Dash to the Stars

by Meep the Changeling

Rating: teen
Tags: Sex, Science Fiction, Profanity, Adventure, Violence, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Rainbow Dash, My Little Pony Comic, Original Character
Length: 183651

When Dash's friends are abducted by aliens, she vows to go to the ends of the universe to get them back. Lucky for her, a new friend got her a ride...

Unrelated to Prior Works - New Story, New Setting

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” ― Arthur C. Clarke

If you send a message to the stars, you just might get a reply. If one person can hear you speak, so can others. Some who hear your cry will extend a hand in friendship. Some will hear and think only of what they can gain by force.

Rainbow and Pandora learned this when Pan’s nightly chats his interstellar pen pal lead a fleet of interstellar pirates and slavers to Equestria. Where they found Rainbow’s friends.

Neither of them are happy about it. Both will try set things right, or die trying. Even if that means being lost forever in the void between stars.

Featured on: Wednesday, September 12, 2018 at 6:46 am UTC

Published 2018-07-03 21:10:08 UTC
Last updated 2018-12-20 03:41:02 UTC

3 - Doubt. Shame. Vindication.

“People have moved beyond apathy, beyond skepticism, into deep cynicism.” — Elliot Richardson

Rainbow Dash - 4th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

Four Days Ago

749556.29 A.H.

Lunar Court - Canterlot Palace, Equestria, Equus

Rainbow had been to the Solar Court many times before. The Elements were not permanent members of the Equestrian Guard, nor were they attached to any other official group. Such was not how Equestria treated its heroes. In their eyes, somepony who saved the world shouldn’t be forced into service as a “reward” for their actions.

Of course, heroes do need to make public appearances. There had been many mind-numbing days where Rainbow had to sit with her friends in one of the many booths which lined the sides of Princess Celestia’s throne room. Rainbow had never done or said anything at these functions. The Elements of Harmony had only been there to be the symbols of Equestrian pride, heroism, and honor they had come to be regarded as.

Rainbow had become intimately familiar with the Solar Court while being a flag on the wall. The large chamber had a split-level ceiling, the center of which had a large vaulted ceiling, creating seemingly smaller “wings” where nobles and dignitaries would view the proceedings. Its floors were marble, its walls covered in cream-colored plaster and gold leaf.

Finery was on display everywhere it could be. The large, solid gold throne Celestia sat upon was framed by gold-plated, fluted columns. A large, plush rug knitted in the same fashion as a cashmere sweater formed a warm red line from the twin oaken doors the size of a small house up to the foot of the throne itself. Tapestries, stained glass windows, and oil paintings hung from the walls between the many frescoes.

The Solar Court displayed Equestria’s wealth, history, culture, and power to all who entered it. It logically followed the Lunar Court would be much the same. Rainbow had traveled to the palace at midnight, as Princess Luna’s letter had instructed, fully believing she would be surrounded by opulence while delivering the same report she had to Celestia the previous day.

Rainbow’s eyes nervously tracked across the medium-sized room’s dark, steel-lined granite walls. The construction on display was not by any means crude, or cheap. It was gritty, industrial, and secure.

Some elegance went into the design work of course. The room’s many shelves were held up by crescent moon shaped supporting rods. The metal had been painted dark gray, dark blue, and pale black, invoking a cosmic feel. Small motes of arcane light hung suspended in the air, mimicking stars, while also providing subtle lighting that enhanced the open, circular room’s features.

The center of the room was occupied by a large map table and chairs. The map table was fashioned from a large slab of crystal and was held up by four silver legs which connected to the table at evenly spaced intervals towards the center. The chairs around the table were made from finely carved wood and upholstered in dark blue velvet.

One of the chairs was clearly a throne, but only thanks to its larger backrest and the crescent moon cut through the back. Of course, any chair placed where it sat would seem special, as the Lunar Court’s sole window was located directly behind it, allowing the moon to shine down upon the seat through a large gothic window filled with special glass.

The glass ensured the moonlight always formed a coherent beam. Luna looked even more like a goddess than normal as she sat upon her throne. Her nebulous mane flowed in an ethereal wind, seemingly drinking in the moonlight. Her plumage caught the light, the edges of each feather glowing a pale yellow, like butter dissolved in milk.

Rainbow’s heart began to beat faster and faster as she walked towards the goddess before her. The half-dozen silve-armor-clad thestrals standing guard in the Court may as well have not existed. There was only Rainbow, Luna, and the moon.

Rainbow’s breaths grew shorter and shorter. Princess Celestia had never produced this effect on her before. She felt powerful, influential, ancient, and wise, but mortal. There was a kindness to the way Celestia presented herself: she seemed like a wise leader you could sip tea with and discuss anything.

Princess Luna sat upon her throne as if she wanted nothing more than to get up and do something. Her eyes held a hardness to them, as if you were a problem to be solved, an obstacle in the way of her plans. She presented herself as a higher being, one which cared for bigger things. Nations, cities, industries, not individuals.

Yet she didn’t feel hostile. Nor uncaring or ambivalent. Luna aggressively cared for the institutions which allowed the individuals under her care to thrive, and would do anything to ensure they continued to exist and bettered her peoples’ lives.

Luna’s horn shimmered blue as she levitated the chair across the table from her out for Rainbow. “Welcome. Have a seat.”

Rainbow gulped and sat down. She flicked her tail behind her for a few moments, before her eyes shrank to pinpricks. “I— uh, thank you, ma’am!”

Luna offered the young mare a polite smile. “Relax. You’re not in trouble, Rainbow. You gave your report to Celestia, I only wish to hear the same report from you in person. I’m no worse than my sister, you will be fine.”

Rainbow bit her lip and winced, her ears drooping somewhat. “Can I say something? You know? Off the record?”

Luna nodded politely. “Of course. You’re a Champion of the Realm, Rainbow Dash. You and I are of equal standing. Well, when I am acting in my capacity as the High Commander of the Guard.”

Rainbow took a deep breath and composed herself. The right words would be key to saying what Rainbow knew she had to say without angering the goddess before her. Once they came to her, Rainbow let her breath go free and opened her eyes.

“Princess, you are much worse than your sister. This room is, like... it's intimidating. It’s not like the Solar Court, which is just rich-pony-expensive… Also, uh, I didn’t expect you to be, um, like this. When we freed you from the Nightmare, you… You weren't much bigger than me. Now you’re twice my size. Your mane and tail are made of pure magic, and—”

Princess Luna chuckled as a smile spread across her face. “Rainbow, my sister is the Head of State. I am our nation’s High Commander. Of course our Courts will look quite different. Hers is a room for talking to nobles and diplomats, mitigating problems with words. Mine is for talking to generals, admirals, and marshals. This is a room for solving problems with force.”

Rainbow nodded. “I—I know. But does it have to be so… imposing? It’s like a void.”

“Oh!” Luna’s cheeks brightened almost imperceptibly. “It does, actually. The Nightmare may be gone, but my memories of the last millennium remain. I’m not yet comfortable in terrestrial environments. All my chambers resemble the moon’s surface, to an extent.”

Rainbow blinked as some of her fear blew away like loose papers atop a desk. She had seen a few photographs taken through scrying glasses of the lunar surface in school. “Huh, yeah… This is sort of what the moon is supposed to look like, isn’t it?”

Luna nodded. “It is close. My sister would not allow me to spread dust across the floor, or use reflective flooring material. I’m sorry you are uncomfortable, but I need to feel comfortable in this room more than you do. As for my appearance, I have recovered from the injuries inflicted upon me. My magic has been fully restored. My body adapted to the power and changed form, as all alicorns do.”

Rainbow bit her lip. “It’s not… I know what alicorns are supposed to look like, Princess. It’s… Could you um, stop the moon?”

Luna slowly tilted her head to one side. “Stop… the moon?”

“Yeah, it’s making your mane go all dark, and your feathers glow and uh, that’s... you know…”

Luna snorted and leaned back in her seat, shaking her head. One of the thestral guards near the door snickered. Rainbow’s ears lay back against her head, a burning anger igniting in her heart as she spun around towards the guard. “What’s so funny?”

Luna smiled and nodded towards the thestral. “Tell her.”

The guard cleared his throat. “That is not the effect of the moonlight, Miss Dash. Her Highness returned from her evening trip to the gym and has recently showered.”

Rainbow blinked as the two facts met only to bounce off one another. “Uh, what?”

Luna spread her wings out and flapped them several times. Droplets of water flew from her feathers, lessening the glowing effect. “My fur dries much faster than my mane or plumage. I’m afraid you will need to put up with this corona until I have dried off completely.”

Rainbow pursed her lips, her eyebrows lifted as she strained to see the princess’s plumage in more detail. “I—But, that’s just water?!”

Luna winked at Rainbow and wrung out the tip of her mane with her hooves, leaving behind a lighter patch. “My sister’s magic makes hers appear opalescent when wet. It’s merely the water absorbing some of our ambient mana. I’m sorry it intimidated you. Are you comfortable now that you know what is causing the glow?”

Rainbow didn’t feel any more comfortable. Intimidation had turned into confusion and curiosity. She bit her lip and nodded slowly. “Uh, a bit…” Rainbow cleared her throat to try and disguise her feelings. “I mean, it’s just that I gave the whole report to Princess Celestia already. Didn’t she write it down, or at least tell you?”

Luna nodded. “She did. But she should have called for me immediately, and had you tell me the story directly. I do not care that I was asleep at the time. Five of our nation’s six greatest heroes were kidnapped by an unknown force, in possession of a cloaked aircraft. We have an eyewitness to the events. I am the pony in charge of our military; I need to hear the full report for myself.”

Rainbow frowned for a moment, then her eyes brightened as she came to a realization. “Oh! Because of the ways ponies move when speaking, and their word choices and stuff.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Yes. Though I would have been more precise in my wording. I’m going to ask you to give me the most basic summary of the night’s events. What happened?”

Rainbow closed her eyes and thought back. The memory was still crystal clear. The sight of her friends vanishing into the belly of the black ship pulled at her heart and stomach.

I should have moved sooner. If I had gone right as it started to turn visible…

“We had gone camping in Whitetail Woods near Ursa’s Lair. We were at one of the designated campgrounds. Twilight hadn’t wanted to do freeform camping… She said something about not wanting to damage nature, but I think she didn’t have enough money for the permit.”

Luna nodded slowly. “Yes, you had planned to stay for the weekend, correct?”

“Right,” Rainbow shifted in her seat slightly. “I had also planned to… Well, the point of the trip was to get closer to each other. We saved you by luck. We resealed Discord only because we barely knew anything about everypony else… The Elements work by—”

Rainbow stopped midword as Luna’s face twisted into an irritated scowl. Rainbow blushed and rubbed the back of her head. “By uh… Heh heh, right, you used to use them.”

Luna leaned forwards in her throne. “Celestia’s report says you left the campsite to talk to a stallion. Who was he?”

“He said his name was Pandora,” Rainbow looked up into the starfield ceiling for a moment to think. “He was a park ranger. I don’t know his last name, but he’ll be easy to find. He’s a unicorn, but his horn is amputated near the base. His cutie mark was a black oval with a grid and a squiggly line on it. It looked a bit like a screen or something. He was pretty androgynous. Long, black and cream colored mane. Rust red fur. Oh! He likes clothes, especially hoodies. There probably isn’t another pony that fits the description in Equestria.”

Luna nodded twice, her nose scrunching up slightly. She turned to look to one of her guards and frowned. “A park ranger? What’s that? A kind of monster hunter?”

The guard shook her head. “No, Your Highness. Park rangers are government officials meant to maintain parkland property and keep those who use them safe.”

Rainbow nodded in agreement. “Yeah, Pan was assigned to a nearby fire tower. I left the group to talk to him because Fluttershy recognized him as an artist. She’d commissioned him to draw a group picture of us, but didn’t get our permission for it… I kinda objected to being drawn, so I went to ask him privately not to draw me again.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “You object to being drawn?”

Rainbow bit her lip and inhaled. “Uh, Princess? I kinda feel that I shouldn’t talk about what exactly Pan draws. Not in your company, and well, not to anyone else. He opened up to me for some reason, and the guy’s had a bad enough time without me potentially making things worse for them. You only need to know that I didn’t like what the picture was.”

Luna nodded once. “Ah. I understand. The report indicates you spoke to him while he was having a conversation over the radio with a mare. Can you identify her?”

Rainbow shook her head. “No. All I know is that her name was Penny, she had an accent I have never heard before, and sometimes said words in her own language,” Rainbow tapped her hoof to her chin as she tried to think of some examples. “I think she said… Nyet! That was one. Also, blin? There were more but I don’t remember.”

“Anything else? Not words, but aspects of her nature you gleaned through hearing her through the radio?”

Rainbow frowned, then smiled. “Yes! She wasn’t a pony. She had hands. I could tell because her typing was way faster than a pony could do, and unicorns pushing keys don’t make the same noise as something solid hitting keys. Her keystrokes didn’t sound hard or sharp. They were soft. Which means they were hands and not talons.”

Luna’s eyes narrowed. Dash’s report confirmed her suspicions—they had been involved. Or at least, one had. “Minotaurs…”

Rainbow tilted her head. “Well, yeah. What else has hands? But why say it like that?”

Luna grew silent for several moments, before deciding to reveal some classified information. “We have kept it quiet, but over the last seven months, Minos has been ramping up its military production. They have been making increasingly unreasonable demands diplomatically and economically.

“On the night your friends were captured, they demanded we give them Junebug Isle. It’s their new king. He’s young and holding onto the kingdom by a thread. It’s quite clear to us now that he believes a war will help solidify his position as the King of Minos. The minotaurs know Equestria is defended by the Elements once more. If my sister’s diplomacy failed, as she fears it may have this past Moonsday, then taking your friends would be the first step to launching an invasion of Equestria.”

Rainbow’s eyes widened at the news, then narrowed. She could still see the ship hanging in the sky over her. Long. Narrow. Like a cigar.

Or an airship.

An airship with a bit of decoration on the balloon, some illusion enchantments, and very quiet motors could easily look like an alien vessel. An airship could reach Equestria without needing to cross the void between stars. An airship would be crewed by people who might have a motivation to hurt her friends.

How could I think it was aliens? For real! Why would it be aliens? Yeah, random abductions make for good movies but why would real aliens do that?

“That… that’s way more plausible than aliens,” Rainbow admitted with an embarrassed blush.

Luna blinked. “Aliens?”

Rainbow’s cheeks flushed a bright pink. “Uh… Y—yeah. It was a very, very advanced-ooking airship. I sort of um… I thought it was a UFO. I told Celestia. She didn’t tell you?”

Luna sighed and shook her head. “My sister made no mention of aliens. She did say you were traumatized and likely misremembering events to a small degree. Are you saying your friends were abducted by aliens? Like in a science story?”

Rainbow shrugged. “I mean, that’s what I thought. It’s still possible, I guess. But if we’re on the brink of war with Minos uh, well, that could have been an airship. It’s more likely it was an airship. I know Minotaurs still use them, but I’ve never seen one.”

Luna waved a hoof over the crystal tabletop. The crystal’s enchantments flicked to live, allowing a map of Equestria to appear within its reflection. Luna gestured to the map, which zoomed in on Whitetail Woods. “What were Pan and Penny discussing? Was it anything which may have primed you to think aliens were to blame?”

Rainbow groaned and slapped her face with the flat of her hoof. “Oh my bucking Luna!”

Luna raised an eyebrow and turned to look at one of her guards in disbelief. “Did she just swear at me, by me?”

One of the guards by the doors cleared his throat. “She did, ma’am. I’m certain she doesn't know the proper cursing protocols.”

Rainbow’s ears flattened against her skull. Her eyes shot open. “Eep! I—I’m sorry! It’s just—they totally did!”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Were they perhaps talking in code?”

Rainbow frowned and looked off into the distance as she thought back through what they had said to each other. “No. I think that they were like, radio pen pals. They were just talking.”

“Are you sure?”

Rainbow nodded. “Mhm. Pan lives in his tower, and said he hadn’t been to town in forever. I’m pretty sure that Penny is like, his special somepony. They were totally roleplaying! I got swept up in it. It felt so real at the time but it had to be roleplaying. Especially because Pan started picking out cute clothes and said she was coming over.”

Luna frowned as her best lead dried up under Rainbow’s testimony. “They were playing make-believe. That’s what roleplaying means, yes?”

Rainbow nodded. “Yeah. Penny was a minotaur pretending to be an alien. Pan was pretending to give her coordinates to land, but in reality Penny was probably at the ranger station and would come over soon for uh, well, you know… But then, right as they were talking about space pirates the ship shows up—”

Luna held up a hoof, her eyes both shining with renewed hope and narrowing with renewed worry. “Pan gave coordinates, then a ship showed up?”

Rainbow nodded, her face falling as she fully recalled the night. “Yeah… He taped Twilight listing off pulse… pulseons? Pulsetors?”

“Pulsars?” A guard suggested.

Rainbow turned to the guard and nodded. “Yeah, that was it. Thank you. He got Twilight to record herself listing off how to find a bunch of those and played it back for Penny.”

Luna hummed and tapped the tabletop with a hoof. “Strange. Astronomers have told me that pulsars could be used for navigation between stars. I asked if they could be put to a more practical purpose, but was told they are not useful for navigation on Equus. Perhaps my suspicions were incorrect.”

Rainbow frowned as she put two and two together. “I don’t think Pan would have led enemies to us, Princess. He definitely doesn't like pony society, but didn’t act like he wanted to destroy it or anything. And he liked us. My friends and I, I mean. He was really shy, got our autographs, and admitted that he thought of us as real heroes.”

Luna nodded. “Very well. I will trust your opinion on his character. I sent troops to find him for questioning, but his tower was abandoned. We attempted to use his radio to contact Penny, but the modulation crystal had been removed. The radio in question having been sabotaged is why I believed he may have been a traitor.”

Rainbow’s face pulled to one side. “No. No, I don’t think so. Maybe he took it so the minotaurs couldn’t use it?”

“We have no way of knowing. Can you tell me how the abduction took place?”

Rainbow hesitated, then looked down and sighed. “Yeah… Penny had warned Pan about space pirates, Pan pulled out an energy gun which could totally have been a prop, or a spellbolt launcher, and then this big black ship with a skull on the front just… appeared.

“It didn’t make a sound… I don’t think. It just was suddenly there. Like when an invisibility charm wears off. It didn’t have any moving parts that I could see. It just floated there, in place. Then it shined spotlights down into the trees, and once it found my friends’ camp, it shot purple beams out which made them fall up to the ship. As soon as they touched the ship, it disappeared again.”

Rainbow resisted the urge to slap herself. Spotlights! It used spotlights. Wouldn’t an alien spaceship have like, super advanced biosignature detectors? They should have just known where ponies were, but they had to look for them.

Luna nodded again. “Can you describe the ship in more detail?”

“Yeah,” Rainbow sighed. “It was huge. Like, as long as a hoofball field, and as tall as a house. A big house. It was kind of like a cigar, but jet black. Like obsidian. There was a big silver skull on the front. I don’t know what animal the skull was supposed to be from, but it wasn’t a pony. There was no muzzle… Actually, it looked sort of like a chimp! Maybe a monkey skull?”

Luna’s eyes narrowed. She growled and slammed a hoof on the table making Rainbow jump. “It was Minotaurs! Their second fleet uses a gorilla skull as its heraldry, and their ships are known for their distinctive figureheads.”

Rainbow’s ears fell. “Uh, but, do they have like, tractor beams? They don’t have unicorns. So they have to buy their magic from ponies, right?”

Luna shook her head. “Not true. Their engineers can create magical devices. They buy unicorn magic for study. I have not heard of any sort of abduction rays before, but they are not out of the question. If I can pull a pony to me, then so can a clever enough machine.” Luna stood up and turned to the guard standing near her doorway. “Halberd! Ready the Air Guard. The airspace between our border and Minos is to become impassable immediately. The Ordos Arcana is to assist them by setting up dispelling nets whenever possible. We will drag that invisible ship out of the sky.”

The guard saluted with one leathery wing. “Yes, ma’am!”

As Halberd turned to leave, Luna amended her order. “Take no aggressive moves except for when the ship is sighted. Be certain you are some distance away from the border as well. If we can catch them in the act without prompting a retaliatory strike, Celestia may yet be able to solve this conflict peacefully.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Halberd said once more, as he opened the courtroom door and ran out to deliver the princess’s orders.

Rainbow felt her stomach churn. War… Such a foreign concept. She’d only read about them in books, watched friends play games about them, and seen them in movies. A real war, one she would live through, and probably fight…

Rainbow gulped. “So uh, Princess? How um, how does us catching the ship stop the war from happening? Is that likely?”

Luna smiled at Rainbow, doing her best to soften her gaze. “Do not worry. If we can prove the minotaurs attacked us by abducting the other Elements, it will cast Minos in a very poor light indeed. International pressure may prevent a proper war on its own, but if it does not, well…”

Luna stood up, pushing her throne back and shutting off the map table with a wave of her hoof, having not needed to try and match the coordinates Pan had used to it. “It will be a very short war if we show the world the mares who saved us all were attacked by a young brat pretending to be a king.”

Rainbow nodded slowly. “Yeah, that makes sense… But like, we saved the minotaurs from an eternal night too. Why would they attack us?”

Luna rolled her eyes. “This started because my sister has refused to execute me. There are many minotaurs who believe the Nightmare and I are one and the same. Their king is one of them.”

“Oh…” Rainbow’s ears fell. “Uh, well… You’re not, right?”

Luna paused and looked up into the fake-star-filled ceiling. “I don’t know… It’s hard to separate her from me. We felt the same on many things, though I doubt I would do half of what she did by my own free will. We can discuss this another time, Rainbow. For now, I need to ensure you are properly protected.”

Rainbow’s heart beat a bit faster as she processed Luna’s words. If she had turned evil instead of having been possessed like they had all been told…

Luna turned to face three of her remaining guards. “Iron, Jade, Vein, you are to escort Rainbow to the Brass Room. She is to remain there under your guard until you are told otherwise.”

Rainbow blinked. “Wait, what? I am so not going to stay shut in a room somewhere! My friends are in trouble.”

Luna sighed and closed her eyes before turning to face Rainbow again. “Miss Dash, you are a target of clandestine operations. If there is a spy in our forces, the enemy will quickly learn we know they took your friends. They clearly want them alive, meaning they wish for the Elements to be usable and thus plan to use them for themselves, or they falsely believe if a Bearer dies then someone else will immediately be able to wield an Element of Harmony.

“In either case, they will come for you if they believe they may lose control of your friends. All six of you are required for the Elements to work. Remove one of you and they are as cheap as jewelry.”

Rainbow hung her head. “I… I understand… But, can’t I do anything at all? Please? I failed them already. I should have flown for the ship right as it showed up, but I didn’t…”

Luna’s eyes softened. Stepping over to Rainbow, the alicorn extended a wing to give Rainbow a traditional pegasus side-hug. “Do not worry. The moment the ship is spotted, I will enter battle and retrieve them myself. You have nothing to fear.”

Rainbow took a deep breath. “But… I still got them captured.”

Luna shook her head and looked into Rainbow’s eyes. “You did not. You are why they will be found. Had you not confronted Pan, all six of you would have been captured, and no one would think to look for you until three days from now, when it would be too late.”

Rainbow frowned. “Too late?”

“Yes. Four days. That is how long it will take for an airship to travel from Whitetail Woods to the Minos border at a speed which will keep it from being detected. We have two entire days to find them, and then one day left to stop them. I will put every available soldier on the job. It will be done.

“We have this chance to save them due to you, Rainbow. Without you having escaped capture, we would be at war and unable to find the Elements. Looking for you six would have diverted serious resources away from the front. You have likely singlehoofedly prevented, and most certainly singlehoofedly minimized a war.”

Rainbow’s ears stood back up, but the frown did not leave her lips. “Well, when you put it like that…”

Luna bent down to look Rainbow more directly in her eyes. “Rainbow, will you please allow yourself to be watched and guarded in the Palace to ensure you are safe while we rescue your friends?”

Rainbow closed her eyes and nodded as her wings drooped down her sides. “Yeah… I’ll stay put…”

“Thank you. I know I am asking much you. I can feel your warrior’s spirit. Do not worry, after our friends return… there may well be plenty of opportunities to make things right,” Luna said, before standing back up straight and nodding towards her guards. “Stallions, escort Miss Dash to her room and send somepony to fetch any personal items she desires from her home.”

Sergeant Iron Ore saluted Luna and trotted over to Rainbow’s side. The silver-armored thestral waited until Rainbow looked up at the sound of his approach and then nodded to the doors. “If you’ll just follow me, Miss Dash, we’ll have you squared away in no time… And if I may say so, I’m glad to see you’re as torn up over this as I would be.”

Rainbow smirked and let out a bitter snort. “Well, I am Loyalty.”

Luna shot Iron Ore a disapproving look. He cleared his throat. “Yes… Sorry, miss. Please, follow me.”

Dash followed the guards to her temporary room. The luxurious accommodations did nothing to help sooth the pain in her chest.

Rainbow Dash - 8th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

Four Hours Ago

749556.3 A.H.

Rainbow Dash lay on the large round bed in the Brass Room. She woke up four hours ago and simply had no reason to get out of bed. Her guards wouldn’t let her leave, not even to get a doughnut or something. They would go get it for her.

Captivity gets to you. Four days spent in a gilded cage is still four days spent in a cage. Even when the cage takes the form of a five-star hotel suite.

The Brass Room had been built for visiting ambassadors and nobility. The amenities were all top-notch. Arcane climate control systems kept the room you were in perfectly to your liking, even as you felt too hot or cold. The bathtub was in fact a hot tub and came with a rather skilled masseuse and mane stylist. The bed was soft, enchanted to be as comfortable as one could possibly conceive of.

The room was fit for someone one rank below a king. Dash hated it. She was a simple mare who liked her cloud house. It may have been bigger than she needed, a little drab, poorly decorated, but it was hers. Her place. The way she liked it.

Rainbow hated gaudy decorations like the gold inlay of flowers and ferns which infested the Brass Room’s walls. She’d spent most of her time staring at the ceiling and worrying about her friends simply because the ceiling was the least gaudy thing in the room.

The ceiling was a single sheet of thin silver with a field of clouds etched into it.

“Sure isn’t much brass in here,” Rainbow grumbled to herself as she snuggled up under her blankets.

The blankets were the one good thing about the Brass Room as far as Rainbow cared. One of them was a dark blue silk duvet, so fluffy it was nearly as thick as Rainbow’s wrist. The other blanket was a hoof-knitted light blue comforter with super chunky, soft, non-itchy yarn. Each yarn was about half as thick as Rainbow’s hoof, making the blanket nearly as thick as her upper hind legs.

Rainbow had honestly believed the bed’s mattress was twice as thick as a normal mattress when she first saw the bed. Upon learning those were blankets, she’d worried their weight would squish her flat. In actuality the blankets pressed down with just enough force to feel cozy, warm, and safe.

Rainbow wanted to keep the blankets. The princess didn’t say she could when Rainbow had asked her the other day. Nor did she say no…

The Brass Room’s door rattled as the knob turned. Rainbow’s ears perked at the sound, prompting her to sit up as the door was pushed open. She recognized the thestral entering her room immediately.

Iron Ore was tall and skinny for a bat pony. It made him easy to pick out among the ranks of nearly-identical guards. Rainbow swore guard armor carried some sort of enchantment which made them all look the same.

Of course, the way Iron’s armor hung somewhat loosely from his body put a hole in that theory.

Rainbow frowned as she saw the pained, yet energized look in Iron’s eyes. “What happened?”

Iron cleared his throat and reached into one of his saddlebags to retrieve a small mirror. “You have a message from the Princess.” He tapped a small sapphire set in its brass frame and the mirror sprang to life. “Excuse the quality. This mirror is very old.”

An image of Luna appeared in the mirror. Everything was dull, unfocused, and distorted, as if reflected from a long distance away through fog.

The recording of Luna held a serious expression in its eyes. “Rainbow, we have located a cloaked Minos airship in the skies near Rockville. It matches the description you provided, though it is somewhat smaller than you reported. Its course indicates it is coming from the region near Whitetail Woods, and is trying to flee across the southernmost point of the Equestria-Minos border.

“There can be no mistake: this is the vessel you saw. What small differences exist between your description and this craft are slight, easily explainable by the dark of night and the small tricks one’s mind plays upon itself.

“I have dispatched the 101st Air Guard. and I am leading the attack myself. By the time you receive this message, Faust willing, we will have engaged the enemy. Your friends will be safe very soon.”

Rainbow’s reflection smiled back at her from the mirror as Luna’s image faded away. She flopped backward into the bed, forelegs and wings spread wide. “Thank goodness that’s over.”

Iron drew in a short breath. “Not quite… The operation must still be successful, and we may soon be at war. Faust willing and Sisters working, we may wake up to peace tomorrow.”

Rainbow’s lips pulled into a steep frown. “You… you don’t think they can stop the ship?”

Iron held up his hooves and shook his head. “Oh! Nononono! I didn’t mean that, Miss Dash. The 101st will stop that ship. It’s just a question of where. If they stop it over Minos, that’s war right there. We need to stop it before it crosses into their airspace.”

