Author's Note

I apologize for the wait, between contracting and recovering from Covid, my travel to see my wife and genuinely planning on the remainder of this project; things got delayed.

Chapter 62 is also done and will be out shortly.

Fiaura

Chapter 61: The Box's Secrets

“Where there is mystery, it is generally suspected there must also be evil. For in the knowledge of that mystery’s secrets is sorrow. Those that know the most must mourn the deepest. For the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life.”
-Lord Byron

Three days had passed and yet nothing had been done with Alguacil’s body. Everyone else was buried and gone. I knew it was time to start digging, and even if we knew how the boxes worked, leaving his body unburied on a chilled slab was just not sitting right with me. Not to mention others began to view us with a strange wariness, and Stormy was downright furious about it. I looked to Nyota and Quick Stitch for answers, but they had none.

Quick Stitch sighed, “He should have gotten up; Whoever was going to come out has done so already, unless the laser actually damaged it, though I find that hard to believe since, well, he didn’t turn to ash.” I nodded and turned my head as we began preparations to dig a grave for a friend we sorely missed.

He might have been a big ass sometimes, but he was at least decent. Stormy came out holding a blanket with something oval-shaped inside. Oh… I guess she should have the hat to give to whoever is in that egg, I thought as I walked up to her and offered Alguacil’s hat and his revolver, which I was honestly having trouble lifting with one hoof. I had never held or modified his revolver, but it was so much heavier in my hoof at that moment than I expected. I could understand why his hat would be hefty. I had armored it up and made it into more of a hybrid helmet than a plain old hat, but that sombrero and pistol could not compare to how heavy my heart felt as I approached Stormy.

“Yeah?” I offered up the hat and placed the pistol into the helmet crown. Stormy glared down at me with her soul piercing eyes that softened immediately, tears forming in them as I looked up at her. I felt the warm sting of tears in my own eyes and the cold trail starting to roll down my cheek. Stormy lifted the weight from my hoof with her free talon, and I felt like the world would fall apart at that very moment.

I lowered my head and mumbled, “I am sorry, I did everything I could.”

Stormy snorted, “What was that?”

I lifted my head and she saw the tears, her facade of stern iron cracked and became as brittle as glass dropped off a building. She leaned down and gave me a soft hug. I felt the hard egg through the blanket shift inside. She held it close to her chest while I felt her cold tears hitting my shoulder. I wasn’t in my heavy armor, just what I woke up in, a stable-suit with a few extra plates. The 43 on the collar and back had been repaired by so many different yellow threads at this point, that you could count how many times I’d been wounded by the changes of the color shading.

I stepped back to look upon Alguacil and walked towards him. We hadn’t built a coffin for him, just in case he became another Quick Stitch. Remember, Buddy and Quick Stitch are in the same box, it’s okay. So long as Quick Stitch lives, Buddy lives too. That brought a strange comfort to me, and I was reminded of Nyota staying in our room, provided by the city for free by a stipend I swore was his but merely was on a piece of cloth that somepony was wearing. He was staying up there to care for our children.

I sighed at his sacrifice to not be at this funeral and to not expose our new babies to seeing someone be buried because of them. I let out a long sigh, I’ll have to tell stories of Alguacil to them.

“Come on Sunrise, You should be happy! You got your family back–Nyota’s here with those little eldritch be–I mean your foals! Your mother lost this battle, so why the long face?”

Pink, I lost my friend. A friend who had started to become something better than their past. You saw it and we witnessed how that egg was made.

“Weeeelll… not exactly how it was made–we only had the radio, remember? However, that’s not the point!” I heard Pink take a soft sigh, before she made her point. “Sometimes, you have to crack a few lives to send to the afterlife to make a better wasteland omelet?” She offered, attempting to lighten a heavy blow of a lesson to me.

I growled under my breath and glared at Pink, who was sitting on my compass provided by the E.F.S. system from the PipBuck. Pink, how much have we survived? How much have we been through? And yet it was a random, no-name Enclave trooper who killed my friend. I felt so helpless about it. I didn’t even know who had taken Alguacil’s life. Only that someone from the Enclave, in self-defense of his airship, had slain one of my friends and companions.

