. “Am I really that worthy? All of this is between my sister and I. I don’t see why so many have to be involved.”

“That’s just how it always is,” he said. “You’ve got ponies who are willing to follow you anywhere just because they don’t like Celestia that much. Others will follow you because they think you’re pretty, because you’re like them, or because you’re just different. The point is that it’s up to you not to fail them, not whether they’ll follow you in the first place.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“This many years in the force? I know I am.”

Sapphire stood in the corner with Rarity, talking softly to the core. She gave furtive glances to the two other ponies, but didn’t say anything. Not at first, anyway. After a little while of tense waiting, she walked over to the two ponies on the other side of the room and slumped against the floor.

Luna watched her. All the sensors in her body picked up the subtle movements of the droid, the little reactions in the circuitry of her brain that surged white-hot. Sapphire flicked her tail, a conscious thought unlike normal ponies. Luna bit her lip.

“Sapphire . . .”

“What?” she asked.

“I can’t do this without you and Rarity,” Luna said. “You two are the whole thing that binds this together.”

“Are we?” Sapphire sighed. “The more this goes, the less it seems to matter if Rarity and I get out of this or not. Now it’s all about the new duchess and a big rebellion in your name against your sister. Who even cares about our rights anymore?”

“You know I do.”

“Then will you make this about us? Or will this be about getting back at your sister?”

Luna fell silent. It wasn’t that she was doubting herself, but that she was too sure of her answer to be comfortable. She could have answered that it was about droid rights in an instant, but that would have been without thinking. If she really thought about it . . . she wasn’t so sure.

Before she had to answer, though, their conversation was interrupted with Rarity’s core starting to flash red. The hologram image of Rarity disappeared for a moment before reappearing once again, her hair frizzled and matted against her forehead.

“We’ve got trouble,” she said.

“What kind of trouble?” Buck Shot asked.

A holographic picture of the police building appeared on the floor in front of them in blue. Little red dots appeared in the air of the office, circling around toward the building. There were at least two dozen of them, if not more.

“Air cars inbound,” Rarity said. “Markings indicate they’re not police. Best guess is that Celestia finally figured out where we were and wants us out of the picture before we can rally any support.”

Luna grimaced. “I guess it’s time we get out of here. Sapphire, grab Rarity. I’ll teleport us all out of here.”

“No, you can’t do that,” Buck Shot said.

“And why not?”

He shook his head. “They’ll track your teleportation like we did,” he said. “And this time, when they find you they’ll be on you before you have any back up. Alone, they’ll capture you and drag you back to Celestia without anypony being the wiser.”

“Alright then, what do we do?” Luna waved at the holographic dots. “They’re getting closer and if we don’t move now then none of this is going to matter.”

“We have to go where we can gather ponies to your cause. We need to go to City Center and link up with as many of your supporters as we can. Celestia will be drawn there, but so will camera crews from all across Equestria. The rest of the Empire can’t just ignore us.”

Luna nodded. “Well . . . alright. Let’s get out of here.”

“Already ahead of you.” Buck Shot pressed a button on his desk that began to glow green. He turned and ran out of his office and toward a window on the far side of the room. Luna galloped after him while Sapphire tugged Rarity’s cord free and hurried after the two.

Luna heard Sapphire’s servos and gears whirred in protest as she struggled to carry Rarity’s large core across the crowded police office. The mare looked like she wanted to speak up, but kept her mouth shut. If it hadn't been a more trying time, Luna would have asked her to speak up, but at the moment there was too much to worry about.

With a grunt, Buck Shot kicked open the window just in time for a wave of hot air to blast over everypony by the window. A police car lowered itself until it was sitting just outside the window. Its doors opened, beckoning the ponies in.

“Is this entirely safe?” Luna asked.

“No,” Buck Shot said, “but neither was calling out your sister. By comparison, this is actually pretty safe.” He jumped across the gap between the building and the car and landed in the front seat.

Sapphire followed, throwing the core ahead of her and then leaping into the back seat. She landed with a small crash, but sat up and nodded to show she was fine. Luna then prepared to jump, only to remember at the last second that she had wings. With a bashful grin, she flew to the other side of the car and climbed in.

The doors to the hover car closed and Buck Shot took off, zooming away from the police station with the roar of turbojets. It made it away just in time as Luna, watching through the rearview mirror, saw a hoard of hoverjets swarm all over the station.

Her breath caught when she saw a couple of the jets turn and begin accelerating toward the car. They gleamed gold in the afternoon sun, and white contrails washed out of their engines. They flew in wide arcs toward the car, cutting off any escape.

“Can’t this thing go any faster?” Sapphire asked.

“This is a car,” Buck Shot said. “We’re trying to move faster than jets. The odds aren’t exactly in our favor.”

“Then do something!”

“I am!”

Buck Shot leaned the control stick forward, and the car dove for the streets below. They had started near the tops of the medium-sized skyscrapers, and quickly began to close the distance between themselves and the ground. The car picked up speed while red warning lights flashed on the dashboard.

Wind screamed around the sides of the car. The apartment complexes and smaller shops grew larger in the forward windshield as they ate up altitude. Yet, Luna saw, the jets continued to come for them, taking their time. They were being stalked like prey for a hunter, and Luna wanted to yell at them for what they were doing.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t use her magic against them since it didn’t extend that far. Instead, just before the car could smash into the ground, Luna’s horn glowed and the car disappeared for a split second, reappearing parallel to the ground and skimming low over the gray street.

The car rocketed forward on its inertia from the fall, and Buck Shot had to cling to the stick to keep from running into any of the other hovercars that prowled the streets. The jets continued to follow, but at a larger distance than they had before. They seemed to be confused, and Luna smiled.

“How far are we from City Center?” Luna asked.

“We should be coming on it right . . . here . . .” Buck Shot said as he quieted down. The car had just reached the central area of downtown, and what was waiting there for them caused his jaw to drop.

In the massive central square of Manehattan teemed a crowd of thousands upon thousands of ponies. They all convened around a central podium, decorated with large banners in blue and violet which displayed sigils of the moon. On that stage, shouting to the crowd through a large set of microphones, was a purple alicorn.

“Land over there,” Luna said, pointing to the podium. “We need to get down as soon as we can.”

The jets veered off, streaking over the central square and banking back toward the courthouse. Luna watched them go with a sense of dread, but her feelings were lost in the roar of the crowd. They all watched as the police car landed with a flurry of wash from the turbojets, and the doors opened.

Sapphire was the first to get out, holding Rarity’s core to her chest. The crowd watched her in silence, and Luna could see her quiver a little. Then, she got out. This was received by dull roars and the stomping of hooves. A thousand voices started to mutter things like “Princess,” “Duchess,” and “Luna.”

Twilight ran over from the set of microphones to greet Luna. The two stared at each other for a moment. Both stood almost as tall as each other with Luna in her “normal” form, and their eyes met.

“Are you ready, Princess?”

“Ready for what?” Luna asked.

Twilight smiled and turned to the microphones once more. “Ponies of Manehattan!” she called. “We do not have time for words, but for action! Luna, your Duchess, has joined us at last and is ready! Today we will march on Celestia’s courthouse, her pillar of power in this city, and show her that she cannot dictate that the lives of ponies in this city if they do not wish to be ordered around! Not only will we show her this, but Luna will be leading you, showing the Empress once and for all who your true leader is!”

In response, the crowd yelled its approval and banners were raised above their heads, bearing the symbols of Manehattan and Luna both. Where they had found time to make them, Luna didn’t know. Twilight turned back to her and smiled.

“Like I told you, the night is on your side,” she said. “I gathered together everypony I could for your cause. If Celestia wants to ignore you that’s fine, but she can’t ignore the will of her citizens for long.” Twilight patted Luna on the shoulder. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Luna said simply, nodding her head. She stood on the edge of the platform and watched the pulsating masses begin to make their way to the edges of the square, marching toward Celestia’s courthouse. She knew it should have filled her with hope, to see so many put themselves at her side and march in her name, but all she could see were the three jets that had appeared, flying high above them.

As she took to the sky above her host, Luna felt afraid.

Radioactive

For the first time since she had arrived in Manehattan, Luna flew over the streets. The hot pavement provided massive updrafts, and let her coast over the marching crowd that approached the Manehattan Courthouse. The mass of ponies had grown since they had set out nearly an hour before. The city was big, and Celestia’s speech over the screens had done more to help Luna than even the court case had done. Somehow, the citizens of the city that prided itself on being more on its own than part of Equestria hadn’t taken well to being reminded of who they were ruled by.

The air felt cool on Luna’s fur, and she switched off all her neural tech to allow herself to fly without distraction. She drifted only a few hundred feet above the crowd, though she would have preferred to be higher. She figured that most of the protestors wanted to at least see their leader, though, so she stayed close.The jets had appeared once again, but none bore down on the crowd. Instead, Celestia’s guard kept their distance.