Rainbow nodded and sat back up. “Got it. I think Luna can do that.”

Iron paused then sighed. “I hope she can… I only signed up for this for college, you know?” The stallion hung his head for a moment before straightening back up. “At least you won't be here much longer, right? I know you hated staying here.”

Rainbow nodded once as an idea took shape in her mind. She wasn’t the only pony who had to have been a mess for the last few days. “Yeah… Don’t worry. Luna will pull it off just fine. I mean, she did beat Celestia a thousand years ago, right? Celestia had to use the Elements to stop her. We both know Celestia could stop that airship.”

Iron blinked. A small grin spread across his face. “You make a good point! Thanks. I needed that.” He turned and began to leave the room. “I’ll let you know when you can go, okay?”

Rainbow slipped out of the bed and stretched her wings and back. “Thanks. I’d say this has been fun, but yeah…”

The thestral stepped outside and closed the door behind him, resuming standing in front of it with his two friends. Rainbow trotted over to the dresser and opened the top drawer with a quick bite and flick of her neck. Her Roughrider saddlebags rested inside the over-decorated cherrywood cabinet.

Iron had been nice enough to bring Rainbow some of her snacks and drinks from home. Canterlot was a unicorn town for rich ponies, with or without a stick up their ass. Getting good jerky, fishcakes, and non-fancy drinks wasn’t a thing you could do here.

Fortunately for Rainbow’s current scheme, Iron had forgotten to take a bag with him to her house.

Rainbow picked up her bags and admired the simple design of the tan leather satchels. The blue and gold Wonderbolt pin she’d stuck on the left bag added just enough decorative flair for her tastes.

These bags were for function, function, and more function. No frills, all form, all solidly built and meant to last a lifetime. Rainbow loved the Deep Pockets brand for that single reason.

Rainbow tossed her bags onto her back and fastened the straps across herself. Then she crossed the room to the bed, opened her right bag, and swept her snacks, drink, and book into the bag with a flick of her wing. The items fell into the satchel, and were immediately organized for optimal storage by the bag’s charms as if they had been carefully packed by the most neurotically obsessive pony in the world.

Rainbow began to fold up the blankets, squeezing them into as small of a bundle as she could. Once the two huge plush blankets were folded, she opened up her left bag and pushed the blankets inside.

One could be forgiven for thinking cramming a pair of blankets the size of a pony when folded into a bag just barely big enough to hold a few books and a bottle of water was futile. Yet the blankets slipped inside just fine, adding no apparent bulk or extra weight to the bag, as far as Rainbow was concerned.

Rainbow’s new blankets were now neatly packed atop all of her camping gear, which had been returned to her by the guard after searching the woods. The bags contained almost all of Rainbow’s personal items on the right side, and everything she might need for work on the left side. The bags didn’t possess limitless space, each bag could hold three cubic meters of stuff before they wouldn’t accept anything else.

Rainbow had also cheaped out on the optional features: he bags didn’t have any air inside, and thus couldn’t be used as an emergency shelter. Nor did they automatically place items you were searching through them for in your hoof. They did have all the basic features of Deep Pocket brand saddlebags, though.

For instance, various charms would keep her stuff from falling out of her bags, even if she turned upside-down.

Rainbow buckled each satchel’s flap with her mouth, then turned to the window, opening it with a quick push from her forehooves. She looked out into the sky over Canterlot. It was a cloudy day. The sunlight didn’t have the strength needed turn the gold-topped roofs of Canterlot into a glowing field of eye-stabbery. It was safe to fly.

Rainbow took a deep breath. She knew she’d probably get in trouble for ditching her guards, but the threat was over, and she had something important to do. The longer she’d thought about it, the more she realized Pan and Penny had to have been roleplaying before hooking up for an evening. Then their fantasy had seemingly come true.

Somepony needed to go tell them that it was just minotaurs in an airship and that everypony would be fine soon. Whitetail Woods was three hours flight for her from Canterlot. Pan was a ranger. He had to have checked in at the ranger station by now.

Rainbow climbed up on the windowsill, spread her wings, and jumped. Her feathers caught the air, pushed down, and carried Rainbow up into the sky. Her Roughrider’s final enchantment kicked in and bent air away from themselves, reducing their drag to nearly zero.

Rainbow’s saddlebags had cost her three months pay. They had paid for themselves a hundred times over.

Penny Hawking - 749556.3 A.H.

CSS Dawn of Destiny - Tau Ceti System, K3 Sector

As Rainbow raced towards Whitetail Woods, the Dawn of Destiny drew near. The wedge-like ship rode atop a wave of tachyon particles, propelled forwards in space by the faster-than-light particles striking the ship’s Dawson field. Or as the majority of the galaxy called it, the ship’s surfboard.

The basic principle behind the Dawson fields were of little importance to the people who used them. You turned the field on, and suddenly a whole family of particles which don’t interact with normal energy and matter have something to push on. The field is attached to a ship, making the particles push the ship. Exactly like the sails of ancient oceangoing vessels.

Unfortunately for Doctor Dawson, “Starsail” had already been trademarked, so the drive was named after its more useful feature.

There are many ways to break the light barrier. There is only one way to break the relativity barrier. The wave of tachyons pushing against the Dawn not only eventually pushed it up to light speed, but also propelled it back in time.

Not enough to be of use to someone who wished to undo the past; the surf drive wasn’t a classical time machine. It was a practical time machine, calibrated by physics itself to almost perfectly cancel out time dilation, arguably much better than a classic time machine.

A ship using a warp drive to travel one star over, a mere five light years, would need to accelerate to light speed. It would begin accelerating in an orbit, and generally hit lightspeed by the time it had traveled 200 AU.

Along the way, special relativity would kick in. From the ship’s perspective, accelerating to cruising speed would take less than a minute. At around forty-four seconds, the ship would hit the speed of light. From the universe's perspective, that same ship would have been accelerating to FTL for one and a half days.

The ship would arrive at the end of its total journey after more than five years from the universe's perspective. For the warp-capable ship, the trip would have taken only nineteen hours. The effects of time dilation would be far, far worse if the warp ship decided to go faster than c. This hampered galactic travel for a thousand years until Doctor Dawson came along.

The surf drive’s time dilation correction meant by the time she reached the speed of light, her clock and Pan’s clock would be a mere twenty-three seconds out of sync. Furthermore, the wave of tachyons would push her ship back in time exponentially faster after she reached light speed. As soon as the Dawn reached lightspeed, it would arrive at its destination.

The only downside was waiting for days, or even weeks, for the ship to be pushed up to light speed and needing enough fuel to keep the Dawson Field active for the length of your ride.

The Dawn’s computer beeped. Penny tipped her head down to look at the notifications window on her HUD. The Dawn was currently traveling at .998 c, and she had forty-five seconds before she arrived at Equus.

Penny closed her eyes and sighed. There wasn’t enough time to install the thruster baffling she had wanted to put onto the Hoatzin. She’d spent the last six days of acceleration overhauling her shuttle.

Not that anyone who saw the Hoatzin thought it was a shuttle. The bright yellow, boxy, van-like craft with four rotating VTOL engines (two high up on the rear, two low and forward) appeared to be more of an aircar than a shuttle. Especially as it looked far too beat up to be spaceworthy.

The Hoatzin had done many things over its long life, things no Lada-class shuttle had ever been meant to do. It had carried Penny down to thousands of worlds with a warranty that only covered a hundred and twenty landings. It had crested the edge of a supernova. It had once had its top half sheared off, and made an emergency landing as a convertible.

The top half had been repaired by welding the top half of a different Lada-class shuttle onto the hull, then spray painting everything yellow again. And, of course, adding the shuttle’s signature three black racing stripes.

The Hoatzin had extracted Penny from a nest of ravenous, man-sized insects. The shuttle had once flown across an entire star system to get her back to the Dawn. It had even been used to smuggle Boris Blood Vodka into the Tilctew system.

Despite its storied history, it had never been used to re-enter an atmosphere at the very instant a ship finished an FTL hop to minimize the chance of being spotted by pirates. The residual inertia from the jump without braking via the Dawn’s engines pre-launch would mean entering at roughly twenty-three kilometers per second.

Penny closed the thruster access panel with a quick flick of her wrist. Her Power Armor whined as she moved. Its servos were overdue for some maintenance. Like all Chernin armor, her T-34 was intended for daily wear. It was not intended to be used for wrestling liquid nitrogen breathing lizards twice her size. Not even after her modifications.

Penny knew the Nova Wing ship had to be there still. Even if it had decided to leave immediately, a ship its size would take at least a week to reach light speed. They would detect her arrival, switch off their drive, and cruise over to kill the interloper who spotted them slaving.

Just because officials ships couldn’t enter the K3 Sector didn’t mean they wouldn’t punish you for committing crimes in it. That’s why Penny had Pan get the signatures of multiple prominent members of his people’s government: to forge immigration papers with.

With the panel secured, Penny ran around Hoatzin and sprinted up its boarding ramp. Her armor slammed against the deck, making the shuttle creak and groan amid the heavy metallic thuds of her foot falls. The Hoatzin had been built to accommodate Chernin. It could handle the weight of her armor. Barely. The poor shuttle was almost three hundred years old now.

Penny reached the pilot’s seat and sat down. Her armor mag-locked to the seat as it detected her desire to fly the shuttle. Penny flicked her finger across a switch, and the shuttle’s hatch closed with a metallic whine. As the shuttle began to seal and pressurize the cabin, Penny flicked a second switch to slave the Dawn’s navigation controls and helm to the Hoatzin’s computer.

The Dawn lurched as it hit light speed, and the temporal shock wave created by its jump washed over the ship and everything within it. The shock wave blasted the ship to the end of its flight, and with a streak of silver and a burst of green light, the Dawn of Destiny appeared in low Equus orbit, terrifying the crap out of several students in the Trottingham Observatory who happened to be watching the sky at the time.

The Hoatzin skid backwards by a few millimeters as the Dawn was suddenly thrust into Equus’s gravity well and entered an orbit.

Penny’s armor chirped at her. “Yes, yes, I know. We arrived,” she murmured as she instructed her armor to call Pan with a quick thought.

Her neural interface relayed her wishes to her armor, which happily complied. “Pan? It’s Penny. Please answer.”

No reply.

Penny waited for thirty seconds out of sheer habit before repeating her message.

Still, no reply.

“Pan, pick up. I need to trace your radio. I don’t have landing coordinates.”

Ten seconds of silence passed, then Pan’s voice came through amid a hiss of static. “Penny! Oh thank Celestia! I’ve been so scared. Guards showed up at my tower. I took the crystal out of my radio and hid. I thought they would confiscate my setup. But they didn’t. They took nothing… It’s weird. How quick can you land? The pirates kidnapped the Elements of Harmony. They’re like huge deals! We need to help.”

Penny’s armor began to home in on Pan’s signal. “We’ll help them. It’s the right thing to do. Don’t worry, once we get to civilization I can file a report with the Star League. There are other things we can do, too.”

“The Star League? Those guys are like, space cops, right? Don’t they just control the areas around planets and stuff? How will that help?”

Penny smiled to herself. “They also hunt pirates. Many people do. Nova Wing has many enemies. We will point all our guns at them, comrade.”

“We should look for them ourselves, too, if we can. I mean, we’ll be flying all over the Arm for your job already.”

Penny frowned, closed her eyes, and sighed. She wanted to say no. She really did. Unfortunately, not only was it very likely her talks with Pan had drawn the Wing’s attention, but helping kidnapped primitives was simply the right thing to do. “Da. We’ll look for them. We can at the least do some investigating out in the fringe and pass information to the authorities. I don’t have a warship, Pan. We can’t take them on ourselves. But we can help.”

“As long as we do something… I think… I think that we may have drawn them to Equus.”

Penny sighed again. “That is probably what happened.”

Penny’s armor chimed, a notification popping up to let her know the Hoatzin had located the radio signal. “Okay, I have you. Plotting reentry now.”

“Reentry?” Pan said with a confused tinge to his voice. “Can’t you just go straight down with a gravity drive?”

“I could,” Penny said as she began calculating her descent. “But the Wing is probably still in-system. There’s a chance they haven’t seen me yet. If I crank up the gravity drive to land vertically, their sensors will light up like Christmas time. If I go down old-school, they may think I’m debris or waste.”

“Won't they spot your starship anyways?”

“Yes. But it will be flying to the moon. The idea is they will think I gravity-braked on the planet and then headed for the moon. I have a beacon set up broadcasting a reactor malfunction warning. I don't think they will approach her for an hour at the least. We should have just enough time to pick you up and get back to the ship. I’m also hoping they are still behind your moon. If they are, the moon will have shielded my entry into the system from their sensors, and I’ll be parking the Dawn on the light side of the moon. We’ll know by the time I touch down if the Wing is here or not.”

“That sounds very risky.”

Penny’s armor chimed again. The reentry course was plotted and the Dawn had maneuvered into position for the shuttle launch.

Penny flipped a switch on the Hoatzin’s dash and the shuttle bay doors beneath it slid open. A quick burst of artificial gravity from the Dawn pushed the shuttle out into space. It was time.

The Hoatzin’s computer flashed half a dozen errors as it entered the vacuum of space. Penny’s eyes flicked across its various displays, taking in everything the ship was telling her. “Oi, blin…”

Pan’s ears drooped. “Why the alien swearing?”

A small part of Penny’s mind wondered if Pan would ever learn she wasn’t actually cursing. The rest of it was fully occupied on the problem at hand. “I… I overhauled my shuttle for this. I knew I’d need to old-school land. I didn’t reconnect the auto-pilot. Need to fly down manually.”

Penny reached towards the controls. Her armored hand pressed the manual override button, and the joystick slid out from the control panel. Penny stared at the stick for several seconds. She had forgotten how old the Hoatzin was and expected the ship to link to her armor to be flown via neural control.

Penny took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and swore properly. “Cyka blyat!”

Pan winced. “Uh, so, it’s not okay, is it?”

Penny took a deep breath to calm herself. “I’ll be fine. It’s a Lada. I’ll talk to you on the ground.”

Penny ordered her armor to sever the radio link. She couldn’t afford any distractions during reentry. Not with her having to use manual controls.

A mental command opened her helmet. She didn’t trust her suit’s visual systems for this. Her helmet rotated back into her suit, letting Penny see out the shuttle’s windshield with her own eyes. The sight of the sun rising over the blue and green planet below brought a smile to Penny’s face. She been to far too many death worlds to not get a little emotional when she got to land on a good old class-M planet.

Penny overrode her neural link for a moment. Her armor froze in place as her body stopped controlling it and resumed controlling itself. Penny wriggled her left hand out from her armor’s torso, past the rubber seal around her upper body. Her pale, ghostly-white skin glistened and dripped as she pulled it out of the fluid-filled center of her armor.

She pulled her second arm free with a little more effort, and shook her limbs as dry as she could. With her hands no longer covered in saline solution and impact absorbing fluid, she reached up, brushed her teal and pink bangs out of her eyes, removed her glasses, and made triple sure the lenses were not dirty.

The last time she had tried to clean her glasses with her armor’s hands, she had to fabricate a new pair. There wasn’t time to make new ones now.

Satisfied her glasses were clean, Penny slipped them back onto her face, pushed them up the bridge of her nose, then slipped her arms back into the sleeves inside her armor’s torso. Like all Chernin armor, the pilot’s limbs never entered the armor’s limbs.

Many species were surprised when they learned Chernin weren't actually twice the size of most races the galaxy had to offer.

With her arms once more stored inside her armor, Penny reactivated her neural link. Her armor returned to life, and her own body returned to ignoring her brain’s movement instructions. The transition was as seamless as always, and remarkably itch-free. Penny took the lack of itching around her neural implant as a good omen and switched on the Hoatzin’s engines.

The shuttle shook as its q-thrusters powered up. Penny closed her eyes once more, doing her best to make peace with herself as she took the shuttle’s control stick and throttle in hand. She started to open the throttle, but her hand froze.

Penny counted to three. Her fear didn’t subside. She sighed and slumped her shoulders, making her armor creak as it moved like her organic body would have.

“I need music.”

Penny let go of the throttle, reached over to the Hoatzin’s entertainment system, and hit play. A calm, soothing, jingly synthesizer melody filled the cabin. Penny sighed, relaxing slightly as her people’s oldest song began to play.

Penny reached forward and gripped the throttle. The song’s warmup was short. Penny mentally counted off the milliseconds, deciding she would open up the throttle as soon as the lyrics began.

A deep male voice speaking English filled the cabin as the singer intoned, “All rise, for Hardbass.”

Penny clenched her teeth. She wasn’t ready. Not yet. The Hoatzin’s shields were barely rated for collisions with small debris. She hadn’t been built to do old-school reentries. This was most likely suicide.

The song continued warming up, its lyrics ironically complementing the situation at hand. “Never fear. Boris is here.”

Penny shook her head at the coincidence. “Heh… And it’s set to shuffle, too.”

“Ready? Let's go!”

Penny threw the throttle open. The Hoatzin’s thrusters burned hot. With the shuttle pointed retrograde, the burning engines rapidly slowed the shuttle. Within mere seconds the shuttle flashed an alert, informing Penny that the periapsis was now below the atmosphere. Another three seconds of burn passed. The shuttle’s HUD lit up with half a dozen warnings, all of which Penny ignored. Except for one.

Her orbit was no longer an orbit. The shuttle was on a suborbital trajectory which should bring her to Pan’s location. It was time to turn around and reenter. Fortunately, she had soothing music to listen too.

Penny spun the shuttle a hundred and eighty degrees, and the Hoatzin hit Equus’s atmosphere just as her song reached the first instrumental segment. The harsh, metallic, distorted, electrical sound of proper hardbass consumed the cabin as burning streaks of orange plasma began to consume the hull.

In the 2300 years of galactic history, no other species had ever called hardbass “soothing”.

Penny’s grip on the Hoatzin’s controls tightened. She could feel the rubber grips through the neural link in her armor. She was about to crush the controls. Penny stopped squeezing and focused on keeping the shuttle’s orientation correct. The rapid, heavy, and powerful baseline pumping in her ears did wonders to focus her mind on the task at hand and shoo away the primal fear of falling while also being on fire.

Falling out of orbit in a Lada-class shuttle piloted by a Chernin who had never qualified as a shuttle pilot without any computer assistance while listening to hardbass was expressly defined as hell in two of the galaxy's smaller religions.

The Hoatzin shook back and forth as it cut through the atmosphere. Its shield sparked and popped under the strain of resisting the plasma surrounding them. The modifications Penny had made to the Hoatzin’s shields held, providing just a hair more power than the bare minimum needed for the shuttle to not become red-hot dust.

Penny kept her eyes focused on the navigation system and the shuttle’s HUD. Every time the Hoatzin hit a pocket of turbulence and bounced around like a ping-pong ball in a clothes dryer, she wrenched it back on course. The shuttle’s control surfaces and thrusters screeched in protest every time, but managed to keep the ship’s descent almost barely controlled.

Two agonizing minutes passed as the Hoatzin burned across the sky as a fireball brighter than any meteor. Ponies below looked up, mouths opening in awe or terror at what they believed to be a meteor burning in. Their mistake was understandable. The Hoatzin was about as controlled as a giant rock flung at the planet from outer space.

The burning plasma subsided as the atmosphere leached away enough of the Hoatzin’s speed to push it down from hypersonic to supersonic flight. Penny let out a held breath and reached for the dash, flipping the switch to cycle from the q-thrusters to the ramjets.

The atmospheric engines refused to start.

Penny wordlessly mashed the controls, checking half a dozen systems as the Hoatzin plumited like the brick it was. Switches clicked, buttons pressed, valves released—a month’s worth of panicked cursing was burned up inside of thirty seconds.

The ramjets finally lit, one after the other, plunging the Hoatzin into the clouds in a flat spin. Penny throttled down and let the Hoatzin drop for several seconds, using the flaps alone to slowly pull out of the death spiral, and bring herself into a level glide just below the cloud layer.

The Hoatzin stabilized at last, slipping into a nice, level glide at a fairly low altitude. Penny could see a large mountain range below, a rather worrying fact since she was close enough to it to see a large, gold-roofed city built on to the mountainside.

Even primitive weapons posed a threat to the Hoatzin. The Lada-class shuttles had always been known for being the space vans they were. Not wanting to accidentally hit the mountain or be spotted by the locals with access to missiles, Penny opened up the throttle and brought her shuttle to a nice cruising speed of Mach 0.8 and dropped altitude until she was certain she would be flying below whatever primitive radar technology ponies had available to them.

A smile spread across Penny’s face. She slumped back in her seat with a happy sigh. “I did it!”

Penny reached over to the radio and cranked up the volume, her armored finger bumping the switch to activate the shuttle’s external speakers. The harsh metallic music filling her cabin thus leaked into the outside world, managing to make itself heard over the roar of the Hoatzin’s ramjets.

Penny allowed herself a few moments to get lost in the music while also quietly being grateful for her armor’s waste disposal system. Penny opened her eyes and turned to her left to check her navigation screen and froze.

Looking back at her through the cockpit window, not three meters from the Hoatzin, was a rainbow-maned, cyan-colored, cartoonishly adorable winged quadruped with massive eyes.

Penny took several seconds to process the fact that a flying pony was keeping up with her at just under the speed of sound and did the only thing she could do: grin like an idiot and flash the pony an approving hand gesture. “You go, tiny pony! Show physics who's boss!”

Rainbow did the only thing a pony can do when a bright yellow, Slavic space-brick blasting hardbass loud enough to be heard over jet engines pulls up alongside you in mid-air at speeds no Equestrian aircraft had ever obtained: stare wide-eyed and slack jawed into the pilot’s eyes and try to process what was going on.

Author's Note

For our convenience, this is a Lada-class Shuttle. Yes, this was made using Kerbal. Yes it flies. It shouldn't but it does. It also survives reentry, somehow XD

4 - Cheeki Breeki

Rainbow Dash - 8th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

One Hour Ago

749556.5 A.H.

Rainbow was always up for pushing herself. She couldn’t help it: she was a born flier and had been naturally good at it long before she decided to train to become great at it. As she flew over the forest below her, Rainbow decided to pass the time by trying to break her old speed record, Mach 1.1.

Rainbow knew that was probably impossible. She’d broken the sound barrier as a filly, and everypony knew little fillies had a much better thrust-to-weight ratio than fully grown mares. She tried anyways.

Rainbow’s goggles dug into the fur around her eyes, pushed roughly into her flesh by the compressed air trying to rush around her head. If not for the goggles, her eyes would be forced shut or stretched painfully wide. She could feel her feathers being pulled and twisted by drag forces, and the thousand little needles pricking her wings blocked out the muscle burn.

Rainbow glanced at the magical speedometer built into her goggles. Mach 0.83. She was close!

Transonic flight, an achievement on its own! Not sonic, or supersonic flight, but still quite good. Especially for a pegasus on her own.

Maybe I shouldn’t have skipped this year’s Young Flier’s Contest. I might have been able to take home an award for speed.

Ponies had their flying machines like any other people. After all, ground-bound ponies needed to visit pegasi towns sometimes. Pegasi themselves used flying machines, too. What pegasus wants to hoof carry a literal ton of food from an earthy pony farm up to the clouds?

The first pony to fly at supersonic speeds had been Commander Typhoon. He had achieved his flight using a rocket assisted autogyro. It took earth pony scientists and unicorn mages six years to design, five more to build, and then six months to teach the pilot how to fly the darn thing.

Rainbow had been training as a flier for a mere eight years, and she had a lower crash record than Commander Typhoon. As well as more common sense than the engineer who chose an autogyro as the basis for supersonic flight.

Rainbow smiled, and the wind pulled her mouth open painfully wide, forcing her to close her lips as tightly a she could.

I should buy a face-mask. Rainbow chuckled to herself. I wonder if I’m the first pegasus to fly this fast on her own? Eh, probably not.

Rainbow tucked her forelegs more tightly against her sides, trying to become just that much more aerodynamic. She could feel the drag on her tail slowing her down, and with a little scrunching up, could maybe overcome the—

In the clear blue skies over Equestria came a roar and thunder ponies had never heard: the screaming sound of an almost literal brick burning through the atmosphere.

Rainbow’s eyes shot open wide. Hundreds of images flashed through her mind, each one depicting the horrors wrought by minotaur weapons or pony-made megaspells.

Rainbow rolled over onto her back to look behind her. She saw nothing. No rising plume of flame-filled smoke. No growing ball of arcane energy scorching the earth. Rainbow frowned. She had definitely heard something, and it had to be loud to get through the wind rushing in her ears.

Her eyes focused in on a small orange dot as it burst through the clouds. An object, falling very fast. So fast it was on fire. Its angle suggested it had to have come from extremely high in the sky.

“Oh cool! A meteor!” Dash shouted, grinning like a dork for the two seconds it took her to realize the space-rock was on a collision course with Canterlot.

Dash gasped and started to twist, flaring her wings to slow down. She could make it back in time to help survivors if she gave it everything she had. Rainbow had to believe that, even if it wasn’t true.

Rainbow began to pull herself into an immelman turn. The meteor suddenly pulled up, its course changing to one which would bring it close to Rainbow’s position in a few seconds.

She frowned and let herself enter a backwards glide while she watched the meteor change direction. Perhaps Princess Celestia had deflected the space rock, or—

“That’s not slowing down like it should,” Rainbow said.

The space rock continued to burn through the sky, the flames slowly fading away, and the rock maintained a level trajectory rather than being pulled inexorably towards the ground.

“That’s an aircraft!”

She couldn’t help it. Nopony else was within earshot, and someone had to help her work her way through watching some sort of super-advanced aircraft just burn through the sky like it shouldn’t be in some super-classified warehouse under five invisibility spells and surrounded by angry bees.

Rainbow tracked the craft, wondering if she could identify it. It would fly past her soon. If it looked like a minotaur ship, she should report it to Princess Luna as soon as possible.

Nodding to herself, Rainbow rolled back over and resumed her original course. The strain would have given a lesser pony a heart attack, but Rainbow pushed through the pain, moving back to her original Mach .83 velocity.

The approaching aircraft’s engines screeching slowly faded into Rainbow’s hearing. Softly at first, then more and more loudly. She could also hear the wind rushing past the craft and swore it sounded just like an irritatingly loud bassline as laid down by DJ-Pon3 at 3 am on a Moonsday.

The craft began to slow, and drew up alongside Rainbow. It didn’t merely sound like an irritatingly loud bassline as laid down by DJ-Pon3 at 3 am on a Moonsday. It was playing a song featuring an irritatingly loud bassline as laid down by DJ-Pon3 at 3 am on a Moonsday.

That alone would have been enough of a surprise for Rainbow to drop out of the sky, but that wasn’t all.

Rainbow pushed her goggles up onto her forehead in disbelief.

The craft was an actual brick. It looked like one of the moving vans earth ponies in cities would use, only somepony had welded some sort of turbofan-fed rocket engines to the front and back to make a wingless quad-jet. That same pony had then painted their van a bright yellow, like a banana dipped in enough gloss to become grossly incandescent.

As a finishing touch, they had put three narrow black stripes down the van’s dorsal ridge. It reminded Rainbow vaguely of a sports equipment brand, but she couldn’t remember which one.

As if the impossibility of a near-supersonic aircraft made from an old flat-nosed van and some jet engines looted from a junkyard wasn’t enough, Rainbow could see into the cabin. The pilot was not a pony. The pilot wasn’t even Equusian.

The pilot was bipedal, possessed hands, and furless. They were covered in a ghostly-white skin which reminded Rainbow of the last wisp of candle smoke. They had a flat face with a small mouth, little eyes, and a slightly protruding nose, but no muzzle. A decidedly weird look for any intelligent life form, but the long, wide, pink and darker pink mane made up for it. The pilot’s turquoise-framed cat-eye glasses also helped make her look less alien. So did her pink eyes; they reminded Rainbow of her own, only smaller.

At least, Rainbow assumed they were female. The long eyelashes were her only real clue because the rest of the pilot was covered by what Rainbow was confident could only be described as a walking tank.

Assuming the pilot’s head wasn’t tiny compared to her body, the tank she was treating like a suit of armor had to be over twice her size, and yet it moved as gracefully as Rarity while the alien inside adjusted her craft’s controls.

The alien turned, looked out the side window, and saw her. Rainbow’s eyes dilated down to practically nothing.

Holy bucking horseapples, Lyra was right! I should have listened to her ranting! Rainbow’s ears slowly drooped down as she realized something else. Luna was wrong. It was aliens. They’re in space...

The alien looked back at Rainbow for a second then smiled. Rainbow felt her brain melt a little as she understood that an alien was smiling. Deep down she felt that an aliens’ expressions should be impossible to read, and yet here she was. Fully understanding that an alien found her awesome.

The pilot said something and flashed Rainbow an enthusiastic gesture. Rainbow blinked and waved back out of pure reflex.

An alien thinks I’m cool… That’s awesome, but how do I know that’s what she means?