I have to live with that. I stared at Alguacil’s corpse on the plank that would lower him into the ground. I have to live with my freedom being bought by the blood of others, many others.

“They were griffons, many of them Sunrise. They agreed to do this because they wanted a fight they could win. Go on, at least accept that they volunteered for this.” I let out a long sigh and nodded at Pink’s comment.

Why did they have to die for me, though? She had no response to that as we started to gather around the grave, laying down Alguacil’s body and setting up the mechanism to lower him into the ground.

I took my place in front of the grave, facing the audience gathered around Alguacil’s body. “Thank you all for coming. Today we mourn and celebrate the life of some creature very special to a few and certainly known to others.” I paused and allowed myself to take in a breath, helping hold in my tears and keeping my voice from cracking.

“I am not going to say he was the best creature by far, like all of us he was flawed. But he was working on those flaws to become better. He no longer viewed only the law as the thing to be upheld. He found love,” I nodded to Stormy and used this opportunity to hold my tears back for another moment, “He found friends,” I nodded to my group of friends. Then I slowly reached up and put a hoof to my chest.

“He found something he considered worth fighting for,” I turned my head to face him, lowering my head a bit. “I will not forget your sacrifice. I am proud to have called you friend and seen you grow so much so quickly.” It was at that moment, his body lit up like a firefly. He was so bright that I had to shield my face.

“What the hell?” Someone watching called out and I turned my head away to see Quick Stitch approaching and staring intently.

My sorrow evaporated and panic began to rise. Is this how it happens? What is going on?

Chifundo spoke up, “That is no longer Alguacil, that is another creature from the wheel!”

Just as he spoke, the light faded away. Pink leaned up over a bunker of sandbags that had appeared. It took me a moment to take in what I was seeing. A pegasus, with a red coat and light beige mane and tail, wearing armor with a big E across it holding his eyes shut. “Ehhh… that really hurts, where am I?”

I heard guns cocking and unholstering. I reacted in a flash,leaping forward and surrounded the pegasus, pinning him under my smaller frame and trying to impose myself as much as possible, “No! No more violence! We already lost too many, this one does not know what is going on.”

I felt whoever this pegasus was looking around, his mane tickling my inner forelegs before he gulped audibly and ducked his head down. I was now surrounded by angry mourning creatures who had just had several Enclave troopers kill those they loved and try to enslave me. Now I was shielding the new creature from unwarranted vengeance. What do I do?

“I’m not 100% here, but perhaps being a pony shield for the pegasus was probably the WORST call?” I growled at Pink, giving her a glare to inform her that advice wasn’t appreciated when Nyota stepped forward. Of all the creatures poised to shoot the newly generated pegasus trooper under me, I was surprised to see he was not one of them.

“Hold up everyone. This one isn’t armed and isn’t from the group that we had to save Sunrise from.” I let out a sigh of relief. “As much as even I wanna break his neck,” I tensed up as my own husband was possibly not on my side. Something spiritual in nature picked at me, making my doubts rise and my ability to speak stolen from me.

“Just calm down, we can put him in a jail cell until we sort all this mess out, alright?” Nyota gave me a look over his shoulder that told me we would be talking about this later. Then he turned back to the crowd, “Stormy, you’re sheriff now right?”

Stormy stepped forward with a glare upon her face and a firm nod as she put her hat back on and kept the egg on her back in its pouch. “I am.”

She pushed past Nyota, who turned around and dropped his knees like he was ready to pounce. Stormy pulled out a pair of scrap metal hoof-cuffs before slapping them onto the pegasus and starting to tie his wings. He kept making noises of confusion, “Who the— but why— what did I—”

Stormy stuffed a talon into his mouth, the nails raking his cheeks and drawing blood, “Anything y’all say can and will be used against ya, got it red wing-brain?” She leaned down to glare into his sunburst eyes and growled like a lioness about to pounce. The pegasus nodded enthusiastically. I could see sweat forming around his head and cheeks.

“Good. Sunrise, get off ‘im.” I took a step to the side, as she pulled him roughly onto his hooves and started to lead him away. “Shame on y’all for thinking frontier justice was somethin’ Alguacil would want. No, we do this right and by the law, or we don’t do nothin’ at all. Sunrise, y’all gonna have to come up and explain this one.” With that, we went from funeral to being in a frying pan of issues.

