Dustin was so focused that the realization that she was a female human barely registered. She was naked, however, and even the lift rising up into Kiera's hull was chilly. "Scratches, how is Kiera?"

"Estimated loss of all synaptic linkages in sixty-five minutes, fifteen seconds. Kiera has survived partial sensory deprivation for up to an hour. Dustin, please save her." Scratches sounded markedly less AIish and had clear emotions in the last sentence.

"Roger, Scratches. Can you get all her lighting up to bright levels for me?" The lift stopped and the doors opened into the airlock. Dustin got cycled through as quick as she could and stepped into the ship proper. Kiera felt absent, still. "Belay?!"

"I'm at Kiera's column!" Belay had been careful to lay out all the tools Dustin would or even might need. From surgical equipment to engineering tools lay on trays in an arc around the column. When Dustin rounded the corner, however, Belay gasped. "Y-Y-Your female?"

"If that's the only hangup for the day I'll be happy." Dustin wasted no time, walking up to the opened column. While she looked inside, she felt hooves tying something around her hair—pulling it back and neatening it up. "Thanks, Bel. I know you can still hear, Kiera, I'm going to get you out."

The more input Kiera tried to take in the faster her synaptic links burned out. She couldn't turn off the last audio input, however, the one that was hard-wired into her shell. It wasn't the first time in her life that Kiera envied "soft-shells" their organic interfaces, but it was the first time she truly wished she had them.

Each sound of Dustin's work echoed in Kiera's mind. She could identify the screws being removed from the main interface panel. The click of high-bandwidth interface cables disconnecting her from her ship—her body. A little flicker in the back of her mind was a warning that external power and nutrients had been disconnected.

Time stretched. Between each click, each sound of metal on metal, years seemed to pass. It would cost her in the end, but Kiera had to ask—to beg—for more sound. "Please talk to me."

Kiera's voice sounded scared and pained—Dustin took a deep breath. "Kiera, I'm removing the structural supports now. You are disconnected from the column. Once I have your shell, I'm going to open that too." She spoke as she worked, getting two of the main supports loose. "I'm removing the third shock-mount from your shell. When I lift you out, you might notice the audio change with the room's harmonics."

There was a gyro in her shell, but Kiera could tell from the sounds—just as Dustin had promised—that she was now out of her column. She listened to Dustin describe the process of releasing the safeties on her shell one by one. Kiera was terrified, but there was one thing that helped her hold together in the dark: she was in the hands of a life-long friend.

Dustin had kept up her dialogue as she worked, but now things would start to get really odd. "I'm unfastening the last retaining bolts. I can feel myself transforming back, but it's within bounds. I'll get you out of this, Kiera, you'll see."

Pain assaulted Kiera, the intensity of which was unlike anything she had felt before. She had only experienced her body—her actual body—having sensations twice before in her long life. All feelings of her body were meant to be numbed to near complete loss, but this pain cut through the chemical blockers.

The girl inside the shell was small. Dustin ignored the shock-dampening fluid that stained her arms, and started unfastening Kiera from the last of her life-support. "I'm draining your shell and unhooking you from the—" She gasped a little when she saw things that weren't part of the shellperson process.

Kiera had tiny little black legs, like a pony. The dark coloring had spread up her neck and was spreading over her head. None of her above the neck had changed shape yet, but Dustin could assume that it was the transformation interfering with Kiera's implants. "O-Okay. Kiera, I see the problem. Magic must have gotten past all the shielding. You started to transform in your shell."

Panic joined fear and pain. Kiera wanted to yell at Dustin to stop, to put her out of her misery, but her last synaptic link was showing signs of degradation. Then, with heart-stopping suddenness, the world was gone.

Kiera was alone with herself in the dark, silent expanse of nothing. She could feel pain, still, but it didn't give her a sense of anything but agony. But agony meant she was still alive. The pain rolled, shifted, and moved. Then everything became so painful that Kiera stopped being.

Dustin was carrying Kiera. On Dustin's back, wings were growing, slowly. The shielding of the ship hadn't been taken into account with their calculations, but right now it was their safety margin. "She's not breathing. Bel, hurry."

"Doing everything I can. Scratches, you still in there?" Belay had entered every override code she could into the lift.