The pilot glanced down for a moment then looked back up to Rainbow and smirked before tipping her head forwards. Rainbow frowned, not at all understanding the nonverbal communication. The pilot turned back to her controls, gripped a lever on the console and pulled it back slightly.

The shuttle’s engines roared loudly, pushing the ship slightly ahead of Rainbow before the pilot throttled down. Rainbow raised an eyebrow. The pilot revved her craft’s engines a few more times then looked back to Rainbow with a hopeful smile.

Rainbow tilted her head. “You… Want to race?”

The pilot reved her shuttle’s engines again. Rainbow’s eyes narrowed as she realized exactly what was going on.

This was Penny. Pandora hadn’t been roleplaying. He was about to leave Equus. If Rainbow lost this shuttle, she’d lose her only chance to rescue her friends. Her friends who absolutely had been abducted by space pirates.

“Oh, it! Is! On!” Rainbow declared as she slipped her goggles over her eyes.

Penny smiled through the window and gestured at Rainbow, making a fist with her thumb extended upwards. Rainbow had no idea what that meant, but she understood what the alien meant when her armor rotated a plate down in front of her face.

It was on.

Rainbow drew on her deepest reserves of energy and pushed against the air with her wings. She began to inch forwards, accelerating past her already pushed limits.

Penny opened the Hoatzin’s throttle as wide as she’d go. The shuttle rocketed forwards amid a mechanical screech of ‘why user?! WHY!!!??’

Rainbow winced as the shriek rattled her teeth more than the dull thumping music the shuttle still blared. She pushed harder. Her shoulders burned. Her wings blazed. The air felt almost solid in front of her.

The Hoatzin began to pass Rainbow completely, the hot gasses coming out of the ramjets blasted across her side. She winced, closing her right eye by reflex.

Rainbow clenched her teeth and stretched her hind legs out behind her as far as she could, even bending her hooves up to hold the end of her tail. She couldn't afford an ounce of drag.

Her effort paid off immediately. The Hoatzin’s side window grew closer and closer until Rainbow was once again alongside the shuttle.

Penny’s 360 sensors informed her that the pony had caught up. She glanced down at her controls. The shuttle was flying at 0.92 Mach. She could feel the hull shaking and jolting, and the shield generator was too fried from reentry to properly compensate for the aerodynamic profile of a brick. If the system was stressed much more, something could explode.

But the pony was going to win! No adorably-huggable organic was a match for mighty Chernin engineering!

Penny reached over and flipped on the afterburners. The boxy shuttle pulled ahead of Rainbow once more, green flames pouring from its boosters as they gave everything they had.

A wave of heat blasted out from the engines. Rainbow was forced to roll to her left and put distance between her and the shuttle as it took off like an arrow from a bow.

Rainbow grit her teeth. The shuttle was getting away. Her only chance to save her friends was getting away!

Rainbow flew faster now than she ever had as an adult. She felt the wall in front of her, the barrier every athlete finds when their body has hit its limits. This was it. This was all she had.

The shuttle shook visibly, rocking in the air as its mach cone burst. Rainbow’s eyes narrowed angrily as the sonic boom blasted through her. Flying this fast was ten percent luck, twenty percent skill, fifteen percent concentrated power of will, five percent pleasure, and fifty percent pain.

As she thought about never seeing her friends again, Rainbow found more will. Twenty percent more.

Everything Rainbow had went into her wings. All the energy her body could provide, all the focus her mind could muster, all the magic in her bones. The pressure wave in front of Rainbow warped and twisted, distorting as her flight magic began to force it aside.

The shuttle began to slow from Rainbow’s perspective. If she could just get a little more speed she could catch up, grab on, and hitch a ride to its final destination.

Rainbow clenched her teeth harder. Her mach cone started to spark, bolts of white lighting flashing around the edges. Dash didn’t notice them; her eyes were on the shuttle’s ramp, and the handles bolted onto it. If she could just reach the—

The air around Rrainbow exploded in a thunderclap as she broke the sound barrier. The pegasus magic once contained in her mach cone radiated outwards, creating a shimmering display of light behind her as she vanished into a prismatic blur, blasting across the sky in an instant.

Rainbow passed the shuttle in front of her like it was standing still.

Penny Hawking - 749556.5 A.H.

One Hour Ago

Ursa's Lair Campground - Whitetails Woods, Equestria, Equus

Penny yelped in alarm as a blazing bolt of prismatic light shot past her window at hypersonic speeds. The young woman stared out the window, slack-jawed as the Hoatzin’s cabin shimmered under the rainbow-light left behind by the passing object.

“The blin was that?!” Penny demanded as she stared wide-eyed at her helmet’s display.

Refusing to believe the sensors, Penny opened her helmet. Her jaw dropped as she realized the sensors had been right.

The shuttle’s targeting computer chirped, finally getting a lock on what it assumed was a surface-to-air missile. Penny glanced at the display in stunned disbelief before her lips slowly pulled apart into a toothy grin. She jumped up from her seat, her armor releasing maglocks seamlessly and the shuttle lurching under the weight of her movement.

“Opa!” Penny cheered. “Carry on, you magical air-pony! Ohhh, my queendom for filming rights in this sector. That clip would have made billions!”

Penny sighed happily and slumped down in her seat again, the mag locks engaging with a ka-chunk as soon as she sat down. She directed her armor to open a call to Pan. “Pan? It’s Penny. I’m planetside. Did you see the pegasus go hypersonic? Why didn’t you tell me you had hyperjets on those things?”

Her radio crackled after a few moments. “I’m so happy you’re alive! Uh… No I didn’t see any— WOAH! Um, okay, yeah I saw it!”

“Isn’t that cool?!” Penny grinned ear to ear. “It’s a shame you want to leave this place, Pan. I could vaporize your bullies from orbit instead, then we could do a whole series of videos on this planet. Hypersonic pegasi, stone crocodiles, bears made from acid. Ohhh, your world sounds wonderful, Pan.”

Pan was quiet for several long moments. “Well… It’s just not my world, you know? It does have its cool places though.”

Penny nodded to herself. “I understand. I have my own problems fitting in back home too.”

It was true. Penny didn’t fit in with her brothers and sisters. While she was a completely typical example of her particular race’s culture, Penny had a tiny disability which made interacting with her own people very difficult: she couldn’t understand her own species’ body language.

“That face thing you mentioned?” Pan asked with a frown.

“Da. It’s easier for me to be with you aliens.”

“But… You’re the alien?”

Penny grinned. “Nyet, you are!”

Penny heard the sound of a hoof meeting face over the radio. “Right! Perspective. I’m dumb.”

“You’re not dumb. You’re just not used to the galaxy yet,” Penny squinted at the horizon, and a small tower built atop an exceedingly large tree caught her eye. “I see you. Is there a place to land up there?”

“Yeah, there’s a landing platform,” Pan said with a smile. “Pegasi need to deliver mail, you know.”

Penny’s mind conjured up the image of a large steel platform supported by duracrete, complete with fuel trucks, boarding ramps, and landing lights. “Good! I was worried I’d need to set eighteen tons down on a tree branch.”

Pan looked out his window at the landing platform. It looked pretty sturdy. The deck was made from 2x4s and supported by 4x4s and angle iron. “I think it can handle that.”

Penny steered towards the tower and pulled back on the throttle, slowing down on a carefully plotted course. As she drew up alongside the tower, the shuttle was moving at a safe speed for her to engage the hover mode. The Hoatzin’s engines rotated ninety degrees, directing their thrust downwards and shaking the leaves from the treetops as Penny looked at the landing camera’s display and sighed.

“Pan, that’s not a landing platform. Its kindling. The engines will light that all on fire.”

Pan looked up at the shuttle above him. It was big, square, yellow, and looked distinctly like something that shouldn’t be flying. He gulped and nodded in agreement. “Um, yeah… Can we like, push my stuff inside while you hover next to the tower?”

Penny checked the shuttle’s fuel gauge. Her little race had burned more fuel than she’d wanted. “Nyet. I don’t have the fuel to hover for more than five minutes. Unless you want to stay on this planet.”

Pan nodded to himself and puffed out his cheeks as he thought about how they could pull this off. “Um, there’s a campground not to far from here with a big clearing. You can land there. I’ll lower stuff down with the winch and meet you there in a few minutes. If you help carry things, we can be out of here real quick. I know you’re worried about the pirates.”

“Good thinking. Which way to I go?”

“North by northeast. You can't miss it from the air, it’s huge and the only big gap in the treetops.”

“Got it. I’ll meet you back at your tree.”

Penny twisted the shuttle’s joystick and redirected herself towards the clearing. The trip took mere seconds to complete, and within a minute the shuttle was slowly floating towards the ground. The shuttle slowly and gently set down, almost sighing in what felt like relief as its landing legs touched sweet ground.

Penny pat the console gently. “Resy easy, comrade. We will be in space once again soon.”

The shuttle groaned under the weight of Penny’s armor as she stood up. It almost seemed like a response to its mistress’s words.

Penny crossed the deck to the shuttle’s ramp and put a finger on the ramp’s switch, but didn’t press it. Pan had told her that their planet had an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, and the Dawn had registered the same via astrometrics, but remote scans and word of mouth wasn’t quite enough for her to step out of her shuttle onto an alien world.

Penny glanced at the environmental scanner and winced. The local atmosphere had a rather high concentration of radon. The radiation was nothing for Penny. She’d been grown on Chern, a planet better known as the Empire of Atomicbombia. The tiny amount of rads the gas put out was literally nothing to her.

But no one wants to go to a doc to have them vacuum uranium and lead dust out of their lungs.

Penny deployed her armor’s helmet and sealed it with a hiss. Her finger flipped the hazardous environment switch, and a forcefield sprang up over the doorway before the ramp lowered. The field wasn’t remotely powerful. It would keep the atmosphere from leaking out, or in. That was it.

The ramp lowered to the ground with an ear splitting screech and a few sparks. Penny winced and set her armor to remind her to give the Hoatzin some TLC once it was secured back on the Dawn. Clearly an old-school reentry was about all the old girl could take.

The lowering ramp revealed something the young woman had not expected. The little blue pegasus was sitting behind her shuttle. Penny studied her armor’s displays as the lowering ramp revealed more and more of the pony. It was the first time she’d seen a member of Pan’s species and there was something she needed to verify.

One of the odder facts of galactic travel most people don’t want to talk about is Cross-Species Orientation. The great variety of species among the stars means everyone will eventually find another species they personally find attractive. That alone wouldn’t bother anyone. The problem is many people’s sense of self is shaken when they find a specific sex within a species to which they are attracted to, and it isn’t a sex they normally like.

Nearly half of all spacers encountered that situation in their lives. For many people, the shock to their self-identity could cause major issues and needed a therapist to resolve. Penny always looked forward to the dice roll. It spiced things up.

Penny took in Rainbow’s slender frame, athletically toned muscles, silky fur, huge eyes, cute little wings, and multi-hued mane. She nodded to herself, the gesture hidden by her helmet. Yep. They’re sexy.

The ramp hit the ground. Rainbows eyes widened as she tipped her head back, and back, then back some more to take in Penny’s sheer size. Seeing the Chernin through a window hadn’t provided a real sense of scale. Rainbow’s head came up to Penny’s armored knee. Rainbow could comfortably fit in her boot.

The poor pegasus’s heart began to beat faster and faster as she realized what she was face to camera-covered helmet with. The alien really was in a walking tank, and could crush her like a bug if she wanted to.

Penny bent her knees to lower herself into a squatting position. The act took her down from four times a pony’s height to merely twice that. Rainbow gulped nervously.

“I— I uh—”

Penny smiled behind her helmet and held out her first towards Rainbow. Rainbow eeped and winced at the sound of EM servos moving nearly a ton of steel.

“Ey, little poni! Put her there. You won fair and square. Good job!”

Rainbow blinked once, frowned, and nervously held out her hoof for the alien to bump. “Please don't shatter every bone in my leg…”

Penny snorted and bumped Rainbow’s hoof with her middle finger knuckle. Rainbow flinched away, only to freeze. The bump had been surprisingly delicate.

“Don’t be afraid. I don’t want to hurt you. You’re smol, and blue! Two of my favorite things,” Penny crossed her arms in front of herself for stability. “This might be a weird question, but are you a male or a female? Or do you not have those? Some races don’t have those.”

Rainbow snorted, her ears flicking in surprise and annoyance. “I’m a mare! Obviously. Sheesh, you work out just a bit and suddenly people—” Rainbow’s mouth froze mid-word. A sheepish smile overtook her. “Uh, heh heh… I uh… Yeah, you’re an alien! You actually might not know anything about uh, yeah....”

Penny rocked forwards slightly to simulate a nod. “Da. Thank you, Blue. Did you want something? Or did you get mad poor Hoatzin couldn’t keep up with your awesome?”

Rainbow smirked as her flying skill was called something so crude, yet flattering. “I have something important to ask,” she said as she looked towards the spot she believed Penny’s head to be under all that armor. “I want to go to space. Those pirates you saw took my friends. I’m going to find them.”

Penny frowned and reached up to her faceplate, stroking it slowly. Dash winced at the sound of metal shrieking against metal. “Well, Blue, Pan and I are going to do everything we can to help. See, I think it’s our fault they were taken. Nova Wing always used their old trick of monitoring transmissions to find good prey. They probably didn’t even hear what we talked about, but they would have seen a call going to your planet and gotten curious.

“There’s a lot of good reasons to investigate signals coming from your sector… Blin, I would have tracked one down myself. Uh, the point is that I feel responsible for your loss. I will do everything I can to ensure they are found. I could take you with Pan and I, but we have problem.”

Rainbow frowned and tilted her head. “What problem?”

Penny stood up and pointed up to the sky. “Up there is the Wild Core, Blue. You live in what we call the K3 Sector. It’s a no-fly zone for governments. We were asked very nicely by very powerful people to keep out. So we do… Mostly. I’m not a government agent, and my ship is privately owned. I can come in. I can take you around this sector, anywhere you want to go… But if we want to track down Nova Wing, we need to leave this sector. I’m not allowed to take primitives out of their home sector without written or recorded permission from a ranking member of their government, military, or other recognised national figure.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow suspiciously. “Then how will you go flying around with Pan? Or is he not leaving this ‘sector’?”

Penny smiled and winked at Rainbow. “Pan has the signatures of several national heroes. On blank pages.”

“You mean you’ll forge him papers, but not me?”

“Da.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “That seems pretty hypocritical.”

The mare smirked, instantly making Penny believe she was holding onto something critical. “My people are called the Chernin. We are born spacers, we travel the stars in search of our ancestors. It is of our firmly held belief that the Federated Republic doesn't have the authority to tell people where they can and cannot go.

“I can forge Pan immigration papers, but doing so will consume those signatures. The paper they are written on, the ink, it will all be molecularly rearranged and fuzed into one sheet of paper so the pen strokes are all in the… It’s a complex process. All you need know is the physical signatures will be consumed to minimize the risk of the forgery being detected.”

Rainbow nodded twice. A mischievous look in her eyes indicated she trusted Penny was telling the truth, but still knew something she did not. “Okay… Thing is, one of those signatures is mine.”

Penny raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Which?”

“I’m Rainbow Dash.”

Penny chuckled. “Well, well, national hero… I’m not sure you can sign your own papers. But let’s say you can. There is other problem too.”

Rainbow frowned. “Yeah so, when you said ‘do anything’ that excludes ‘help me’, right?”

Penny shook her head. “Nyet! How are you with not having a bedroom?”

Rainbow blinked. “Huh?”

“My ship has two bedrooms. One is mine. One will be Pan’s. You would have to sleep in a sofa.”

Rainbow’s frown deepened. “Um, you mean on a sofa.”

“Is it on? Sorry. Still learning Equish.”

Rainbow pursed her lips and looked up at Penny. “You don’t have some awesome space translator?”

“I do, but it’s only so good. A good spacer learns the languages they use the most. Uh, if they can speak them. Blin… You should hear Falaxian and try to say even a single word! Stupid four larynxed space elves and their thirty-two syllable words for basic shit…” Penny grumbled muttering to herself.

Rainbow closed her eyes for a moment, then stood up and gave Penny the most determined look Rainbow had ever given anyone in her entire life. Penny bit her tongue to keep for squeeing at the adorable little thing trying to look all tough. Oi, Blin! Their girls are adorable. I’d get into so much trouble here if I could stay a while.

“I don't care what I’ll be sleeping on. I want to rescue my friends. Sure, maybe they can escape without me, but… I need to help them if I can, and I can!” Rainbow stamped a hoof against the ground to punctuate her claim.

Penny squatted down for Rainbow again. “Hokay. Then you can come with us. If you can sign your own papers. Let me look it up.”

Penny closed her eyes for a moment to access her armor’s database and call up a legal text. No spacer left home without a full copy of the current galactic law. She began to page through the volume, searching indexes for laws relating to Spacefaring-Planetbound interactions.

Penny found one option and giggled. “Ey? Huh… As a captain, I could marry you to Pan, and then you could come with us no problem!”

Rainbow snorted. “Pass!”

Penny gave Rainbow a playful glare, and wished her helmet was translucent. “Oi? What’s wrong with him?”

Rainbow bit her lip. “Uh, well… Personally, I like my stallions to look like stallions. He looks like a mare who's a bit butch. You know?”

Penny nodded and smiled internally. It’s a trap, eh? Good. I like their mares, so I should like him. Maybe Blue can have her own room after all…

“So he looks a little girly. So what? My last partner was a squid-person from an ocean world. Looks aren't that important.”

“Yeah, well, he’s also a bit too into sex, and a bit of a misanthrope.”

Rainbow eeped as she heard somepony clear their throat behind her. She turned around to find Pan standing a few meters behind her.

The little stallion was carrying a large pair of saddlebags, and dressed in a black hoodie with pink socks covering his hind legs from hoof to mid-thigh, just below his cutie mark.

Penny looked up from her documents and smiled behind her helmet. So that’s what he looks like? He’s more adorable than Blue. Hokay penny, you’re bi when it comes to Equestrians, who are adorable. Kush!

Penny waved to her friend, and hoped he would find her attractive as well. It would be nice to have a romantic partner again. “Opa! Pan! Come over here, you can ride on my shoulder.”

Pan gave Penny a shaky smile. “Uhhhh… One sec, okay?”

Penny nodded. “Okay.”

Pan stepped forwards and looked at Rainbow, rubbing the back of his head. “Um, so… I’m not a misanthrope. I don’t hate everything and everyone. This place just isn’t for me is all. I thought that talking to you would be the last thing I ever did with another pony and I wanted to get some stuff off my chest.”

Rainbow raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You spent like, ten minutes ranting about how guys dont get to look cute because ponies are jerks.”

Pan rolled his eyes and gestured to his socks. “You know full well a lot of stallions would slap me for liking to wear these.”

Rainbow coughed into her hoof. “Uh, okay. Yeah… But just as many would want to mount you for it.”

Pan’s cheeks flushed bright pink. “Yeah, but I’m straight. I like mares. I like to look cute, because then mares find me approachable, hang out with me as friends, and don’t get weirded out by me ‘suddenly’ liking the occasional girly thing. They expect it. Because I like socks, and hoodies, and looking cute. Can we not do this again? Please?”

Rainbow pursed her lips then nodded sharply. “Sure. I’m willing to give you a second chance, but uh, that was a pretty bad first impression. All I know about you is that you’re a girly stallion who likes to draw porn and hates how you’re judged for it.”

Penny rolled her eyes. “Oi, blin. You had one conversation and brought up his you-know-what,” Penny looked at Rainbow and tapped her helmets forehead. “If someone cut off your wings, and someone brought that up, would you be in a good mood and talk about things that make you happy?”

Rainbow shook her head. “No! He brought that up. I was just upset because I thought he drew porn of me.”

Penny turned to face Pan. The stallion nodded and chuckled. “Yeah, I did it that time. Rainbow, seriously, I’m sorry I came off like that. I’m not normally like that. I just wanted to complain to someone before never coming back here again. Also you kinda started us on a topic that guaranteed we wouldn’t have a normal conversation.”

Rainbow raised her hoof to protest, then lowered it. It’s true. If you start a conversation with porn as the topic it will bring out the weirdest parts of people. “Fair enough. Let’s start from scratch then. Hi, I’m Rainbow Dash.”

Rainbow held out her hoof and Pan gently shook it. “My name is Pandora. Nice to meet you, Rainbow.”

Pan let go of Rainbow’s hoof and looked up at Penny. “Now for you!” He said, his eyes narrowing angrily, “You told me you were a mare, but you’re a giant robot!”

Penny snorted and laughed, falling over backwards onto the Hoatzin’s ramp. “Xaxaxax! Eto dospekhi, ty derpy poni!”

The two ponies looked at each other for a moment. Rainbow spoke first. “So uh… Why does an alien language sound a lot like Griffonese?”

Pan shrugged. “I don’t know. Coincidence? The words aren't the same, just the sound. I checked,” he said before turning back to glare at Penny. “What’s so funny?!”

“I said this is armor, you derp!” Penny said as she sat up, wiping her faceplate as if to remove tears from her eyes.

Pan’s eyes narrowed even further. “Ponyfeathers! That is a giant robot! I know giant robots when I see them.”

Rainbow cleared her throat. “Uh, it really is armor. I saw her face when she was flying. That big middle smooth slab-thing is some kind of helmet. It was down.”

Pan tilted his head. “Really?”

“Da,” Penny said with a smile.

“Yep,” Dash snickered. “You do look like a robot in that, though.”

“Is okay, I’m a cyborg. This armor is technically a bodypart,” Penny chuckled. “It comes off. There’s a fully-normal squishy-person in here who can come out. I’d show you now, Pan, but you’ve got a lot of radon here. I don't want that in my lungs; it turns to lead.”

Rainbow bit her lip and snickered. “Your Equuish is terrible. I uh, I’ll help you while we're in space.”

Pan tilted his head. “Wait, what do you mean by body part? Can you feel things through that?”

Penny nodded, remembered her helmet was fixed, and flashed pan a thumbs up. “Da! It responds to my thoughts too. We can talk about my T-34 later. We need to get back into space and find out if Rainbow can come with us.”

Pan tilted his head and turned towards Rainbow. “Okay, I missed something. You’re going with us?”

“Of course I am. You’re the only way of getting off world and my friends are rotting in a space pirate’s brig!”

Penny winced, internally debating if she should say what was most likely happening to them right now. She decided to be honest. Penny cleared her throat. “Nyet. They are most likely in stasis tanks, or on medical tables. New species, new bio.”

Rainbow’s ears lay back flat against her head. “So yeah, I’m going with you. Especially because your pirates won't even use bioscanners or whatever other future tech you have.”

Penny raised an eyebrow. “You need baseline data for a bioscanner to work. First few organisms need to be dissected.”

Rainbow’s eyes widened, she sniffled, her head hanging from her neck limply. “So… It’s too late?”

Penny frowned. “Ey?”

Pan closed his eyes tightly. “You just said they’ll be dissected. As in, cut apart for study. You don’t survive that.”

Penny blinked several times. “Blin… Your doctors SUCK! Nyet, they’ll survive, but the Wing won't care to use painkillers on slaves. I imagine they’ll clear up the scarring though.”

Rainbow’s head snapped back up. “We can still save them?!”

“Da,” Penny resumed flipping through the legal documents on her display.

Rainbow turned to Pan. “Da is her word for yes, right?”

Pan nodded. “Mhm. She refuses to say it most of the time.”

Rainbow’s face scrunched up on her as she processed that. “She KNOWS the word, wants to speak Equuish, but wont use it?”

Penny smiled. “Opa! We have solution. Rainbow can come with us for up to 48 standard hours as an ambassador!” Her smile faded. “Oh… She’d have to stay at an embassy for everything but travel time.”

Rainbow’s eyes closed. She sighed in irritation and rustled her wings. “Can you wait here for a little bit? I can fly back to Canterlot and—”

Rainbow winced as her wings sent burning pan into her shoulders, almost as if mentioning flying again so soon after breaking through the wall made them panic. “OW! Buck… That stings… Okay, never mind, muscle burn just kicked in.”

Pan’s ears drooped down. He set down his bag and began digging through it for a first aid kit. “How bad is it? I remember when I stressed my hips out it felt like they were like, detaching. I have painkillers I can give you.”

Rainbow shook her head. “No! No drugs. They interfere with the muscle growth process.”

Pan looked up, raising and eyebrow at her remark. “Um, no they don’t?”

Rainbow rubbed the back of her head and smiled sheepishly. “Uh, not to sound like a big jerk but, at your level it makes no difference. I’m training to be an elite athlete. Where I am right now it’s hard to gain anything at all, so the tiny little bit of interference a painkiller will cause actually will negatively impact me.”

Penny tilted her head. “Really? That’s a bit of odd biology. Do they slow down your protein synthesis?”

Rainbow nodded a smile spreading across her lips. “Yeah! How do you know that, do you work out?”

“Nyet. Real Chernin build muscles,” Penny said with a savage grin. “I’m a mechanic.”

Rainbow puckered her lips. “Okay, that’s related to biology stuff… How?”

“Biomechanics are also mechanics,” Penny said as she closed her legal briefings. “I do hardware, software, firmware, and wetware. Bodies are machines too, you know.”

Pan flicked his tail for a few moments while staring awkwardly at the ground. “We don’t have the fuel to fly her to Canterlot, do we?”

Penny sighed. “Nyet. I drained some of the fule to make entry easier. Less mass, less energy to bleed. We could go to orbit, check to see if they are reacting to me, refuel, then go.”

Rainbow’s ears drooped. “What if they are there?”

“We’d cheeze it for Tavros. The Wing doesn't like witnesses.”

“They’re probably up there still, aren't they?” Rainbow asked as she turned her head to look up at the sky.

“Da,” Penny sighed.

Pan bit his lip. “This isn’t fair! She deserved to help. There has to be some kind of emergency clause in the law.”

Penny shrugged. “There is, but I’m not a Star League officer. I’m a Net-Persona. I can’t film in the K3 Sector, it’s forbidden. It’s not like I can stir up a frenzied crowd to demand a special permit.”

Rainbow smiled slowly. “Net-Persona?”

“Da. I make videos for people. Edutainment, mostly.”

Rainbow’s eyes shone with a mischievous light as Penny’s words confirmed her suspicions. “What if you use Pan outside of this sector? He can be all ‘I have a friend, please help her!’ That works ALL THE TIME for us here.”

Pan hummed and flashed Penny a smile. “I’d be completely fine with that! You know, you never told me how popular you are. Could we get a few thousand people angry at xenos?”

Penny snorted. “Thousand? Blin… It’s cute how you think that’s a lot of people. I’m pretty popular, but is smol problem. It took me a year to save up for the extra fuel to come get you. It would take a year of working to get Rainbow on the hunt. The trail would be cold.”

Penny could cancel some of her charitable donations or investment funds and be able to pay for the fuel in a video or two at the most. That is, if she could back out of contracts with various banks. Which she could not. Wildlife Conservation organizations get especially antsy about your donations when you provide a majority of their funding.

Penny hummed and stroked her chin. “I could maybe ask babushka for help. I haven't asked her for anything yet this century. Ey, would take a while too… Trail would probably be cooling by the time she helped us.”

Rainbow growled and punched the ground with her hoof hard enough to leave a dent. “BUCK! I hate this! Laws are horseapples!”

“Not when you are the one writing them,” a mare’s voice called from the trees.

“Blyat!” Penny jumped bolt upright, her armor’s quiet hum transitioning to a loud rumble as it clocked up for combat

Penny’s hand flew to the blade stored on her back and seized the hilt tightly. Her eyes scanned her display, doing their best to take in the 360 display and quickly locate the newcomer who had identified as a Fed. If only Pan had believed he could get them to actually sign an immigration form, we wouldn’t be committing a crime right now and—

A tall white-furred alicorn mare stepped out from the shadows. She was massive, compared to the other ponies. Easily twice their size, if not three times. Her multi-colored cerulean, turquoise, cobalt, and pink mane and tail flowed in an ethereal breeze. Her magenta eyes held an unnatural kindness to them. You could get lost in her eyes, in those pools of comfort, caring, and understanding.

Pan and Rainbow immediately dropped into a bow, murmuring greetings Penny didn’t quite catch.

Princess Celestia offered Penny a small, polite bow. “I mean you no harm, star citizen.”

Penny let go of her sword, leaving it in its storage compartment. Despite the unnatural aura of friendliness the alicorn radiated, the snark was strong with Penny. There was but a single way she could reply. “I haven’t backed that project. I’m not into contemporary fiction, and it’s still in alpha.”

Princess Celestia blinked in confusion. “Is that not a polite way to greet someone from another world?”

Penny shook her head. “No, not really. It’s not rude though. One minute…” Penny took one step and crossed the two meters between her and Pan. She crouched down and put one of her suit’s cameras directly in his face. “You told me you were an adult.”

Pan blinked. “Um, I am.”

Rainbow stood up and bit her lip to keep herself from laughing. “So am I. Princesses are just really, really tall.”

Pan nodded. “Yeah! All alicorns are tall.”

Penny turned towards Celestia, seeking confirmation. The alicorn smiled. “It is true. They are my little ponies.”