*****

So we were inside the jailhouse, the pegasus had been gagged because as we were walking away from the funeral. He kept trying to talk almost the whole way. Stormy was not having any of that and gagged him with a piece of rope. He was still mumbling through the rope. “Don’t y’all know when to shut the hell up?”

Stormy, however, was in no good mood. She growled at him while the pegasus kept trying to say things through the rope in his mouth and move his wings despite the rope around them that was also attached to his four hooves to keep him held in place. “Stormy, perhaps we should listen to him, at least find out who he is.”

“No, y’all are gonna explain to me how in the Gryphus baked-ass a Enclave trooper came out of Alguacil during his funeral, or I’m just gonna start putting bullets in heads till someone does.” Stormy took out her revolver and clicked it as she pulled the hammer back. It wasn’t as large as Alguacil’s weapon but just having it out made all of us nervous; I could feel the beads of sweat on my head.

I looked at Quick Stitch as he took a hesitant step forward and cleared his throat with a grunt. “Stormy, I’m going to explain as best I can, and if something gets particularly upsetting, I’m sure Sunrise will step in and prevent you from doing something you will regret, alright?” He spoke very quietly, in a very formal and deliberate voice, like a father trying to console a child, which even managed to calm me down despite every muscle ready on a knife edge, to jump in front of Stormy’s aim if she fired.

Stormy groaned and unclicked the gun, “Make it good, horn-head.”

Quick Stitch cleared his throat, taking out a small case from his saddlebag and starting to shuffle through several print-outs and x-rays from it. “All of us have these boxes inside us. It’s a form of cybernetic. Still with me?”

Stormy leaned forward and her hat fell off, but she paid it no mind as she looked at the x-ray with awe while it was held up to the light. “These boxes have the spirits and DNA compositions of a variety of creatures inside them, somehow. I don’t quite fully understand it yet or how it works. Only that there is a method to trap a creature inside, and once activated with enough energy or spare biomass around, it will form the next pony on the roulette wheel.”

Stormy’s beak was agape as she stared at Quick Stitch. He kept showing her more documentation from the Ministry of Morale and Stable-Tec proving his case as well as his own notes. He made sure to go over each part of the diagram, his notes, and other information as he spoke. “The boxes were made to create soldiers that once killed will resurrect, usually as the appropriate specialist or soldier type to deal with an ongoing situation. The problem however, is that these soldiers do not remember anything that happened once they resurrected after they were boxed. Further, the boxes degrade over an extreme amount of time. So instead of about an hour tops to get up, Alguacil took almost 3 full days.”

He turned to the red pegasus, “Technically Alguacil is still in there, however, though we have no idea how many other creatures are in there with him, nor who will come out each time. Furthermore, Sunrise has decided it is definitely morally bankrupt to just shoot creatures that come out willy-nilly to get the result you want. I think she may be correct somewhat, as I am still unsure how much of that creature is biomass and how much is hard-light.”

Stormy fixed her jaw and I spoke up, “Hard-light?”

Quick Stitch nodded, “You see, the box takes time to heal wounds and repair the body. You and Nyota were able to have children only because the box was able to fully repair your body in the meantime. But for someone like that red pegasus, parts of him are hard-light magic acting as biomass until the healing process can finish. Same goes for perhaps myself for the first several weeks after you met me. Or all of you when you woke up in that pool together.”

Stormy, “So you’re telling me Al’s not dead?”

Quick Stitch cleared his throat and shook his head, “Well no, Alguacil is dead. If anything, we are in a state of undeath or unlife; a place where our lives are not entirely a living creature anymore, sustained by the cybernetic box inside us. Hence, when I tried to remove and tinker with it inside you Sunrise,” He turned to me and pointed at my chest, “You immediately flat-lined. The good news is that because of their enchantments of spirit I don’t entirely understand, they are mostly indestructible without use of a… well, a mini-megaspell or some other extremely powerful explosive or directed magic attack that they cannot absorb for energy. Bad news, you can still die and the box has to regenerate you.”

