Luna felt it said something about the last three years of incursions that she was no longer very surprised when a human fell out of her ceiling.
This one hit the little ramp in front of her throne, bounced about a hoof-height, then helplessly rolled down the full length before skidding about halfway across the marble, coming to a stop across one of the finer onyx inlays, which was already being discolored by the blood.
It grunted. Grunting was just about all it was capable of.
She took a deep breath, forced her wings out of the challenge posture and into a more standard flight position, then got her corona down to a fully-prepared single instead of the wildly-spiking double she'd instantly reached on sheer instinct before slowly flying down, landing a body length away.
The situation was exactly as her battle-trained senses had taken in during the split-second when the human had been plummeting past her gaze, attention wrenched away from the history texts she'd been consulting in the empty room. This was a male. Adult, although there was a certain factor currently preventing her from getting a more accurate estimate of the age. Bulky in an unbalanced way. What little of the clothing she could see seemed to suggest a suit, and that narrowed down the origin world somewhat -- but not by enough.
He glared up at her, eyes wide and projecting an anger which didn't even begin to cover up the fear. This action completed the full list of those he had available, and so he kept right on doing it.
The human had been recently injured, and by more than the fall. Someone had beaten him, possibly severely. And that same party had taken some pains to treat those injuries by bandaging them. Followed by... keeping right on going. Over ninety percent of the human's body was wrapped in multiple layers of bandages, swaddle after swath after outright encasement, he had been medically cared for within an inch of his life and the cure was in fact looking worse than the disease...
She lightly poked at him with her left forehoof. He rolled slightly.
The laugh reached her first, a burst of utterly unrestrained mirth filling her entire throne room starting from somewhere around that ceiling level, bouncing and echoing and never quite changing away from something which made her nerves sing a ballad of gleeful madness looking for a place to ground itself. (The human twitched, writhed, tried to get away.) The smoke came second, a single white acrid curl wafted to her snout, and the involuntary breath momentarily dizzied her while triggering fleeting visions of things she would only be able to visit again in her own nightscape, and not for long.
She knew exactly which world this human had come from. Where both had arrived from.
"Your incursion, Princess!" the laugh came again, and she had to force her wings to stay where they were. "You know, I never know what to get royalty. All the gifts you must receive from those looking for your favor, diplomatic overtures, outright suckups... anything your fuzzy heart desires, on call, at need, and probably shivering a little from having broken the sound barrier on the way over. But this..." A pause. "Do you like the gift wrapping? I really wasn't sure about the gift wrapping. Honestly, I think he's more ribbon than anything else, which is overcompensation on my part for the ribbing, and the ribs, which I'm sure I broke at least three of..."
She looked up. She couldn't spot him. Too many shadows clustered near the ceiling at this hour, and he'd been learning to project his voice. She could light them up...
"But you cannot return him," the voice suddenly insisted, abruptly petulant. "I put a lot of thought into this. Also a lot of swings and kicks. If you don't like it, just stick him on a shelf somewhere. Or in a cell. Yes, I think a cell would be best. Just -- add him to the collection. Nicely preserved in rarefied underground air, kept in mint condition... all right, read once..."
She took a deep breath, listening for scrambling sounds within the shadows. None came.
"This was not our agreement," Luna shot at the ceiling.
"Agreement?" the bemused voice asked. "One incursion: stopped. I believe that was very much the agreement."
"You are to keep them from coming here. You are not supposed to be bringing them. The fact that we have a prison available does not mean you can further contaminate our world by filling another cell. Our cells are full. We are trying to expand the prison, but there is no room for each to have a private space and keep them from conspiracy. Your world has prisons --"
Shoes and hands shifting against ornamental protrusions. She knew where he was now.
Maybe.
"Prisons," the voice mused, and this laugh was much softer. "Shall we talk about prisons, Princess? I think that we should. Immediately."
Oh, no...
Luna took another breath, forced her horn's corona to wink out.
"Jack," she called out, "you have been wearing the mask too long. I can hear it, and I know you can as well. Remove it. And then we shall discuss any subject you care to name. After you can think again --"
"-- that's not my name."
It had been a whisper. It had filled more of the throne room than the laughing ever could.
"Jack --"
"-- and I can think," the voice said. "I am clearly am, therefore I must be thinking. I just think -- differently. Why is different wrong?"
She was not helpless. She kept trying to tell herself that. All she had to do was probe the area where she was almost certain he was (and a minor pegasus technique might pin it down, locate the shifts he had to be making in the air currents), surround him with her field and bring him to floor level. That would confine him.