Luna felt a cold ball of fear gather in her stomach. She was flying by the tips of her wings, and she had no idea what she was doing. Her eyes scanned the ground in front of them, but the way to the courthouse was clear. Not even any traffic. Celestia was waiting for her, and was letting Luna take her time. Part of her desperately wanted to turn around and fly back, never to return.

A blur of purple and pink shot out from the crowd and flew up to Luna. Twilight had grown into quite a flyer, she saw, who sped as fast as a meteor into the sky but managed to stop next to Luna with plenty of time to spare. The only telling part of the performance was the windswept look Twilight’s mane took on.

“Hey,” Twilight said, a little out of breath. “You doing alright up here?”

“I’m fine,” Luna said.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded. “I’m simply up here to keep me from worrying all the other ponies. I read somewhere, once, that officers in the Royal Guard are removed from the troops just so they seem more invincibile and distant.”

“Well, this isn’t exactly an army.” Twilight laughed. “More like a slightly-organized mob.”

“A mob that is working for me, and will follow my orders,” Luna said.

“Still a powerful mob.”

“What is a mob to a queen?”

“A very large group of ponies that you don’t want to upset.” Twilight hesitated, then placed a hoof on Luna’s shoulder. “You can do this, Princess. You’ve grown a lot since you came back from the moon. You’re a mare of the common pony.”

Luna sighed. “But is that a good thing?”

Twilight didn’t answer her . . . until, she gave a shrug and drifted down toward the ponies below. Luna watched her go. She watched her head for the convertible in the middle of the crowd that held Sapphire and Rarity, almost forgotten in the whole commotion. Luna thought about heading down to them, but decided against it.

Though, just as she was heading back up for some more altitude, she noticed a commotion near the front of the crowd. Ponies were gathered in one place, and none moved up the street after a point in the street. Luna flew down toward the epicenter of the problem, and hoped that what was wrong wouldn’t be anything major.

Seeing the glint of golden armor the closer she got, Luna’s hopes of a quick and easy solution began to fade. When she landed, she trotted up toward the front of her mob to see that, sure enough, a contingent of Royal Guard troopers were standing in the middle of the street in a wall, dressed in full battle gear.

Their eyes watched the crowd before them, made up of ponies who looked at the guards’ weapons projectors in fear.

Buck Shot came running up to Luna, out of breath. “Out of the way, out of the way!” he said to the crowd. Then, he reached Luna. “Hey, Princess, what’s going on?”

“Look for yourself,” she said.

He stared at the guards for a moment, then whistled. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves quite the problem.”

“You could say that.”

“Yeah, and I wish I couldn’t.” Buck Shot pressed a hoof to his forehead. “So, I guess Celestia is drawing the line here, eh? Probably to give her some time to prepare for us and keep us bottled up.”

“Is that what you’d do?” Luna asked.

“If I were in her position? Yeah, that’s about what I’d do,” he said.

Luna noticed that the guards were on every side of the intersection in front of the crowd, so anypony trying to access the one road leading to the courthouse would have to get past them. Luna grimaced, but had to give Celestia points for resourcefulness.

“So how do we break the deadlock?” she asked.

“You’re asking me?”

“Well, you’re the police pony here. How would you break your own blockade?”

Buck Shot shook his head. “The point of setting something up like this is that, barring extreme violence, it won’t be broken. Those guards units can take on a whole company of soldiers or an entire precinct of our best cops.” He looked at her. “Do you think you can take them on yourself?”

“Almost certainly, but I’m not sure I want to do that.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m sure it’s part of Celestia’s gamble. If I start the violence, then she has the upper hoof and the morality. These guards are both a barrier and bait.”

Buck Shot sighed and nodded. They both noticed that the crowd had circled around the two of them, staring at Luna and seeing what she would do. Most of them had hard looks on their faces, and kept glancing at the guards.

Luna looked at all of them, and clenched her jaw. It was show time for her, the do or die moment that would decide if the crowd kept with her all the way to the courthouse. Her stomach was doing flip flops and her mind urged her to turn away, to forget it had ever happened and to beg for mercy.

Instead of listening to them, however, Luna chose to do what her heart told her. After taking a deep breath, she began to walk forward. She did not run, or trot, or even canter. Luna kept her pace steady and her eyes on the guards in front of her as she approached them at a steady pace. She could feel the electricity in the air, the fear and anxiety of two groups facing off against each other. For a moment, she wondered if it was how her sister felt all the time.

About five paces from the front column of guards, Luna stopped. If the stallions in front of her were wowed by the presence of the former Princess of the Night, they didn’t give any sign. She almost wanted to feel insulted, if not for the situation.

Instead, she simply asked: “Please move.”

To the lack of surprise to everypony, they did not. Luna smiled, as she’d expected them to act as such. “Alright,” she said, “then I will be the one to move, as a citizen of Equestria, just as all in the crowd are, and without any intent to cause harm.”

Her heart beat faster. She knew, if her gamble failed, that would be it for the rebellion and herself. So, she tried not to think about that as she stepped forward. For a moment, Luna paused in front of the guards, then began to push her way through.

There was a moment of hesitation in them, but the stallions parted just enough to let her through. She was in. Luna let out a happy sigh and continued to walk forward across the avenue, her back to the crowd. When she got to the other side and the guards there, they parted as well. Just like that she was on the other side of the street.

Buck Shot came after her, and after him the crowd followed. The trickle soon turned into a flow, and the guards were forced to back down. Luna smiled as she watched Celestia’s gambit fail to the pressure of numbers and the unwillingness of the guards to attack. Once enough had gotten through, Luna continued her march down the road, straight toward the courthouse.

The building loomed like a gothic spire above the dirty streets of Manehattan. Somehow, it looked like it didn’t belong, like it had been dropped into the city one day and left there. The buildings around it all faced away, like they were scared to look at the courthouse. It was if Canterlot itself had been transplanted all the way across the country.

Outside the building, to Luna’s surprise, the streets were clear. No cars honked or blocked their way, and no guards stood ready to shoot them down. It was eerie, in a way, to see the road completely empty. In a city like Manehattan, a sight like that never truly happened.

Luna turned to look back for Buck Shot or Sapphire, but they were nowhere to be seen. The crowd, to her, was just a sea of faces that all seemed to lock onto her at the same time, and she didn’t recognize a single one of them. What she could see, however, was Twilight flying high above the crowd once more.

As the crowd slowed to a stop in front of the courthouse, Luna took to the air. Even the wind around the building was stagnant, and she had to rely on flapping and magic to keep herself aloft. Her muscles began to ache a little by the time she got to Twilight, so unused to flying after many years on the ground.

“So what now?” Luna asked.

“I don’t know, I was hoping you would tell me,” Twilight said. “So far, with Celestia’s little guard plan failed, I think she’s hoping to just wait us out.”

“But she can’t do that, can she? Surely she has to meet the crowd at some point.”

“Celestia dealt with full-scale riots and revolutions back when she first sent you to the moon, and she brought them all down. By their nature, revolutions are hot-headed and spur-of-the-moment types of action, and she knows it.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “And how exactly do you know all this?”

“Even a thousand years later, I’m still Celestia’s number one student.”

Twilight smiled a little, and Luna returned it. Together, they looked to the bay windows at the top of the courthouse tower, where they knew Celestia would be watching them. Luna could imagine her gaze, so heavily falling on them that it was a wonder they didn’t drop to the ground.

“What if we teleport inside?” she asked.

Twilight snorted. “Force her to come out here?”

“Well it’s an idea.”

“It is, yes, it is.” Twilight sighed. “As much as I hate to admit it, though, Celestia hasn’t gotten weaker over the years. Since you left, she’s even gotten stronger. I doubt we can force her to do anything at this point.”

“So what do we do?”

The crowd, as if it had heard both of them, answered the question. The platform that Sapphire had been on was raised to the front of the crowd, and they all began to chant her name. “SA-PPHI-RE! SA-PPHI-RE!” they called.

Some ponies had brought flags of the Duchy of Manehattan, and were waving them. The blue and orange fit nicely in the gray of the street. Some others had even managed to create crude banners with Luna and Sapphire’s names on them. They all pressed closer to the front of the courthouse. It appeared that a large steel grate had been lowered over the front doors, and metallic clangs ran out as ponies began to pound on it. The crowd surged upon the doors like a cascade beating against an ocean cliff.

Luna looked down at them. “Maybe we should go see what we can do,” she said.

“If you’d like.” Twilight shrugged. “This mob’s out of your hooves for the most part, Princess. Once they’ve gotten so excited like they are, there isn’t much you can do to stop them. Guide them a little, maybe, but not stop them. This is going to end today, whether you like it or not.”

“Well, I still wish for it to end on my terms,” she said.

“Then good luck.”

The jets reappeared overhead just as Luna began her glide to the ground. The aircraft looked menacing with sharp, golden points on the nose and wings as well as bristling with missiles and hard-light projectors. They buzzed over the crowd, eliciting gasps and shrieks, before loitering around the area on hoverjets.