Now it was my turn to be stunned, “How… how long have you known this?”

Quick Stitch nodded, “Two days before we rescued you, it was all just a theory. I did not have much to do while we waited to gather our forces. Now with this red pegasus’ appearance, I know the theory is mostly right.”

Stormy and I both had to fall on our haunches and stare at Quick Stitch as if he had just revealed some deep profound secret of the universe that we had to take it in. This was going to take quite a bit to fully understand.

“Well, perhaps before we continue, this pegasus can stay here while we decide what to do, but Stormy, Sunrise, would you get our friends and help me down underneath The Roof; there is a very important reason you were drawn here.” With that, Quick Stitch headed out and we followed, gathering up several with us along the way. Quick Stitch took time to fill them all in while I had to break the chance of a new truth of the world.

*****

Below The Roof, in a place that we felt absolutely terrified of, was a large bunker facility that had been reinforced and fortified. Quick Stitch took several minutes to open it up as we took in the surroundings. The walls after the first two flights of stairs were covered in some sort of crystal growth that glowed black, but the blackness generated light for us to see. The concrete turned into rough rock cave walls. Things were clearly worked and smoothed but not replaced with new building materials.

Deep underneath was a large reinforced steel-stubbornite door, with huge cross-beams that stretched across the main door, keeping it closed. The door could have fit a tank through it, but considering there were stairs to get down here, I wasn’t sure what was inside.

“Well you see,” Quick Stitch spoke while he worked, “This is where the creature that possessed Corners came from. This is also the same place where that egg I swallowed and barfed up came from. They’re all forms of the T’Doshians.” He kept tinkering with the door and managed to get the first of several locks undone.

“Normally Alguacil would pick these locks, but ya know why I’m doing it instead.” I nodded to Quick Stitch and then looked at the rest of our group who were transfixed upon him. “There was apparently an explosion here during the war–it’s when the T’Doshians crashed. Their ship had… things on it. A nursery among them, but also there was some sort of zebra spirit here, hence why some of them are insane and turned into those predator creatures.”

Stormy groaned, “So why haven’t we seen or heard of them before?”

Quick Stitch smirked at that and turned as he opened the next lock, “Because they were locked down here until Corners possessed form sent a signal to unlock this door. A signal I cannot figure out.” Finally he got to the last lock. “Are you sure you want to see this? They turned that crash ship into a huge research lab, and it isn’t pretty.”

I nodded. There was no turning back now. My throat had dried out from nerves and my body was sitting on edge. Something about this place was so familiar, yet it wasn’t at the same time. With a hiss, the air-tight door opened and groaned as it slowly moved aside. There were lights on the other side, bright white lights. In a haze, I took a step forward. Pink yelled at the top of her lungs but she felt so distant, so code, “Stop stretching at the wall!”

ooOOoo

I was in a room with no lights currently on, but I was also unrestrained. I looked around as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. The only light source came from outside the door frame. Pink wasn’t here. No wait, she was. But she was nothing but a cloud at the edge of my vision. Still with the distant voice, like when I had first awoken in the pool.

My coat color was changed, now the green I had come to know in the wasteland. Somewhere from the darkness, the door unlocked and opened with a whine of unlubricated metal against metal. I turned to see three ponies in science lab coats. One with the Ministry of Morale logo above her nametag, “C.L.” Just two letters.

The others were wearing Stable-Tec logos. Names “S.W.” and “J.B.” They were holding a black cube with silver etching drawn over it. That’s… That’s my box. Wait, is this…?

Past Pink and Present Pink both spoke in unison, in a strangely unnerving way, “No, not trapped in one of those! Anything but that! I’ll do anything, let me out!” She was freaking out, trying to escape. It felt like a sledgehammer hitting the inside of a skull everytime the cloud smacked into the barrier that held her inside.

Pink! I’m here! This is just a memory, it already happened. The pause brought clarity to her as they approached.

“If dis does not vork, ve vill lose our only successful test subject,” J.B. protested to the other two.