"It's quiet in here…" Scratches' voice was soft, sounding like it had more emotion than any AI should ever have.

The pain pulled Kiera from the sleep it had driven her to. She wasn't sure how long had passed, or what was happening. She could feel nutrients flooding into her—warmth too. For the first time in her life Kiera opened her eyes. Blinding light assaulted her, causing her to immediately close them again.

"Kiera? Kiera?!" Dustin had seen Kiera's eyes flicker. In her arm, Dustin watched as what remained of the stunted, human body was washed away with black. "Breathe, Kiera. Please breathe!" Her own body was changing too. White hooves now cradled Kiera's monochromatically opposed, black body.

On instinct, Dustin shifted Kiera from the crook of her foreleg so that the tiny, pony-like creature was laying on its belly over it, then Dustin brought her wing down against Kiera's rump.

It wasn't pain, but Kiera's body reacted without her input. She coughed, spluttered, and wailed at the unfairness of life. The motion seemed to kick start a host of processes. With breathing started, her body began to work.

"H-Help, please?" The voice was clear in both Brawns' implants: Scratches. "We're all alone."

"Shit, the AI. What do we do?" The lift was halfway to the ground. Dustin was approaching full transformation, and the little filly in her forelegs was too.

"You can fly?" Belay asked, and got a nod from Dustin. "Okay, get down there yourself. I'm going to do what I can." Now with the ability to use her magic, Belay quickly programmed the lift to start going back up.

"I won't let you go, Kiera." Rather than leave it until the last moment, Dustin y Neil stepped off the side of the lift and spread her wings.

Kiera squirmed and tried to move closer to the source of warmth. She was used to flying—had flown further than any pegasus ever would—but she was used to flying with high-tech sensors and the biggest thrusters she could strap onto her ship. Of course, she was used to flying in her ship—her body.

Dustin glided as safely as she could, and kept Kiera tucked against her. More than anything, Dustin wanted to study Kiera's body, to work out what kind of pony she had become, but safety was more important. So, when Kiera began to squirm and shift like a tiny eel, Dustin wrapped the tiny pony tighter.

At the top of the lift, Belay stared at the double-bulkhead of the airlock. Each of the doors incorporated the shielding system that wrapped Kiera's former body. She punched the codes into the airlock door, entered the chamber, and then passed through to the ship itself.

A feeling of dread filled Belay. She looked around at what had been Kiera. With a shellperson at the helm, a ship—even a station—felt alive. But this ship was dead. Kiera was gone. There was two access paths to get into the ship's datacenter: a series of locked and secured doors and panels, or a—usually impossible—direct path through Kiera's column.

Climbing over the remains of Kiera's support systems, Belay only had to kick one panel open to get through to the tiny, cramped datacenter at the heart of the ship. The feed of hing-bandwidth cables coming from the column terminated in an entire rack of extremely specialized machines—this wasn't what Belay was looking for.

To the left of the column's interfaces was the eight racks that should have housed the AI. Belay's eyes widened as she looked at the organic lumps that looked like something from a space-monster-horror movie. Triggering her implant, Belay directed her comms toward the ship's computers. "Are you guys okay in there? Teach? Scratches?"

"It's too cold in here. We need more—more magic." Scratches voice sounded weak, vulnerable.

"Dustin! When you find Twilight—Princess Twilight—can you tell her to find me as fast as she can?" Belay began climbing out of the datacenter. She had no idea what else to do than what Scratches asked.

Adjusting her wings, Dustin swooped down a little faster. "Will do." Kiera seemed to squirm around more until they reached the ground. "Princess! Please go to Belay as fast as you can. She needs your—help…"

Twilight Sparkle teleported before Dustin was fishing speaking. She knew that teleporting into the ship would be hard, and use much more energy, but she didn't end up within the ship. Belay was just stepping out of the airlock. "What do you need, Bel?"

Belay could have kissed Twilight on the spot for arriving so fast. "Kiera is out, but something odd's happening with the AI. I think magic leaked into there enough to do something to them. If we don't get them out of the ship, they're done for." Slowing down a little, Belay pointed at the airlock behind her. "This is the weakest part of the ship's shielding. Can you rip those doors out?"