"I've been wondering," the voice said. "About my name. Quite a bit, actually. What it is. But the subject is prisons, Princess. And now... now you're going to listen for a while."
But it would do nothing about the madness.
"Did you know," the voice asked, with bemusement beginning to return, "that I found a police officer who would talk to me? Not that he wants anyone to know about that. Not that anyone should, since I think I rather like him and so watching his entire family die might be slightly upsetting. And for my last incursion... I didn't tell you about this, Princess, but you've been so busy... I actually managed to set up an arrest. Not for Dimensional Travel Without Passport, of course: just can't seem to get the city council to stick that on the books, not enough bribe money, although it could give me a use for the jewels... But there was enough there to arrest him on. Minor technical things, but -- jail time, enough to let him know that we could do something. Unless he bribed another judge. Or jury. Couldn't kill the witnesses this time just because there weren't any, which is actually a real savings for his books..."
Life in the shadowfell. Jack had told her about his world. About -- everything. It had been why she'd recruited him as an agent, both of them. That mutual determination to do the needful...
"You have never seen a trial get put together so fast," the voice reflected. "Jury! Judge! Snack machine refilled in the hallway! And when the first gavel came down, do you know what that particular incursion did?"
The laugh went on for a mere three heartbeats, and was all the more agonizing for it.
"Admitted everything."
Luna blinked.
"...what?"
"All of it," the merry voice assured her. "Every last word. Other worlds! Ponies! Magic! And they believed him, did that judge and jury, every word of it -- or rather, they believed in his belief. By reason of insanity, Princess, the greatest Not Guilty there is! But that incursion still had to be sent away, because he was clearly too crazy to be out among normal people, who just believe in things like Truth and Justice and all the things too crazy to lock away. And he is such a good man, he loves the city so, that he gifted it with an asylum, so that those poor lunatics could receive the love they truly need. It's being built now, even faster than the trial was put together. I've seen the plans: stole myself a copy. I showed them to a friend -- did I tell you I have friends, even without a proper name to introduce myself by? -- who knows something about materials science, and he was rather impressed." And with a plummet into rage which nearly cracked the marble, "Until that moment, he didn't know it was possible to build an entire prison out of cardboard."
She needed words. In the face of madness, she needed words more than anything. And in the face of madness, she was failing again...
"Here is his plan," the voice hissed. "A prison built from tissue paper. Cell bars made of straw. Every time I catch them, any time there's actually a trial -- they tell all. They'll be found insane, every last one of them. Spontaneous Pony Hallucination: an epidemic sweeping the city. Probably triggered by too many video games. And they'll be sent to his little toy asylum, where he can just reach through any wall at any time and pull them out to do his bidding again. The same as always."
A brief pause.
"Well," it continued, "perhaps not any wall. I saw the plans, Princess -- I did tell you that, yes? I was very proud, having thought to look. There is one part of the asylum which is very much not cardboard. It is steel and osmium -- my friend just told me about that -- and diamond and lightning, especially lightning. It's a very special cell, perhaps the best ever made."
And a longer one.
"It's reserved for me."
Luna managed a single breath.
"I know the dangers you put yourself through," she said. "I know what you all face --"
"-- I imagine you do," the voice quietly said. "I imagine even better than I think. So if you want your incursion to never do it again, Princess -- keep him here. Because he may not know my name any more than I do, but you just used another one and that really shouldn't get back to him, now should it? Or just kill him. That would do the trick, wouldn't it? But that's not a decision I wanted to make, not being royalty. I didn't think I had the right." Thoughtful, "It's very important, the whole living thing, isn't it? I get so little of it that it seems extra-important, so I didn't want to take it from someone else... except maybe him. For Jack's sake."
The smoke began to curl down, pale green this time. Luna, who'd had a lungful once, found her legs moving back before she could override them.
"My gift to you," came the final call. "As a thanks for the extra life. I'll see about flowers with the next one, truly I will. And you know, if I grab the ears just right, there's a chance to try out a bow..."
The smoke dissipated. And there was but one shaking human in her throne room.
Luna looked down at him. He flinched.
"So," she softly said, fully aware that she was at least partially trying to get control back, "we may be able to find some space..."
The main doors flew open, pushed by the pressure of a nearly jet-black field. A harried-looking unicorn raced through the gap.
"Princess!" he gasped -- then nearly executed a four-hoof skid as he tried to avoid tripping over the human. "I -- what? How did he --"
"-- it is under control, Cluster," she assured him. Although Jack is another matter. "Why have you come?"