“If we don’t, we will lose her anyway! If she dies, if she escapes again, we lose her. This is a chance to make sure these recombulators will work and work on us too. For immortality, this creature is but a small risk to pay.” I recognized the voices. That accent was off, it must be something they fixed later but that was 88, 71, and 9! That is all of them! Wait, whose voice was that, why do I recognize it even more?

I narrowed my eyes and tried to see through the obscurity, only for bells to ring in my head, my vision to warp and distort, my head to pound harder. Present Pink was comforting her past self as the Ministry of Morale scientist with the C.L. pulled out a small remote. Once it moved out of the shadow illusion that kept me from recognizing them, I saw it; A remote with dozens of controls, all labeled and a number dial showing the digits for 17 at the top of the remote, a digital display too.

Something that high tech, that advanced. That’s… That’s…

“The control module for the recombulators. The only thing that could release me from here.” I nodded to Pink.

And the one thing that can open a box reliably to trap a creature, body and soul inside. They pointed the box at me and I took a deep inhale. My body surged forward as I rushed them, screaming as the box opened and a blinding light made of the blackest black emerged and surrounded me. Suddenly, I fell into oblivion.

ooOOoo

I was standing in the showers, my mind now my own. The water cascading over me like the feeling of being myself again. There was a feeling inside me as we pieced the plan together. It was rather disgusting.

Pink and I had calculated it all out, but now I could feel the memory being sealed behind the wall along with 17. I could feel it fading fast and had to remember what to do.

I had gone to use the toilet and retrieved my stool into a plastic bag I had used that to make a sort of fertilizer bomb with food I didn’t eat, and where did I place it? Think think think… where is it?

“Silly, we put it into the fannypack of the guard, remember? Oh right, you wouldn’t remember, does that mean you’re gonna forget about me too?”

Who are you? I questioned as the image of a pony in the corner of my eye turned into a pink floating cloud. Whoever she was, she was right; the guard shifts had been precisely calculated and one of them would be walking along, going to his private place to relieve himself, and once the armor cycled and compressed the plastic bag inside its waste pack, boom. No pain, just a quick instant explosion that would set off a chain reaction with the armor’s reactor. Right, all I have to do is…

ooOOoo

That was…

“Us being boxed together and the day you forgot about me. My death attached me to you when Stable-Tec captured my soul. Who I used to be, panicking, not wanting to be with you. I wanted to move on when I died, go be with my friends. Not put into your body as a living soul jar to share.”

And my present raging against my captors and the things they did to me. They changed my coat color and you—

“I begged for you to accept me back in. I didn’t realize it would literally ya know, take a second armageddon threat to get that but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.”

“What about your friends? Ya know, Twilight, Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy? Celestia? Luna?”

Pink’s voice cracked, she fell to her knees and started pounding the ground as she let out a wail of agony. This wasn’t just crying because you were upset; this was a raw primal howl of anguish. “They’re dead! They already moved on to the other side!” I felt for her.

Here we were, stuck somewhere in memory limbo between the present and past, trapped in my mind together. She could never see her friends again. Much like I could not see Algaucil or Buddy, yet they would eventually regenerate. Her friends, they were gone, dead for good. She wasn’t allowed to die with them or even really grieve for them. She was in something worse than my limbo. At least my actions still mattered and changed the lives of others. Her’s couldn’t do anything more than influence me, and she took almost 188 years to get far enough to where I would listen.

We need the command module to release you? So one day I can release all those souls trapped in the boxes?

Pink nodded with a long expression as she dried her tears. “It isn’t the remote, it’s some sort of big broadcaster and server inside Stable 43.”

Where is Stable 43?

“You made me block it, keep it caged in there with that monster, Seventeen. Just like we did to them.” My eyes suddenly snapped to Pink and every sensory organ I had in this place went into overload when she spoke those last few words.

We what!?

“Seventeen didn’t want to kill them. You didn’t want to. You hoped you could somehow save them back then, so you captured them one at a time and deleted the memories, all of them. Then we tricked Seventeen into the cage. I helped make her desperate enough to trust me and we locked her away. The only way to get to the command module is your PipBuck, which has a DNA lock to you.” I looked down at my arm as the world started to swell and swirl around me. I had gotten used to these sorts of memories. Some happen in a second in the real world, others take minutes, or even hours. Yet they always moved faster than the present day. It was so strange to have absolute clarity.