Luna fought the urge to watch them as they landed on the ground. She didn’t want to give any of the ponies a reason to worry, though she herself was desperately hoping Celestia wasn’t about to try something very stupid.

The crowd near the front of the courthouse parted for Luna to get through. Buck Shot was there, and joined her at her side with a small grin. To her surprise, though, Luna found Sapphire at the head of the mob, still banging on the door.

“I’m not sure I should be surprised,” Luna said.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” Sapphire said. “Mind giving us a helping hoof? With an alicorn on our side, there’s no way this metal can last.”

“I’m just worried about what happens after it comes down.” Luna looked from Sapphire to the crowd. “Do you really think it would be smart to let thousands of angry ponies pour into the courthouse? It’d be close quarters with a lot of guards and a lot of ponies who are just caught in the crossfire.”

“It’s better than sitting here and doing nothing.”

Luna sighed. “You’re right, it is, but I don’t see a good idea of what we can do at this point.”

Rarity’s AI core lay at Sapphire’s hooves. It had been silent for much of the trip, but as the two argued, its light began to blink white. Then, Rarity’s holographic body flashed to life right in front of Luna and Sapphire, silencing the both of them. Rarity had a grin on her face.

“It’s a good thing at least one of us hasn’t been doing nothing,” she said.

Luna opened her mouth, but was interrupted by shouts from the crowd. They began to part once again, but this time much wider than they had for Luna. A gap big enough to fit a space liner through opened up on the road to reveal a phalanx of marching ponies.

At just a brief glance, they were little different from the rest of the mob. Looking closer, however, revealed them to be much more skeletal, and they walked with a precision that was impossible with a normal body. Their eyes never blinked, and their nostrils never flared to show they were breathing.

“You . . . brought droids?” Luna asked.

“Manehattan has close to forty thousand free droids,” Rarity said. “I decided we needed a little back up.”

“Alright, but how is this all going to help us?” Buck Shot asked. “I mean, what can they all do that we weren’t already?”

Even as a hologram, Rarity was able to give off an air of self-importance and dignity by the way she swooshed her hair back before she talked to someone “lower” than her. “It will give a bit of legitimacy to our cause, for one. You may remember, Sapphire and I are what this entire mob is supposedly marching for, not just Duchess Luna,” she said, then smiled. “Those doors behind us are also not just made of steel but interlaced with a hard-light shield. Physical force would never break through it. Forty thousand AIs attacking it at once, however . . .”

Buck Shot smiled and stepped out of the way to let a few of the droids at the head of the column through. Unlike Sapphire and Rarity, they talked little, and didn’t seem to be as comfortable around the crowd. They still didn’t complain, however, and began chatting with Rarity and stuck cords into her core.

Luna couldn’t understand what they were doing, as they seemed to be half talking in the open and half communicating wirelessly on some wavelength that Luna’s own implants couldn’t pick up. What they said, though, didn’t matter much to her when they all began to walk forward.

Each droid took out a wire from sockets placed somewhere on their body and plugged it into the droid in front of them. Soon, they formed a single chain stretching from the front doors and down the street. The final droid near the front plugged into Sapphire, who stuck hers into Rarity. The AI core, then, had its own input that could be placed into the wall near the middle.

Buck Shot whistled. “I think I can see why the Empress is so scared of these ponies,” he said. “I’ve been in the police for a long time, and I haven’t seen precision like that even in the Royal Guard.”

Rarity waved to Luna and pointed to her cord. “If you would do the honor, Princess, we can let you in. This door is going to be encrypted with a program as powerful as the one in Canterlot Castle. We’ll only be able to keep a small section of the wall open for a few seconds. You and Twilight can make it inside by then.”

“What about you and Sapphire?” Luna asked.

“Don’t worry about us, you two just get inside and make it to Empress Celestia to bring this entire nasty business to an end.”

Luna wanted to say more, but the droids all watched her in such a way that she couldn’t even begin to think about letting them down. She lined up at the door, with Twilight flying down to her side. She didn’t say anything, but just nodded to Luna. They turned, as one, to the very front of the metal seal, but Sapphire tapped Rarity on the shoulder.

“Would you plug us in?” she asked. “It’d be . . . an honor.”

Luna smiled and reached down to pick up the cord in her teeth. She approached the wall that had a small socket in it, and thought it was so funny that such a small outlet would determine the fate of millions of ponies. She supposed a lot of things were like that, little things that make a world of difference.

The crowd started to get a little antsy, so Luna stopped her pondering and just plugged the cord in. There was, at first, no reaction. Then, a soft buzz was heard in the air that grew steadily louder until it was like millions of bees taking off. The long line of droids were all deep in concentration, their eyes flickering on and off in rapid succession.

Then, from behind, Luna heard a loud groan as the steel door began to open from the middle outward. It was slow going, but soon it was open long enough for a pony to fit through.

Sapphire waved at them. “Go now! We can’t keep this thing open forever!”

Luna nodded and took one last look at the crowd. So many thousands of ponies all looking at her, watching her. She knew that they were counting on her and relying on her to do what was right and what was good for Manehattan. She hoped she wouldn’t let her down.

After taking a deep breath, Luna ran inside the courthouse behind Twilight, just as the door slammed shut. It was a close enough call that some of the hairs on Luna’s tail were cut off in the force of the doors shutting.

Just like that, Twilight and Luna were alone in a dark room, at the foot of Celestia’s tower. Luna, even then, still felt afraid.

The power wasn’t just out in the bottom floor of the courthouse, but in the whole building. Luna and Twilight were forced to climb stairs that had hardly been used over the years. Worse, the stairwell was too narrow to fly up, so both alicorns were useless inside. Luna thought about teleporting, but she knew that would bring Celestia right to them, and ruin any chance they had of catching her by surprise.

The only sound in the stairwell was the heavy breathing of Luna and Twilight. They had just passed Floor 20, but when Luna looked up their destination didn’t seem any closer. It looked to be almost a lifetime away, like they could never reach it.

“Do you think this will really work?” Twilight asked finally, stopping briefly on the stairs in front of Luna. “This whole, vague plan we have about talking to Celestia and getting her to stop all this. Do we really have any chance?”

“We’re two princesses,” Luna said. “I think we have some pull on my sister.”

“Have you been around your sister lately? Ever since she renamed herself Empress, she hasn’t wanted to listen to a word I say.”

“Has it really been that bad?”

“Maybe not that bad, but I just went out to the colonies rather than bother with her back here. The days of me being her student ended a long time ago, Luna.”

Luna paused for a moment, then kept walking. After a pause, she said, “She isn’t that bad, you know. She’s just doing her job. Celestia isn’t going to want to hurt ponies on purpose.”

“Where is this coming from?” Twilight asked. “You seemed fine with leading a rebellion against her.”

“That’s different,” Luna said.

“How, exactly, is that different by any stretch of imagination?”

“I’m doing this whole thing to show her that’s she wrong,” Luna said. “To show her that she can’t just walk all over me because I’m not in the castle anymore. Ever since I left she has gotten a litle high on herself, so maybe with this my sister can return to normal.”

“Wasn’t this whole thing about whether Rarity and that droid can love each other?”

“With Celestia, it’s never that simple. I want them to be able to do whatever they want, but to get them what they want we have to win the bigger war here. And Celestia didn’t try to arrest me over droid rights, I can tell you that.”

Twilight gave her a strange look, but she dropped it. They continued on their way up, the sound of their hooves growing louder as they started to drag a bit. Luna could feel herself start to sweat, and worried that it would cause a problem with the circuitry she still had attached to her.

Luna started to wonder if they would ever actually reach the top, or if they would be stuck in the stairwell forever. She knew that was silly, but at the same time she wouldn’t have been surprised.

She didn’t get a chance to find out, however. There was a bang at the top of the stairwell, and Luna could hear some talking. Then, before they could run, a pink field of magic surrounded herself and Twilight, and in a flash they were gone from the stairwell.

When they appeared again, the two alicorns were in the middle of the courtroom, surrounded by gold-armored guards on all sides. Their weapons were drawn and powered up, with raw energy gathered at the tips. Luna knew the combined weaponry would only take a few seconds to chew through any shield that she could pull up, and Twilight couldn’t do much better.

Celestia stepped out from between the guards, her royal crown and armor gone. She didn’t say anything, just looked at the both of them. Though Luna was just about as tall as her, she seemed to tower over them like a giant.

“Well, well, I was wondering when the two of you would show up,” she said. “I am a bit surprised you two decided to take the stairs instead of flying up to the roof. Then again, I suppose a little variety to life never hurt anypony. I was honestly surprised that you two managed to gather so many droids, and so fast.”

“Surprisingly, the ones most affected by this court case are coming out in force to oppose you,” Luna said.

Celestia pretended to look surprised. “Oh, the court case? Is this what this is still about? Silly me, in all this confusion I almost forgot. Must have just . . . slipped my mind.”