"There's an incursion..."
A little more sharply than she would have liked, "Other than this one."
"...yes. The CDA has been kicking -- everything at it, and they can't even get it to move --"
Luna forced her attention all the way onto her Guard, which was difficult when it had a thousand-bale weight of disbelief to push through. "They have actually called for backup?"
"For --" he winced "-- talk. It wants to speak with a leader. It rejected Crossing. It's safe as long as nopony attacks again. It's made that -- very clear." Dark purple eyes betrayed every last tenth-bit of the fear.
She noted the repeated use of 'it'. "Which world? What kind of human?"
" It's... not human. There's a human there, but... It's..." Forehooves scraped at the floor. "You have to see, Princess, we can't work out what it's doing..."
Not human?
She took another slow breath.
When the Canterlot Deportation Agency had first been formed... it had seemed to Luna that the core of its membership should be those who were the most used to dealing with other species. Who had, to some degree, learned to think as other sapients did. And the largest waiting group of such ponies had been the Immigration Department. A division of government which was under Night Court dominion, and so the CDA had fallen to her as well. Celestia had input: Luna never would have excluded her. But ultimately... the decisions were her own. To manage the agency, to recruit, without the knowledge of a press which would have cried treason, a few (too few, now) select incursions as Equestria's hands in other worlds...
...to serve as the final resort when all else failed.
Some would have rather died than call on her and in her nightmares, the ones her magic would never do anything to stop, she suspected more than a few already had. Luna understood their fear, had walked through it in their nightscapes time and again. The terror which insisted that to summon her would be to bring a count of two rulers back to one. But she wanted to be there for them. She needed to be. And they had never called on her...
They would have to be beyond desperate. Or completely certain the situation was safe. Horribly confused...
Not human.
...or perhaps all three.
They had called on her.
"You have a more complete briefing?" He nodded. "Is it in a location which I either have a teleport site or somepony who can escort me there?" Again. "How much time do we have?" Enough. "Speak as quickly as you can without leaving anything out. And then we shall depart."
"And... this human?" her Guard asked.
She glanced down at the bandaged head. For a moment, her inner vision showed a rock-crystal window of her putting a forehoof through the skull.
"We will drop him off at the cells. Questioning can wait. He is from the shadowfell: I doubt he will have anything of interest to say." And the next words were an order. "Your briefing."
He spoke. She listened, if with increasing incredulity. But as they made ready for departure, she still found her thoughts wandering, and wished they would not -- but she had no more ability to stop them than she did to control her own dreams.
It wants to know what its name is.
[/hr]
This human was dead.
Female: face-down, but Luna had learned to spot the shape of the hips. The skin was somewhere between tan and orange. All hair had been burned away, as had most of the head. She had been left where she had fallen, in the cobblestoned main street of Trottingham.
The other presence had everypony's primary attention.
It moved a limb. The slender fingers reached into the black gap at the center of the red flower-shape, removed a piece of golden metal six times larger than the aperture it had emerged from. The twisted puzzle piece was added to the growing structure.
"Not human," Luna quietly agreed.
"No," Crossing Guard said. The dark blue stallion still looked oddly flustered, even as he inclined his horn towards the corpse. "Witnesses say she came through first. Some kind of distortion effect... more of a silver ripple to the air than anything else. Something new. But she had about six seconds before it followed her, and she spent all of them running. Then it... you saw."
"And when you tried to make it explain itself?"
"Magic..." He took several slow breaths. "Unicorn fields can't make contact. It's like there's something in the way. Pegasus techniques work around it, but no amount of wind we were willing to risk would shift it, lightning does nothing -- and the lightning is when it put that down."
For the second time, Luna looked at the hoof-deep trench which had been melted through the stone. The mathematical precision of the circle was impressive. A faint residue of heat lent a little red to the evening.
"We tried some other things, Princess," Crossing told her. "Lots of -- well, I'm sure it was in the briefing, and none of them worked. Then we tried everything we could, and it kept asking to see the entity in charge, and... it hasn't hurt anypony, at least who didn't try to attack, and Border and Barb are more shaken than anything. One filly jumped the trench and ran right up to the thing: it just picked her up, carried her back to her mother, and then went back to -- whatever it's doing. If we don't try talking to it or attacking -- it just... works."
Four more pieces had joined the assembly during their conversation. The shape was starting to look oddly familiar.
"And asks to speak with an entity in charge."
"Yes."
"Then perhaps it should." Luna began to trot forward.
"Princess?"
She glanced back.