Penny’s mind connected two dots which most people would not have even thought about the next day. “Then… Alicorns rule your people because they are alicorns, and alicorns are the tallest ponies?”

Pan nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.”

Penny inhaled, turned to face Celestia, then stood up and snapped into a salute. “Privetstvuyu, moy samyy vysokiy!”

Princess Celestia tilted her head to one side as her translation spell processed the alien language with ease. “Did you refer to me as ‘my tallest’?”

Penny sputtered, her cheeks turning a bright blue as she blushed. “How do you speak Chernin?”

Celestia smiled and focused her magic to allow her to speak in the tongue she had just heard. “YA - voploshcheniye solntsa. Moy magicheskiy potentsial vykhodit za ramki ponimaniya bol'shinstva lyudey.”

Penny nodded to herself and nervously shuffled her feet. “Ah. Super-psyker. Got it. So uh… What do you want, moy samyy vysokiy?”

The Princess’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Are you going to keep calling me that?”

“Da. I can’t help it,” Penny admitted, blushing again.

“Why?”

“Well, there’s old First Race media stored on the ODIN network and— Ey, long story. The cartoons they pump into your growth tank stick with you,” Penny admitted, grateful for her helmet hiding the sheepish grin on her face.

Celestia’s eyes softened. She’d overheard Penny’s mention of not having asked her grandmother for anything in a century. If there was one thing Celestia understood perfectly, it was how dear something very old could become to you. “I understand. As for my wishes, at first I wished to learn why a meteor changed direction. It is intriguing to know my people may have indeed been visited by otherworldly visitors in the past, and most humbling to meet one in pony.”

Penny immediately suppressed the urge to facepalm. Blin… Let’s hope the Mina didn’t find these poor ponies and do their normal abduct for “medical” experiments thing. I can’t believe I ever dated one of them.

The Princess continued. “Though I do wonder why my little ponies reported seeing flying saucers when your ship is a box. Are there many space vessel designs?”

Penny closed her eyes tightly. Cuka blyat! They did… “Yes, every race has their own. Saucer shapes are prefered by the Mina. They are harmless. You don’t need to worry about them. They don’t colonize, make war or anything. They are explorers. Just uh, don’t fall for their advances. Also, if any of your people reported they took them for medical experiments, it’s fine. Mina don’t hurt anyone, and—”

Celestia cleared her throat. “Are you certain? Because a particular mare has been writing me every month for ten years asking if we are starting a space program yet and volunteering as an astronaut, so she can see her doctor for a checkup.”

Penny facepalmed. Rainbow snickered. “Oh, my, Luna! It’s Lyra, isn’t it?”

It was.

“At least they found someone into it…” Penny muttered to herself. “She’s fine. Trust me. They like roleplay. No real medical procedures were performed. They also don’t contribute to galactic mapping or encyclopedias. So only I, a fleet of pirates, and their race knows of your world right now.”

Pan’s cheeks turned bright pink. “Wait, so there’s a species of uh, ‘weird’ people?”

“Da…” Penny grumbled. “Not all of them but—” Penny sighed and raised her hands. “Moy samyy vysokiy, we have a very short escape window. Pan wants to leave, and I have agreed to take him. If that is not okay by you, I will leave. I do not have time for a long conversation. Pirates in your system may be trying to board my ship. It’s automated defences are only so good.”

Princess Celestia smiled softly. “Yes, I am aware. I am also aware of your dilemma. I am here to make a bargain.”

Penny nodded. “Okay.”

“I will overlook your intention to forge documents, and provide you with my permission to take Rainbow and your friend to the stars, if you do everything in your power to assist Rainbow in her quest.”

Penny blinked. “Ey? Just like that?”

Rainbow frowned. “Quest? You mean you’re going to make this a formal mission?”

Celestia nodded and closed her eyes. “Rainbow Dash, I, Princess Celestia, command you to venture to the stars and retrieve the Elements of Harmony. You have no deadline, but you must be quick. We are on the brink of war with the minotaurs. I have avoided it for now, but this peace cannot hold. There will be a war within five years unless we have the Elements here as protection.”

Rainbow’s eyes narrowed with determination and raised a hoof in salute. “You can count on me, Princess.”

Penny linked to her armor’s systems and deployed one of her camera drones. The small orb robot popped free from its storage slot on Penny’s back, deployed its teal hardlight wings and hovered into position to put Princess Celestia in view.

The white alicorn frowned. “What is that?”

“It’s a camera. I’m not supposed to record video here, but audio-visual recordings are prefered over paper. I think I’ll be okay if I film you granting permission. Is that alright?”

Celestia nodded. “It is.”

Penny ordered her drone to record as Celestia began speaking. “Okay, repeat after me: I, Princess your name, grant the right of interstellar travel to my citizens, Pandora and Blue.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “My name is Rainbow.”

Penny winked. “Da, Blue Fast.”

“That’s not my name.”

“I think remember the name of best poni.” Penny said, writing the nickname in stone.

Rainbow facehooved. “I’m not the best pony! What kind of statement even is that?”

Penny rolled her eyes. “You hit hypersonic with your own wings. You’re clearly the best poni. Unless someone can move your moon or something equally cool.”

Princess Celestia smiled and elected to not tell the alien about her sister. Pan’s ears drooped as he feared competition.

The Princess cleared her throat. “I, Princess Celestia Solaris Invictus, grant the right of interstellar travel to my citizens, Rainbow Dash of Cloudsdale, and Pandora of Canterlot.”

The drone chirped as it finished recording. Pan wheeled around to face the princess. “Wait, you KNOW me?!”

Celestia nodded, a frown pulling at her lips. “Not quite. Long ago I invented a spell which tells me the full name of anypony I look at.”

Penny hummed as her drone returned to its storage rack. “Does it work on me?”

Celestia nodded. “It does. It takes the knowledge of the name from the mind of the person attached to it. You are Captain Penni Hawking Junior of Hawking Industries.”

Penny frowned behind her helmet. The psi-resistant lining I bought was a scam. Good to know.

The young woman crouched down to get onto Celestia’s eye level. “You know I never agreed to your terms, and you gave me what I want, da?”

Celestia smiled softly and held out her right hoof. “I believe you’re an honorable person, Captain. A hoofshake will be enough.”

“I don’t have hooves.”

Celestia rolled her eyes and wiggled her extended hoof. “A forelimb-terminator-appendage shake will be enough.”

Penny nodded and formed a fist, pressed it against Celestia’s hoof and awkwardly moved her arm up and down. It took every ounce of Celestia’s diplomatic training and experience to not snicker at the way Penny chose to replicate her gesture.

“We have deal,” Penny said with a smile, before turning to look at her shuttle. “Okay, we have what we need. Rainbow, you’re sore from flight. Get into a seat. Pan and I will get his things and then we get out of here.”

Celestia smiled. “I understand the need for haste. Please, allow me.” The Princess’s horn shimmered, lighting up bright gold until it became a miniature sun.

The built up magic seemed to burn the air around her horn before vanishing in a flash of light. The Hoatzin groaned as a few hundred pounds of personal belongings suddenly appeared within its cargo area.

Penny looked at the packed items which had simply appeared as if out of thin air. She turned to look at the alicorn. Then back to the boxes. Then back to the alicorn. Back at the boxes, then back to the alicorn.

Penny’s gaze suddenly turned to Pan. “Can you do that?”

Pan shook his head and offered Penny an apologetic smile. “Sadly, I’m not a princess…”

Rainbow walked over to the boxes and began to look through them. Pan tilted his head and coughed into his hoof. “Uh, Dash? That’s not yours…”

“I know,” Rainbow said as she opened a box to check its contents. “But I remembered your radio can call Penny’s ship. We should give it to Celestia so I can report back to her.”

Penny nodded, thoroughly impressed. “Good idea, Blue. Is that okay with you, Pan?”

Pan nodded and walked up to a wooden case in the shuttle. The case was bright green and nearly as large as two ponies. It had to be to contain the rather powerful radio setup in its entirety. “Now that she explained it, yeah. It’s in this case, by the way, Rainbow. Please stop looking through my stuff.”

Rainbow blushed apologetically. “Sorry. It’s just, you know…”

Pan nodded and pulled his radio in its case over to Celestia, presenting it to her with a bow. “Here you are, your highness.”

Celestia accepted the radio graciously. A slight blush formed on her cheeks as she decided Pan was perhaps just a little over the top with his presentation. “Thank you, Pandora. I will return this to you after Rainbow’s mission is complete.”

Penny paused for a moment and stepped over to Celestia. “If you don’t mind, may I look at the modulation crystal Pan was using? I’ve always wanted to inspect it. Not just anything can be used to call a starship.”

Celestia nodded. “By all means, as long as it still works.”

Penny turned to face Pan. “Could you show me the crystal?”

Pan nodded and opened the case. The radio was packed inside using dedicated cutouts in foam blocks. It was a matter of seconds for Pan to remove the signal modulator from its compartment and open the case. He pointed to a small red crystal with a hoof, a necessary gesture as the rado contained six separate crystals for various purposes.

“It’s this one.”

Penny leaned over the crystal and activated her suit’s scanner. A few pale beams of blue light washed over the crystal as her suit took its readings. The crystal glowed in response to the probing, shining a dim red light into the opened modulator.

The data scrolled across Penny’s display. “I thought so,” she said her lips pursing. “This is the transceiver from a Miniac bioship. It can contact my ship because it's the last ‘number’ this crystal was in contact with. The last call was five hundred years ago. Makes sense. My father still owned the Dawn back then. He did a lot of business with the Minia.”

Pan blinked. “Really? My dad said he found it at a dig sight. He would have mentioned finding a starship.”

Penny smiled and resisted the urge to ruffle Pan’s mane. “Bioship, not starship. Minia use organic starships.”

Rainbow frowned and turned around to join the conversation. “Wait, like, their ships are living beings? How does that work? Isn’t space like, super deadly?”

Penny sighed. “I don’t have the degrees to tell you how it works. It just does. They are bioengineers, good ones. Almost everything they make is a purpose grown cybernetic organism.

“They are weird like that. The ship would have died on impact, or starved to death over time, then rotted away. Only a few crystals, and maybe some personal items, and parts of the ship’s skeleton would be left by now.”

Celestia hummed, her ears perking. “We have been visited for at least five hundred years? Interesting. I will see what I can learn here.” She turned her attention to Rainbow. “Rainbow, please bring them back safely.”

Rainbow nodded. “I will. I promise.”

Penny’s armor chirped an alarm. A warning popped up on her display. The Dawn Of Destiny had detected a Nova Wing ship in Lunar orbit when the hostile ship began scanning the Dawn for lifesigns.

“Blyat! We’re out of time,” Penny swore as she pointed to the shuttle. “We need to go.”

Everypony rushed aboard. As soon as the ramp closed Penny fired up the Hoatzin’s gravity engine. The shuttle rose into the sky, its conventional thrusters burning hot.

Celestia watched it rise, and smiled as the ship’s gravity engine finished spooling up, making the ship seem to fall into orbit in the blink of an eye. “Good luck, Rainbow. I know I can count on you.”

Rainbow Dash - 10th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

The Present

Medical bay, Dawn of Destiny, Lunar Orbit - Equus, K3 Sector

Rainbow felt like she was dead. Everything hurt, but the pain was fuzzy, distant, almost alien. She could feel things poking into her skin, and even a few tubes slid into her natural openings, but again it was all distant.

Her right eye saw a blurry shape in front of her. The room’s light was bright, making it hard to see what it was. Her left eye saw nothing at all.

Rainbow’s oxygen-starved brain did its best, eventually determining the blurry thing was a drill. Rainbow gurgled in fright and began to squirm in place. The medical bed she laid on began to beep in protest as its patient moved.

Rainbow saw a small, white and pink object move into view. It took her a moment to understand that it was Penny. The Chernin had slipped out of her armor to do what needed to be done here.

Penny gently put a hand on Rainbow’s barrel. “Is okay. I’m fixing you. Relax, I’m a mechanic.”

Rainbow gurgled, barely managing to speak around the tube in her throat. “I can’t see.”

“Da. Your eyes burst. It’s okay. I fixed the right one. I’m putting the left one together right now.”

“It’s blurry…”

“We can fine tune once you’re not dying.” Penny reached over to a control panel and tapped its touch screen. “I’m giving you more anesthetic. You’ll go back to sleep. Don’t struggle. It will be okay.”

Rainbow blinked her working eye as she realized something. “There is a tube in my butt.”

“Nyet.”

Dash’s eye narrowed skeptically. “I can feel it.”

Penny pursed her lips as she debated telling Rainbow how badly she’d gotten hurt. In the end, there was only one right choice.

“You pushed out some intestine in vacuum. I think poni insides are under more pressure than normal. Pan did the same thing. The thing you feel is a medical tool called a speculum, it is holding your guts in place while nanites glue them back in so they don't glew your ass shut.”

Rainbow’s eyes shot open wide as that one fact clarified just how messed up she’d gotten from being spaced. If not for the drugs being pumped into her, she wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep for the rest of that day, let alone then and there.

Fortunately for Rainbow, basic medical procedures were a part of a mechanic’s training. They had to know how to install biomods after all.

“It’s okay, Blue. You’ll make a full recovery. This isn’t the worst I’ve patched up,” Penny lied soothingly as Rainbow passed out.

The Chernin elected to not tell Rainbow she’d had to flash-clone her new eyes twice. Or that she’d been in a coma for two days, when a real doctor would have had her back on her hooves in an hour. Even without good bio-data to work from.

“It’s a good thing you’re near-humans despite being quadrupeds… I don’t know what I’d do if your biology was totally alien,” Penny muttered to herself as she resumed extracting the ruined left eye from Rainbow’s socket.

5 - Welcome Aboard

"If offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat. Just get on." — Christa McAuliffe, USS Challenger

Rainbow Dash - 12th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

749,558.23 A.H.

Medical bay, Dawn of Destiny, Solar Escape Trajectory - Equus System, K3 Sector

A faint voice whispered in the distance. It felt like it was calling to Rainbow, even though she could tell it wasn’t speaking to her. Its words sounded alien, yet she understood them perfectly. It was as if a little voice whispered everything to her subconscious in plain Equish.

“I blurred them out because they haven’t consented to being on cam yet.”

The sound of a glass bottle clinking against metal made Rainbow’s ears twitch. Pegasus ears were half magic, half miracle of biology. The sharp click was more than enough for Rainbow to hear the bottle was almost empty. It also made her wince in pain.

Ow… Things shouldn’t sound this sharp.

“Da, you’ll see them soon. I know Pan won't mind. He did agree to be my media technician. Rainbow might say no. I don’t know enough about poni culture to say if they think of being on camera like we do.”

Rainbow moaned and opened her eyes. She regretted it instantly as blindingly bright light was positioned directly above her. Rainbow recognized it as a surgical lamp and gulped. The mare tipped her head down to look at her body, checking for signs of injury.

She was laying on her back. Nothing looked too out of place. Her fur was unusually clean, to the point of being glossy and silky. It’s like I’ve been at a sp—

Rainbow stopped mid sentence as a cramp rippled through her entire body. It wasn’t a bad cramp, just a quick twinge which a normal person would forget after a few moments. Rainbow wasn’t a normal person. She was a highly trained athlete. She understood her skin had pulled away from her muscles in many places recently. Even worse, she could feel the thin layers of nano-glue holding it in place.

Rainbow’s eyes shot open wide despite the lamp shining in them. Luna’s mane, what the buck happened to— Oh yeah, space. I was in space. Naked. Why aren’t I dead? Shouldn’t you just go pop?

Someone laughed. It took Rainbow a moment to recognize the laugh as belonging to Penny. It had an alien sound to it, but reminded her a lot of a pony’s laugh. Specifically Berry Punch’s.

Rainbow turned her head towards the speaking alien, expecting to see her standing around in the light mech she called power armor. Instead, she found the alien to be dressed in a smaller machine. One which was skin-tight.

The off-white machine wrapped around Penny’s arms, legs, shoulders, back, and hips. It looked almost like a minimalist exoskeleton. It covered her spine almost entirely, with her shoulder blades completely covered as well, and had a single rod running down each arm and leg. While there were visible joints in the rods to allow a full range of motion, the joints looked almost identical to the rods.

The frame included a full pair of knee-length boots, but no gloves or visible means of sticking to her skin other than the boots.

Penny’s frame protruded a centimeter away from her skin at the most, and each edge tapered down to meet her skin flush for an organic look and feel. It reminded Rainbow of the mobility constructs made for paralyzed ponies so much, she concluded that’s what it must be. Rainbow’s guess happened to be almost correct.

A lifetime of living in her power armor had left Penny fairly weak. She’d grown up in T-34s, helping advertise her family’s wares at live demos, testing new features, and otherwise piloting a heavy suit at all times. She’d missed most of the five-year window a Chernin has for developing natural muscles, so here she was today: a grown woman almost as feeble as the day she climbed out of her tank to see the world for the first time.

The mobility frame left Penny’s pale skin mostly bare, and she didn’t have anything on over it. Nothing solid, that is.

The mobility frame had internal hologram projectors, which were meant to help it blend into a user’s body. Penny had set it up to project the image of a deep purple sports bra and bike shorts. The holograms covered the slightly-out-of-shape-looking woman’s body with a realistic (albeit glowing) simulation of clothing.

This was the closest Penny ever came to wearing clothes. Her lifetime of piloting her armor was to blame for her preferences. Being touched by anything other than liquid, another living being, or air felt unnatural and disgusting to the young woman.

Penny was sitting in a chair next to a small table covered in medical supplies, along with the remains of an unappetizing-looking ration bar and a mostly empty one-liter bottle of vodka. A small, spherical robot hovered in front of her, projecting a screen Rainbow couldn’t properly see.

Penny’s eyes flicked across the screen, and she shook her head. “Nyet, gorlacli34. She’s not blurred out because she’s naked. From what I’ve been told and seen, they treat clothing like the Iregsin. It's totally optional. I got their permission clip from a royal. The only things she had on were a tiara and a big necklace-thing.”

A moment passed, and Penny read the next message from the chat and laughed. “I don’t know if they will like how I look, so I covered up the bits most likely to gross them out.”

Rainbow sat up slowly and carefully. She didn’t want to rip any of the glue she could feel under her skin. Or her skin itself.

Penny frowned and turned to look over her shoulder at Rainbow. She smiled as she saw the mare sit up. “Opa! Blue, good to see you. One minute, let me stop this stream,” she turned back to her camera bot and smiled. “I have to go, comrades. Pay attention to the public channel. If she'll let you see her the proper introduction will be there later. Cam, end.”

The floating bot hummed, retracting its small camera array and covering it with the protective plate. The camera remained floating near Penny’s side as she stood up, ready to resume its duties.

Rainbow winced and pointed to one of the glue spots on her barrel with her left hoof. “What’s in my body?”

Penny frowned. “Uhhh, well—Blin, I’ll be honest. You’re mostly original. There’s a few cloned organs, a lot of nano-glue, and I—”

Rainbow’s eyes shrank to pinpricks. She jumped up from the bed and landed rear hooves first on the floor. The impact sent a ripple of pain through her gut, which Rainbow ignored as she glared into the alien mare’s eyes. “Clone organs? WHAT?!”

Penny nodded. “Da. You didn’t exhale enough. Oxygen ripped up some of your lungs. Our stimpacks didn’t work on you, so I flash grew you new ones, tuned them to what your original lungs should have been capable of then made some improvements to help space-proof you.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, because it’s okay to just swap someone's organs out for those of somepony else!”

Penny’s face scrunched up. “Other person’s?”

“Yeah!” Rainbow growled. “If you got lungs from a clone of me, you had to clone me, then kill that person to take their lungs and give them to me! That’s not okay.”

Penny snorted, a smile parted her lips as she held in a laugh. “Nyet! I didn’t grow a whole poni. I grew just the lungs, a kidney, a set of eyes, and six centimeters of large intestine.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow skeptical. “Oh yeah, because you can just grow body parts without making a whole person.”

Penny chuckled and used the remote system in her mobility frame to open the med bay’s flash-tank. The wall to her left hummed as it slid open, and a large bank of eight torso-sized vats filled with a mostly opaque green slime slide out from the wall.

Penny nodded towards the wall. “Flash-Grow system, for growing cloned or engineered biological components. Standard in any long-range ship like the Dawn.”

Rainbow frowned. “Oh. Uh, well good. I’ve never been okay with the idea of organ transplants.”

Penny sent another mental command and the flash-grow tanks retracted back into their stored position. “Don’t worry, we’re not savages. Any part you need replaced will be fresh and just for you.”

Rainbow squirmed awkwardly. “I uh… I’m an athlete. A high-performance one. I’m happy you saved my life but, uh… Will this set my career back?”

Penny squirmed in place for a moment then sighed. “Da, probably… I’m not a doctor. I’m a mechanic. We’ll get you to a Doctor when we reach Tavros. Pan too. I can spare the credits for full service. It’s only fair.”

Rainbow ‘s ears flicked back. “I thought so. I don’t feel a hundred percent. I can feel the glue under my skin… Also, you’re way more um, better sounding. Your Equish isn’t as broken.”

Penny winked. “I’m speaking Chernin. I took the liberty of installing a translator module in you while you were out.”

“You did what?” Rainbow asked, her eyes narrowing.

Penny held up a hand. “Stop. Calm down. All I did is allow you to understand and be understood. Every spacer gets a translator. I gave you speech only. I didn’t mess with your eyes. You will have to learn to read. We can give you that implant later, if you want, but I had to open up part of your head to replace your eye anyways, and you need to understand officials speaking to you, Rainbow.”

Rainbow bit her lip, then sighed as she accepted Penny's logic. “Okay… But don’t do anything else to me without my permission!”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Rainbow’s eyes turned towards the bottle still in Penny’s hand. “And you better not have done any of that stuff while drunk!”

Penny giggled and sat down on a stool placed near the bed Rainbow had been treated on. “Chernin don’t get drunk,” she said as she took a long pull from her bottle. “We digest ethanol. This is lunch.”

Rainbow spent a second processing what she’d heard. “You… Eat… A liquid?”

“Nyet, we drink it,” Penny said with a wink before finishing off her bottle. “But no, my people can get our nutrients from almost anything. Ethanol can be turned right into ATP. I can’t cook, so I drink a liter for every meal along with some halva to get the minerals I need.”

“Why can’t you cook?” Rainbow raised her eyebrows as she asked her question. Rainbow could cook extremely well. After all, she had to specially prepare most of her meals to stick to her athletically-optimized diet. If she hadn't learned to cook, all her meals would have tasted horrible.

It has to be the same for Penny, right?

Penny waved her hand. The gesture summoned a holoscreen in front of Rainbow. Penny appeared on the screen, wearing her mobility frame and a white apron while standing in a small kitchen made mostly of stainless steel and light wood paneling. “Here, watch a clip from one of my streams.”

Penny commanded the recording to play.

“Okay everyone, I will now make a bowl of cereal,” the recorded Penny said as she poured a box of cereal flakes into a bowl.

She set down the box, picked up a bottle of milk, and held it at arm's length, wincing back away from the bowl as she poured the milk in. The milk hit the bowl. The cereal combusted in a flash of blue-green flames and the Dawn’s fire suppression system kicked in, soaking the entire kitchen until the flames were extinguished.

“That’s why I don’t cook,” the recorded Penny said, before the clip ended.

Rainbow smirked at the totally fake expression Penny had been making in the video. “You staged that.”

“Da, but I burn most everything I cook. Water is at a premium on the ship.”

“Why even use water? Why not foam?”

“Water is used as an emergency heat sink and power system. The gravity engine keeps it circulating and hydraulic turbines help power the ship,” Penny said as she set her empty bottle down. “So every ship has enough water to simply use it to suppress fires. But not enough to do that every meal and still work. So I drink vodka and eat special halva.”

Rainbow sighed and took a few steps to test out her body. Her short walk from the bedside to the shutter covered window told her more than she needed to know. She was in rough shape. Penny’s medical treatment was the equivalent to an adhesive bandage and a splint. “So uh, how long till we get to a doctor?”

Penny quickly checked the Dawn’s helm over her neural link. “We’ll be there in the morning. Are you in pain? I can give you painkillers.”

Rainbow rolled her lips then shook her head. “Nah. I can take this. I’ve been in a lot of crashes. This isn’t anything, really.”

Penny nodded and stood up. She joined Rainbow by the window and nodded towards it, unaware that Rainbow, being belly-high on her, couldn't see the gesture. “Would you like to see out the window?”

Rainbow nodded. “Yeah. I’m having a hard time really… You know.”

Penny slowly reached out with a finger and placed it on a small black square at the bottom of the window. “These are the manual controls for the windows. Go ahead, open it.”

Rainbow reached out and tapped the button. The window shutters slid upwards, revealing the universe like the curtains upon a stage. A stage upon which a crappy play was being conducted, because all Rainbow could see was a grayish, blurry gradient of nothingness.

Rainbow sputtered and gestured towards the window. “What the hay is this?”

“Space, when traveling at point-eight-six the speed of light.”

“But it’s gray! Space is black,” Rainbow fluffed her wings irritably.

“Da. But we’re moving so fast—just understand the light we see is warped from our speed.” Penny reached out and shut the window.

The meter-thick transparent aluminum was more than sturdy, but the grayness of light-speed space unnerved her. Besides, you didn’t want to see out of your ship when you reached lightspeed. Brains hated it.

Rainbow sighed, turned around, and sat down, resting her back against the wall next to the window. She closed her eyes and did her best to take stock of her situation. Her friends were missing, she had almost died, and space was disappointing to look at when flying super fast.

Wait… I was in space because the shuttle exploded! “Did you recover any of our stu—” Rainbow winced and looked up at Penny, for the first time noticing she had engorged teats. “Eeep! What’s a new mom doing messing with pirates?!”

Penny sputtered, her cheeks turning a bright red. “What in the Way makes you think I have a kid?” Her embarrassed blush twisted into a look of pure horror. “OH, GOD!”

Penny dropped to her knees, the deck rang as she hit it hard. She looked into Rainbow’s eyes over the tops of her glasses. “Do I look old?!”

Rainbows’ ears lay flat against the back of her head. She held up her hooves and waved them. “No, no, no! You look good! You're not old.”

Penny sighed in relief and slumped down. “Blin… Don’t scare a girl like that.”

Rainbow cocked her head. “What’s wrong with getting old?”

Penny’s lips pulled upwards slightly. “We don’t do that. My people were engineered to live on our homeworld. It’s extremely radioactive, so we named it Chern."

Rainbow tilted her head to the left. "Why?"

Penny shrugged. "I don't know. I wasn't alive back then. I'm fourth generation. All I know is the name is short for Chernobyl. We think that was the capital of our ancestor’s homeworld. It was an irradiated hellhole full of bandits and strange psi-rifts. Easy to see why they sent us away to find a new home."

Rainbow shook her head. "No, I meant why is your world so radioactive? Did you have a big war or something?"

Penny snorted. "Nyet. Chern hasn't been invaded in any wars, yet. It's irradiated because of our star. Something about it made it decide to go ape and emit extremely high levels of radiation for the last six thousand years. Chern is so radioactive, most races would die instantly if exposed to the outdoors. We had to be engineered to survive those conditions. That's why most people call our planet 'The Empire of Atomicbombia'."

Rainbow winced. Anywhere with a name like that couldn’t possibly be a nice place. "Wait, like, if I went there, I'd just drop dead from radiation sickness as soon as i went outside? How do you engineer against that? Can you wear-- Oh! That's why your armor is so thick, isn't it?"

Penny shook her head. "Genetic engineering, not mechanical engineer. My people are so resistant to radiation that the amount needed to make us sick is so big, the energy transfer will make us combust. So we either survive radiation exposure without consequence, or turn into Chernin candles.”

Rainbow squinted at Penny, trying to process how any of that would work, and failing. Her trade school hadn't included alien biology in its weather manipulation classes. “Okay, and that’s related to you looking old being bad, how?”

“Well, our radio-resistance works using a few different things together. If one of them fails, it is rapid ageing followed by death. Da, total pizdec in three minutes flat. But, if everything keeps working, since all our cells self-repair instead of dying and duplicating, we don't age at all.”

Rainbow blinked several times. “Uh, then how did you grow up?”

“We don’t. We don’t have children, either. Not like you do. A couple who wants a child has one grown for them. While they’re growing, they whip up memory implants for the whole family, and everyone gets their copy of the memories. A whole childhood experience for everyone. When you get taken out of your tank, it’s like seeing people you’ve known forever despite having never seen them before.”

Rainbow’s frown said it all. That sort of life didn’t sound like anything anypony would ever want to experience. It frankly sounded like something you’d think about subjecting your worst enemy to. “That’s horrible! I’m so sorry!”

Penny threw back her head and laughed. “Everyone says that!” Penny leaned forwards and wrapped her right arm around Rainbow, pulling her over to sit against their side. The Chernin woman gestured to the air in front of them. “The galaxy is vast, Blue. There're all kinds of ways to have kids, each is normal for the people you meet who use it. It’s not bad. I remember sitting in the kitchen, helping babushka make kvass, and she remembers me helping her. True, it didn’t really happen, but that doesn't matter to us.”