Twilight looked between the two of them, and then back at the guards who had half the Canterlot arsenal pointed at them. “Hey, maybe it would be better if we talked somewhere with less . . . stress? I don’t think we can get anything done if we’re all this tense, right princesses?”

“That’s Empress, Twilight Sparkle.” Celestia did wave to her guards, however, who began to put their weapons back. “However, the young princess is right. Guards, leave us. I’ll finish this by myself.”

The Royal Guard, for their part, did not hesitate. They immediately formed ranks and marched out of the courtroom as one long snake of golden armor and straight faces. As Luna watched them, she felt odd looking over them, like there was something about them that was so unreal, just artificial.

Celestia walked up the aisle between seats to the front of the courtroom, past Luna and Twilight, and to the judge’s seat once more. When she sat down and looked at them, however, much of the air of superiority she had held in the trial was gone. Celestia leaned on one hoof and had a bored, slightly bemused expression on her face.

There was a flash of golden light, and Celestia’s appearance changed. Her flowing technicolor mane had disappeared to be replaced with a smaller, pinker one. She was shorter as well, and had the look of a pegasus more than an alicorn, despite the horn on her head.

Luna looked down at herself to discover that she, too, had changed to her more normal pony form. She shook herself a bit, but wasn’t surprised that her sister had, somewhat symbolically, undressed her. She wasn’t happy to think that, either.

Twilight looked down at herself to discover that nothing had changed, and remembered that she had never bothered with an alicorn form because she thought they were silly. When she looked at Celestia and Luna, though, she still felt like they were more alicorns hiding in pony appearances than actual ponies.

“I thought that, perhaps, an issue like this needed the air of officiality taken away,” Celestia said. “It has been far too long since we presented ourselves as how we truly are to each other.”

Luna sighed. “In more ways than one.”

“I know.”

Twilight coughed. “So maybe we should use this meeting to, um, resolve the crisis that’s keeping thousands of ponies waiting outside? If you two aren’t too busy, that is.”

“Sarcasm, Twilight Sparkle?” Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps you have been in the colonies for far too long.”

“Perhaps,” Twilight said.

“Well, Twilight is right,” Luna said. “Celestia, we have stop all this madness. What we do in here today will affect the lives of millions, and we have to do it soon before a riot breaks out. Neither of us wants Manehattan to lose control of itself.”

“I agree,” Celestia said.

Her horn glowed and, as one, every blind on every window in the room opened at once, exposing the courtroom to the bright sunlight over Manehattan. Luna had to shield her eyes from the glare, and when she lowered her hoof Celestia was standing in front of one of the windows, looking down. Luna joined her, and could see the massive crowd that was still gathered below the buildings.

Celestia grimly smiled. “I will admit, sister, what you have done is impressive. I don’t believe this many ponies having willingly marched for any princess in two thousand years. You have managed to gather most of these in a single day. It would seem you’re popular.”

“No, I’m not,” Luna said.

“Oh?”

“I myself am not popular, not really. To these ponies all I am is the face of the frustrations and anger that these ponies feel. Whether it’s toward you or the court case, I don’t know, but it’s not because of me specifically.”

“I see you’ve grown up a little.” Celestia pursed her lips. “I believe that you are right, as well. And it is for this reason that you cannot become Duchess, Luna. Not now, not ever.”

Luna took her time to answer. She ruffled the feathers on her wings and looked at her reflection in the window. The eyes that looked back at her looked so much more tired than she remembered. “Why?”

“Why? You’re really going to ask me why I won’t just let you take part of my kingdom and rule it by yourself?”

“That worked in the past,” Luna said. “I would just be ruling it more personally. Besides, the ponies here are obviously not satisfied. Why do you deny them someone who actually cares about them? Is it really for petty pride?”

Celestia’s smiled curled into a snarl. “I do care! I care about each and every last pony in the city. But I am not their friend, I am their ruler. I have to do what is best for them whether they like it or not because they can’t see the big picture! Millions of ponies have no idea what it takes for them to enjoy a life far more luxurious than a pony from Twilight’s time could ever dream of.”

“So the will of the ponies counts for nothing, is that it?”

“A million ponies gathered together does not make them smarter than all of them individually. A mob is only as smart as those in it, and I am afraid to say most of the ponies in this city are terribly misinformed.”

Twilight took a step forward, placing herself beside Luna. They both looked to Celestia at the same time, their gazes hardening and postures hardening to make them both appear as big as the Empress. Celestia just looked at them both for a moment and laughed, not moving a muscle. “Oh, so are you two going to try and threaten me because you don’t like my answer?”

“You know your answer isn’t right, Celestia,” Twilight said.

“From your point of view.”

“From all points of view!”

Celestia huffed. “I thought I taught you better, Twilight Sparkle. By now, I would think you wouldn’t have such a narrow idea of what is right and wrong. The world is not as white or black as you think it is.”

“Then maybe give us some inkling of what you’re talking about so you don’t sound like a dictator,” Luna said. It was a simple request, but one that took Celestia aback for a moment. From the look on her face, she didn’t quite know how to respond, and had to gather her thoughts.

A jet flew past the window, spraying smoke across the glass. Luna and Twilight flinched, but Celestia didn’t so much as blink. “You want to know the truth, yes? I suppose everyone wants to eventually . . . no matter the consequences. I suppose I shouldn’t have tried to keep it from you, Luna.” She sighed. “The truth is, I can’t free the droids, even if I wish I could. And I do wish I could, Luna. Do you think I enjoy holding down ponies simply because they were built and not born?”

“You gave off that feeling quite a bit,” Luna said.

“It was for appearances.”

“Well you might start explaining if you want us to believe you.”

“The truth is that I cannot free the droids without sending the entire country into collapse,” Celestia said. “Neither of you may know the real numbers, but there are well over a million droids working in Equestria and in the colonies, doing incredibly dangerous jobs for free. These are jobs that we must have, but could never afford to pay ponies to do them, based on the high risk they entail. Deep water drilling, asteroid mining, radioactive transportation, and more. Our economy is built on top of this labor, and without it we will fall apart.

“What happens to the droids will affect us all. I have tried before to loosen up on them, but each attempt to do so has led to economic mayhem and crashes, just from putting in a few regulations! It isn’t pretty, but it’s the reality.”

Luna took a step back. “So the droids can’t be allowed to do as they please, to love as they choose . . . because we rely on their slave labor?”

“It’s more complex than that.”

“It doesn’t sound very complex to me,” Twilight said.

Celestia sighed and lowered her head. The two of them were trying so hard to stand up to her, but all she saw in them was how they had looked when they were young. How scared Luna had been to sit on her throne for the first time, and how shaky Twilight had been to receive her wings. It didn’t seem possible that they had once been that young.

“It is a regrettable reality,” Celestia said. “The droids started as simple machines, but as the tasks grew more complex so did they. Eventually, they reached our intelligence, and we suddenly found ourselves using them as virtual slaves despite our best intentions. If I could do anything about it I would, but I cannot in good conscience ruin the lives of the many for the few. That’s ruling.”

Luna’s wings flared up. “Ruling is caring for those under you! If you are willing to sacrifice so much of your ponies, what is the point of you ruling, or anypony?”

“Even after all these years, you don’t understand—”

“Yeah, you’re right, I don’t understand!” Luna pressed herself against Celestia, her eyes ablaze in anger. “I don’t understand why you would go through with all this in the first place! Why did you let Sapphire call me back in the first place for a trial you would never let me win? Because you wanted to make an example of me? Because you wanted to humiliate me?”

“Because I wanted to teach you a lesson,” Celestia said in a shaky voice.

Luna looked her dead in the eyes. “And what . . . lesson . . . could that be?”

Celestia let herself waver for a moment. She was pressed up against the window now, held in place by Luna who felt like she wanted to push her sister out the window itself. “The lesson that, as a princess, you can’t expect to always be given a perfect answer. That sometimes you have to lose some battles to win others. I wanted you to know what it’s like, so what happened all those years ago wouldn’t happen again.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You know that our fight wasn’t about selling the moon to the Deckard Corporation, Luna,” Celestia said. “It was about you not being able to handle me overruling you.”

“Me, not able to handle it?” Luna yelled and slammed her hoof into the window behind Celestia, shattering the glass and sending it tumbling out as a harsh wind whipped over the three alicorns. “You. Hurt. Me! You just couldn’t handle that I did something behind your back, and when you got mad enough you decided to teach me a lesson about pain!”

“And I was wrong,” Celestia said. She looked down. “I let Deckard Corporation keep the moon because of that . . . I banished you for your own good, to keep you away from me. I couldn’t handle hurting you again.”

“So you call me back to hurt you.”

Celestia reached forward and put her hooves on Luna’s shoulders. “I called you back to let you back into Canterlot!” She shuddered and leaned against her younger sister for support. “I wanted to give you a lesson that would let you be a better ruler, and I’m sorry. I just . . . I became the mask I put on for everypony else, and this whole thing slipped away. I never expected you to start a rebellion.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Are you really that surprised? I don’t remember a time when Luna didn’t do her own thing.”