The angriest words she had ever heard from the CDA's head. "Who called you in?"
"That is not for you to know."
"It was Barrier, wasn't it?"
She managed not to look at the trembling tangerine mare, paid no attention to the sound of rustling feathers. "That is not your concern."
Furiously, "Nopony should have --"
"-- I am going forward."
He shut up.
"You," Luna calmly told him, "will watch over me. All of you shall. Should something happen, I will react accordingly. Should I fall, look to yourselves and those of the settled zone rather than wasting time in avenging me. A ruler it wishes to speak to... a ruler it shall have."
Twelve assorted pony agents, four Guards, seven local police officers, and a host of citizens who had yet to be evacuated away from their windows watched her go.
She looked the thing over as it allowed her to approach through the shadows of her night. The body was a golden metal sphere, hovering at about her head-height, roughly half a body length in diameter. Two arms, one at each side. Recognizable shoulder joints and hands. The flower shape from which things emerged, three purple patches of varying configuration above that. A flexible metal tube grounded on what seemed to be the back -- the arms could rotate to grasp in any direction, but what she might mistakenly be assigning as features seemed to give it a front. And at the top of that tube, an oval, one end of which glowed a faint, glassy green.
But the sphere was not a perfect one. There were -- dents. One of them was a particularly deep specimen and she could see a faint line of silver sparks at the bottom of the chasm. Another, at the top of the sphere, had not penetrated, but was wide enough to plant a hoof in. Damaged. Wounded, perhaps.
It looks like some kind of device.
But it talks. If it talks, it may also think, although that is hardly a guarantee. Still, approach it as a sentient...
Not human.
The humans, in all their variety, had been bad enough.
Within four body lengths now, and she stepped over the trench without drawing objection, at least from somepony other than those watching over her. Three. Two...
"You requested my presence?"
It rotated somewhat, facing -- facing? -- away from the structure. The glow from the oval cast a sickly hue into her fur. Reflections lit the hollow at the front of the new little golden building, which was just large enough for a single pony to trot inside.
"You aRe the rUler?"
"Yes."
A long moment of silence.
"ParTiAl truth," it said. "ExpLain."
It was not the time to question how it knew that, at least not openly. "Our nation has two rulers," she said. "My sister is in the Griffon Republic, speaking to their own leaders regarding an important matter, and cannot be readily recalled. I am available now." And was all too aware of the scent of fear which came from the watching citizens, a stench which had just not-so-subtly increased.
It seemed to regard her.
"TRuth," it said. "We shaLl speak."
She nodded. "Who are you?"
"I Am." (The silver sparks seemed to dim.)
This didn't strike her as particularly helpful, but there was every chance that was how the thing truly thought of itself. Still -- "Can you tell me more? What others call you, perhaps?"
"I Am." (And again.)
She decided to treat the cause as, if not fully lost, at least delayed. "The human?"
"A criMInal." The oval moved, the tube stretched towards the corpse as far as it was able, and that was further than it should have. "She SHould not HaVe run. I was to... taKE her. Away. She..." The pause was far too long. "...fOUght. She..."
It stopped speaking. The body dipped a little closer to the ground, levitated back up again.
"...not hurT," it said. "HumAns cannot huRt. So I am nOt hurt."
"You executed a criminal." She managed to keep it flavorless.
"She... did not LET me taKe her AwaY."
"Do you intend to attack ponies?"
"Your CitiZens ASkeD. I Told them. They have broken no LAW. There is no LAW to BrEaK."
She felt the stares of her citizens. Their desperation. The confusion. The complete lack of faith.
"We have laws," she told it.
"NO!"
Her fur laid down among her body. Rocks shifted. Windows broke. Ponies screamed, hooves pounded at stone as three citizens simultaneously panicked, and the fear reeked, filled the street, she could feel the others trying not to break...
"But you WILL have LAW," the thing said, and the tones felt horribly as if it was trying to reassure her. "LAW is on all HuMan PlaneTs. You WilL turn over all LAW to Me. And aLl will be beTTEr."
It turned away from her. Another piece came out of the flower, was slotted in. It floated back slightly after, perhaps in satisfaction.
"You May stiLL rule," it said. "All that iS not LAW. That is... is..."
Dip, rise.
"...LAW."
She wanted to attack. Her feathers were vibrating with the need to charge...
But there might still be a place for logic, and so she tried that. "We are not a human planet."
It rotated again, moved the oval. A beam of light illuminated the corpse.
"HuMan," it said. "On PlanEt."
"She is dead."