Why? Why did I do that?

“Because immortality is a power no one can use right.”

No, Pink, why the breadcrumb trail to get back? Why not destroy the command module too?

“Because you promised me to help get me free. It just took a while to remember your promise and renew it. You didn’t know how to use it back then and now that memory is locked in there with Seventeen.”

There was a few slow clop of hooves as well as a soft chuckle from the darkness and I looked to see a set of bars holding back a white version of me. The version I had missed and longed for so long, a return to what I was. What I could never really be again without destroying everything I loved. “Yes, locked in here with me. You two made me so desperate I trusted her to reset everything, but no, she locked me in here and you woke up in that damn pool! Now you’ve got my little borderline sociopath of a pegasus upstairs in a physical cage and me in a mental cage. He probably recognizes you, stupid filly.”

How does the control module work?

“Let me out or you’ll never know. I burned the books. Only 9 knows how to work it, or me.”

Pink snarled, “And you’ll immediately take a big dookie in her cake before you kill all our friends. By Celestia’s glorious bakery powered ass, no! I’d take another thirty lifetimes figuring it out before I let you out of that cage.”

What if we worked something out? Where we both get what we want?

Seventeen leaned onto the bars of her cage, where a hard little fleck of rust fell away. I was running out of time here in the memories and the walls. “What could you possibly offer me?”

The world started shifting back into reality. Seventeen locked away in a distant cage and me standing back outside as Pink stared at me, confused by just what my plan was. I wasn’t sure what I could offer my murderous alter ego either. What would the monster want besides freedom?

ooOOoo

I snapped back to reality. I was gasping for air but we were inside somewhere, with shiny metals and tons of faint yet somehow illuminating lights. The metal hallways were rounded and smoothed, so much cleaner than anything on Equestria. Rows of soft navy blue stripes decorated the walls. I thought the strips of navy blue at the top and bottom of the walls were painted at first, then I realized: no, That was the color of the metal. Bright silver in the middle, navy blue at top and bottom of all the walls around me.

I was lying upon a warm metal slab, several devices pointed at me as Quick Stitch stood over me. “Your memories are getting more intense. Your heart rate is getting higher during them and you are really stuck in them now. I couldn’t pull you out this time.”

“Anything we should be worried about?” Nyota approached and grabbed my hoof tightly in his own.

“So long as she doesn’t hit a heart rate of over 200, no, she will be fine, probably,” Quick Stitch added the last part with a smile on his lips. “Come on Nyota, she can take a whole lot more abuse than bad memories, have some faith in your wife.”

The last word struck us both as I looked away from the needles, examination glass, lights, and other implements over me. A biomotor written in some symbology I didn’t understand was hooked up to both of my fore-ankles. “I can kinda read this T’Doshian language now, and according to this, she was never in any real danger.” I noticed how Quick Stitch’s hair was still flowing, but also how his armor was now mended against his skin and flesh. The flight talisman acted as a beautiful red garnet at his neck that was embedded inside him halfway, with several lines of nerve bundles and other magical ley lines pushing through his neck.

“Quick Stitch, what happened to you in the sky?” I asked hesitantly. He turned to me with a smile and nodded. I kept looking at his form, how it had changed so radically. He had long hair that flowed even without wind blowing through it. His yellow and silver armor was embedded into his flesh all over with areas of darker green skin poking out in a horrific and painful looking mutation of metal and flesh.

“Remember the taint stuff? That Sandy Claws used for rocket fuel? That makes those alicorn creatures we’ve seen like….”

“Like Barista Foam?” I asked as I reached up with the medical device on my wrist and started to feel the metal of his armor I had helped remake and modify. It still felt like something I had worked on, yet when I touched it, the metal reacted like skin and Quick Stitch moved like he was feeling me rub my hoof on a sore muscle knot.

“Yes, Barista Foam. Well taint is the impure version of I.M.P. This is what happens when you inject yourself with I.M.P.,” He explained as he pulled my hoof to touch his heart.

“How? I.M.P.?” I had so many more questions now than answers.