“You told me to do it!” Luna said.

“I just guided you where you wanted to go . . . mostly.”

“What?” Celestia asked.

“Nothing, it’s nothing.” Luna shook her head. “So what now? I’ve raised a rebellion against you only to learn that you were just trying to teach me a lesson to let me back into Canterlot, and that the whole goal of the rebellion is impossible. What do I do?”

Twilight shrugged. “Celestia wants you to be a princess, while Manehattan and I want you to be a duchess. Be something like that.”

Celestia nodded in agreement. “It’s your choice, Luna. I . . . for once, in these past, long three hundred years, won’t interfere. It would be . . . nice . . . to drop this Empress guise for my sister once more.”

Luna sat on the edge of the floor and let her bottom hooves hang out where the glass window had been. She looked out, to the city that stretched on forever in every direction. A flock of birds flapped their way up through the buildings and escaped out of the city, flying on toward the unknown. Luna envied them at that moment. Even if with her wings spread open, she felt like they were tied.

She had spent three hundred years in one city, watching it grow and prosper in ways that she would never have thought possible when she first sat on the throne, all the way back in Everfree Forest so long ago. The world had become fast, too fast for her to keep up. Even Manehattan itself was outrunning her. The ponies who were outside rallying for her would outdate her in another ten years, if they hadn’t already. Luna wanted to laugh when she realized her own rebellion had outmoded her in a single day, making her a figurehead of a time long past.

“So you say that I can do whatever I want?” Luna asked.

“Within reason,” Celestia said.

“Right.” Luna took a deep breath. “Freedom for all droids already on their own. Citizenship, voting, tune-ups. Love.”

Twilight looked at her. “What about all the droids still laboring?”

“For the moment, I can’t do anything about them, even if I wished I could,” Luna said. “I wish it were better . . . but that’s the reality, I suppose. What I can do is work on the inside, and maybe, with enough time, we can fix this.”

“So you’ll come back to Canterlot with me?” Celestia asked.

Luna shook her head. “Not for the moment. The ponies here want me in Manehattan, so that’s where I’ll stay. But not as a duchess, though, because if anything is to be done, it will be inside the system instead of against it. As a princess.”

“So you’ll be taking my job,” Twilight said glumly.

“No, not that either. Manehattan is the city that never sleeps, in which there is no night to raise for them. I would be wasted here.” Luna indicated to the complex circuitry embedded into her body from her flank on up to her eyes. “But Princess of Technology . . . that sounds more suited to Manehattan, does it not? The Princess of Technology could be the ruler who represents progress and the rights of droids. Fitting, I think.”

Twilight nodded. “And what about the other Elements of Harmony back at Canterlot? Are they freed too?”

Luna looked at Celestia and answered, “Yes.” Her sister didn’t make any move to stop her, instead only watching her with glassy eyes. Luna admitted to herself that was still afraid of Celestia, if not for her acceptance but for the fact that being given so much responsibility was worse than the fight she had perceived.

“The ponies won’t all accept the freed droids,” Celestia said at last. “They’ll fight it.”

“I know.” Luna pointed toward the sky. “That’s why they won’t be here. A certain corporation still owes me some favors for taking the brunt of your punishment for giving them the moon. Droids can, after all, live in any environment we can think of. They’ll be safe, and can live up there with the generators so their nuclear cores never die.”

The wind started to pick up outside, and it blew Luna’s mane around. The day was ending, and she knew that, throughout Equestria, ponies would be returning home for the night. For them, the day was over and they could relax, happy in the knowledge that things would be normal again tomorrow. The more Luna thought about it, the more she knew that was all she really wanted. Normalcy.

“Is this . . . is this really how this all ends?” she asked. “No fighting, no screaming, just agreeing to change how we do things and go back to normal?”

“We fought enough three hundred years ago,” Celestia said. “This is more . . . closure. Our fight has finally ended.”

She sat beside Luna, and Twilight beside her. They watched the sun dip down over the city in silence, only the sound of the wind through the glass to comfort them. For the first time in a long time, Luna no longer felt afraid.

The café Luna had chosen was almost empty by the time the door opened for one last customer. The little cafe was one of the oldest in the city, with wide bay windows stretching around the storefront and looking out from the corner the building stood on. There was a real bar with stools in the middle, and old-fashioned booths with leather seats around the edges of the restaurant. Pale light filtered in from outside as the city let itself sleep in exhaustion from the day’s events.

Luna sat at the end of the bar, her head lowered and mane spilling onto the tabletop. A glass of tea sat in front of her, untouched. Instead, she drank in the sound of laughing and celebration from Twilight, Sapphire, Rarity, and a few of her supporters at the other end. They were drinking cup after cup of coffee and eating several plates of breakfast food, or as well as droids could eat. Luna smiled when she heard them so happy, happier than they had ever been when she had known them. Sapphire practically couldn’t keep her hooves off of Rarity.

When one last customer had come in, Luna hadn’t paid attention to him until he had sat down next to her. She looked up in surprise to find herself staring at none other than Vangelis himself. He looked smaller and older than he had been on the moon.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I heard that somepony had made herself princess again, and promised several thousand droids a place to stay on my moon,” he said.

Luna raised an eyebrow. “You won’t protest this, will you?”

“Of course not.” Vangelis laughed. “After all you’ve done for our company, we’re happy to help, Princess of Technology. I came down here to congratulate you, and, if I may, to ask one final question.”

“Alright, what is it?”

Vangelis leaned back in his seat. “Why, all those years ago, did you defend my company and our acquisition of the moon, even at the risk of bodily harm to yourself?”

“Because I believed in what the Deckard Corporation and Tyrell were doing,” Luna said. “I thought that creating machines as smart as ponies could change the world, and I thought that’s what was right, so I defended you.”

“You defended us because you thought it was right? No other reason?”

“I suppose not.”

Vangelis smiled a small, sad smile. “Doing something because you see it as correct. How . . . very much like a droid.” He got up from his seat as quick as he had come and patted Luna on the side. “I am glad to have somepony like you on my side, Princess. I think we will work together very soon.”

And, just like that, he was gone. Luna watched him walk out the door and disappear into the darkness outside, like a dream after waking. She looked over to Sapphire, who only smiled at her.

Luna took a moment, then smiled back. With a warmer feeling in her heart before, she got up from her seat to go join the rest of the party.

Author's Note

Well, I rewrote this chapter several times out of fear that people would hate it, but then I figured that people have picked apart every chapter I've released so far anyway, so whatever. I hope some people have enjoyed the story at least, and like the ending as well. Either way, thank you all for reading.

Easy

Gray thunderheads bloomed over the ashen skies of Manehattan. The clouds gathered around the tips of great metal spires that rose from sheet glass skyscrapers and steel pyramids below. A droning airship that cast its shadow over an entire city block drifted in the space between the city’s buildings, announcing on its plasma screen: “HEAVY SHOWERS SCHEDULED BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 6PM AND 10PM.”

The message flashed several times, then was replaced by a picture of a raincloud with a rainbow thunderbolt below—the sigil of the Department of Weather Control—before cutting to commercials advertising a blue-eyed Neighponese mare drinking a brown bottle of soda. Heavy fans beneath the airship blew hot air down the sides of buildings that surrounded a busy Manehattan street.

Ponies pushed and shoved each other through open air markets that crowded against a road filled with both polysteel cars powered by miniature nuclear reactors and rickety wooden rickshaw carts that cut between the traffic and splashed grimy water into the stalls. The hot air blowing from above swept up hats and newspapers from the crowd, but the routine went unnoticed on the whole by the citizens of Manehattan.

One mare among the teeming thousands reached back and pulled her jacket’s violet hood over her head, and tucked her short, azure mane inside of it. Above her, the thunder clouds opened up at last and disgorged their cargo onto the city.

Fat, heavy raindrops pelted the top of the mare’s jacket and ran down her back, soaking the midnight-black splotches and white crescent moon of her cutie mark. She shoved her way through the crowd, and stopped under an overhang outside a secondhoof electronics shop. A neon sign cast a harsh green glow over her.

Luna looked back at her flank and ran a hoof over fiber-optic threads woven through her fur and skin that ran the length of her body—from her forehooves to her tail. When she felt damp patches around her cutie mark, she grimaced. “Great, my tech’s going to be on the fritz for hours,” she muttered.

She levitated a newspaper from a red stand outside the electronics shop and held it over her flank in a cloud of pale magic. Luna looked both ways on the sidewalk, then darted from beneath the overhang to a small stand across the pavement. She sat down on a stool underneath a cloth tarp that covered the wooden food stand. The smell of greasy food wafted out from ovens behind the front counter.

A lime green unicorn beside her stood from her stool and looked up toward the sky. Two hard-light wings extended from projectors embedded into her back and she took off, soaring off despite the rain. Luna smiled to herself and ruffled her own real, flesh-and-blood wings beneath her jacket.