"Does NoT matter. Where there IS one, there will be moRe. To breAk the LAW. When thErE is LAW to Break."
It seemed to look at the structure.
"LAW awaits," it told her. "You may VoTe. This is... also LAW. But only OnE. One vOte."
It floated to the left, enough to let her look inside the booth.
There were thirty-two switches, arranged in four rows of eight. Each was currently in a neutral position. Each had a line of writing stretching out to the right...
"I cannot read this," she told it.
It floated closer. She held her ground.
"TrUth," it said. "WHy? You Can spEAK..."
"Whatever magic allows those who come here to either understand or speak our language," Luna calmly said, "does not work on print. This has been proven multiple times. Nopony will vote for something they cannot understand."
Rise. Dip.
"YEs," it eventually agreed. "Cannot read LAW aloud for oThers. INterPREtation. TransLAtion is REquired. I wilL translate. And then theRe will be LAW."
The sphere rotated so that the flower and purple faced her.
"GO," it said. "I wiLl call when LAW is REaDY."
The arms dropped to its sides. The glow dimmed. Shadows seemed to deepen the dents.
Luna turned and trotted back over the line, feeling the last bit of fading heat sinking into her hooves.
"Princess?" Crossing slowly asked. "We're not just going to leave it --"
"I was briefed," Luna softly said. "The full list of offensive spells which were tried. The attempt to teleport it away. The distance poor Border was thrown when he attempted a direct charge, and I am thankful that he landed on something soft, although I am not certain Barb feels the same way. I could attack, yes. I might even prevail. But... we do not know what it is. And..." even more softly now "...research may be possible."
Before, it had been a lack of faith radiating from her citizens. And there were times when that was almost a dream, those weeping minutes when the ponies of Equestria could think of no better solution than unanswerable prayer. But now...
...her agency wanted to trust her. The Guards knew she had something planned. But even there...
...and from everypony else, it was steadily transmuting into a new kind of fear.
"I must speak to someo -- somepony." Had anypony outside of her own noticed the verbal stumble? "We have time for me to do so. Let us see what can be learned..."
She nodded to Cluster, who signaled the other Guards, and they all began to trot away.
One thin yellow head poked out the second-story window of a residence.
"Princess?"
She glanced up.
"When... when will Princess Celestia come back?"
"After," Luna said.
"After... what?"
"After we win."
No answer. She resumed her path.
They think I will not be able to do this.
She wondered if they were right.
[/hr]
In total, there were one hundred and ninety humans in front of her. It had taken very little time to count them. It had still taken far longer than she'd ever believed it could.
The (theoretically? No, she couldn't think that way...) momentary residents of what was called the temporary human settlement camp and was, much more realistically, an outdoor prison for those who had arrived by accident, arrived on purpose with no return route, had kept the peace and had been gathered in this place to make sure it was kept... they were mostly trying to blink away sleep. She'd had them all roused from their equally-temporary homes and gathered on what the one called David called the baseball field. One hundred and ninety assorted ages, sizes, worlds...
She could have gone to the prison: after all, the thing had executed what it claimed to be a criminal, and the dead woman might not have been the first to flee into Equestria. But those confined there seemed to enjoy lying about the worlds they came from, and some of those untruths had taken pony lives. Making the temporary human settlement camp into the first stop had seemed like the best idea. Even if it was her first time here, at least since picking the site where the shield would eventually be raised. Even if she'd never seen so many humans at one gathering in her life, with her Guards trying to watch all of them at the same time and failing, the unnatural shapes of their bodies and all the smells coming off the skin...
Luna looked at the crowd --
crowd...
-- again. One of the adult females seemed to be extremely pregnant.
"Princess," David said, "this is all of us. So -- welcome to New Cynosure --"
"-- what?"
Awkwardly, "It... kind of needed a name. And... well, welcome. We've never had -- royalty visiting before."
"Or a false god," called out a harsh female voice from the back.
Someone hissed "Joanna! Not now!" The harsh voice started to sound again -- and was abruptly muffled as the noises changed to that of a very quick, extremely definitive scuffle.
Joanna. Luna kept the sigh internal. Naturally.
"I suppose," she said, ignoring the palm-covered screams which were now being dragged away from the group, "you are wondering why I have called you all here tonight."
"At three in the morning?" the dark-skinned one named Jake said. There was something vaguely Guardlike about him. "No. At three in the morning and with you gathering us for the big question round instead of the Agency, it's going to be something bad. We're just waiting for you to tell us what."