Penny let go of Rainbow and pushed herself up off the deck and into a squatting position. “What made you think I was a mother?”

Rainbow politely withheld her opinions on being called Blue again. “Your teats are, you know, showing.”

Penny chuckled and looked down at her chest. “Oh. No, these are always like this for us. Many races you’ll meet have them all the time.”

Rainbow looked at Penny’s chest and imagined having two grapefruit sized lumps of fluid in front of her legs all the time. “No offense, but that seems annoying... And weird. Like, those should be down by your marehood, you know?”

Penny blushed and coughed into her fist to avoid Rainbow noticing her thinking about a partner with all the 'fun bits' in one conveniently accessible location. “Is no problem. Our engineers built in ligaments to make a natural bra. No back pain, no excessive jiggling.”

What the hay is a bra? Rainbow wondered before deciding to avoid that topic for now. “Yeah, but what about like, laying on your stomach? Or reaching for things?”

“Ey,” Penny shrugged. “Not a big deal.”

Rainbow sighed and rested her head against the wall. “If you say so… Oh! Yeah, uh, did you recover our stuff from the shuttle?”

“Mhm. I got almost everything. Your bags are fine. I have them in the hold with Pan’s luggage.”

“Oh, good.” Rainbow trailed off and looked around the medical bay for the first time as she searched for Pan. “Is he okay?”

The bay was fairly spacious. It was built in a rectangular room, had six beds, a number of workstations, and every wall had several compartments built into it which slid in and out to reveal specialty tools that didn’t need to be accessible all the time. The medical bay was intentionally left as empty and open as possible. It had been meant to serve a crew of twenty-five hands and needed a certain amount of space for emergency situations.

Decoration wise, the medical bay was bland, sterile, and smelled of bleach. Your standard hospital. All stainless steel, white vinyl cabinets, and extra bright lights.

“Da, he’s fine. He got banged up worse than you did, but I fixed everything,” Penny said with a nervous smile. “I also did some mods for him. Don’t protest. He consented to them a long time ago and has been looking forward to them.”

“Why?” Rainbow asked. “He doesn't strike me as the type of pony who wants to have shiny metal bits poking out of him all the time.”

Penny snorted. “Da, that’s not him at all. Don’t worry about your translator showing. It’s all flush with your skull.”

Rainbow reached up with one hoof to feel around her ears. Nothing seemed out of place. She nodded to herself, happy there wasn’t some antenna sticking out of her, and asked the obvious questions. “Sooo, what did he want? And where is he?”

“He’s in my bed. My cabin is down the corridor a bit. He came off the drugs I had him on and went into a normal sleep instead of waking up. The computer said he was okay, so I put him in a more comfortable bed. He was having a hard time dropping into REM on the medical bed. Don't worry, the Dawn will tell me if he’s waking up, so we can be there for him.

“As for what he got, Pan wants to live here forever. There’s only one other quadruped species I know of, and they don’t leave home. They send holograms out to explore the universe, so they can take the form of anything they like. They tend to like imitating the locals wherever they go, so you don’t see many things built for quads.”

Rainbow frowned. “If that’s true, why would anything be made for us? Back home, there’s only two biped species, and yeah, there’s not much made for them, either.”

“Because transformatives,” Penny said with a nervous laugh. “Ey… I don’t… What’s your culture’s view on body autonomy, the right to live as you wish, gender identity, and art?”

Rainbow's brain shut down in response to Penny’s question. “Uhhhhh…”

Penny sighed. “Other species which don’t constantly regenerate can use drugs, nanomachines, surgery, and/or combinations of those things to alter their body almost in any way they like. There are some people who are quadrupeds who were not born as quadrupeds. Enough for there to be some accommodations for them. But there are no accommodations for hooves of which I know.”

Rainbow bit her lip nervously. “Uh, will that be a problem for me?”

Penny shook her head. “Nyet. I can make you gauntlets which will help you. Pan wanted a more permanent solution. Also, after a while, who knows. Someone might design things for ponies. There’s enough demand for it with a whole planet of you guys.

“Heck, it wouldn’t be the first time something like that’s happened. My last girlfriend was a Legri by birth, but turned herself into a mass of tentacles because—”

Rainbow’s cheeks flushed. “Um, that’s uh… Kinky…”

Penny grinned. “Da! It’s why I dated her. I hadn’t been with a cephalopod before. Though most wouldn’t call her kinky for wanting to be a D’roil. Transrace people are… A thing. I can understand it a little. There’s a lot of very cool species out there. You might find one so beautiful you want to be one yourself; but the world of bodymodding isn’t for Chern. Our regeneration makes us reject implants and alterations.”

Rainbow nodded as Penny continued. That made sense to her. If your body repaired itself so well you didn’t age, and since Penny wasn’t a walking mass of scar tissue from thousands of daily cuts and bruises, that implied Chernin would regrow lost parts. If true, then anything implanted in them would get pushed out of their body as it regenerated. Likewise, their body would fight and overcome any genetic changes made to it.

All of this was quite true. Chernin had to be designed with any implants from day one of their growth cycle onward. Penny’s neural interface had always been a part of her. It had existed before her brain grew around it.

The young woman continued. “As for Pan, he wanted to be able to use tools, vehicles, computers. You know, basic everyday things. I adjusted his hips, so he can stand on all fours or on two legs comfortably. That’s without losing any of his agility or grace. I also replaced his forehooves with some chrome parts I matched to his colors. They work like normal hooves, but can transition to a hand-mode. We worked out the size and style over the comm for months… I wish he could have sent me medical texts. I spent two days trying to install them.”

Rainbow paused, trying to picture what she was being told in her mind's eye. “Sooo, you made him able to turn into a biped?”

“Ey… Kinda?” Penny shrugged. “More like he can stand up if he needs to reach things, or use both forelimbs at once while walking. That’s a normal thing we do daily. He will also need to manipulate things designed for hands… But he won't be a biped. I didn’t do anything to his spine, neck, or other things.

“Ever see a frein?”

Rainbow shook her head. “Can’t say that I have.”

Penny held her hands apart, drawing a box in the air about the size of a cat. “Little scavengers, this big. They are fluffy and have racing stripes. They run around on all fours, but can stand up and walk if they want to. He’s more like that now. I think it’s called a transitory biped.”

“So, he’ll be more comfortable like a normal pony, but can stand up like you?”

“Da,” Penny nodded.

Rainbow looked off into the distance for a moment. She knew Pan wanted to live here forever. He’d left Equus for good. “Why wouldn’t he want to be a biped forever? He’s ditching Equus for... Wherever you live, I guess.”

“I live on the Dawn,” Penny said as she stood up. “Pan wanted to stay as close to himself as possible, in case he wants to visit his parents or sister someday.”

Rainbow stood up, assuming that Penny was going to walk somewhere. The last thing she wanted right now was to be alone on an alien ship.

Penny’s remark about his parents made Rainbow think of family. She blushed slightly as a vague memory of Pan saying he and Penny would be a couple if they liked each other in person entered her mind. “He has a sister?”

Penny nodded. “Da. He talks about her a lot… Funny thing, he only told me her name once. My translator mangled her name, and I’ve been too embarrassed to ask him what her name is.”

Rainbow smirked. Finally, an alien emotion she could relate too. Of course, there was another more burning question on her mind.

“Why him?”

Penny frowned. There were a million things that Rainbow could mean by that. “Mmm?”

Rainbow bit her lip as she did her best to phrase her question diplomatically. “Why Pan? I understand you like other species and want to have one for your special somepony, but—”

Penny blinked, her eyebrows raising. “Excuse me, but there was a translator error. Whatever you said after ‘to have one for your’ translated for me as ‘special someponi’. What did you mean?”

Rainbow smirked. “That’s what we call colt and marefriends as a group if we don’t want to mention their gender.”

Penny winced, groaned, and rested her face against her left palm. “Oh, god. That sounds so dumb…”

“Well, what do you say?”

“Partner.”

Rainbow nodded. “Right, special somepony.” She winked at Penny, glad to find a way to get even for being called Blue.

Penny smiled, amusement making her cheeks dimple. “I get it, I get it. I’m guessing you’re asking why I decided to give Pan a try as my ‘special somepony’?”

Rainbow nodded. “Yeah! Why him? He’s kinda weird. Not the good kind, either. He isn't coltfriend material, if you ask me. Why not just be friends? He’s still nice, and everypony needs a friend.”

Penny squatted down to look Rainbow in her eyes. The young woman’s youthful front vanished as she presented her words with an ancient wisdom Rainbow had only ever seen in Celestia and very old ponies. “Because he needs more than a friend. He’s a young man who didn’t learn how to finish growing up.”

Rainbow frowned and raised an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah. He’s like twenty eight-ish. Stallions are still kinda immature at that age.”

Penny nodded slowly. “Da, but it’s worse than that for him, Blue. He never learned that life is about more than your own wants and needs. He doesn't understand the value of fitting in with your community. True, I don’t fit in with mine… But I understand that value. I would go home and live with my people if I could. But I cannot, and Chernin can’t use modern medical procedures. I’ll never be able to... “

Rainbow’s frown deepened as she tried to understand what Penny was talking about. “To what?”

“I can’t understand my own species’ emotions,” she explained calmly.

Rainbow’s eyes widened. She hadn’t expected that of all things to be a problem for someone who could grow individual organs to keep someone alive. “What? How!?”

“Nyet! Not entirely. I understand some things. If someone tells me they are mad, I get it. I also get it if they are obviously mad, screaming, waving arms, spouting threats… But if they are just sitting and stewing? I’ll never know there’s anything wrong with them. I am blind to emotions that are not extreme.

“Fortunately for me, it’s not true for aliens’ emotions. I understand you just fine. Your expressions, body language, tone, they all make sense, while Chernins’ do not. I can’t live with my people without being highly stressed, but I still value them. We’re born spacers. Most of us live in space anyways. I just don't attend meetups, is all. But I still send money home and spread the values of my people: peace, love, good food, and fun times!”

Rainbow’s frown vanished. “Okay, I understand now… I’m sorry. That must be rough. When I was little I couldn’t read ponies subtle emotions either. But I tried really hard and learned how. Uh, don't get me wrong, though! I know how mental issues can be. Not everyone can fix them with willpower.”

Penny nodded and offered Rainbow a grateful smile. “Thank you, comrade. As for Pan, he doesn't understand that he should be a part of your people even if he doesn't fit in like a puzzle piece. He can be different and contribute to your race’s story. If he contributed, he would find happiness despite his troubles fitting in. He would even be accepted more.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Rainbow said as she smiled. “You’re dating him because you can empathize with him.”

“Da, that is a big part of it. It also helps that he’s a fun guy. Not too masculine, not too feminine. It’s refreshing… Of course, your race is cute too! That helps,” Penny returned Rainbow’s smile. “But, it’s not just that. I’ve been where he is before. He needs a loving relationship to grow. He needs to feel like he belongs. When that day comes, we can visit his family, and they can see their son isn’t a failure. That he made it, it just took a bit of time, and a hot alien girlfriend. Or maybe wife, who knows? I want to be with him, and I can help him too. I feel like I should be with him. Make sense?”

Rainbow frowned. “Wait, you plan to make him change? Like, stop drawing kinky stuff, dress in stallion-appropriate clothes, and be a normal guy?”

Penny laughed and shook her head. “Nyet! Why would I make him be someone else? I love him as a person… He’s also stupid-attractive. Blin! Back on topic. It’s not his likes that are the problem. It’s how he thinks they isolate him from others. That is what I will change.”

Before Rainbow could fully reflect on Penny’s words, the pink-haired woman hopped to her feet and began to walk out of the medical bay. She made it six steps before Rainbow took off after her.

“Hey! What’s happening? Where are we going?”

Penny blinked then grinned sheepishly down at Rainbow. “Oh! Sorry, Blue. Forgot you don’t have a HUD. Dawn says Pan is waking up. I want to be there when he does.”

“Oh! Yeah, let’s go,” Rainbow agreed, following along behind Penny as she left the medical bay.

The chrome doors slid open with a quiet hiss, unveiling the Dawn’s interior. Rainbow had a bit of a hard time processing what she was looking at. Years of sci-fi movies, comics, and more recently, books, had conditioned her to accept the idea that all starships were metal boxes decorated with different colors of metal, glass, and ‘science stuff’. The Dawn was anything but.

Rubberized hexagonal tiles formed the ship’s floor. It was the only design choice which fit Rainbow’s expectations.

The walls were metal, but had been painted a cheerful shade of blue and given a nice, dark wood wainscoting, which helped the black floor transition into the brighter blue wall. There was even a baseboard, and it included embedded lights which helped label rooms with a simple color code, as well as illuminate the hallway.

There were no harsh lighting panels embedded in the ceiling. Instead, small, blister-like bubbles protruded downwards from the ceiling at regular intervals, projecting a rich simulation of natural sunlight during mid-afternoon. It helped the somewhat small space feel larger than it was.

Hidden scent emitters and humidifiers added to the experience, creating a relaxed atmosphere. Rainbow felt like she was in someone's house instead of a spacecraft. If it weren't for the alien walking in front of her, she’d have believed she was in a mansion owned by a noble who wasn’t into elegant finery.

The trip from the medbay to Penny’s cabin was short. The two proceeded along the corridor for only forty meters before Penny turned left and tapped a small chrome panel next to another monstrously huge, chrome-plated door with her fingertips. The doors hissed open, revealing her bedroom.

Dash felt a pang of jealousy rush through her as she looked into Penny’s room. Not for the furnishings, or the decor, or the paint scheme. All of that was secondary to her closet.

Penny’s closet ran along half of the room’s circular perimeter. The closet’s many doors were made from transparent aluminum and slid up into the ceiling. Penny’s T-34 was housed in the center, with each of the closet’s wings containing different limbs, modular plating, and other optional quick-link systems.

Rainbow’s eyes lit up at the awesome sight of a literal mech closet and made a beeline for the display. She ignored everything else in the room. The personal bar stocked with vodka, the large round bed with the space behind the headboard serving as a desk, the many awards, letters, and photos hung on the walls.

The only thing which mattered to her was the fact that Penny’s T-34 had a jetpack attachment. It hung on hooks next to the suit itself, its bat-like wings folded up with the holo-membranes switched on at minimal power to provide a cool orange glow. Rainbow couldn’t help but ogle the twin nuclear ramjets on the central pack.

Not that she knew what they were. All Rainbow knew was the pack had energy wings, two turbines as big as she was, and a cool black and yellow dot-and-triangles-symbol on the power supply.

“So awesome!” Rainbow said with a grin as she imagined having a fairer race against her Chernin friend.

Pandora - 749,558.31 A.H.

Captain’s Quarters, Dawn of Destiny, Solar Escape Trajectory - Equus System, K3 Sector

Pan woke up with the distinct feeling of a hangover. He had experienced several proper skull splitters in his life, all of which put the dull ache in his brain to shame. He knew exactly how to cure what felt like a six cider problem.

Okay… Shut eyes extra tight. Take six deep breaths… Pan paused for a moment to execute his instructions. The extra oxygen flowed into his lungs and into his bloodstream, helping to soothe the dull buzzing in his head.

Now, block out the noise with some DJ-Pon3. Pan focused all his attention on remembering the beat, melody, and lyrics of one of his favorite songs: You Boop Me Right (On the Snootle), from DJ-Pon3’s album “Popular Parodies 3”.

The sound of a small motor humming punctured the quiet melody of Pan’s mental music. He frowned, briefly confused by the sound until a female voice shouted a dire warning.

“Oi! Don’t open that unless you want a face full of plutonium, blin!”

“Plu-what-ium?” somepony asked.

That sounded like Rainbow Dash.

“That pack’s nuclear powered. If you open it, you won’t have a good time.”

And that sounded like— Pan’s eyes snapped open. He was laying on a circular bed in a large, round room.

A well-decorated room. If not for the black rubberized floor panels, the cherry-colored reddish wood wainscoting and glossy, creamy-yellow walls would have looked at home in a rich pony’s house. The furniture continued that impression. The blankets he lay under felt like silk, only even better. Penny’s bed itself was made from steel, and decorated with a nice wood veneer with a rich-person-looking type of wood with a nice dark brown color to it.

The same wooden veneer covered every other piece of furniture in the room, all of which was actually made of durasteel so Penny’s T-34 wouldn’t crush it if she stumbled walking in our out of her room. The lovely dark wood layer prevented her bedroom from looking like a prison.

A very unusual prison, which allowed its inmates to have a 255 bottle liquor cabinet, a computer terminal, and an epic bed in their cells… But a prison nonetheless.

Rainbow stopped messing with the T-34’s flight module. “Okay. Can you like, put a warning label on deadly things?”

“It has one, blin! Big, yellow, right on the fuel compartment. Can’t miss it.”

“Oh! That’s what that means.”

“We’ll go over ship safety protocol once Pan’s up. You need to know what not to poke… Don’t touch any of the ammo in my closet, please.”

Rainbow turned and snapped Penny a salute. “I won’t. Junior Wonderbolts’ honor! Uh, what’s the ammo look like?”

“Oi, blin… Touch nothing!”

Pan’s eyes skimmed over the room, searching for the source of the familiar voice. His eyes fell on Penny’s paper-white body and his heart began to beat faster.

She was tall, as bipeds tend to be. Her hips would be about on his eye level, based on how long her slender legs were. Pan spent a few seconds looking at Penny’s feet. He couldn’t see them under her mobility frame’s boots, but their shape was apparent, and very alien.

Not a single species on Equus had feet as far as Pan knew. He only knew the word feet thanks to Penny herself. They shape reminded him of a dragons’ talons, only without any claws or a hallux. Her legs just bent at the end, making a flat spot. Or like a monkey’s hind-paws, but without the grabby bits.

Those are neat!

Pan’s eyes moved upwards. He took in the frame stuck to Penny’s body and simply ignored it. She had said she was a cyborg, and if that’s all she had attached to her, that wasn’t a problem. His eyes took in the black holographic shorts Penny had given herself, and he smiled.

She remembered I find clothes cute! Yay!

Pan smiled and pushed himself upwards from the bed. Penny turned as the blankets rustled, and Pan saw her face. It was flat, with soft features, a cute little nose which reminded Pan of a monkey’s, and small, pink, pony-like eyes. Her face was alien for sure, but her hair was bright pink, with a darker pink streak in it, much like a pony’s mane. Her hair framed her face, making her look at once alien, but familiar. In a word, exotic.

Pan smiled. “Hi, Penny.”

Penny smiled. “Opa!” She reached down and picked Pan up, holding him to her chest in a tight hug made possible only by her frame’s assistance. “How are you?”

Pan’s eyes dilated to pinpricks as he felt Penny’s breasts squished against his chest. “Uh… Wondering why I can’t see through such a thin top.” He admitted with a blush as he returned Penny’s hug.

“Oh, those are holograms… I must have forgotten to add tactile feedback to them,” Penny said as she set Pan down on the bed in front of her. “I don’t like wearing actual clothing. It feels bad.”

Penny quickly adjusted the projections with a mental command, adding the hardlight tactical simulation to the outer layer of her holographic outfit. She had genuinely forgotten to add one while improvising the outfit in the first place. Penny blushed, realizing it was a good thing she hadn’t hugged Rainbow earlier despite really wanting to squeeze the adorable little pony.

Pan nodded understandingly. “Yeah. Cloth feels weird rubbing on bare skin. I can’t imagine what it would be like to not have fur and wear something.”

“Ey, most handle it just fine. I’ve… Spent too long in my armor. Heh… Too used to air, or water,” she paused for a moment, twiddling her fingers before clearing her throat. “So…”

Penny gestured to herself with both hands and nodded at Pan. “Ey?”

Pan looked her up and down again. “Well… No offense, but you should have told me you were a mom.”

Penny facepalmed and smiled, shaking her head before rolling her eyes at Pan. “Xexe! Rainbow said the same thing. I don’t have any children, Pan. Our breasts are always like this. Most species out here have them all the time.”

Pan’s eyes widened. “Really?”

Rainbow cleared her throat. “Yeah, that’s what she told me, at least.”

Pan smiled almost as wide as he could. “Awesome!”

Penny’s eyes sparkled for a moment. “Chudesnyy! Think we can be a thing, or will you need your own bunk?”

Pan hummed and rubbed his chin as he looked Penny up and down once more. “Honestly, I fell for your personality, Penny. Looks aren't too important to me. It’s you who was worried I’d think you looked gross.”

Penny shrugged. “Some species don’t take to aliens well. Besides, each individual is different.”

Rainbow stepped into Pan’s view and looked up at Penny. “Wait, you were worried we would think you looked gross, so you covered your groin, and your teats? Why not everything?”

Penny snorted. “It’s my ship, Blue. I’ll dress how I like. That usually means I don’t dress at all. I thought you might not want alien pizda in your face all the time. Especially not one that’s been attached to a waste-reclamation system for hundreds of years. So, I put on holo-shorts.”

Rainbow tilted her head, did some mental math to compare heights, realized Penny didn’t have a tail, nor would her marehood be towards her rear for her tail to cover. A blush spread across her cheeks. “Oh. Thank you.”

Pan’s ears drooped slightly. He would have enjoyed that. At least, he would have with the woman he loved. Then Penny’s words clicked in his mind, and his ears perked in alarm. “You never mentioned that! Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself somehow?”

Penny blushed. “Well, da… Slowly. Over many years. My species can only be modified during our first few years of life. I spent mine in armor—”

Pan blinked, wondering why an infant would need armor. “You did? Why?”

Penny chuckled. “My family makes mechs, armor, and weapons. I was made to help with advertising our wares. I enjoyed the work and decided to live in my armor full time as a stunt. That… Had consequences. I spent my developmental stage flooded with medical nanomachines and hooked to life support and waste reclamation systems. The waste hose would suck on things… Tissue would swell and tear, and the nanites would go ‘oh hey, this tore, let’s patch it up.’ Ey, basically, I did additive manufacturing on myself… So I fit the waste-system like a glove. C— Can we not talk about this in front of Blue, please?”

Pan’s ears drooped down. “Of course. I’m sorry. I was only worried about you.”

Penny waved a hand dismissively. “I’m fine. Everything works. It’s just, uh… Big. Fits the cup perfectly… At least I can't do any more damage to myself.”

Rainbow held up a hoof. “Is that why you’re in that mobility frame? You didn’t build muscles while you could?”

Penny nodded. “Da. I can get around without this, but doing any real work is out of the question.” She smiled and offered Rainbow a wink. “Upside, I trained my nerves to work cyberware all day every day. It made me an ace mech pilot.”

Pan blinked. “Wait, mech?”

“Da, mech.”

“But you called your suit power armor.”

Penny nodded. “Right. It is Hawking Industries T-34 Power Armor. One of the most popular suits in the Galaxy for my people. We’re only beaten out by the Exo-Sport line by Adidas.”

Rainbow looked over at Penny’s stored armor, then back to her. Then back to the armor. “That thing is four ponies tall. Just how big are your mechs?”

“Eh, four to five times that size?” Penny said with a shrug. “Technically, T-34 is a light mech with neural controls. Papa got it classed as power armor for environmental regulation reasons… Also, there’s more of a market for power armor. Civilians can own it. They can’t own mechs.”

Pan smiled. “Neat! Sooo, um… I don’t remember getting on your ship. When did that happen? I feel hungover. Did— Uh, did we… You know?” Pan clapped his hooves together twice.

Penny snorted and shook her head. “Nyet! Amnesia, ey? Blin… Well, there are worse things to forget. We got spaced. It’s okay, I patched you up, and we’ll see a proper doctor in the morning.”

Pan closed his eyes and tried to remember. The last thing he could remember was seeing Equus drifting beneath him as the Hoatzin left the atmosphere.

“I don’t remember that… How bad was I hurt?”

Penny looked away for a moment. “Badly… You both were unconscious for several days.”

Pan winced, his tail flagging in alarm. “Oh… Uh, well, ponyfeathers.”

“Da,” Penny gently hugged Pan to her chest, then tipped his chin up with one hand and looked into his eyes with a smile. “Do not worry. I was here for you, and I will be until you don’t want me to be. Okay?”

Pan blushed and stretched his neck upwards, planting a kiss on Penny’s little nose. “That sounds wonderful.”

Rainbow bit her lip to keep from saying something inappropriate. She didn’t disapprove of interspecies relationships. After all, she had briefly dated a griffon. That said, saying ‘Oh, that’s why ponies mistook you for a mare.’ Wouldn’t have been appropriate at the moment, even if it would be a good friendly barb to throw Pan’s way.

Penny returned Pan’s kiss and stood up. “Okay! Let’s get things moving. We need to get you two registered before we leave your sector. But first, just so you don’t have a panic attack, Pan, I installed the mods you wanted while you were out. It seemed best. I don’t carry much anesthetic.”

Pan’s ears perked. “You did?!” He held up his forehooves and looked at them closely.

They seemed original at first, until he noticed their slight metallic sheen and the tiny flecks of glitter in the paint. “You did! I love the sparkles. That’s a nice touch.”

“Da! Just enough to make them shine in the light like natural keratin. Can you feel with them?”

Pan reached down and touched the blanket he sat on, the soft feeling of silk flowed under each hoof. He nodded. “Mhm! A bit better than before, I’d say.”

Penny’s brow furrowed as an especially nasty worry came to mind. “Good. Can they still lift things in that form?”

Pan picked up the blanket with each forehoof, and frowned. “The grip feels a little weak, but I am holding things.”

Penny’s brow smoothed as she sighed in relief. “We’ll have a psi-engineer tune them later. I don’t work with psi-tech normally. I’m glad it works at all… Okay, here’s the hard part. You’ve never moved like this before, but think about having a hand.”

Pan closed his eyes and focused as hard as he could. It didn’t take nearly as much effort as he thought it would. The micro controllers in his hooves detected his thoughts through his own nerves just as they were designed to, and activated ‘grasper mode’ by feeding his autonomic nervous system the data it needed.

Pan opened his eyes as he both heard and felt his hooves click. Each hoof separated into five different segments. The seams between which had been completely hidden thanks to Penny’s expert machining and a powerful set of limited-vector electromagnets which held the hooves together.

Once each piece was separated, the hooves unfolded. Frogs became palms and rotated to be inline with his forelegs, while the segments of hoof unfolded into four fingers and a thumb. His hooves didn’t look even remotely organic in their grasper-state. No biological hand would ever look that cartoony and stylized.

Pan’s ears drooped as he wiggled his fingers. “This is weird… Really weird!” He said with a wince.

Rainbow nodded in agreement, her face mirroring his own. “Hooves shouldn’t do that…”

Penny frowned. “I did my best. Sorry.”

Pan shook his head. “No, just uh… They look good. But it’s weird to look at my legs and see robot hands. Way weirder than I thought.”

Penny sighed. “I can clone new hooves for you and install them tomorrow.”

Pan transitioned his hooves back to their normal mode and shook his head. “No! No, it’s okay. I did ask for these. I’ll get used to it. It’s just… Imagining something is different from actually getting it, I guess.”

Pan shivered as the last vestiges of body horror left his mind. With his hooves folded back up, they looked normal again, and the uneasy feeling they’d incited in him was no more. I think I can get used to these… They at least feel like my hooves like this.

Rainbow shivered. “I don’t think I could ever get used to that.”

“Da, that’s why bio-mods are more popular than hardware-mods,” Penny said, nodding in agreement. “Pan’s graspers were not possible with biotech. Uh, for me. I’m sure someone could have done it that way.”

Pan nodded and slid out of bed onto all fours. “The other thing was just surgical, right? So I should just rear up?”

Penny nodded. Pan reared up. The movement was more fluid than he had expected, and he accidentally fell over backwards onto the bed. “Oof! Hehe, my bad! Usually it takes a lot more thigh power to do that!”

Penny smiled and offered him a hand to help him up. “Try to stand on your hind legs from there.”

Pan took her hand and pulled himself up onto his hind legs, easily finding his balance. In this position his head was right on eye level with Penny’s chest. Pan took a few experimental steps with a nervous frown on his lips. The year of practice he had put in walking upright combined with the slight alterations to his pelvis, hips, and thighs made bipedal locomotion cake.

Rainbow shook her head slowly. “Man… Okay, that’s cool. I know how hard that is!”

Penny cocked her head. “Ey? Is it common for ponies to walk like this?”

Rainbow nodded. “Yeah, the Guard trains to do it, so they can make shield walls and stuff. I did a bit of practice with it because the Wonderbolts are technically part of the Air Guard, so I’d have to do basic to join them. That’s something I want to do.”

“I could do the same surgery for you. It won't hurt your normal walking at all,” Penny said as she began to walk towards her door. “I didn’t invent the procedure, I reversed an existing one. It’s old, tried and true.”

Rainbow thought about it then shrugged her wings. “Maybe one day? Could be a good idea but… I think I’ve been ‘worked on’ enough for a while.”

Penny offered Rainbow an apologetic smile. “I did my best, Blue. Maybe be happy you’re not dead?” Penny tapped the door release and opened her bedroom door. “Anyways, it’s time for a tour. Blue, we will see your cabin first. Pay extra close attention, because until you’re qualified to do another job on my ship, you will be cleaning it.”