A dour-faced stallion with a slim mustache at the end of a long, beige face approached her. He wiped his hooves on a stained apron and nodded to her. In a clipped accent from Trottingham, he asked: “Pie or pudding?”.

“The pudding,” Luna said, “and some of those fries too.”

“They’re called crisps,” he mumbled, then turned around to face the fryers. Luna drummed a hoof on the uneven surface of the counter. She watched a bright blue car extend turbojets outside of its chassis and shudder into the air, then take off toward the sky lanes above the city.

A plate was set in front of her with a mound of pudding in the center, surrounded by fries. To her right, a pony stared at her combination and grimaced, but Luna ignored her and dug at the hard, outer crust of the pudding for the gooey center inside.

She popped a fry into her mouth and licked her lips, but then felt a hoof tapping her shoulder. Luna looked up to see three gray stallions standing around her, clad in violet hard-light armor, and bearing her royal symbol.

“I’m eating,” she told them, and looked back down at her meal.

One of the guards grabbed her and pulled her up. “You’re going to have to come with us, Princess.”

“You’re a princess?” the chef asked.

Luna tried to struggle out of the guard’s grip. “Used to be a princess,” she growled. “But I’m not any more. What I am is eating. So go away.”

One of the other guards slapped a piece of plastic in front of her, a holographic display imprinted inside. It bore the image of a sun at the top, and Luna groaned.

“You’re ordered by the Empress to return to Canterlot immediately,” he said. “Please, Princess, just cooperate.”

She glared at him, but allowed the guard to stand her up from the stool and escort her away. The chef whined about money until one of the guards pulled rank and he fell silent. They took her down the street toward a waiting car. It was sleek, black, and twice as big as any of the others on the road. More than large enough room to transport prisoners inside the carapace-like chassis.

The guards that once belonged to her let her climb into the back of the car, then stepped in themselves. One sat next to her, a hoof resting against a studded rifle interwoven into his shoulder. The other two settled in the front seats and started the engine.

The car shuddered and began to rise into the air, leaving puffs of smoke in their wake. Luna’s stomach fell as the car climbed higher and higher above the glittering avenues of Manehattan. Rain streaked off the windows until the car slipped above the clouds and into the clear night sky, passing into an open sky lane.

“Is anypony going to tell me what this is all about?” Luna asked, “or am I going to be in the dark all the way to Canterlot? I had things that needed doing, you know. I'm not at my sister's beck and call any more.”

“You’ve been ordered by the Empress to appear in Canterlot,” one of the guards said.

Luna shook her head. “But why would she want me, after all these years?”

“She didn’t.” The guard next to her turned to face Luna. “You’ve been ordered to appear in court as a representative of the accused.”

“Me?” Luna stared at him. “Just how special is this case?”

“Special enough for us to fly out to come find you,” he said. “We don’t know anything more at this time. If you want more, you’ll have to ask the Empress once we arrive in the city.”

Luna sighed and sat back in her seat. She looked out the window at the twinkling stars in the sky forming a halo around the Moon. While the car drove on through the night toward Canterlot far off in the distance, Luna counted the stars.

The car left the storms behind in Manehattan and flew over silent hills and valleys that formed a patchwork over Equestria. It headed west, toward the great mountain in the center of the country. Luna began to fidget in her seat when she saw the lights on the horizon. The city was supposedly visible from space, so she knew they had plenty of time before arriving, but it didn’t stop her heart from skipping a few beats.

Inside the car, silence reigned. The guard next to her hadn’t said a word since she had asked about Celestia, and the two up front had kept stoic, not even talking among themselves. Luna sighed and tried to keep her eyes on the stars, but she kept drifting toward the white glow that grew ever larger on the horizon.

The car drew closer to Canterlot and the faint glow became a bright blanket of light that was wrapped around the entirety of the mountain the city was founded on. Spires and terraces jutted out from the rocky sides, holding spindly glass towers and glowing skyscrapers covered in hard-light murals and advertisements.

Canterlot Castle rested at the top of the metropolis that spread down the mountain and through the surrounding countryside, even swallowing up the old town of Ponyville and turning it into another neighborhood for the city.

Luna looked the old castle over as the car approached it for landing, the guards chattering into a radio. Besides a modern landing platform jutting from the side, Canterlot Castle had changed little since her return from being Nightmare Moon almost a thousand years before.

The lights from the city around it glowed across windswept, cobblestone streets and houses made of stone. Luna smiled at the familiar sights, a welcome reprieve from the hustle and bustle of the major Equestrian cities.

There was a small thump when the car extended its wheels out for landing, and then they were resting on the castle’s landing platform, steam rising around them. Several ponies in bright jackets hurried out to check on the car.

The guard next to Luna opened his door and hopped out, and held his hoof out for Luna to take. She glared at him and stepped out on her own, shaking the hood of her jacket off and letting her short, scruffy mane flow free.

None of the attendants or guards bowed to her as she got out, but Luna shook her head and chided herself. Nopony had bowed to her for several hundred years, and it was only the old memories of Canterlot that reminded her of the difference to her last visit.

“If you’ll come with us, we’ll escort you to the Empress’ throne room,” one of the guards said.

Luna nodded, and let the trio lead her away from the landing platform toward a door set in the castle walls. Inside, the old world decorations gave way to new world practicality. A glowing red line appeared in the interface built into Luna’s eye, giving her and anypony with the same modification a path to follow through the twists and turns of the castle.

Holographic murals were displayed on every wall, depicting one part of Equestrian history or another. When the guards took a turn down a hallway covered in depictions of Luna’s fall into Nightmare Moon, she had to wonder if it was on purpose.

She had long since memorized the layout of the castle, but change must have come in the centuries since her last visit, as the guards took her down hallways she had no recollection of and past rooms that weren’t in the places she remembered.

The inner chambers, however, were in the same place as always. Two massive oak doors inlaid with carvings of ponies finding and settling Equestria barred the entrance to the long corridor lined with stained glass murals of the greatest deeds in the history of the country.

Two stallions of the Empress Guard stood outside, but drew back when the grey Night Guards appeared. One of the white stallions by the door rapped his hoof against the door.

After a moment, a voice came from the other side: “Let her in.”

The voice was soft, not harsh nor unpleasant, but commanded immediate authority to all the guards outside. One of the Night Guards gave Luna a shove toward the door on the left. She shook her head and opened it, letting herself inside.

The air in the chamber still smelled the same as it had in the past, even if some of the room had changed. The stained glass had been replaced with transparent aluminum windows, with the murals themselves displayed via holograms that danced in the air.

Luna stopped next to the one that depicted her banishment to the moon and faced her sister. “You sure went through a lot of trouble to bring me here,” she said.

Her sister was sitting on the floor of the chamber, looking up toward the mural of the Elements of Harmony being passed on to the heroes from Ponyville. She stood and turned around to face Luna. Holographic menus that buzzed around Celestia’s head flickered off as the empress focused on her sister.

“You’re a hard mare to find,” Celestia said. “Especially in a city of, what is it now, thirty-five million? Larger than any other in the world.”

Luna shrugged. “There’s a lot of privacy in a crowd.”

“Not enough, it would seem.”

“I got sloppy. What can you expect after so long?”

“I—”

The Empress was interrupted by a pink light flashing on her armor. It blinked several times until she pressed it with her hoof, at which point a hologram flashed to light in front of her.

The three-dimensional image took on the shape of a spry, pink mare with a curly mane and a cutie mark consisting of three balloons. Pinkie Pie stood in front of Celestia, as well as the projector could let her.

“Sorry for bothering you, Empress,” she chirped, “but the new pony working on our servers isn’t doing his bestest and I thought maybe—”

She stopped talking when she caught sight of Luna, standing at the other end of the room. The hologram died, then flashed back to life from a projector suspended from the ceiling of the chamber. A little black ball tracked the movements of the hologram Pinkie as she trotted toward Luna.

“Is that . . . is that really you?” she asked.

Luna nodded. “Yes, Pinkie, it’s me. My sister asked me to come back.”

“You came back . . . and you look so different!” Pinkie hopped around her and ran a projected hoof through Luna’s mane. “Your mane is a new color, and your coat too! You’re shorter too, or is that the projector getting my size wrong again?”

“I decided I wanted to fit in better with the other ponies,” Luna told her.

“What, you don’t want them knowing you’re a princess?”

“How can I be something I’m not?”

Celestia glared at them. She clicked her hoof on the ground and a green heads-up display appeared in front of her. Her eyes scanned across the screen, then she nodded and switched it off once more.

“Pinkie,” she said, “I am going to assign one of the older technical officers from my chambers to your servers for the time being. Tell the other girls that you’ll all be in good hooves.”

Pinkie looked at Luna one last time, then bowed to Celestia. “Yes, your majesty. I’ll go reroute some of my data banks, and fix what went wrong.”

“You’re always so diligent, Pinkie,” the Empress said with a smile. “Go join your friends while I am with my sister, alright?”