Chifundo stepped into view as Nyota pulled my hoof away from Quick Stitch. “Impelled Metamorphosis Potion is not something for one to play, you should very much always stay away!” He looked at Quick Stitch. Chifundo's face was full of shock and absolutely appalled. He examined all the pieces of metal, now a part of his body. “Your armor has become one with your life force, what we see on your body is just the potion’s course.”

Quick Stitch gave a heavy frown and looked down, his face hiding in shame. “I put the I.M.P. into an auto-injector. Something that would inject me with it if I died just so it wouldn’t go to waste. I didn’t actually expect to die. I also did not realize living metal could be a result, much less that it would save my life when it fused to me.”

I looked at with my sorrowful eyes, “All this is just one giant mutation?”

Quick Stitch nodded, “A shortcut made by ponies to make super soldiers, with apparently very unpredictable results if you don’t know how to use it.”

Chifundo nodded and Nyota spoke up, “This is why I told you not to touch it. Taint is I.M.P. but impure, which makes the results much worse, even deadly from the mutations it causes.”

I nodded to him and understood as Chifundo sagely nodded back, “Only a pony who has lost all sanity, would dare to touch this even for pride or vanity.” Chifundo placed a hoof on Quick Stitch and gave him a soft hug around his neck. “Of the two sisters, Ruby and Emerald, when they learn, your body of metal and iron, of what do I say about this new turn?”

Quick Stitch, on the verge of tears, looked at Chifundo, “Can we go outside and I talk to you for a bit, Chifundo?” The two of them left, very slowly, with Quick Stitch dragging his hooves as they went outside.

Nyota started unhooking the medical equipment from me and gave me a kiss on the cheek, “Come on love, while they talk I wanna show you something.”

Nyota took me into the hallway, in the opposite direction of Quick Stitch and Chifundo as they spoke. “The T’Doshians left in a hurry, probably trying to get away before the military or Stable-Tec or whoever built on top of their ship got here. But this place here…” We had come up to a circular doorway, just like the one from the medical area but roughly fifteen meters away from where the room I had been lying in. Nyota pressed his hoof against a panel next to the door. A strange symbol of lines I didn’t recognize formed and then warped in on itself before the door slid open with the hiss of air and hydraulics.

Inside was a firing range with a line of sleek refined looking guns, made of the same metal as the hallways and doors around us. He took me over to the racks of them. “So much more advanced than anything ever made on this planet. It looks like they were testing them out here and trying to figure out how they worked.”

Scopola Mina cleared her throat and I turned around, “How long was I out?” I said as she clearly had been target shooting with the weapons, judging from the freshly broken target downrange.

“Oh, a while. We were worried there too. Not sure how long it was for you but out here darlin’, y’all was out for a half a day. We’ve been down here, looking at this well, I guess this used to be a ship wasn’t it?” Scopola mentioned, and it was then that my senses noticed all the goosebumps along Nyota’s skin and how it felt like it was crawling.

“Look Scopola, you and Quick Stitch might like it here, but all this star metal feels wrong to Chifundo and me. The sooner we leave the better.” Nyota tugged on me and sighed. “I didn’t want to show you this, Scopola Mina did.”

I turned to Scopola and looked her over, then looked at Nyota, “Love, if you aren’t comfortable here, we can leave.” Nyota hesitated to say anything and I rubbed at the leg he had been guiding me with. “I felt the goosebumps and your skin crawl; I wasn’t sure and wanted to make sure you were alright.” Nyota stared at me with large bewildered eyes for a moment.

“How can I feel your worry? Your compassion for my feelings?” We exchanged a long look back and forth as this new mystery made us both curious, which fed itself as the more curious he became, the more I did as well, until finally the stripes on my rear leg and the ones on his started to flare up and glow before receding.

“I think you two should hold off on that and ask Chifundo.” We both turned to Scopola Mina. She was holding up what looked like a large smooth shotgun made of star metal. Every single gear and part looked so smooth. All the seams for things like the barrel and firing chamber were nearly invisible. The end of the barrel was smaller than my pump action, but it felt so daunting and dangerous even just looking at it.