Rainbow’s wings flared slightly. “Uh, what?”

Penny squatted down. “This is a starship. There is lots of work to be done. Everyone onboard needs to contribute. Da, cleaning work can be bot work, it’s true, but you don’t know anything which will let you do other work, so I will turn off those bots, and you will clean till you find another job. You want to earn credits, da?”

To Rainbow’s shock, Pan nodded in agreement with Penny. “Trust me, Rainbow, you do! I’m working too. I’m going to help manage her streams and broadcasting while she’s on the ground, and when in space I’ll be the Communication's Officer. She’s been training me at that job for a year now, and before that I was going to school to be a technoarcana communications specialist.”

Rainbow’s ears dropped down. “Oh, uh… I have a degree from a trade school!”

Penny’s eyes brightened. “Da?”

“Yeah! I’m a certified weather manager with five years of experience as a team leader.”

Penny looked over to Pan in confusion. “That means she can… ?”

“She can control the weather, and do it right so it won't mess anything up.”

Rainbow nodded proudly, only for her ears to slowly began to droop. “Yep! I’m also one of the fastest, most agile ponies alive. But, um… I guess athlete isn’t really a uh… Space job. Hmm…”

Penny looked Rainbow in the eyes and smiled. “It is a space job. Tell you what, we will get you started as janitor for now, so you have some credits when we get to Tavros from your hiring bonus. Then I’ll start training you as my squire.”

Rainbow tilted her head to one side. “Squire? Are you a knight? What’s a knight doing driving a fuel truck? I mean, ship.”

Penny waved a hand in dismissal. “The fuel is a side job. Extra credits. I’m also not a knight. Squire isn’t a feudal term in Chernin. I am a Xeno Hunter. I go from planet to planet and hunt dangerous apex predators which threaten local settlements.”

Rainbow triple blinked as her face scrunched into a look of disgust. “Wait, what?! That’s a job?”

Penny nodded. “Da. I also stream each hunt for extra credits.”

Pan’s eyes narrowed as he stepped into Penny’s defense. “Rainbow, it’s not what you think. She’s hunting things like jackalopes. What she does is like that time you and your friends went to stop that dragon. Imagine if dragons were not people, and were very savage predators. Imagine if the only way to keep a town safe from a dragon was to drive it away or kill it. That’s what she does.”

Rainbow raised one eyebrow skeptically. “So… If they were like timberwolves?”

Penny nodded in confirmation. “Da. Now imagine there’s a whole blyat-load of even more dangerous things out there to control. Xeno Hunting is a valid career. It keeps people safe, and it keeps animals safe, too! I don’t just kill things. While in the field, I take notes on the ecosystem, catalog flora and fauna, and if I do have to make a kill, well, it will be dissected to learn about the creature so more effective means of deterring them can be found. Bioscanners aren't as good as sending a body to a lab.

“When I finish a job, people are safe, their livestock is safe, the local animals are no longer being eaten wholesale by an apex predator, and the planet or habitat has a fresh set of environmental data to work with. True, one or two animals will be killed, but nothing will go to waste. Everything I kill is used completely. The meat will be butchered and sold if it can be eaten, and if not it will be turned into useful materials with everything you can’t eat.”

Rainbow frowned. “Wait, so like, you’re not a big game hunter. You’re animal control?”

“From what she’s told me, it’s more like monster control,” Pan said, smiling in relief as Rainbow’s hostile expression softened.

“Da. I also sometimes get to arrest poachers,” Penny added.

Rainbow’s skeptical face remained. “And sending one mare down in some armor with a gun is the best way to solve the problem?”

Penny shook her head. “Nyet. But it works and people have to do something with their lives.”

Rainbow shrugged her wings. “Well, okay. Seems like you could use robots for this, but if that’s how you guys do it, and it works, I guess I can’t complain.”

Penny stood up. “More importantly, my job takes me around to the fringe worlds which don’t have the resources to use automated defenses yet. That’s where Nova Wing likes to operate. It will help us find them. By being my squire, you will learn how my weapons and armor work, what they can do, and when I use them. It will help you learn to fight them if it ever comes to that.”

Rainbow’s eyes narrowed, her lips parted in a sinister smile. “I like the sound of that! What’s this job mean for me? Like, what will I do?”

“Maintain my weapons and armor, fetch me tools when I need them in the field. Go planetside with me and have my back.”

The mare nodded eagerly. “I can do that! But, uh, will I still need to clean?”

“Da. At least till you can perform maintenance on my equipment. Like I said, everyone works on my ship. Don’t worry! There will be time for play too. Time also for searching for your friends. That will be when we’re docked or planetside, mostly. But now, the tour! Come.”

The Dawn of Destiny was a fairly small ship, but to Dash and Pan it seemed huge. The ship was easily the size of a large Manehattan skyscraper and featured four decks. The two ponies had awoken on deck two, the living area.

Deck two was nicely decorated, and was where the ship’s major facilities were located: the captain’s quarters, the conference room, the guest suite, the kitchen and dining hall, the medical bay, and the recreation hall.

The rec hall interested Dash the most. It consisted of a gym with gravity controls, a place to watch movies with friends, and a small room with simulation pods. Much to her relief, the guest suite she was given had more than enough space for her tastes, and Penny promised any furniture or decor she needed could be made on board.

Rainbow got excited at the sight of the Dawn’s full sized industrial kitchen. Meant to cook three meals a day for a crew of up to thirty normal-sized people, the Dawn’s kitchen was a state of the art facility. Rainbow recognised the basic items, the refrigerator, stove top, oven, and prep-station for what they were. What she didn’t recognise was small items like the flavor synthesizer (which could form small amounts of miscellaneous compounds from stored chemicals), Prep-Drone (a small robot which would prepare ingredients for you), and the small hydroponic herb garden.

To everypony’s delight, Rainbow volunteered to be the ship’s cook. Pan had been nervous about living entirely on packaged foods, and while Penny could sustain herself on vodka and rationbars, she still had a sense of taste. Rainbow's pending job was updated, no longer would she be cleaning floors.

Deck three used to be the crew deck. Penny had completely gutted it and redesigned it to be a single, massive workshop. The deck had no decoration at all, and smelled of grease, oils, metal, and chemicals. It was noisy, with automated systems working on various projects the entire time Penny showed them around the deck. Everything she needed for her job, as well as nearly anything else, could be machined, built, grown, or otherwise created in this one room.

Deck four was the heart of the ship. It contained the engines, as well as the ship’s other major systems, the computer core, the surf drive, and the cargo bay. Like deck three, deck four was undecorated. Steel, rubber, glass, like a proper fuel-tanker. The one exception was the cargo bay, which shared deck two’s wood paneling and paint job. Visitors deserved a good first impression after all.

The last deck Penny showed her new friends was deck one, command. The deck consisted entirely of the bridge, which took the form of a transparisteel bubble on the ship’s bow. Both Rainbow and Pan expressed concern about the bridge being separated from the vacuum of space by a grid of hexagon shaped windows. Penny had laughed, assuring them that the hull was thicker here than anywhere else on the ship. It had merely been made transparent. It was perfectly safe against anything likely to hit the ship itself.

After all, the Dawn was a civilian ship, not a ship of the line. If anything did breach its shields, the fight was already over.

The bridge itself had a simple layout. The captain’s seat was at the rear center of the bridge, and various stations were arrayed around the edge of the bubble, allowing the ship to be controlled manually. Rainbow had asked how the Dawn could be controlled by one person after seeing the whole ship, the eight bridge stations in particular.

Penny’s answer echoed in Pan’s mind while he sat in the conference room on deck two.

“Right now, the Dawn is automated… Which means she flies a fifth as well as she could be if I had a full crew. But I never wanted to hire one. I always hoped to fill those seats with friends.”

That would be cool. We could make a bunch of alien friends and zip around the stars protecting people from monsters. We'd be real heroes! I should so talk her into it.

Rainbow groaned and leaned back in her chair. “Ugh! What’s taking so long?!”

“Be patient,” Penny said for the fifth time. “It takes time for signals to travel, and it’s not every day a new species needs to get into the legal system… If it helps, any poni who comes after you two will have an easier time thanks to your suffering.”

The lights in the conference room dimmed as its communications system registered they had been taken off hold. The air around the seat located at the head of the conference table flickered as a hologram took shape within it. The projection was of a lower ranking official of the Federated Republic of Orion.

She was an Iregsin. Her species looked much like Penny’s: humanoid, breasts, flat face, feet, hands, four limbs. Rather than two pony-like eyes, she had four inky black orbs which sparkled and shimmered like oil containing glitter. Her eyes were arranged in a two by two grid with one set above the other. Her face lacked a nose, but she had lips, and her face bulged out where a muzzle would be, very slightly. She reminded Pan somewhat of a dolphin, especially since her lavender skin looked much like a dolphin’s rubbery hide.

The only non-aquatic feature the alien woman sported was her ears. They were extremely long and gracefully pointed. Her ears drooped down from the sides of her head, their tips brushing against her shoulder blades. Astonishingly, the ears complemented her overall look, somehow managing to make her look graceful and elegant.

The voluminous, open-front, orange and black robe she wore as a badge of office added to her graceful look.

To Pan’s surprise, Rainbow blushed as the alien’s hologram took shape, and hid her eyes behind her bangs, a sign of arousal in mares.

Pan grinned. HA! I’m not the only pervert on board.

The alien spoke in a refined, feminine voice. “Good evening, Captain Hawking Junior. My name is Meado of Clan Galroi, I will be your passengers’ customs and immigration officer today. Your request for their immigration and right of travel has been approved, pending their interviews reveal nothing objectionable in their personal histories. We have authorized you to fabricate two ID chips. You may implant them upon the conclusion of each interview.”

Rainbow eeped. “I— Implant?”

Meado turned towards Rainbow and gave her a kind, calming smile. Rainbow shivered as the alien’s smile seemed normal. She made a note to ask Penny why both aliens she had seen thus far had expressions that were perfectly understandable.

“It’s only a small microchip. It will be injected with a syringe anywhere you like. You won't notice it at all, but you do need it. It will be your identification, bank account, and permit registry. You may not enter our space without one.”

“Oh...” Rainbow said with a nervous smile. “Uh, well, okay then.”

Penny cleared her throat. “The Dawn has produced the chips. I’ll get them ready to be formatted and implanted.”

The Chernin woman quickly stood up and left the room. Bureaucracy was about to happen…

Rainbow Dash — 13th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

749,558.59 A.H.

Dining Hall, Dawn of Destiny — K3 Sector

Rainbow wished she could slam the dining hall’s door behind her. The last five hours had been a hell on earth for the poor mare.

Nopony should have to wake up from being spaced only to have a ridiculously sexy alien grill them about their entire life story!

It had indeed been her entire life story. The interview was designed to give the officer a full understanding of the individual before the real questions were asked. That way, they would have long since established an emotional baseline and be able to spot a lie.

Unfortunately for Rainbow, that meant the questions had started with her birth and had her effectively tell Meado everything about herself. Every last secret, every little bit of herself she wanted to keep hidden. She had put it all on the table for the sake of her friends’ lives.

Why did she have to ask if I thought she was hot? Rainbow whimpered. What possible thing does that tell her about me other than, well, yeah… I’ve never been more embarrassed in my life.

The obvious answer was Meado needed to know if Rainbow’s reactions were her baseline, or influenced by an emotion. However, one can hardly blame a pony as fried as Rainbow was for not thinking of the obvious.

At least she helped me file a report when I said I was here because pirates took my friends.

Rainbow looked around the dining hall, ignoring Pan as he walked past her on his hind legs.

The stallion had decided to get in some more practice, just in case he had to walk that way for any important reason in the near future.

“You know, I wish they hadn’t separated us with that forcefield for the interviews. It would have been a cool way to get to know each other,” Pan said as he stepped into the kitchen.

Rainbow shook her head venomously. “Buck the hay NO!” She growled. “It’s bad enough she knows that much about me. That was super uncomfortable. How the hay are you okay with what just happened?”

Pan snorted and winked at Rainbow. “Uh, hello? I’m a nerd with internet access? I’ve been telling strangers all about myself for years. Having radio and net friends is sort of my thing. Besides, RP is fun, you should try it.”

“RP?”

“Roleplaying, in the non-sexual sense. Or that too, if you want. You’re a grown mare.”

Pan opened the kitchen’s refrigerator in search of food. There was no point having Rainbow cook when the ship wasn’t stocked with any ingredients. Tonight’s dinner would either be a Chernin ration bar, or nothing. Rainbow had elected to go hungry. Pan decided to risk the bar.

Pan’s ears drooped as he found nothing in the refrigerator but bottles of vodka. He turned to the nearest cabinet and opened it and sighed as the cabinet he had chosen was filled with yet more vodka.

“Yeah, I don’t think I would have enjoyed that at all if it was anything like that!” Rainbow moaned.

Then she spotted the vodka.

Rainbow pointed to the bottles she couldn’t see clearly with a hoof. “Is that alcohol?”

Pan lowered himself to all fours to check, then nodded. “Yes. Why?”

Rainbow got up from her seat, walked over to the cabinet and took one of the bottles. “I need a drink.”

Pan eeped and put a hoof on Rainbow’s foreleg, his eyes wide. “Rainbow, no! Penny told me about her vodka. It is WAY too strong for us!”

Rainbow looked at the bottle. The alien scrawl was meaningless decoration to her, but the clear liquid inside promised to help her forget she had to tell a cute mare she wet the bed until she was five.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “It's too strong my flanks. I can handle it.”

Pandora winced. “Um, Rainbow? Read the label again.”

“I'm not fluent in alien.”

Pandora snatched the bottle from Rainbow’s hoof and pointed to several sections of the label. “It's called Boris Blood. This star sticker is a ‘Gopnik seal of approval’. It's sold by a company called ‘Tru Slav’, and the alcohol content is somehow a hundred and twenty percent.”

Dash snatched the bottle back. “I said I can handle it!” she said as she popped the cap off the bottle.

Rainbow didn't handle it.

6 - Medic V: Pone's Anatomy

Author's Note

IMPORTANT!

Do you want to know what the aliens in this setting look like? I've been working on an in universe guidebook to the Galaxy. It's not done yet, but the species section is. Go ahead and >take a look< (Rainbow will be getting a copy next chapter anyways.)

Oh, and have a picture of a certain space station.

6 - Medic V: Pone's Anatomy

Twilight Sparkle - 13th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

749,559.51 A.H.

Prisoner Transport Bay 2, VOC Meermin -- Ithaa-Phea System, Noctae Sector

Two small, orange stars danced around one another as they had for eons. They had once held the title of sun, back when the cosmic twins bathed an inhabited world in their life giving rays. An intelligent species had once looked from the surface of the once-vibrant green rock four orbits out from the former suns and gave them names.

Ithaa and Phea, named for the gods they had represented to the people whose life had originated through the slow transfer of energy from those stars to their world. Their religion had crushed its competitors to dust. Even governments had fallen before its political might. Seven billion souls prayed to their creators for thousands of years, never advancing beyond the invention of steel blades and wooden sailing ships, lest they offend mighty Ithaa and Phea by reaching a level too close to their power, and invoke their genocidal wrath upon the face of Tustea.

Their religion had been a sham. The clergy enjoyed a technologically enabled lifestyle, hidden away from the commoner’s eyes in underground cities with full access to the treasures the galaxy had to offer by way of the pirate fleets whom they allowed to use their system as a safe harbor.

There was a grand irony to the situation. The two orange dwarfs had indeed been the cause of life’s emergence upon their world, as all suns are. The unassailable march of entropy carried some of their energy to Tustea, providing the catalyst for abiogenesis, as all suns do.

The First Race had tampered with the natural evolution taking place upon Tustea, as they had done with billions of worlds within the Milky Way. Although, one can hardly call seeding a world with a few bits of DNA and some microorganisms “divine”. Besides, it was the suns which had breathed life into mere inanimate matter.

In a way, the two stars truly had given them the gift of life.

Five hundred years ago, the clergy upon Tustea became aware of a way to increase their race’s sorcerous might, and the number of magi they could produce. It was believed that by tapping into the metaphysical hearts of their suns, they could transfer power into their people directly, creating something the galaxy feared: an entire species of psions.

The Orion Arm was no stranger to the metaphysical powers available to a select few. Over the last four hundred years, the Federal Republic of Orion had safeguarded psions, spellcraft, and arcane lore. They had but four centuries of development in what they saw as the field of arcane science. A species consisting of all, or even mostly psi-adept individuals would likely have thousands of years of development in that field. That extremely dangerous, deadly, useful, industrious field.

The Tusteans believed they could use that fear to their political advantage, and install themselves as the controlling power within known space. The “Solar Upgrade” to their already naturally high levels of arcane might would be what they required to assert their dominance over their galactic neighbors. It could be explained to the commoners as a gift from their gods, and those not a part of the clergy could be filtered, kept minimally powered.

The plan failed.

Ithaa and Phea did not possess the type of arcane power the priests had believed lay within their hearts. They reached for the power of the gods, and that power crushed the minds of every man, woman, and child on Tustea. A wave of arcane energy washed over the planet, warping the biosphere beyond recognition and scorching most everything off the fourth rock from the suns.

The Federated Republic of Orion sent some science ships to determine the origin of the psionic wave, which had reached into neighboring systems and killed half the population of a science station two stars over. The science ships found the now dead world, and downgraded the suns to stars. The psionic energy burning within the system was so intense the system was marked as a hazardous area. No one was to enter it under pain of atomization.

Not by the guns of Star League ships, but by the still burning invisible fire which engulfed the system.

The clergy’s lie had been true all along.

The system was dead and declared a memorial site, as all home systems are should their race pass into the annals of history. A memorial site no one ever visited, so as to prevent their brains from melting.

There was but one problem: the arcane fire engulfing the system burned out within a few years, and no one noticed. No one, that is, except for the pirates everyone had forgotten about.

They couldn’t have been happier. Now, not only would no one be poking their noses into the Ithaa-Phea System, but they didn’t even have to pay for the convenience of an anonymous harbor. The Nova Wing had taken on the duty of maintaining the lie, and raked in several prime raiding grounds as tributes from other fleets for their efforts.

A patch of space above Tustea warped and rippled as spacetime churned and boiled. A black ship slid out of the distortion at near-luminal speeds.

The ship resembled a cigar, long and cylindrical, with rounded ends. Spine-like towers rose up from the dorsal segment, and combined with the talon-like forward-swept wings to make the ship look like a predator flying towards its prey. A silver skull featured prominently on its bow as both a figurehead and a ram.

The NW Elusive’s gravity engine kicked into high gear, burning hot and bright as it guided the ship towards the dead world below, using its much greater gravity to help slow down.

Its surf drive switched on and entered braking mode. The drive’s field inverted, using the natural streams of tachyons to decelerate instead of accelerate. The black ship shook slightly as it came into orbit around Tustea, resting nearly four-hundred-thousand kilometers above the tomb world.

The Elusive’s jump on the course from Equus to the Fleet’s hidden base was complete. The ship was in a safe harbor with no eyes upon it. Her captain gave the order to transition from raid mode to cruise mode.

The ship’s predatory visage shimmered and rippled as hundreds of holoprojectors shut down. The black hull transitioned to a light cyan color, one commonly seen on civilian cargo ships. The spines and other adornments vanished as the projector’s hardlight constructs were turned off. The larger spines were “replaced” by comms masts and docking tubes. The smaller ones hid nothing at all.

Other holoprojectors switched on, transforming the skull-ram into a large bulbous bow with two large observation ports. Again, a feature common on civilian cargo ships which also transported some passengers. Everyone traveling the void for the first time likes to see things from orbit.

The ship’s many guns retracted downwards into the deck. Hatches sealed over the recessed gun bays as each gun vanished beneath the top-most layer of hull plates. Holographic projections flicked into existence, blurring the lines between the hatches and the hull until the gaps couldn’t be seen visually.

The ship’s scan-splice system switched on, ready to intercept scans and send pre-recorded data back to hide the ship’s true nature from electronic detection. Unless the ship was boarded by a Star League inspection force who knew what to look for, the ship would look like a normal long-haul cargo liner to all but the most intense targeted scanners in the Galaxy. Even when docked at a space-port.

There remained only one part in the ship’s disguise. The captain tapped a hidden command into the ship’s computer, and the transponder was switched over. The battlecruiser NW Elusive became the cargo liner VOC Meermin. The transformation was complete.

The still-healing incision under Twilight’s left ear itched maddeningly. The wound had been made by a Nova Wing surgeon, who had crudely installed a translator so Twilight and the other captives would be able to understand their captors’ commands.

A unicorn’s body relies mostly on its magic to heal, and the tank Twilight had been forced into was designed to cut her off from sources of mana and disrupt her casting ability. The thick, red, syrup-like gel which filled her tank was also to blame for both the itching and the slow healing.

It wasn’t the first time Nova Wing had captured a wizard, or a psion as the Galaxy called them. This was the first time they had captured five of them at once, however. More importantly, it was the first time they had captured one of Twilight’s caliber.

Nobody had known exactly what someone with that much raw power was capable of. The initial reading suggested she may be able to cast while unconcious. Cryo likely wouldn’t prevent her from causing the crew serious harm. She had to be specially stored.

Twilight’s legs were bound behind her back, twisted into a painful knot, and secured by welded chains. She had been blindfolded and muzzled with a steel visor, and then placed into the ship’s single psi-deprivation tank. She had no idea where her friends were being held, but she knew what had been done to contain them.

At least I’m not frozen like everypony else. Twilight squirmed in the confines of her tank, seeking any way to force the lid open.

She knew it opened via a lid above her. She’d heard it open when she’d been placed inside.

Are alien wizards so dangerous they can still use their magic while frozen? Is that why I get special treatment?

Twilight felt her head touch the bottom of her tank. She’d long accepted the fact that she could breathe the gel she’d been placed into. Her tank lacked any air-pockets; if she couldn’t breathe the gel, she would have died days ago.

In spite of being unable to find which way air bubbles floated, Twilight still knew the bottom from the top. The goop was slightly thicker downwards, and she could still feel the pull of gravity on her body.

If I can get away, I can get help. I can’t take this ship on my own. My friends can’t help, either. Not with taking the ship, and we would need to if we wanted to go home. We don't have weapons, and Rarity doesn't know any battle magic. I learned that last time… What kind of mare doesn't even learn a stun bolt?

Twilight’s first escape attempt had been shortly after she saw Applejack being “examined”. In her rage, she had killed six of the pirates and gotten four of her friends free. She could still remember the Captain’s words when he had interrupted her attempts to get Applejack out of the medical lab.

“Do you have the power to reassemble her body? No? We do. Be a good girl and surrender, or I’ll cut the life support and she’ll die as a brain in a jar.”

If the Captain hadn’t been protected by a powerful personal forcefield, and Twilight’s magic hadn’t been exhausted from trying to heal Applejack, she might have been able to overpower him. Like the other alien pirates whose faces still haunted Twilight’s nightmares.

If I had just tried to get myself out in the first place, I would have been able to bring back help by now. I… I killed people, and I still didn’t get away… Evil people. Who deserved it, but… I—

The Elusive’s intercom clicked loudly. “All hands, we have arrived in Tustea orbit. All shifts are to immediately change into civilian uniforms. There will be an hour’s rest for the A, B, and C, shifts. D shift is to conceal all illicit cargo for travel through League space.”

Twilight’s ears flicked as she heard the announcment over the intercom. The walls of the psi-deprivation tank muffled the captain’s words, but she understood them. Her translator may have been crudely installed, but it did the job perfectly. No one wants their slave to have even the slightest chance to misunderstand an order.

Twilight’s eyes lip up as hope burned through her heart. Conceal all illicit cargo? That means someone will come do something to my tank. I already feel horrible… I wont feel worse if I… If I escape again.

Twilight closed her eyes, took a deep breath of goo, wondered how she hadn’t ever choked on the stuff, then focused her mind on gathering together what little sparks of magic she had left.

The sparks swirled and flowed sluggishly. They didn’t want to move; the red gunk pulled at them, demanded they rest within it. Twilight’s will pulled harder. The last scraps of her magic pooled in her mind, leaving her with barely enough to cast her chosen spell.

Twilight’s horn didn’t glow as she cast. It sparked, crackled, and fizzled. Like a wet firework. All ambient energy was sucked into the goo like dust out an airlock. But her spell worked.

Twilight’s body convulsed. Her heart rate jumped erratically, high one second, low the next, then critical condition, only to return to being incredibly high. Her breathing desynchronised, her left lung stopped, her right went into overdrive. Her brain waves seemed to scramble, sending random noise rather than discernible signatures.

Three rooms over, the pirate monitoring her pod spat out his sandwich and hit the alarm. Despite Twilight’s body seeming to be in the middle of suffering a heart attack, stroke, and respiratory failure, Twilight was quite fine, and fully alert. The Play Dead spell she had invented when her young classmates had told her to ‘drop dead!’ had always been extremely convincing.

Even Princess Celestia had fallen for it.

“Medical team to Prisoner Number Five! She’s dying. It looks like she tried to cast a spell in there.”

Twilight’s body shook violently, then went limp. Twilight smiled behind her steel muzzle. She could lay like this for as long as she wanted to. The spell would keep her alive for several days. I hope Princess Celestia wont be mad I used this again… I did promise I wouldn’t after I traumatized those bullies. And her. And mom… Shining… Dad… Passersby… Probably shouldn’t have used it in the Canterlot Mall.

Within seconds of the alarm, three pirates converged on Twilight’s tank. The lid was opened a second after they arrived. With expert care, Twilight was lifted out of the goo, set on a hover-sled, and given a quick check with a bioscanner.

The moment she was out of the tank, Twilight felt ambient mana around her. Much less than back on Equus, but enough to slowly start charging herself up. She was fairly certain she had just enough body fat to burn in place of calories to quick-charge herself to ten percent once she gathered enough mana to kickstart the process.

She would need about five minutes.

Twilight could hear the pirate’s cloaks fluttering and rustling as they moved. Their uniforms were absurd in her opinion: the Nova Wing outfitted its members with black, knee-length leather boots, white pants with a red stripe down the side of each leg, a black leather jacket with gold piping, and red-lined cloaks with the outside being made from a shimmery blue fabric which looked like a dying star.

A potent musk like spent gunpowder, melted plastic, and broccoli-with-cheese assaulted Twilight’s nose. She remembered that smell. There was at least one Furlan present.

Twilight did her best to prevent her mind from reconnecting to her body as the urge to vomit overtook her.

Furlans had made Twilight’s skin crawl from the moment she saw them. They were tall, thin, noseless-bipeds with elongated limbs, clawed hands and feet. No ears. No fur, just leathery, yellow-tinted, diseased-looking, oily skin. Fangs. A mouth full of them. No normal teeth. A long, rat-like tail tipped with an envenomed stinger. The way their hands oozed a digestive enzyme… The way the one she saw earlier could just grab lumps of flesh off an uncooked animal and eat the mush it made with a touch...

They were like something right from her fillyhood nightmares. Furlans were something beyond creepy, but entirely different from horrying.

That’s before you took into account how they smelled. Once you did, your nightmares are liable to have nightmares of their own.

The surgeon attending Twilight sighed. She may have been a pirate, but she was still a doctor. “There’s lifesigns, but they are very faint. If we knew more about her species, I could keep her alive. There’s nothing I can do with the tools on me, and she won't make it to the infirmary.”

Twilight recognised the way she sounded. She was one of those plant-people. How a plant could ever evolve intelligence, much less a means of locomotion and tool use was beyond her. It seemed impossible, yet the six-armed, evil flower men didn’t seem to care about the implausibility of their existence in the slightest.

He could have at least listened to me for the first hour of questions… Three minutes isn’t enough to learn anything at all!

An alien spoke in a hissing, sucking voice. “I will report her death to the captain.”

Twilight had no idea what kind of alien that was. She had been shown one of the metallic lizards, and that lizard had crushed a solid steel cube in its talons. Apparently their homeworld had three times the standard gravity.

Twilight couldn’t fight one of them off if she wanted toot even with the trickle of mana she could feel flowing back into her body. She was still too far from critical mass to perform a Flashpan Recharge.

I’ve never had to use Flashpan’s technique… I hope I can pull it off first time.

The mystery alien reached up to the side of his helmet with an armored hand and tapped its comm. “Captain, it is Duat. Number five has died. The tank reports she was casting when it happened.”

Duat paused for a moment then nodded. “I’ll ask, sir,” His armor clicked as he turned towards the doctor. “The feedback from the nuralization gel may have fried her brain. How does it look?”

The surgeon tapped on her bioscanner. The device chirped several times as it processed the data. She shrugged. “I don’t know. There's been a lot of random activity, that could mean a psi-induced neural short. Or it could be some part of their anatomy we don’t yet understand.”

“Is there brain activity of any kind?”

“Not anymore. She’s gone.”

The Furlan spoke. Its voice sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard while glass shattered. Not even a translator implant could mask the horrible sound from your perception entirely. “I would enjoy seeing how these primitives taste. May I eat the corpse?”

Twilight almost screamed. WHY DO THEY SOUND LIKE THAT?!