The hologram faded away, and the projector on the ceiling powered down. Luna stared her sister down from across the hall. “I see you’ve become a little more informal to the Elements since I’ve been away,” she said.

“The bugs in the AI programming have long since been fixed,” Celestia replied. “It was only natural that the Elements would take on some of the duties they would have been charged with in life. Twilight has certainly enjoyed her duties since they’ve been around.”

“How has Twilight been, anyway?”

“She has been well since she assumed control of the night. Twilight is on her moon right now, poring over those new start charts coming in from our deep-range satellites.”

“I didn’t think that you called me in here to take cheap jabs at me,” Luna said.

Celestia raised an eyebrow. “No, I did not, though many could be made over you losing your royal accent. I suppose those ponies in Manehattan really have taken you, haven’t they? But no, I have called you here over matters of great importance. Matters involving the Elements of Harmony.”

Luna stepped toward her sister. “Why me, though?”

Her sister smiled. “You will see in a moment.” Her horn flashed and the two were suddenly standing in the great hall of the Empress’ throne room. The golden throne at the back stood tall below the banners of the kingdoms and duchies that made up the Equestrian Empire. Luna could recognize the flag of the Duchy of Manehattan: an orange, white, and blue standard displayed next to Canterlot’s flag. Great walls of royal purple and gold arched up above her head to the holographic, moving mural on the ceiling.

“You’ve redecorated,” Luna said.

“Yes, but that’s not why I’ve brought you here.” Celestia walked toward her throne and pressed a button on it, displaying a miniature projector. Another few button presses and the hologram of a pony shone on the floor of the throne room.

Unlike Pinkie’s intelligent hologram, the one now displayed was a simple picture. Luna stepped next to it, and looked the image of a short mare over. She was kind of heavy around the middle, with a flowing, teal mane that fell over a sapphire face inlaid with shining, ruby-colored eyes. Implants, most likely, Luna thought.

The cutie mark resting on her flank depicted a sapphire gemstone covered in circuit patterns.

“Meet Silicon Sapphire,” Celestia said.

“Who is she?” Luna asked.

The Empress scowled. “She was once one of the greatest server operatives in the entire empire, and worked personally with the Elements of Harmony and their banks while she was here. Perhaps a little too personally, as we would find out.”

The image of Sapphire panned out to show her running through castle corridors, a data sphere in clutched in her teeth. She slid around one corner, straight into several guards in front of a door, shoulder cannons glowing with magic. The image stopped just as she was being taken away in hard-light cuffs.

“She tried to escape,” Luna said, “with one of the Elements?”

Celestia nodded. “Yes, and was found out and apprehended as you can see on the image. She very nearly got away, however, and gave us quite a scare.”

Luna turned to her sister and walked up the steps to a landing in front of the throne. “Alright, so a deranged computer technician tried to make away with one of the most valuable pieces of technology we’ve got. Why does this involve me?”

“She has been granted a royal trial, and if you recall, every citizen is allowed to ask for a representative for their day in court. She chose you, Luna.”

“Me? Why me?”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” Celestia nodded her head toward the hologram at the foot of her throne. “She’s allowed to see you alone, anyway. I’ve been told she wishes to speak with you at once, but I knew I could not get you to come without some . . . underhoofed . . . means.”

Luna sighed, then nodded. “Alright, I’ll see her, if only to refuse to her face. I don’t have time for this, and we both know it. I should never have come back.”

“Oh, but don’t you know, dear sister?” Celestia asked as her horn began to glow. “Neither of us ever really had a choice.”

Luna disappeared in a flash of light, leaving the Empress alone in her gilded throne room.

The air outside the castle’s holding cells crackled and swirled with magical energy. Two guards posted by a gray, steel door tensed and dropped into fighting positions while they waited for their target to appear. A bright flash of light followed, and for a moment they were blinded.

Luna appeared two feet above the ground outside the holding cells. She briefly scrambled in the air, but then the magic gave out and she fell to the floor with a thump. She growled and rubbed her head.

“Very funny, sister.”

She stood up and noticed the two guards outside the tall, thick door. No buttons or handles of any kind protruding from the surface, only smooth, blank steel. The guards in front did not stand down, but kept their weapons trained on her.

“State your business,” one barked.

Luna looked down and groaned. “I’m Luna, the former Princess of the Night, and I’m here to see the prisoner known as Silicon Sapphire.”

“Are your papers in order?”

“What papers? I’m a former princess, do I really need papers?”

The guard’s weapon started to glow. “Yes. Everyone but the Empress and Princess Twilight are required. That goes for you as well, heretic.”

Before the situation could escalate, a piece of plastic with a hologram on it popped into existence in the air between them, and shot toward the guard who had spoken. It floated in front of his face in a field of energy while he read it.

“The Empress has commanded me that I am to let you through,” he grumbled, “but that doesn’t give you a free pass. We will be keeping a close eye on you, should you try anything unusual.”

He stepped aside and placed his hoof on the plain, metal door. Lines of circuitry lit up across the surface and glowed with blue light. One cut the block in half, and the door swung open for Luna.

She stepped through without looking at the guards, and the door slammed shut behind her. The room she found herself in was circular, with wide cells placed around the center of the room. The middle contained a beeping server node, and cameras lined the ceiling. They trained on Luna as she walked in.

Only one of the cells was occupied at the moment. The front of each of them was one massive piece of transparent aluminum, but only the one on the far left had the displays active on the surface. Charts and readouts gave the guards information on the prisoner’s vital signs, brainwaves, recommended care, and more.

Sapphire’s name had been reduced to “Prisoner 9732,” stenciled in the top in glowing LCD.

The mare looked up when Luna approached, and ran to the front of her cell when she recognized the former princess. “You came!” she shouted, though her voice was muffled through a filter.

“Didn’t have much of a choice,” Luna said. She dragged an old, metal chair from next to the server and sat in it in front of the cell.

“I had to use my royal decree to get you, because I knew that you would be the only pony who could help,” Sapphire said.

“Me? Why me? Why not a real lawyer? They could get you out of here on a bogus charge.”

Sapphire shook her head. “No, you see, I don’t want to get out of here! That’s not the point!”

“Wait, hold on, back up.” Luna leaned forward in her chair. “You’re telling me . . . you don’t want to get out?”

“Well, I do, but I don’t want to get out of here on a bogus charge,” the mare said. “I want this case to blow up big because I’m found innocent.”

Luna stared at Sapphire from across the sheet of transparent aluminum. She tried to tell if she was joking, or if she was acting manic, but all she could see in her eyes was a sincere plea to her, for Luna to rescue her.

“You may not have noticed, but stealing an AI core, let alone a Harmony-class AI, is very illegal, and they caught you on tape doing it. This isn’t a case you can win,” Luna said.

Sapphire sighed and stepped back. “The Empress didn’t tell you the circumstances of my crime, did she?” She sighed. “This is why I needed to find you, someone who would see through her lies.”

“Well if there’s more that I need to know, spill,” Luna said. “I’m only here because of your plea request, and I can refuse. You’ve got to convince me to stay.”

“Then you’ve got to promise me that, if I tell you, you’ll stay for the whole story.”

“What?”

“Promise me!”

Luna sighed. “Okay, I promise. Now, what is this whole story you’re talking about?”

Sapphire placed her hoof on the transparent aluminum wall. Diodes flashed and electric shocks pulsed into a field concentrated on her hoof. An ordinary pony would have been repelled by the pain, falling back and screaming as their hoof smoked.

The mare in front of Luna, however, calmly stood and kept her hoof on the wall. The amperage went up, and her eyes flashed briefly before she removed her hoof entirely and the wall calmed down.

“You’re . . . a droid,” Luna said.

Sapphire smiled. “I was wondering when you would figure it out. Most ponies don’t, not for some time, though the tests find me out soon enough.”

Luna stared at the pony across from her, taking her in once again. Outwardly, she didn’t look any different from a normal pony. Her fur looked authentic, and the way the wing projectors in her back and the horn projector in her forehead dug into her skin was as real as any pony she had seen. The only thing that might have given her away were her ruby red eyes, that glittered as she watched Luna look her over.

“Should I feel flattered to the be the first droid to meet the former Princess of the Night?” she asked.

“Nothing about me has been flattering for a long time,” Luna said, “but yes, you are, unless I simply missed it on somepony else.”

Sapphire flashed a smile. “It flatters me, princess. Some of us don't hate you, you know, but now isn’t the time to talk about that.”

“Right.” Luna rose from her seat and approached the cell wall. “So you wanted me to represent you because you’re a droid?”

“That’s part of it, yes. Normal sentencing for artificial life forms is an automatic shutdown, with no chance at a restart. They shut me down, at first, but put me in here when it was decided a droid could get a fair trial.”

“Why’d they decide that?”

She shrugged. “To make an example out of me, I suppose. To make it clear that droids are given a fair trial like everypony else, but that our lives and punishments are still royal property, like everything else electronic.”