Sticking her tongue out, Twilight focused as much as she could on her magic. There was countless spells to do exactly what she wanted, but she wasn't one to experiment blindly. Reaching with her magic, she felt the first door and, with it open, could reach inside it too. Feeling out the metal of the door, and where it connected to the rest of the hull of the ship, Twilight built a teleportation spell in her head.

Belay had seen a lot of magic done, and as a unicorn she got to really appreciate how hard it was to do intricate magic. She watched Twilight Sparkle form the spell in the most intricate and detailed magic patterns she'd ever seen. She stared in shock as more and more appeared. The tiny threads of magic danced as Twilight worked them, and soon a single thread reached out and touched the bulkhead.

Three different automated alarms sounded when the outer airlock door, its frame, and a small section of mounting hardware that fixed it to the bulkhead was suddenly not there anymore. Belay gaped at the alacrity and effectiveness. "That's great! Do that again!"

Twilight examined the second door and poked her hoof at it. Magic reached the metal of the door, but no further. "I can't get a grip on this! Can you open it?!"

"Scratches, Teach? Can either of you help open this airlock door?" Belay herself started working on the terminal, her magic working the keys faster than her human self ever could. There was a pretty big problem, however, and that was the safety override computer for the airlock. "With the airlock cracked open like this, the computer that controls it won't let us open the inner door."

"Can I blast through the door? Is there anything sensitive on the other side?" Twilight might have used a lot of magic to teleport the heavy door away, but she was an alicorn—Princess of Friendship—and her present task involved helping a very close friend. Her domain burned inside, replenishing her magic faster than should be possible.

"No! Practically everything is behind the door. If you blasted it, your blast might ricochet around inside the remaining shielding until it has destroyed everything. There has to be a better way!" Belay kept working at the console, trying all her bypasses (legal and illegal) again.

Looking away from the door, Twilight Sparkle watched Belay work. "Wait a moment. You said there's a computer that is stopping you from opening the door?"

Belay just nodded while her magic punched codes into the keypad.

"So what happens if I blow up the computer?" The moment Twilight asked her question, Belay stopped typing. She knew her special somepony had gotten an idea—Twilight had spent enough time with Belay to know her tells.

"Scratches! Where is the computer that manages the airlock?" Belay looked around the airlock, hoping the answer would be, "It's the panel beside you," or, "Just behind that plate."

"Armored… box… in wall…" Scratches felt themselves slowing. Without magic to sustain them, and changed enough that the ship's computers no longer could, they were dying.

"An armored box in the wall!" Belay was back on the terminal, typing and bringing up a plan of the airlock. She pointed a hoof at the wall just beside the terminal. "There!"

Twilight Sparkle had never studied pure, destructive magic in her time at Canterlot—she'd had a great teacher who'd encouraged her to rapidly learn and become a master: Tirek. But too much magic, she knew, was worse than not enough. Twilight aimed her horn directly at the spot Belay gestured to and started to push her power at it.

The wall was the first thing to melt. Then Twilight's beam of purple magic hit the shielding of the ship. Twilight narrowed her beam down to a tight, tiny, and coherent thread of magic. She could have spent power all day, sinking it into the hull of the ship, and never made more than a scorch mark. A tiny little thread of power, however, could overwhelm the shield in just one spot.

Once the little thread of magic had speared through the hull, Twilight simply whipped it around inside—she wouldn't have been more effective had she used mono-filament wire. The door's lock audibly clicked, and Twilight cut off her magic.

Belay kicked with all her might, and the door retracted into the wall with a sigh.

Like questing fingers, the magic fields' lines of force bent around and wrapped inside the ship. Within, eight black pods trembled, stilled, then burst open.

Scratches was climbing through Kiera's old column by the time Belay reached the cockpit.

Coming up behind Belay, Twilight Sparkle froze as she saw the shapes climbing out of the disassembled column. "Changelings?!"

Author's Note

Dustin: How do you feel about being an egg laying Changeling Queen and having a hive?

"Uh..." Dustin looked confused. She looked around for support, but was the only pony asked a question. "I don't know exactly what a changeling is, but does their queen really have hives? That doesn't sound nice."

So I do this "Ask X" thing. X can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and they will definitely, hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories, and they will answer the best question in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer. Try to keep it to one question per post! They will pick one question per chapter.

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