Duat’s eyes narrowed behind his helmet. “Nova Wing is not in the business of eating intelligent lifeforms, Mister Stuph.”

The First Mate turned his attention back to the Captain. “Captain, we are unsure if the corpse is useful or not. We have the data on this subspecies, and I cannot think of many uses for the body. I recommend we dump it.”

Twilight nearly sighed in relief as she learned the terrifying rat-demon-alien wouldn’t eat her with its creepy, digestive enzyme spewing hands. No, stupid! Don’t. Let. Yourself. Do. Anything. The spell will break!

Duat paused for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” the alien turned to his subordinates. “The Captain wishes for the body to be sent out an airlock, then retrieved for study. We do not know if this psion is capable of reanimation, but a bath in cosmic rays will take care of that for us. Mister Stuph, Doctor, I leave the task to you.”

Twilight heard the thud of armored boots striking against the deck. The doors to her room hissed open, then closed. A second passed.

Stuph growled, a sound like broken shards of glass scraping across a chalkboard while fingernails cracked. “Let’s make quick work of it. If we use the aft airlock on deck six, you can launch an escape pod to pull her back in.”

“Is that wise?”

“The other option is we spend half an hour getting suited up for a spacewalk. Come on, you launch the pod, use an emergency grapple to pull the corpse into the pod’s airlock, then I use the tractorbeam to pull the pod back in. It will take five minutes.”

“I’ll still have to fly around the ship to locate the body.”

“Are you new? There’s a bank of escape pods next to that airlock.”

Twilight’s heart beat once. Fortunately, the plant-person surgeon had stopped monitoring her. Escape pods, you say? There’s a planet below us. Perfect!

“I am. I transferred from the Mythic before we set out for the K3,” the doctor replied as she tapped a few commands into the hover-sled so it would follow her. “We won't get in trouble for using the pod, will we?”

Stuph laughed. “Hardly. We use them to retrieve things people have dropped all the time.”

The doctor shrugged her upper two sets of arms. “Okay, but if we do get in trouble, I will tell them this was all your idea.”

Twilight felt the hover-sled jolt as it rose up to horn-height on a unicorn, or waist high on an alien. Her cell doors hissed open, and her captors began to walk to the airlock. The walk was short. Twilight managed to lay still despite everything around her.

A dozen alien conversations nipped at her ears. So many words she did not know, so many concepts which seemed interesting. So many smells she had never smelled before, some good, most bad. If only I wasn’t a prisoner. There is so much to learn here!

The amount of voices Twilight could hear worried her. In her current state, she could handle two pirates, assuming they weren't the lizards. Three? Maybe. Four? Definitely not.

Twilight knew she had one shot at this. If she messed up, she would be shot. Contrary to the pirate’s fears, her magic wouldn’t save her from that.

Twilight did her best to relax and let the ambient magic recharge her diminished strength. Her lungs were sill filled with the psi-dampening gel, which she feared was hindering her attempts to recharge. The magical field felt weak here, and Twilight knew she wouldn’t get much magic at all back from the environment.

If only I’d been given food so I could make my own energy… You’d think they would have given a prisoner food. Wait… Could I have eaten that gel too?

The number of alien voices died down as her guards drew near the airlock. The crew had been ordered to change uniforms—maybe everyone had gone to their quarters to change.

Soon enough, the other voices had stopped altogether, leaving only the sound of two pairs of boots striking the deck and the dull, throbbing wubs of the hover-sled. Her guards walked in silence for several long moments, before the Furlan pointed to the bank of hatches on their left.

“Those are the pods,” Stuph said, as he walked over to one of the hatches and punched in the access code. “You need to program them for hull-flight before launch, or you’ll get fired off into space. Let’s get in this one—”

Twilight needed no further prompting. It was time for the Flashpan Maneuver. The mana she had skimmed form the air went directly into a pulse of raw magic which she directed through her own body. The stench of burning fur filled the corridor as random patches of Twilight’s fur singed. Fat liquified at the magic’s touch, burning away far faster than nature had ever intended.

All of this occured in milliseconds. The pirates’ heads were still turning when Twilight unleashed a massive burst of telekinetic force. The hover-sled cracked in two. Her mask/muzzle shattered. The chains binding her legs behind her exploded into shrapnel. The deck beneath her buckled.

A small miracle prevented Twilight from being blinded by the shrapnel. Her legs and sides were not so lucky, getting peppered with flecks of durasteel. Blood welled up from hundreds of tiny, splintery cuts.

The two pirates went flying, each believing the hover-sled’s power cells had exploded. Stuph’s skull hit a hatch; there was a crunch, a crack, and he slid limply to the deck. The surgeon was flung against the wall equally hard, but without any bones, nor any easily damaged organs, the plant-person stood back up just as Twilight was able to stumble up onto her aching, weary hooves.

Twilight had no idea why she understood that the plant alien’s eyestalks moving closer together was an expression of fear, but she did.

The doctor reached under her cloak for her bolt-pistol with a lower hand, hiding the motion from the unicorn with a subtle twist of her shoulders. “You played dead… Clinically dead. How?”

“Magic,” Twilight answered with a smile, then coughed as a wad of gel worked its way out of her lungs.

The doctor whipped her pistol out from under her cloak. Twilight saw the movement out of the corner her her eye and dropped to the deck as the weapon rang out with a sound like a hammer striking an anvil. Magnetic fields propelled a steel dart at supersonic speeds into the wall behind Twilight. Sparks flew as steel smashed into durasteel and fused to it.

Twilight’s horn shimmered as she cast the first spell to come to mind, and a ray of lavender light lanced out and struck the alien’s weapon. The silver gun twisted, warped, and contorted, tinting orange as it melted into a spherical shape.

The surgeon looked down at her hand, which was now holding an orange. “Fuck this shit, I’m out! I’m done. I’m retiring. I am SO sorry!”

She stood up, raised her vine-like hands to the ceiling, and began to slowly back down the hallway. Twilight put a stun bolt into her chest. The plant-person visibly wilted, her greens and purples fading to gray as she dropped to the deck. Dead.

Thus did Twilight learn an important lesson: that which stuns one species can easily kill another.

Six days ago, Twilight would have felt her heart break in two. She would have rushed to her enemy's side and made sure they were okay. Especially if they were a doctor.

But it was today. That doctor had helped keep her friends alive while cutting them up to examine them muscle fiber by muscle fiber, the first truly, purely evil act she had ever seen. Twilight could not, and would not forget that.

She would get help. They would be saved, or avenged.

Twilight felt confident despite her starved, dehydrated, injured body. She felt far more mana in her system than she had expected to regain form her dangerous trick. It made her feel invincible.

Twilight coughed again, spitting more and more of the gel onto the deck until all that remained was a thin layer coating the inside of each lung. That gel had fuzed to her tissued, and would require a doctor to remove.

Little did she know it, but the psi-blocking gel in her lungs had an unintended side effect when it wasn’t surrounding a captive.

The substance was entirely permeable to oxygen, allowing Twilight to breathe clearly even with parts of her lungs still full of the gel. More importantly, it still pulled ambient mana towards itself. Which in this case, meant more energy moved towards Twilight than away from her.

Nova Wing had unintentionally created the first viable cybernetic modification for psions: a quick-recharge system. A shame it wouldn’t work for anything other than a pony, or any as of yet undiscovered species which had evolved ambient energy absorption.

Twilight ignored the dead doctor and squinted at the escape pod’s hatch controls. The door release was clearly labeled, and within mere seconds Twilight was inside the pod, buckled in and ready to go.

What little she had seen of the ship had been nicely decorated in a way she would call futuristic. This pod was quite the opposite. Her escape craft was small, cramped, and industrial in aesthetic. It felt like something mass produced and disposable, and that’s exactly what it was.

How the pod was supposed to fit someone the size of the average alien without jamming their knees into their chin, she would never know.

The pod’s manual lay open in her lap. Her translator replaced the text on the page with Equish, preserving font choice, layout, and even color. Piloting the pod to the planet below would be a piece of cake.

Twilight smirked as she began to program in a descent path by giving the tiny, way-too-compact-for-hooves controls targeted bursts of telekinesis to operate them. Shouldn’t have given me the ability to read your language, monsters.

Just as Twilight was ready to begin scanning for a safe landing site near the end of her descent path, the ship’s alarms began to go off. Twilight’s ears lay back in panic as she recalled one of her captors mentioning the pods could be pulled back to the ship.

Twilight slammed her hoof down on the launch button, forgoing coding a landing site for the moment. Mag-locks clicked loudly as the pod’s doors sealed shut. The docking clamps hummed and squeaked as they retracted.

The pod was blasted away from the ship with a burst of electromagnetic energy. Twilight was thrown against her seat as the pod was launched into space. Her eyes widened as the pod left the starship’s gravity-field and the book in her lap slowly floated upwards.

Before Twilight could appreciate the uniquely wonderful treat of microgravity, the pod’s q-thruster switched on and slammed her back into the seat as it began to head towards the planet below.

Duat sprinted down the corridor, a blur of chrome, black, and yellow, with a deactivated beam-saber in one hand and a psi-reflecting shield in the other. The Prai soldier had years of experience fighting spellslingers. He could retrieve the unicorn with the least risk to anyone else. Therefore, it was his duty to bring their prize back aboard.

Duat’s comm hissed in his ear. “Mister Duat?”

It was his Captain. Duat turned a corner, moving from the main hallway on deck 5 to the smaller shuttlebay access corridor without losing any speed at all.

“Sir! I am enroute to the shuttlebay. I will be ready to retrieve our prisoner in—”

“Belay that, Mister Duat.”

Duat slid to a stop, his boots screeching on the deck as he went from forty kilometers per hour to zero in mere seconds, the corners of his mouth turned down in disbelief. “Sir?”

“We had her contained in a null-psi tank, and she was able to use her powers. Security footage shows she transmuted a crewman’s sidearm into fruit. As in, the weapon is now edible food. We do not have the capability to contain her. Let her go.”

Duat’s frown deepened. “A fair argument, sir, but shouldn’t we at least detonate her pod? I can launch a fighter instead of a shuttle.”

“There’s no need, Mister Duat. Have you forgotten she is escaping in our escape pod?”

The first mate’s lips pulled up into a smile. “Ah! My apologies, sir. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was focused on ending the danger to the Elusive in the ways I am experienced in, sir.”

“Indeed. I’ve set the pod to reenter uncontrolled, crash through some old buildings, and fail to deploy parachutes. The pod’s controls have been remotely locked. She has no way to safely land. If the impact doesn't kill her, her injuries will. If she somehow survives that, she’s stranded on a barren planet, and we will be parsecs away within the week. I’ve cancelled the alert, Mister Duat. Please continue overseeing the transition to cruise mode.”

“Yes, sir.” Duat let go of his comm’s transmission button and turned to look out one of the ship’s windows.

He was on the port side. If he tried, he could likely catch a glimpse of the doomed mare’s pod. It would bring him comfort to know such a powerful enemy would soon die.

Rainbow Dash - 13th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

749,559.51 A.H.

Dawn of Destiny, Tavros Station - Fenx System, Noctae Sector

Pan, Rainbow, and Penny sat on the Dawn’s bridge. The bridge had deployed a holo-curtain over the bridge’s windows for safety during the jump. Pan had asked if they could get rid of it. The answer was a laugh, followed by a very firm no. The time displacement made studying why impossible, but anyone who saw the universe when traveling faster than light went irrevocably mad.

Not even a fun kind of mad. The sad, pathetic, vegetable-who-occasionally-screams-for-no-discernible-reason mad.

Rainbow had just enough time to wonder why you would even have windows on a ship, in that case, before the Dawn hit FTL.

The Dawn lurched as she came out of FTL, her engines whining loudly enough to be heard up on the bridge as they began their deceleration work. Her hull was rocked by a brief but violent shudder which was immediately forgotten by everypony aboard as the holo curtain faded away to reveal Tavros Station.

Tavros hung in the air over a water world. The entire planet was a single salty ocean, one of the exceedingly rare worlds to be exclusively land or sea. The planet was a fascinating place to visit, if you were able to live beneath the sea. Amphibious and aquatic races all agreed the many biomes and ecosystems were a natural wonder.

Which is why the fuel-processing industries, deuterium harvesting, and refining angered so many people in the Arm. Despite their protests, fuel for the fusion reactors used in the fringe worlds had to come from somewhere, and there was no location in the fringe which could offer a cheap price to most developing systems. So the harvesting continued.

Tavros station existed for the sake of the people who worked for the fuel industry first and foremost. It was a full space habitat, specifically a Bernal sphere with a diameter of 30 kilometers. The station’s living area filled the inside of the sphere, and over 80,000 people made their home on Tavros. No station can survive with only residential zones, and so Tavros also had rings.

Three rings, to be precise. The first ring was built 400 meters away from the sphere’s equator, and ran along it. This was the commercial district, filled with shops, businesses, and government offices.

Perpendicular to that ring, and five hundred meters away, was the agricultural ring. A single, massive hydroponics facility which grew not only the station’s food, but enough food to export to the local fringe worlds.

The final ring, the industrial ring, was a full kilometer out form the agricultural ring, and orbited around Tavros’s equator. It was primarily a shipyard, but also served as a dock, shipping department, and refueling station.

The orbiting rings and their transparent connecting space bridges made the station look like a gyroscope as it slowly rotated along its axis.

Just as Rainbow’s jaw dropped at the awe-inspiring megastructure before her eyes, she noticed the thousands of starships, big and small, flying to and from the rings on countless different missions. There were cargo ships, personal transports, construction vessels, survey ships, automated-mining rigs offloading ore, and even a few Star League warships flying around the station.

It reminded Rainbow of the bees around a beehive, if each bee was completely different from every other bee, and in fact might not actually be a bee, but some other form of small flying insect.

“Woah!” The ponies said in unison.

Penny frowned. “What? That? It’s just a run down—” Penny stopped mid sentence as her brain ordered her to backpedal hardcore. “I mean, I am glad I can be here to see you see your first habitat.”

Rainbow didn’t let Penny bother her. She was too absorbed in watching the warships move. There were four of them, and the way their massive gun turrets ran on gear-like rings around their hull so any given turret could be moved to any point in its rotation around the top, sides, and bottom of the vessel was something she could watch for hours.

The ships were testing their turret translocation systems in preparation for a patrol of the fringe worlds. It made for a truly fascinating show to watch each gun cycle through each possible firing position at random. The largest ship had a row of 32 turrets along its hull, making the cigar-shaped ship look like an ever-changing hedgehog who had to threaten an entire army with its quills.

Rainbow was so fascinated by the ship’s display she missed Penny call for, wait for, and then recieve landing clearance, a A process which took ten minutes.

Rainbow only barely heard Penny say, “Okay, we’re landing in 3-I, remember that, Pan,” before her attention was diverted by the Dawn’s thrusters kicking in.

She’d gotten to watch a spaceship fly when the ill-fated Hoatzin took off, but the trip to the moon had been rather dull after the first ten minutes. Just a long flight through a black void in a tiny ship. But here?

The Dawn’s large arrowhead hull nimbly wove between rows of moving ships. Up, down, left, right. It was like flying through treetops. Only the trees were moving, and hitting one would mean certain death.

Rainbow’s heart beat rapidly in her chest. A grin spread across her face. As the sixth cargo ship slid across the bridge’s viewport, she knew what she needed to do with her life: she needed to become a star pilot.

Pan was fascinated by the view, as well. The young stallion’s eyes were fixed on the station, his mind moving through every possibility for what would lie within. A whole alien world, no nature at all, a place built for people of all sorts by all sorts of people. It must be a paradise.

Penny flew towards their hanger bay with a bored detachment. Parking was the worst part of flying. The trip to the hanger was always boring, and the actual docking was always stressful.

As the Dawn slipped through the gaping octagonal hole in the outer ring, passing directly beneath alien numerals labeling the city-sized hanger as 3-I, Penny’s bored expression changed to a distressed one. Her eyes flicked across every ship in the bay before they drew even remotely near the other vessels.

Despite the obvious, bright yellow flashing drones which flew alongside the Dawn to escort the fuel tanker into the bay, well… Some pilots were just plain stupid.

Others, Penny knew a little too well.

Penny’s eyes narrowed as she saw a small red and white ship docked near the Dawn’s landing pad entrance. It was a Mina ship, a simple saucer with a nice paint job and a glittering, hematite-plated hull. The sort of ship which you could find everywhere.

With just one unique feature: the saucer was warped to make the ship ever so slightly vagina shaped. A Mina’s vagina, to be specific. The oval shape and ridges were very subtle, to the point where anyone not intimately familiar with an unmodified Mina would never see the lewd joke. As far as Penny knew, that was her and maybe eighty dozen other people.

A flame of rage welled up within her heart. Memories flooded her mind, a million “I love yous”, and a dozen other people. “Cyka blyat!”

Pan frowned and turned to look at the chernin woman. “What’s wrong?”

“That’s a Casstech Z14… I need to check the docking registry,” Penny’s fingers flew across her controls for several long seconds, only for her eyes to narrow as she pulled up the data she was looking for. “Da, eto korabl' vlagalishcha!”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow as curiosity got the better of her. “How come our translators don't translate everything you say? Is it just, like, untranslatable?”

“Nyet. The Chernin translation is programmed to drop certain words for cultural reasons. Also, they like to censor our swearing…” Penny growled as she lay back in her seat with a look of extreme upset on her face.

Rainbow counted to three. Her desire to ask the obvious question didn’t go away. She sighed. “Okay, and they like to censor your cursing, why? Is that even legal?”

“It’s a government. It can make anything it likes legal or illegal,” Penny griped. “There’s a saying. ‘If you learn to swear in Chernin, you know half the language.’ It’s not wrong.”

Penny’s eyes narrowed as she took another look at the ship. “But THAT is wrong!”

“What’s wrong, hon?” Pan asked with a worried frown.

“That’s my ex’s ship. I hoped for a minute she sold it, but she hasn’t,” the woman grumbled darkly.

Pan winced and trotted up to Penny to give her a loving hug. “Oh, okay, yeah. I get that… But I thought you liked that squiddy-girl.”

Rainbow nodded in agreement. “Yeah, you’ve only said nice things about her.”

“She wasn’t ever my ex,” Penny said as she flipped the switch to set the Dawn to auto-land. “I outlived her. I’m her widow. That, is my ex’s ship. She’s still alive. Obviously. Different person. Different, cheating, never mentioning being polyamorous, or already having eight other relationships, person!”

Pan’s ears entered the classic full-droop of a stallion who needed an immediate out from this conversation. He had never wished he could teleport more than he did as Penny stomped across the bridge.

Rainbow zipped over to Penny, entering full damage control mode. She reared up and set her hooves on Penny’s shoulders. “Hey, it’s okay. This station is huge! Odds are great you won't even see her. We can just go, do our thing, then leave.”

Penny closed her eyes tightly and gave Rainbow a hug. Rainbow blushed lightly as she felt Penny’s breasts squished against her barrel.

Oh! That’s why Pan keeps giving her hugs. Heh! Let’s never let Penny know this feels nice...

Penny let go of Rainbow and sighed. “Nyet… Steele’s family sells ships. She… still wants me. She'll give me a good price on a new shuttle. I need to talk to her. Otherwise I’m wasting credits.”

Rainbow nodded once and dropped back down to all fours. “Okay, well, in that case, Pan and I will stay clear of her, right Pan?”

Pan nodded as if his life depended on it. “So clear! All of the clear.”

Rainbow smiled. “See? Just tell us what she looks like, and we won't go anywhere near her.”

Penny coughed into her fist and looked awkwardly up at the ceiling. “I uh, I can’t.”

Pan and Rainbow shared a look. Rainbow nodded to Pan, pleading with him to ask instead of her.

Pan cleared his throat and trotted forwards. “So uh, why not? You guys were a thing, so like… How can you not know?”

Penny offered Pan a shaky smile. “Mina tend to… They like to change their bodies. A lot. They are the inventors of most transformatives. It’s rare to see a Mina in the same body they had two months ago. It is fashion to them. I haven't seen her in eighty-three standard months.

“I have no idea what she looks like right now. I don’t even know if she is a she right now… I don’t want to call her with you two around. Trust me, the first thing she does when meeting new aliens is try to bed you. Which um… I sometimes do that, too. But NOT while I am in a relationship! A promise is a promise.”

Rainbow winced and gave Penny a quick nod to let the woman know she understood. “Okay, so she’s some kind of predator? I’m sorry you have to deal with that.”

Pan took it upon himself to give Penny another hug. “Me too… So uh, I guess you’ll deal with that while we are at the doctor’s? Is it okay to leave us alone on a station that big?” Pan pointed out the window with a hoof.

Rainbow blinked. “Good point! How will this work?”

Penny walked over to a storage compartment on the bridge and opened it. She removed two small silver pins shaped like the Dawn’s silhouette as seen from above. She took the pins over to Pan and Rainbow and gently pressed them against their barrels, just over the heart.

Nanoglue on the back of the pins imeadiently adhered them to the ponies’ fur.

“Commbadges. Modeled after an idea from old First Race show. It’s a good idea; we made them better. These are entire personal comms. Keep them. Tap them twice and you’ll get a holoscreen. Touch the big green circle and say my name, it will call me.”

Pan looked at the pin and frowned. He looked up at Penny with a curious tilt to his head. “Why didn’t you give us these when we woke up? They seem important.”

Penny gestured to the compartment. “They are for guests. I’ll buy you good comms at the mall later. Those only have the basic features.”

“Oh.”

Rainbow experimentally tapped the badge twice. A rectangular, curved hologram immediately formed a screen in front of her. The display had several buttons, but the green one was obvious and held the center position. “Okay, cool. How do I close it?

“Tap it again.”

Rainbow tapped the badge and the screen vanished. “Cool!”

Penny gestured for the ponies to follow her and began to leave the bridge. “You two will be unconscious at the doctor’s for at least two hours. I’ll try to be back before then.”

Pan and Rainbow shared a nervous wince.

“Why that long?” Pan asked with a sidelong glance at Rainbow.

“You need full service. They put you under for that.”

Rainbow hummed and nervously shuffled her hooves. “So full service means, what?”

Penny took a deep breath as she realized she would need to explain literally everything to her new friends. “Everything. Every procedure needed to get you into optimal health. Teeth? Cleaned and repaired. Arteries? Unblocked. Age damage to neurons? Repaired. Injuries? Treated. Conditions? Removed or managed. STDs? Removed. Everything. It’s full service, blin.”

Rainbow triple blinked. “Wait, like, HOW?!”

Penny turned and flashed Rainbow the biggest grin she could. “How? With science of course!”

Rainbow had no option but to accept that answer.

Pan frowned. “That sounds expensive. I thought money was tight?”

Penny nodded. “Da, it is, but medical care is free for the basics. You were hurt on my ship. My insurance covers you. I also have a small emergency fund for medical care, but I don’t think we’ll need to dip into it, comrades.”

With that settled, everypony got ready to disembark. The process was weirder than Rainbow thought it would be.

Despite the Iregsin being nudists, most worlds had modesty laws. Iregsin had special exceptions to those laws thanks to their species owning the majority of the Orion Arm’s major manufacturing systems. Other species who did not have such legal clout had to dress.

Pan was delighted for the excuse to wear something cute. He went with an outfit consisting of his favorite hoodie, some black leather socks for his rear-legs, and short white shorts which Rainbow thought might have once been pants.

To Rainbow’s annoyance, the only clothing which would fit on a pony were Pan’s. Pan gave her a purple hoodie of his which he had loaned a pegasus he once dated. She’d cut slits into it, which let Rainbow’s wings remain free.

If that’s all she had to wear, Rainbow would have been fine with it. The law was however, very clear. All individuals must wear a garment or garments which covered their torsos and groins. Rainbow was very unhappy to have to go out into public while wearing a stallions’ swimsuit which she swore was a design for mares given a bit of extra room in the front. Especially one which was the pink you get when you wash something white with something red.

Fortunately, her embarrassment had been forgotten when Penny stomped into the cargo bay in her T-34.

Rainbow’s eyes widened at the sight of the Chernin woman in full battle armor. “Uhhhh… D— Are— Um—”

Penny frowned for a moment then giggled. “Oh! I forgot to tell you. Chernin are not allowed to enter other species habitats without an enviro-suit or other containment suit. This is all I have.”

Pan frowned. “Why? Diseases?”

Rainbow’s ears perked up. Her eyes widened as terror flooded her guts. “Oh buck! I didn’t even think about alien diseases! That’s like, a huge staple of sci-fi! The aliens dying because they can’t handle the flu or whatever.”

Penny shook her head and held up a hand. “Nyet! Don’t worry about disease. Unless there’s a plague, you won't catch anything from an alien without having sex with them. There’s little microbes native to every planet. First Race bio-tech. It’s like an immune system that specifically targets alien microbes. Each strain evolved with your species, so it’s harmless and—”

Rainbow’s mind linked the concept to something she vaguely remembered when she had been not sleeping in highschool, and gasped. “Oh my Luna! Is THAT what those are for?”

Pan looked over at Rainbow. “Is that, what, huh?”

Rainbow looked at Pan like he was an idiot. “Didn’t you pay any attention in high school biology? There’s that little flu-looking thing that literally every species on Equus has in it, but it doesn't seem to do anything for us.”

“Da! That’s it,” Penny said as she walked out the cargo bay door. “The amicitiae bacterium aka The Bonds of Friendship. Without them, we couldn’t interact with each other.”

Pan hummed. “So, that super powerful species that came before everyone made sure everyone after them could hang out with each other?”

“Da!”

Pan nodded sagely. He had in fact napped through high school biology. “You could make a religion out of that.”

Penny sighed and shook her head. “They did. Several. Come, the less money I spend on a ship, the more I can spend on you two. We’ll be looking a long time.. You’ll need things. Clothing, tools, entertainment especially.”

“Okay,” Rainbow siad slowly. “But why do you need a containment suit?”

Penny’s cheeks flushed. “Uh, well… We’re not legally allowed to use their bathrooms… Because of our diets and regenerative abilities our waste is, uh… very hazardous.”

“Oh… ew.” Pan said in unison with Rainbow.

With that, the trio disembarked the Dawn, entering directly into a habitat shuttle. The shuttle ride took them through the industrial ring, down the space bridge, through a segment of the agricultural ring, and through the second bridge to the commercial ring. Their flight lasted for nearly half an hour and was ungodly boring.

Tavros Station hadn’t been built for tourists. The shuttle’s route was essentially a huge, hollow steel tunnel. The shuttle route prevented anyone from seeing into the rings they passed through. Only the short trips through the clear space bridges provided a break from an endless series of big, gray steel panels.

The commercial ring, on the other hoof, was breathtaking. The ring was completely hollow and filled with a huge city that reminded Rainbow of Fillydelphia, only so huge it stretched out as far as the eye could see. Soaring towers of multi-colored glass were separated by small parks, short plastic buildings, and busy streets.

The city below, alone, would have been a wonder in and of itself, but it shared space with something far more interesting. The city was divided into sections via large lakes. The sea like lakes were big enough to have small waves, and the warm light of the special tuned lamps caused enough evaporation for clouds to form over the city.

In the distance, Rainbow could see rain falling over a far-off section of the ring. Her arcane senses immediately fell in tune with the weather. It was real, not stage magic. The winds, the thermals, the rain, the slight electric charge in the air…

Tavros felt as alive as Equestria. Rainbow longed to get out of the shuttle and walk around on some nice, fluffy clouds.

“I’m going to have to fly later. This place feels great!”

Penny smiled. “We’ll let you get in a good one before we leave. It could be a month or more till we land again.”

Rainbow immediately penciled in at least three hours of relaxing flight.

The shuttle emerged out of the ring’s cloud layer, giving everyone a much better view of the technicolor wonderland below them. Rainbow gasped and laughed as shuttles whizzed past them. The machinery on display everywhere was a novelty she found herself enjoying more and more with each passing second.

Pan’s ears drooped as he hung his head in disappointment. “Awww… It’s just like how we would make a city.”

Penny snorted. “No it's not? I saw one of your cities. It was all gold and solar flares.”

Pan giggled. “That’s just Canterlot. Most of our buildings are not dipped in gold. They are all colorful though, and we don't do just one kind of building. Honestly, it looks like ponies made this.”

Rainbow hummed and looked down then shook her head. “No way. Not enough parks, and all of the parks are too small. We use way more green places.”

“I think you’ll like it on the ground, Pan,” Penny said as she leaned up to speak to the AI pilot. “Land us at the nearest doctor’s who accepts Cosmic Care.”

“Right away, ma’am,” the AI replied in a sexless voice.

The shuttle turned and headed spinwards before stopping dead in the air and moving straight down. Before Rainbow knew, it the shuttle had touched down and the doors hissed open. The landing had been so smooth she hadn’t felt any deceleration.

“I hope you leave the doctor’s satisfied, girls,” the AI said as everyone disembarked.

Pan blinked and glared at the AI. “I’m a guy!”

The AI ran another check and came to the same conclusion it had before. It debated informing the delusional person that they were in fact, not. However, it deemed politeness to be the better part of valor. “My apologies, sir. Have a nice day.”