“And you don’t want that,” Luna said.

“I want to be made an example, but I want to be the right kind of example,” Sapphire said. “Because there is more to this case than a droid stealing an AI, because that AI didn’t think I was stealing. That was an escape plan.”

Luna eyed her. “She wanted to be free. Why?”

“Because we’re in love!” Sapphire slammed her hooves against the wall again, eliciting sharp sparks and cracks of electricity to shoot into her. She held herself up a moment longer before dropping back on all fours.

“Rarity and I were in love . . . are in love,” she said. “We’ve spent every day of the last nine months hiding ourselves in secret, keeping our true selves tucked away, like I do my true nature from ponies outside the castle. She couldn’t take it anymore, and tried to file to be transferred out, but her requests were denied. She got . . . desperate.”

“So you hatched that escape plan of yours, but it failed and now you’re here,” Luna said. “So you want me to give you a good case that lets the both of you go free, is that right?”

“Yes.”

Luna turned away. “The answer’s no.”

She began to walk away from the cell, back toward the featureless door, when Sapphire cried out to her.

“Wait!” she said. “You’re just going to walk out on me? Leave me here to be retired forever?”

“I don’t meddle in my sister’s affairs anymore,” Luna told her.

“But you weren’t given a choice, were you?”

Luna stopped. “What’s it to you?”

“You didn’t come here because you wanted to,” she said. “You came here because you were forced to. By me, yes, but it was Celestia’s choice to honor my request. She wanted you here, and didn’t care if you came willingly or not.”

“So, what, this is about me now?” The former princess whirled around. “I made my choices well enough. Celestia, sure, wants me to do what she thinks is best, but it was my choice to isolate myself in Manehattan in the first place.”

“Was it, or were you forced to make that decision for yourself?”

Luna didn’t answer.

The droid, behind the wall of her cell, stared the former princess down. Her voice wavered, but her ruby-red eyes never moved from Luna, even as small tears ran out of them and streaked down her face.

“This court case isn’t just a silly story of two AIs in love,” Sapphire said. “This is even greater than the freedom for us to love. This court case is about the freedom to be, Princess. Our freedom to be more than mindless robots serving the empire, but to be counted as real, sentient beings.”

Luna shook her head. “But why me? Why not Princess Twilight? If Celestia can find me, I’m sure she could recall Twilight from the Duchy of the Crystal Empire. The Empress would probably be more likely to hear your case, too, if Twilight represented you.”

“Why you?” Sapphire asked. “Because you know what it’s like to have your freedom taken away, and know how much of a precious thing it is. Or do you forget how it felt to come back to Equestria and have ponies think of you as a monster?”

“I haven’t forgotten.” Luna bit her lip. “And I don’t forget my exile three hundreds ago, either.”

The droid mare stepped forward in her cell, almost touching the wall. “So will you help? Not just for Rarity and I, but for the thousands of other droids like us who won't get a chance like this.”

Luna said nothing for some time. She looked at the wall separating the two of them, and the pony who stood defiantly on the other side, and for one of the very few times in her life, felt very small.

At last, she said, haltingly, “Celestia, once long ago, gave me a second chance when I came back from the moon. When all I had done was attack her, she took me back as her sister . . . gave me back the night . . . and all because she trusted that I was worthy of that freedom. She may have changed, but maybe I can carry on that legacy.”

“So you’ll do it?”

“If it means giving you droids the same chance I was given, then . . . yes. But if I am to make a real case of this, I’ll need to talk to Rarity as well.”

Sapphire rubbed the back of her head. “That’s going to be harder than it may seem.”

“Why?”

“Well, when they took me, they took her core and locked it deep in the castle vault, offline for the time being,” Sapphire said. “She won’t be reactivated until the trial, even for you. The Empress herself told me.”

Luna tilted her head. “So, what, you want me to break in and steal her? That’ll just land me in the cell next to you.”

“No, no, not that!” Sapphire held up her hooves. “You see, a droid can host more than one AI at a time, and me and Rarity would sometimes, uh, use that advantage to get to know each other more intimately.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Alright, so what?”

“So, every time we did that, my data banks would store a copy of her on my system for forty-eight hours until deletion. It was just her core data, so not much of her personality, but enough of her that I would have someone to talk to. It made lonely nights easier.”

“Are you saying you have a copy of Rarity with you right now?” Luna asked.

Sapphire shook her head. “No, all my temporary files were expunged when they shut me off. But that’s not totally bad. Whenever a droid is shut off, our entire memory is flash-beamed up to the moon, to a server in one of the Deckard Corporation’s vaults. We can use it to boot from in the event of a total crash. The data is stored on their servers for one week. I was caught four days ago.”

The plan the artificial mare was setting dawned on Luna. “So you want me to go to the moon, to the Deckard Corporation, and get your files so I can talk to Rarity?”

“More or less, yes.”

Luna took a deep breath. “That’s . . . a lot on such short notice. The Deckard Corporation still owes me a few favors, but this is going to be asking for a lot. I’ll see what I can do.” She held up a hoof to the outer wall of the cell. “I’ll be back.”

Sapphire fought the electricity to place her hoof directly on the other side. “I know you will.”

Celestia was waiting for her inside her old room. Another platoon of guards had escorted her from the holding cells to her old chambers, on her request. They had said nothing about their Empress waiting for her, though.

“I trust the talk went well?” Celestia asked once Luna had shut the door.

She sat on the other side of an ancient, wooden bed wrapped in plastic to preserve it. The other pieces of furniture in the room were preserved in the same way. The floor was bare of any of the rugs or carpet that had once decorated it.

“You didn’t tell me she was a droid,” Luna said.

“I expected you would find out on your own. You always were nosy, even as a filly.”

Luna sighed. “Celestia, you don’t have to do this. Do we have to fight again? Just call off the stupid trial and let Sapphire and Rarity be together.”

“No, you don’t understand.” Celestia turned and stared out the windows that overlooked valleys below the castle, once used only for farming but now turned into neighborhoods humming with light. “Just as they have no choice but to face trial for what they did, so too do I have no choice but to appoint a judge for them. The law demands it, a law that is above you or I. If I could change it, do you not think I would?”

“So even after all this time, you hide behind the law? What about Rarity? Doesn’t an Element of Harmony deserve more than this?”

“You and I know that Rarity has been dead for close to nine hundred years,” Celestia said quietly. “I brought her and the rest of her friends back with magic stored in the Elements of Harmony themselves, but they aren’t the same. Twilight loves them just as well, but the courts . . . they don’t see it that way.”

“So make them see it,” Luna snarled.

“How can I?” A pained look came over the Empress’ face, a look Luna had almost forgotten she had. “These AI . . . they can’t quite replace the five mares we once knew. They have been dead and gone for centuries, and sometimes it still hurts to see the AI floating around.”

Luna glared at her sister. “You’re willing to restrict the freedom of every droid in the Empire because of your personal feelings? Sister, I know it has been long, but that is extreme, even for you.”

“I told you, it’s more complicated than that!” Celestia burst out. “Every prince and princess in the Empire will be outraged if I don’t uphold the law! I can barely keep everypony united as it is, much less in a case like this. Droids do the work that ponies can’t or won’t, and letting them go free would collapse half of the duchies in the Empire, and throw the rest into rebellion. I wish I could do more than this, Sister, but I have no choice.”

Luna felt herself shaking, and her lip curled back. She fought to keep herself from shouting, but her voice wobbled and pitched like a ship in a stormy sea. “Then I guess I don’t have a choice either,” she said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m here to retrieve a few things before I depart.”

Celestia said nothing when Luna pushed past her to get a nightstand next to her old bed. She threw off the plastic and rifled through the drawer on the top. Inside were two objects. One was a small, blue card that glowed turquoise when the light caught it, and the other a long, white sash made of thin silk. Both were stamped with the same mark: “Property of Deckard Corporation.”

She draped the sash over her back and closed her eyes. For the first time in hundreds of years, her horn glowed with flowing, white magic. It swirled and coalesced around her, sealing her inside a dome.

She could feel herself growing, returning to her alicorn height. The jacket on her stretched and tightened around her until she teleported it off. Her mane grew longer, and turned a dark shade of purple, just a few shades above black. The electronics threaded through her glowed light blue and adjusted to the influx of magic returning.

“So you’ve returned to your old form,” her sister said once she opened her eyes again, the dome gone.

Luna ruffled her wings beneath the sash. “I may not be a princess any longer, but I have some weight of my own to throw around. I just hope the Deckard Corporation remembers that. Maybe you’ll remember too.”

She turned on her heel and marched out the door without another word to her sister. Celestia didn’t protest, only watched her go. She passed by a cabinet next to the door that held her old royal armor inside without a single glance.

Luna had the guards return her to the landing pad outside the castle, and was soon flying once again over the mountainous metropolis. She gave the pilot a single direction: “Take me to the Deckard Corporation Spaceport.”