"Maybe it's a way home," a woman she didn't recognize hopefully said. "Something which will only work for an hour or two..."
"Sarah," a yellow-tinged young male said, "they'd be moving us to it already."
"You don't know that, Shinichi, it could be a spell which she has to cast here and now --"
"-- it is not," Luna interjected, and hated watching the woman's face fall -- but broken faith was bad enough for a single night without allowing more false hope. "There is an issue with a new incursion. I will describe it to you. Should any recognize it, all information and help given on how we can deal with it will be appreciated."
"Yeah!" a short teenager shot at her. "You'll appreciate it so much that you'll let us go for a walk? Maybe on a leash? How about with a collar, or --"
"-- you are still on probation, Mr. Conner," Luna starkly reminded him. "You are, in fact, in this camp by what I am told is the skin of your teeth, which is something I have yet to see on any of you, so let me explain it in my terms: you are a fur strand away from the cells, and it is a fraying one. Do not prod me. It is not the night to push your luck."
Ben stepped forward. Of course. "Princess, he's only been here a moon, he's still trying to adjust --"
"-- yes," Luna tightly cut in. "And at some point, I expect you will explain to me how mysterious fires appearing around guard posts are a sign of adjustment." She briefly glanced up at the sky, seeking strength from Moon, and found only the blue of the shield. "For now, I would like to concentrate on the problem. Before it becomes your problem. Our incursion, based on a single human corpse --" a little more quickly "-- which it created, seems to feel this is a human planet. I do not wish to discover what will happen when it learns that between the camp and the cells, there are several hundred of you about."
The next thought was sudden, and a little too attractive. Then again, given how it feels about criminals, it could potentially empty the cells...
"It... killed someone?" a little girl tremulously asked.
"Yes," Luna replied. "I wish --" she did, didn't she? Yes. For here. "-- to keep the count at one. So. It is a golden sphere --"
And from the absolute back, the rightmost edge, where one resident had carefully placed herself so as not to block anyone's view, the softest of gasps.
Luna's attention immediately focused in that direction. Spotting the source took less than a heartbeat. Trying to see through the hand which was now covering most of the girl's face turned out to be futile.
"Two arms?" the teenager asked as her fingers wove into the wild tangle of brown curls. "A ray gun mounted on the back? Has it been talking about Law?"
After three years of incursions, Luna also had a strong grasp on 'ray gun'. This quickly? "Yes."
The girl sighed.
"I'm sorry, Princess," and she sounded every bit of it. "That's one of mine..."
[/hr]
One of the ways Luna tried to mitigate her frequent difficulties in dealing with humans was to treat them as being from more familiar species. A number of the criminals were Diamond Dogs. Some of the worst were dragons. There were goats here and there, teetering on the line between intelligence and animal. Griffons everywhere she looked, struggling for dominance. Some could approach pony, and that number seemed to increase the more she associated with them -- which often felt as if it should be cautioning her against doing too much more of it.
The teenager was a minotaur.
It might have been the height. By the girl's own measurements (which Luna had learned how to work with -- odd new systems of math remained math), she was six feet, seven inches tall and weighed in at two hundred and ninety extremely dense pounds: once pony eyes adjusted for the frame, she looked only slightly heavier than the human standard, but there was something which been designed into her very bones... and at seventeen, she claimed to be small for her age.
The strength was part of it (a strength some ponies were frankly afraid to try measuring), as was the wrestling. Minotaurs were the most cheerfully physical species on the planet, believing a hard slap on the back was good for a casual greeting, a quick scrum was a welcome-home hug, and there was no better way to prove yourself to a future mate than by fighting off every other prospect. The girl... had a habit of saying hello to people and ponies she liked by tackling them. Literally. A roll to the ground, a jostle for position, and once the pin was established, how was your day? It was something which had nearly gotten her thrown into the cells before somepony had worked out what she meant, and it could still cause shock to new guards in the settlement camp, for the girl seemed to love ponies -- loved them more than humans, with whom she could be more than a little shy -- and wanted to learn all about them. After a quick tussle. She was reportedly adjusting, learning to greet more pony-normally... but every so often, reports of friendly piledrivers still reached the Lunar throne room.
Luna had been made to understand that by human eyes, she was attractive enough, even if the curls would never be tamed and the eyes were a shade of maroon Luna had seen on no other biped. But despite the visual evidence, the girl had an odd habit. She insisted she was not human. Not completely. She used terms like genetically engineered and heavyworlder. She claimed most of her frequent clumsiness, that occasional tendency to destroy the scenery which was also so minotaur-like, came because she had yet to adjust to local gravity. She said there was a planet full of those changed as she had been, and other worlds hosting their own alterations to the root stock.