“This here though, this is the T’Doshian version of a shotgun.” She motioned to some papers on a nearby table with parts of another one of this weapon scattered about it. “Those papers refer to the direct translation as an Alloy Cannon. There is a catch though–it has only so much ammo, and they couldn’t figure out how to make more, but I tested it a couple of times.”

She pointed her eyes and hoof down range to what was left of a target. The targets were made of some sort of ceramic with sandbags behind them. Zebras were painted onto them with a cross-hair circle around their body and the center at where the heart should be. The one she was pointing at was barely a pair of zebra ankles. “One shot turned that whole target into nothin’ but ankle and shrapnel. I reckon there’s about twelve shots in that magazine left and another seven in this one.”

She offered me what looked like a magazine, and I could partially make out where it should go, but not how to eject it. Scopola levitated some papers over to me. “Until y’all can get back to them T’Doshians and they teach us how to make bullets, I’d only use it if you really need it.”

I looked back and forth between the target and the gun. “I umm… I doubt I can wield something that strong. I can barely hold my shotgun and I am used to it.”

Nyota took the weapon into his hooves and then holstered it against his saddlebag. “Well if an emergency comes up where we need a starmetal gun from beyond the stars, I umm…” He was shivering from the weapon pressed against him. I do not know how I could sense it but I could sense that is why. He couldn’t even finish his sentence until I took the weapon from him and offered it back to Scopola Mina.

“I think what he means in this case is that you should hold onto it, Scopola, until we really need it.” Scopola nodded and smiled at us as she went back to examining more of the notes on the alien weapons.

We walked out of the room, both Nyota and I sweating as Scopola took the book of notes with her and kept reading while we walked towards where we heard Quick Stitch and Chifundo’s voices. Chifundo’s pink stripes were radiating light somehow as we approached, and Quick Stitch was leaning against him, staggering up to us.

Once we were together again, Nyota and Scopola took over holding up Quick Stitch while Chifundo explained. “I ventured far and deep, the box within like a fortress keep. If I pushed too hard in one breath, it would have brought about Quick Stitch’s death. With each moment I was allowed, more answers became endowed. Pegasi, earth pony, zebra, and unicorn all combine, to make something against nature a crime. Dark magic and star magic too were used, the boxes required it to become with us fused. We are not alive and we are not dead, yet we are as real as blood we bled.”

I turned to him, getting an understanding of what he was saying and processing it slowly. He spoke very deliberately, as if still in his spiritual trance like with the nature spirit that led us to The Roof and Hot Cross Buns. “Our immortality comes with a price, one that will always be a vice. Of Sunrise’s box there is but one, a soul within yet fiery and bold. To the rest of us we must share, heroes and villains locked away in there. Should Sunrise die she will return, but if our fire should pass another will burn.”

“So what you are saying is that if I die, I get back up. Hence being on the Vulture and mom shooting me.” Chifundo nodded very sagely as Stormy walked up, holding her head to understand it all. “But if one of you dies, your boxes are different. You are not the only soul inside there are you?”

Chifundo nodded again and Pink interrupted in a way everyone could hear, “The difference is a guardian class vs a soldier. One is a prototype, the first created; you’re the big experiment here Sun and Fun. But everyone else is a mass production one. They made more like you too, but more advanced; they don’t break down as easily or have the faults you've gained Sunrise. They were supposed to exterminate all the guardians once the overlords were online. But umm… They found you to be a really useful field officer once they reprogrammed you to be Seventeen.”

The whole room went silent and everyone looked at me. Only the hum of electrical generators and lights around us echoed in with our breathing. “Sunrise… you… Pink isn’t just a figment of your imagination?”

“I told you! Who did you think was controlling my tail?” As if on queue the tail reared up and pointed at Nyota like he should have known. Now he could hear Pink too, and we stared at each other, wondering how that worked exactly again. I took a breath and looked at them.

“I learned what the Agents want by the way, and why the coordinates in my PipBuck go places.” The group looked at me and held their breath again before Stormy stomped a talon on the ground so hard that the metal should have cracked, but instead I swore I saw blood under her balled up talon. She had fire in her eyes of an absolute crazed gryphoness ready to cleave a head off of anyone who didn’t say exactly what she wanted to hear.

“What in tarnation are all of you crazy ponies talking about!?”