Ultimately, despite all comparison attempts, Luna thought of the girl as human.
Tess Beckett called herself a Hoffmannite.
They had retreated to the main cafeteria tent for privacy. Two Guards had followed them in and after Tess seen the need to say hello, both had found themselves pressed into the dirt while a curious mezzo voice asked them about Lunar shift life. Both were now retreated in the closest available substitute for corners, trying to pretend they weren't cleaning the armor off, or that they hadn't been -- greeted -- that fast, especially with Tess distracted by the needs of Luna's question and only able to devote half her attention to the welcome...
Luna had just finished telling the girl about everything that had happened in Trottingham. Towards the end, the human's wincing had approached compulsive twitch rates.
"So explain," Luna said. "In detail, please. One of yours?"
Tess glanced around the tent. There were three plates out, each filled with partially-eaten rose petal salad. An interrupted late-night snack.
"The worst of mine." she shakily said. "In some ways, to some people... Princess, it's kind of complicated. I don't know what you're familiar with about my world..." A helpless look served for the prompt.
"To begin with, that until tonight, you were the lone arrival," Luna said. "A status which has now been broken. Do you have reason to fear this presence?"
"No." She paused. Long arms lifted for a moment, palms upturned. "Not... yet."
Luna was trying to be patient. Truly. "Ms. Beckett..."
Which triggered a deep breath. "Okay. Princess -- it's called a Law Machine. And it's... well... in my world -- universe... someone thought humans were... out of control. Dangerous. A bad influence..."
"I cannot imagine how anyone could ever come to that conclusion," Luna dryly lied. "Go on."
"And that person invented the Law Machines. To keep us in line. They're -- what you would call devices. Intelligent ones. And they're very powerful. Very few humans have ever been rumored to take one on and come out alive. Almost impossible to damage. If... if all of humanity together was the twelfth most powerful thing in my world, one Law Machine is at least four ranks above us." Hesitantly, "Do you understand?"
Luna silently reflected on the twisted metal discarded after Tess's camp suitability hearing, which had been a lot less twisted before the girl had slipped and used it to catch herself. "Yes. Go on."
"This is... kind of a short version," Tess went on. "But there are thirty-two Laws. And whenever humans settle a planet, the Law Machines arrive right behind us to set up the voting booths. Any person can only vote once on a Law for any given planet, and you only get to vote Yes. The votes are never erased, and they can even build up over several generations until they reach a threshold number. And when enough people vote in favor... the Law is official. And enforced."
"What are these laws?"
"They start with the big crimes," Tess said. "Murder, rape. And if someone commits that crime... they're taken away."
Luna blinked.
"How does the Machine know about the crime? What is its means for determining the identity of the criminal?"
"We don't know."
"Is there a trial?"
"No. Never. We've got civil courts, and some criminal ones for things outside the thirty-two, but... the Law Machines just take people."
She tried not to swallow. "Do they come back?"
Tess shook her head.
As steadily as her voice would allow the words to emerge, "Are the Machines ever wrong?"
The girl did swallow. Hard. "Some people say they make mistakes. But... I never knew of anyone who proved it."
"Thirty-two laws."
"Yes."
"Enforced absolutely."
"Yes."
"Is there any escape?"
"You move into space. The Machines don't operate when you get really interstellar. Some people make a habit -- almost a living -- from just moving to another planet where the Laws haven't been voted in yet. They call themselves Freemovers..."
And then Luna was furious.
"Your humans," she tightly said, fully aware and uncaring of the white crowding in at the edge of her eyes, "are so desperate to preserve their right to murder and rape, that they will travel to new worlds in order to continue doing so without consequence? Would arrival here count for that purpose?"
Tess winced.
"I... Princess, I..."
"Explain, Ms. Beckett. I am not accusing you of this. I do understand you were in the midst of changing your home for a school experience when your accident brought you here. But I would truly wish to understand just how desperate your people are to hurt others."
"...that's the top of the Law list."
Luna waited.
The girl shivered. Seemingly without her knowledge, the long arms wrapped inwards, and she hugged herself.
Slowly, "I -- try to talk to ponies. I liked talking to aliens, when some came to my planet. I talk... and I usually find out we're more alike than we think. For the good stuff and the bad stuff. And mostly the bad. Princess... there are humans in my world who want to just keep hurting people, and they usually get stopped by other humans. Hoffmannites can take care of our own. But... Princess, have you ever met anypony who treated pettiness as an art? Somepony who, if your lawn was trimmed an inch higher than hers, would drag you into civil court for making her home look bad by comparison, ruining her neighborhood, she'd spread rumors and form committees and do everything it took to get you to move away, just because she had standards and she was the only pony in the world who could meet them? Which was the whole reason she had them -- to make sure everypony else fell short?"
Luna took a long moment for silently trying to forget most of the non-binding arbitration requests which had trotted into her Open Palace sessions, and failed.
"Several," she tensely said. "And your connection?"
"That's... the bottom of the list."
Luna stopped breathing.
"Imagine that those ponies... could vote that anyone who violated their standards would just -- be taken away," Tess shakily said. "The further you go down the list, the pettier the crimes get. Casual littering comes in at number twenty-four, and then... Princess, imagine that those ponies could travel from settled zone to settled zone, voting their anger into law. That's what we have. There are Freemovers because there's Restrictors. They're a small population -- compared to the entire group of human species. But when they all get together, they overwhelm any planetary population. And their whole lives center around traveling from planet to planet, making us all live by their rules -- or die from them. We have to keep settling new planets because the old ones become legally uninhabitable. We're just trying to stay ahead of the curve. And the Restrictors are just waiting for us to run out of planets."
She imagined the ponies who made up what was often called the Loyal Opposition. Pictured them traveling from settled zone to settled zone, one set of votes at a time...
Equestria's laws made it impossible, of course: no matter how the Day and Night Courts might vote within their respective domains, it was ultimately the signature of a Princess which made law -- and despite what some of the other nations had suggested, neither sister had ever seen the need for any form of 'veto override'. But with this Machine...
Luna forced herself to take a breath, and then another.
"I would assume," she said, "that the Restrictors only arrive after the major crimes of violence are against this Law."
Tess managed a smile. "They're famous for it."
"How does your own homeworld manage?"
"The gravity keeps most of them away... and we have ways of scaring off the rest. But for other places..."
Luna nodded.
"And the entity who created these devices?"
"Was the universe's biggest jerk."
Luna couldn't argue.
"We have to stop it," she said. "By any means necessary." Because in a single generation, there would never be enough ponies to accomplish their Restriction dreams -- but with votes accumulating over centuries... "Do you have any ideas regarding how we might accomplish this?"
Tess' fingers knit together. She wrung her hands.
"Something hurt it," she said. "From everything you said, it's damaged. Badly. Usually, they self-repair: if anyone somehow puts a scratch in one, it'll fill in as you watch. Whoever that woman was, she managed to hurt it enough that it's not fixing itself -- and she still wound up having to run. Did you check her body for weapons?"
"We will," Luna assured her, but suspected they would come up empty: if the woman had possessed a weapon which would keep working, she undoubtedly would have been using it. "Continue."
Tess began to pace, hands still interlocked. "You can't block the voting booth," she went on. "It'll do anything to make sure ponies can vote. But it shouldn't kill, not unless the damage really messed it up. Normally, the automatic Law -- which never gets voted on is that -- well, that attacking a Law Machine is illegal. But even ponies who attack it get to vote, so it might not take them away until after they cast..."
"It will destroy barricades," Luna guessed.
Tess nodded as her speed increased. "Ferry ponies in. Go around with pamphlets. It'll get out the vote one way or another. And this is just the first booth. There's going to be more, once it works out the translations. But... Princess, it is damaged -- and it's not thinking clearly. No Law Machine I know of would ever call a planet human based on one person who'd just arrived. You should have been able to talk it into turning around right there: it has to be a deliberate colonization attempt. This Law Machine is broken. I can tell you what a normal one would do. A sane one. This one... maybe you could still logic it out, especially if it did start to repair itself." She paused, turned towards Luna and smiled. "That might even be the best hope. Once it's fixed, it'll understand that there was only one human. And then it'll leave. Your magic might not find a way to hurt it, but repairing it..."
Luna closed her eyes. "Ms. Beckett?"
"Princess?"
"What if it becomes aware of the camp and cells? Between the two, there are more than six hundred humans in Equestria. Which does not begin to account for any incursions into the other nations, any arrivals we manage to turn back on a daily basis, and those we have simply not found yet. In total, we could have several thousand humans spread across the world. Would it consider that as a colonization attempt, especially given how many incursions are deliberate?"
She heard the girl stop moving.
After a too-long moment, both resumed breathing again.
Their plans became increasingly desperate as Sun-raising approached. None of them were feasible.