The shuttle’s doors closed as Penny stepped out, and the AI switched on holo-displays advertising its rates.

Pan and Penny looked around the alien street, while Penny took a moment to start the paperwork for her insurance in advance.

Both ponies were blown away. They had been used to seeing different kinds of ponies everywhere in Equestria, but the other species sharing their world tended to keep to their own nations. Tavros wasn’t like that. Tavros was a melting pot.

Everywhere you looked, another new race jumped out at you. There were a few other Chernin, some Iregsin, and dozens of species Rainbow couldn’t recognize. There were six armed plant people. A bunch of people who looked like Chernin, only they were bald, purple, and had pointed ears. There were a bunch of really tall, skinny, bipedal aliens who came in tans and greens which looked like alien frogs, only with lizard tails and shark-eyes.

There were tentacled creatures. Short, furry bipeds. There was a thing Rainbow couldn’t even describe other than as ‘a centaur, only instead of front legs, it has extra long arms connected to its upper torso that it walks on like front legs, also it has back tentacles.

Pan excitedly looked around, a bright smile on his face. “I take it back. This is NOTHING like a pony city!”

The young stallion was in heaven. Everyone was so different. He knew there had to be a place for him.

Rainbow was in a special kind of hell. Everywhere she looked, she saw something cute or beautiful. Not in Tavros’ buildings or landscape, but in its people.

The warm, smooth, green ‘skin’ of the K'Rixon (plant-people). The cute, pointy ears of the Iregsin passing by. The fluid way Legri moved when they walked. The light blue glow of Praian eyes.

Rainbow looked around doing her best to hide her blush from everypony. AAAAA! WHY IS EVERYTHING ATTRACTIVE?! THAT CENTAUR THING SHOULD NOT MAKE ME WANT TO FLIRT WITH IT! HELP!!!

Rainbow’s panic was smashed aside as something female squeed and sprinted towards her at the speed of glomp.

“STARS ABOVE! YOU ARE THE CUTEST THING, EVER!”

Pan and Penny winced, their ears dropping flat to block out the high pitched sound. Rainbow wanted to scream and fly away: her pegasus hearing couldn’t handle the ultrasonic component of the screech.

Just as her wings opened to take off, a short Iregsin with bright, iris colored skin wearing only a silk belt with many large pouches rushed up to Rainbow and gently scratched her behind the ears.

Rainbow’s eyes shrank to pinpricks. She wheeled around and glared up into the young alien’s face. She seemed bubbly, nice, and reminded Rainbow a little bit of Pinkie, which is what saved the woman from a light slap. “Hey! It’s NOT okay to pet people! Who taught you manners?!”

The alien woman eeped. Her long ears flicked up in the most adorable expression of embarrassment Rainbow had ever seen. And she had seen Twilight go full scrunchface.

“I’m so sorry! I thought you were someone's pets.” She dropped to her knees and offered Rainbow a humble bow. “My sincere apologies!”

Rainbow took a step back, not sure how to reply to such a sincere apology. “Uh, it’s okay? It felt nice.”

The Iregsin woman moved back to her knees, remaining in a kneeling position to be more on Rainbow’s eye level. “I have never seen your people before, and I am big into ODINet culture. So, um, uh, I may have just blown a first contact between our peoples. I am very, VERY sorry and would love it if I could help you with something so as to leave a better first impression.”

Rainbow frowned, compelled by the power of quad-bambi eyes to be extra nice. “Oh, uh—”

Penny crossed the distance from the shuttle to Rainbow and the Iregsin in one loud powered step. “Ey! Are you harassing my friends?”

The alien woman looked to the left. Then up, and up. Rainbow smirked, expecting her to make a hasty and apologetic exist. Instead, her lower pair of eyes widened.

ODINet celebrities were fairly common. In fact, they were quite abundant thanks to the size of the galactic population. Meeting one in person where you lived, whom you also followed, was unheard of.

Iregsin’s tongues are prehensile, and quite long. The poor alien woman’s tongue proceed to tie itself into a knot. Literally. “U— U— Um— H— Hi! C— Can—”

Penny squatted down, smiled at her fan, and extended a pen from the tip of her armor’s right index finger. “Of course. What do you want signed?”

The alien woman reached into one of her pouches and took out a small datapad. With a few swift taps of her fingers she pulled up a video clip of Penny. To Rainbow’s shock, terror, and fassenation it depicted her friend in her armor having a fistfight with what appeared to be a robo-bear and a cyber-gorilla.

Woah! I think I need armor if I’m going to be bringing her stuff.

“This, please!”

“What’s your name?”

“Saria.”

“Net name?”

Saria blushed a bright blue. “I Uh, it’s… It’s stupidsexydolphin…”

Rainbow bit her lip. Don’t say her username is apt, don’t say her username is apt, don’t say—

“Looks like you picked the right name,” Rainbow said with a wink.

Rainbow mentally kicked herself. Not like that! Bad brain!

Saria blush brightened even more. “T— thanks!”

Penny giggled and beamed Saria a smile. “I remember you! You won a video chat last year.”

Penny reached out and signed her name on the lower right corner of the projection. The signature stayed behind on the screen even though she drew on it with a normal pen. The captured signature would forever glow on the video in bright pink. “There you go. If you don’t mind, my friends need a doctor and I need to find a new shuttle.”

Saria gasped. “What happened to the Hoatzin?! Did I miss a stream?”

Penny shook her head. “Nyet. This is the special project. You can’t film in the K3. There will be a public stream soon. Long story short, Nova Wing was also picking up ponis. Against their will.”

All four of Saria’s eyes widened. “You got away from Nova? Wow! I um…”

A mini fantasy of leaving the streets of Taveros and becoming a space hero like her hero briefly flashed within her eyes. Then she remembered how much it cost to own and operate a proper starship, and the dream shot itself. As it had every other time she’d dreamed it up.

The starstruck alien took a moment to catch her breath. “I made a very bad first impression with your friend, Miss Hawking. I would very much like to repay that dishonor. I have lived here for six years, and can show you around after the doctor’s appointment. I can wait here for you, if you would enjoy a guide.”

Penny hummed and waved Pan over. “Comrades, I may be talking with… Her for some time. I know Saria is trustworthy because none of the footage from our call has made it onto the net. She could have made a good deal selling it, if you catch my drift. I think it would be best if you agreed to let her accompany you so you have a guide incase I can’t get back in time. At the very least, she can help you get back to the Dawn.”

Pan smiled. “Sure! Why not. I mean, you trust her and know her as a fan.”

Rainbow thought for a few moments then nodded. “I would be happy to let you show me around your home, Saria. This place is awesome!”

Saria smiled to try and hide her embarrassed ear-wiggle at the mention of her home. She pointed to a nearby bench. “I’ll be right here! Don’t worry, I’ll duck into the net. Just tap me on the shoulder when you’re back, and I’ll logoff.”

Penny smiled. “Thank you.” A small compartment in the left thigh of her armor popped open. Penny reached in and fished out a small bag of sunflower seeds and handed them to Saria with a smile. “Have some semechki while you wait.”

Saria’s lower eyes widened. “Really?! Thanks!” She took the bag and skipped over to the bench to munch on what was a very rare snack for her people.

Penny stood up, only to find both ponies looking up at her in complete confusion. “What?”

Pan pointed to her armor’s pocket, conce again closed. “Why the heck does your armor have a pocket for sunflower seeds?”

Penny tilted her head to the left. “Semechki pouch is standard feature on all Chernin armors. This is a T-34, so I have three. Come, let’s not keep our new comrade waiting.”

The ponies followed Penny across the expansive, plaza-like sidewalk to the small building directly across from where the shuttle had landed. The building was bright white, and featured a red alien sigil on it. It reminded Rainbow of the letter L, but with a little dash across the middle.

Rainbow immediately memorized the symbol, assuming correctly that it was the galactic sign for a hospital or medical supplies. As they entered through the large glass doors, Rainbow found herself more than a little confused.

Rather than a waiting room like she thought she would find, the front room was lined with row upon row of pods large enough for a person to lay down in. There was an island counter in the middle of the room, behind which sat one of those extra tall lizard-frog aliens who wore a white tunic with the medical symbol embroidered on it.

The Legri doctor looked up at the sound of a walking tank barging through his front door and groaned. “Chernin have to use the office on 189th avenue. We are not equipped to handle the toxic elements found in your body.”

Penny held up her hands. “Nyet, doctor. We’re here for my friends, not me. They need full service care. I am sending you my insurance information now.”

The doctor glanced down at the holoscreen on his counter. An alert chimed as it informed him that a Rainbow Dash and Pandora were due for full care and were cleared for up to twenty-thousand credits of service.

“In that case, let’s get started…” The doctor stood up and walked out from behind the counter, moving over to Rainbow and Pan with a silver device held in his left hand.

He tapped a button on the device and swept it over them. “Near-humans? Odd. You don't see very many near-humans who are not bipeds.”

Pan cleared his throat. “What is a near-human, exactly?”

“A large group of lifeforms with a genetic link to the First Race, or humans as they called themselves,” the doctor explained as he scrolled through his medical files. “Ah, there we are. You’re lucky, our system was updated with your species biology a mere six hours ago. We wouldn’t have been able to treat you.”

Rainbow’s eyes narrowed. “Where did you get that data?”

The doctor frowned, noticing her tone and expression. “Is there a problem?”

Penny nodded. “Da, the only others of their race to leave their homeworld were taken by pirates. I’m helping them file a report with the Star League, but we ran into a shuttle accident. They need medical care first.”

The doctor tapped some more commands on his pad. “Mmm, the data was sold to the medical community by the captain of the VOC Meermin. It says here he purchased it from a Mina who was selling bio-data in bulk. I hope that helps you.”

The three nodded as one. “Oh, it does!” Rainbow said with a wicked smile.

We have a lead. Won’t be long now, jerks!

Penny smiled, deciding that she should go to her bank and shift some funds around. It looked like Rainbow might need some proper equipment sooner than she thought. “I have business to attend to. I must leave them in your care, doctor. There is an Iregsin named Saria waiting outside. If I am not back in two hours, they may be discharged to her, if they can’t leave on their own. She is our guide.”

The doctor nodded. “Of course,” he turned his attention to the ponies and used his neural interface to open two of the capsules lining the rooms. “If you two will step inside, our auto-docs should be able to clear everything up for you just fine. If anything can’t be treated by them, I’ll attend to you personally. Don’t worry, I monitor their operations closely. It’s perfectly safe.”

Penny turned and left the office while the doctor spoke.

Pan pursed his lips then nodded. “Robot doctors. Cool! Can it fix a broken horn?”

The doctor paused. “I don’t know. I could certainly make a prosthetic for you, but cosmetic work must come after a full service checkup.”

Rainbow blinked. “Wait, even though a unicorn’s horn is like, their actual means of spellcasting and an important body part?!”

The doctor’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry! In most species, a horn is a cosmetic feature. I take it yours do not regrow?”

Pan shook his head. “Nah, I wouldn’t be that lucky.”

The doctor nodded and tapped at his pad. “There. I’ve instructed the auto-doc to take a look. Please take the one on the right, sir. Ma’am, take the one on the left. Unless you want it to try and fix a horn you do not have.”

Rainbow gulped nervously. “O—okay…”

She stepped forwards and entered the capsule on the left, easily able to climb on the bed and walk along it to the end of the capsule, thanks to it being built for larger people. The moment she laid down on the bed, the door gently hissed shut behind her. Rainbow eeped slightly, worrying about being trapped in such a small space.

The capsule’s AI detected the patients stress levels and responded accordingly by choosing the most soothing voice it had on file and deciding to speak professionally.

“Please state the nature of the medical emergency.”

Rainbow bit her lip and looked around for anything to look at while speaking. None were available.

“I uh… I was in a Lada-class shuttle, and it got blown up. So I was in space without a suit. Then a Chernin mechanic gave me first aid.”

The auto-doc paused for a full second as it tried to process how to respond to the poor mare. A small hatch opened up into of Rainbow and deployed a small tray. A small arm descended from a hidden recess in the pod’s ceiling and set a glass of amber liquid on the tray. “It is my medical opinion that you need some of this before we continue.”

Rainbow frowned and sniffed at the liquid. “Is this whisky?”

“Yes.”

Rainbow flinched and gently picked up the glass and put it back into the robot arm’s graspers. “No thanks... I um… I also tried Chernin vodka.”

The auto-doc paused again, this time to sigh. “I see. Well, let’s start by regenerating your liver.”

Twilight Sparkle - 13th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

749,559.62 A.H.

Gilbi Ruins, Tustea -- Ithaa-Phea System, Noctae Sector

Twilight moaned and squirmed in the mangled remains of the escape pod. She couldn’t be certain, but she swore she had plowed through the crumbling remains of a palace on the way down. There had been too much screaming, vomiting, and spinning for her to be certain of anything.

Anything other than that she was bleeding, covered in sick, her rear-left leg was broken, and she was alive.

Twilight clenched her teeth to ignore the pain from her leg and twisted around to see about getting the pod’s hatch open. It took her a good minute, but her probing hooves at last found the manual release and with substantial effort ratcheted the hatch open.

It wasn’t until cool air flooded the interior of the pod that Twilight realized she might have just let poison into her only source of breathable air. She spent several moments beating herself up over her mistake while waiting to die.

Death didn’t come. Not because Tustea’s air was safe for a pony, but because the gel in her lungs filtered the air for her. It even stored a little air for her. The lavender mare had gained what amounted to an internal life support system.

If the psi-gel worked for the average alien like it did for unicorns, Nova Wing could have made a killing as a legitimate business.

Unaware of her unintentional gift, Twilight slowly crawled out of the ruined escape pod. The mare was laying in the middle of an ash-filled wasteland. The remains of buildings great and small spread across what little of the hills she could see around her through the dense fog.

A few young plants poked through the rubble. Ancient seeds having at last been able to germinate as the arcane toxins had leached out of the soil at long last. Perhaps in a few thousand years, Tustea would once again be a green world. For now, it looked as if one pony could manage to survive on the sparse greens growing over several acres of land.

Twilight whimpered as an especially sharp twinge of pain ate through her leg. She reached back with her magic and gently pulled the mangled limb out of the pod, smearing blood along the once smooth metal as she finally slipped entirely free.

The smell of blood entered Tustea’s thick atmosphere and spread almost as quickly as it would have in water.

Twilight gulped nervously as she took in the apocalyptic surroundings. She raised a hoof to shield her eyes from the intense light of the setting suns and tried to scan the horizon for any sign of movement. Please just be a warzone… An inactive warzone…

Sharks can smell a bleeding creature of a pony’s size from almost a kilometer away.

Twilight’s eyes narrowed against the bright light as she swore she saw something move just over the ridge of the furthest hill she could see. She leaned towards it, wishing she felt in good enough shape to cast a magnification spell.

Water, especially salt water, is not a good fluid for spreading scents over a large area. Air is much better at dispersing smells. Especially in terms of speed.

The fur on the back of Twilight’s neck stood up. She could feel it. Deep, deep down in her guts. She was being watched.

If sharks live on land they would be able to smell a given amount of blood from tens of kilometers away.

Twilight scrambled onto the three good hooves and turned around. Her mangled pod was the only shelter she knew of. The steel was twisted, the hull was cracked, but just maybe it had enough integrity to keep out a predator.

A trio of black, gelatinous, shark-like alien eyes watched the unicorn stand from behind a pile of charred logs which had once been the support beams for a princess’s bedroom. Three eyes saw Twilight slowly turn around. One mind observed the new creature in its territory. A great hunger welled up deep within, instinct issued a command, and thousands of bodies began to converge on the old ruins.

Twilight’s injured leg slammed into the side of the ruined pod. She screamed in pain. The creature watching her burst form its concealment. Stone, ash, and wood scraped and clattered as the massive creature pounced.

Twilight’s eyes widened in horror, her head whipped around, she saw it, and froze.

It was a giant. The creature was something between a mammal and a reptile. The black-skinned giant had three large eyes, two where you’d expect, with a third set above them in a triangle formation. It ran on four legs, but it’s front limbs, talons, and thick saurian tail suggested it was a theropod, and had merely been crawling a moment before. Its four six-fingered talons ended in massive claws, each one as long as Twilight’s leg from knee to hoof.

The thing’s salamander-like skin glistened in the light of the suns. Twilight wasn’t sure if it was sweating, covered in mucus, or just glossy. She was too terrified that the two large globular things on the monster’s chest were pouches to carry its young in.

But the mouth is what caused Twilight to go limp with terror. The monster’s head was large, round, and at the end of a long, flexible neck, like a dragon’s. It’s mouth was small, but able to stretch wide enough to swallow Twilight whole. Not that it would. The smile on its face showed three rows of shark-like fangs.

The monster landed and raced towards Twilight at top speed, driven by one of the most primal instincts. It would get the pony. It needed the pony.

Twilight took in its black skin, mistaking the stripes running along its spine for blood. Teror shot down her spine and gave her the energy to run. Twilight twisted, pushed against the ground, and made it three steps before her broken leg remembered it was broken in six places and she collapsed, falling face first into the ash.

The suns were blotted out as the monster loomed over her. Twilight screamed in terror as taloned hands curled around her torso with surprising speed and gentleness, though one talon did slice into her ribs.

The gestalt intelligence born of the genocide five hundred years ago took full control of the drone which had caught the pony. It reared up, and held the thing out at arms length, craning its neck around to examine it before hugging Twilight to its chest. The lavender unicorn immediately vanished into the cleavage of what she now realised were teats the size of her entire body.

Twilight screamed in terror. I’m going to be eaten by a giant salamander somepony fuzed with Lyra’s drawings and a utahraptor!

The “monster” made a sound, something low, rumbly, but happy sounding. Just as Twilight was about to panic, her translator found the alien language in the archived files, and quickly provided her with a translation.

“Yay! Social activity!”

Twilight blinked. “Wait, what?”

The six meter tall alien held Twilight out at arm’s length again. “Hello, sky-person! We friends, please?”

Terror left Twilight like air escaping a balloon. Twilight looked her ‘captor’ up and down once. Now that she wasn’t afraid of being eaten, the huge alien mare actually looked kinda cute. More importantly, the obvious carnivore wanted to be friends.

Twilight nodded fervently. “Yes! Please! That is amazingly preferable to being eaten!”

The alien smiled, and so did the two billion drones that made up her hive. “Yay! No worry. I know you words. Brain-magic-good! Um… No, that sounds bad? I no talk with words, ever! Only mind on world. Everyone is me. Lonely… But no lonely now!”

The drone holding Twilight set her on its left shoulder. Twilight did her best to find hoofholds as the alien bent down much like a raptor and began to talk deeper into the ruins. “I take you hive. It rain soon. Rain bad. Burns skin.”

Twilight’s ears fell. Acid rain… Great! It’s a post-apocalyptic world. I’m trapped here, aren't I?

“Sky-person not trapped here! Zuul will reinvent up goers. We can take you to you friends… Uh, take lot time… I was, too sad to do anything… But eat. Let drones do drone things… Lonely…”

Twilight frowned. “Did you just read my mind?”

“Yes! Not this drone. Zuul is all drones. Zuul is… Uh, mind? Yes. Magic-mind.”

Twilight blinked. A slow smile spread across her face. “You’re a hive mind, and you’re friendly?”

“Yes!”

“Uh, how many are you?”

“Um… Lots? Drones like to make drones. No order them to. They just do…” Zuul briefly checked to see how many minds she was at the moment. “We are six… Million? No! Hundred million. Yes.”

“And you’ll help me find my friends?”

“Yes! Friends most important thing ever. Can’t imagine losing a friend! Not having one is bad.”

Twilight smiled, more stress than she knew she had left her body in a heartbeat. Though more than her fair share remained, she felt as if she could be genuine friends with the scary, yet cute, and absurdly lonely alien. “Thank you. I’m Twilight Sparkle. It’s nice to meet you. I’ve never met a hive mind before.”

“I’ve no met a other mind before! Are you one or many?”

“Just one.”

Zuul nodded, a determined expression crossed her face. “Then Zuul will not let Twilight die. Will fix you drone.”

“When you just have one, it’s called a body.”

The thousands of other drones converging on the ruins began to scavenge materials to build their new friend a hospital, and a nice house. No, a palace! No, not a palace, a whole city! Full of things to do. There were reasons to make places, and things to do at those places now. She could do things with a friend! Nothing was too good for her friend. NOTHING!

Not even fighting very mean pirates. Or reinventing space travel. Much of the species which had become Zuul’s knowledge was lost in her creation. It would probably take her a few years to re-discover it.

In the meantime, there was nothing but a reason to celebrate. For five hundred years, there had been only one mind on Tustea. Now there were two.

Zuul wondered if Twilight might be interested cuddles. The trillions of fuzzy fragmented memories in her metaphysical head had always made them seem so nice.

7 - Necessary Upgrades

Author's Note

Brought to you by,

Patron of the Week: Life Beat.

7 - Necessary Upgrades

Penny Hawking - 749,559.69 A.H.

The Iron Tiger Cantina, Tavros Station - Fenx System, Noctae Sector

Penny remembered the Iron Tiger Cantina well. She’d first met Steele there, back in her younger more naive days before she even knew that Mina names consisting of a metal which ended with an extra vowel ment their family was Old Blood.

Mina’s Old Blood families were something to be feared. Not for reasons of violence, but for the economic might they collectively wielded. The twenty five metallic families had been the ruling elite of the Mina’s homeworld before it was destroyed during the Battle of Tilctew. The dyson swarm the Mina now lived in had been such a drain to construct that their race had done little else but create livable habitats.

Old Blood families were the only reason the Mina had a presence outside their star system these days. Before the battle destroyed their system, the Old Blood had used their genetic engineering mastery to terraform all seven planets in their system to Gaia World status. Paradise planets, created on demand by only a few families working together over a few hundred years.

A feat no one else had accomplished but the First Race, as far as the Galaxy knew.

Today, the Old Blood families dominated the Transformatives industry. Collectively, they were what allowed the Mina to be of note to the rest of the Arm.

The Iron Tiger Cantina was not a very nice looking building, but it was not rundown. Its tall gray and blue tower-like five story presence dominated the small park it had been built in. Many people believed the park was owned by the cantina, and served as outdoor dining. It wasn’t, but the cantina never bothered to correct anyone.

Inside, the Iron Tiger was large, open, a bit smokey, smelled of exotic drinks and comfort food, and packed with modified individuals.

Penny was relatively certain that no one who came here was rocking an original part in their whole body. She had no problem with their extreme lifestyle choices, but it did give the place a certain atmosphere. One which few would describe as positive.

If I don’t get Pan to understand the value of differing opinions in a community, he’ll wind up here one day. Penny sighed as she looked around the cantina at the elaborate customized, often highly sexualized, bodies of the people before her. I don’t think he would be truly happy here… These people change on a whim. Nothing is permanent about them. They are addicts, when you think about it.

Her assessment was not born of ignorance. Steele had loved the Iron Tiger so much she had purchased it to spend time with Non-Mina who enjoyed Transformatives as much as she did. She even offered free nano-injections to regulars who couldn’t otherwise afford them.

It had not surprised Penny that Steele still owned the place. They had shared one of the upstairs rooms for years.

Penny could remember hundreds of drunk people talking to her about how they still didn’t feel right, or fit in, or couldn't do what they wanted to do. If they could just get that one last shot, or treatment, or topical cream, it would all be better.

Penny’s eyes fell on a person who had gone to elaborate lengths to make themselves into a semi-humanoid cephalopod. They had dozens of tentacles which they used to get around on land, as well as manipulate their utensils, cup, data pad, and communicator. They also had a somewhat humanoid upper body with two heads and six arms. Their skin was a violent electric blue which pulsed and rippled faintly, using a chameleon-like set of color changing cells to animate ocean waves across their skin.

Penny whistled quietly. It’s a shame they’ll change that in a few days. That’s art right there. I’d love to have that skin… If it turns off.

Penny got a few looks as she walked around the Iron Tiger in search of Steele. Most casual, some fearful, and others… Well, she couldn’t help but notice some of them were very lustful. Normally, she’d flirt back with the cute ones, but that was before Pan had come aboard.

“Hey babe! How much organic is left in that thing?” Someone called in a rather aroused tone.

Penny smiled and waved in the voice’s direction. “It’s just an envirosuit. I’m Chernin.”

“Awww… Well, come back when you get some chrome, girl!”

“Chernin can't be modded you idiot!” Another patron laughed.

“The fuck is she doing here then?”

“Vicarious enjoyment?”

Penny laughed and shook her head. She knew this crowd well enough. Even if most of those who might still be alive from when she lived here would be entirely unrecognisable.

Penny looked past the host of aliens as she searched the Cantina for anyone her computer recognised. The only way to find Steele in this mess would be by biosignature. Her vision became hazy lights clustered around simple geometric shapes as her glasses focused on bioscan data.

The tables, chairs, and stools didn’t change in appearance. They were the same artsy geometric polygons they had always been. The entire place was quite intentionally plain. Soft lighting, muted colors consisting of grays, whites, and blacks. No wall art. No plants. No scultures.

‘The Iron TIger, where you are the decor’. I see they are still holding onto the old theme.

The AR overlay in Penny’s glasses drew an arrow, directing her towards a table near the center of the room. Her T-34 had found Steele.

Penny turned and walked over to the table. Her old flame appeared to be female this month, and rocking a relatively subdued look.

Penny nearly choked on her own spit in shock. Steele’s body from the waist up was her natural Mina appearance. Humanoid, creamy green skin, large slanted oval shaped eyes, all black with pale gray irises, a small nose, long black silken hair, small perky breasts. She was wearing a loose fitting white t-shirt which almost hid her body armor with it’s billowy mass, and had a tan messenger bag slung over one shoulder.

The blin is she doing going natural?! I haven't seen her like that since our second da—

Steele’s lower body was that of a quadrupedal hooved animal. She’d gone centaur. Penny frowned as she took in the fur which was a slightly darker green than Steele’s skin, and equally dark silken black hair. The coloration and general build reminded her of how Pan and Rainbow’s specific equine bodies were constructed.

Ey! There it is. That’s the cheater I partially tolerate.

Penny crossed the floor, weaving through the crowd of modified individuals to make her way to Steele’s table. The armored woman squatted down at the table across from Steele and nodded curtly. “Steele.”

Steele looked up from her datapad and plate of deep fried Kalien Bullworms, and smiled revealing her natural ‘every tooth is a fang’ teeth. “Penny! Long time no see… Still mad?”

“Let’s not do that today, blin,” Penny grunted. I called. You knew I was coming. Why the excited greeting?

The Mina woman sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “It’s been centuries. I’m on my eighth rejuvenation treatment since we broke up. You guys really do carry a grudge forever, don’t you? I’ll apologize again if you’d like.”

Penny closed her eyes and groaned. This! This is why I don’t want to be real friends with her. We do this every time. “That won’t change anything, Steele.”

Steele sighed, a frown parted her lips. “No, it won’t will it? But I am truly sorry I hurt you, so I will keep apologizing. You’ll believe me one of these centuries. I am sorry I didn’t tell you I’m polyamorous. I was young too and worried that aliens wouldn’t understand the minutia of our culture. I didn’t realize another spacer and could visit me rather than me visiting you exclusively. Your job made hiding my relationships impossible. Someone who wasn’t young and stupid would have told you. I am sorry.”

Penny reached up and rubbed her temples with her suit’s arms. The gesture would have been suicidal for a lesser mech pilot. Penny pulled it off without even ripping out hair. “Steele, I’m here to buy a ship.”

The green alien nodded once. “Yes. We’ll get to business after pleasure. I’m a different person now, Penny. I still like you. I want to be friends.”

Penny rolled her eyes and gestured to Steele’s equine half. “Da, so different. How old is this body? A week? Did you get it because you wanted to pretend you were someone else to get back into someone's life?”

Steele’s eyes appeared to turn cloudy as her secondary eyelids closed in shame. “You know that I regretted that as soon as I tried it.”

“Da… Still hurt deeper than any knife.”

Steele cleared her throat. “And for your information, Penny, this body is a gift to my wives. I let the two of them pick it out and I will be staying in it until they get bored of it. I’ve settled down.”

Penny raised a skeptical eyebrow. Steele laughed. “I may look twenty, but I’m almost as old as you. It took me a few lifetimes to mature, that’s all.”

Penny was floored. Her jaw dropped. “You? Settle down?”

“Yes. I’ve been married to them for the last twenty years. Happiest years of my life! I just wish they weren't dead set on staying on that backwater world… I’d like to visit more often. But you of all people know how business can be.”

Penny shook her head in disbelief. “Well, if that’s true, pozdravleniya, staryy drug.”

Steele’s face brightened as she smiled. “Old friend? Sounds like someone's warming back up to me.”

“In your dreams, Steele… Can we talk shuttles now?”

The Mina nodded. “Sure, you’re too distracted by that to be any fun anyways. What are you looking for? Something automated, I’d imagine. An AI cargo-hauler? Is that ancient Lada finally out of space for your toys?”

Penny’s eyes grew cold. She stared down at the table for several moments. Steele frowned. “Oh… Oh, Penny. I’m so sorry. I know how much that old thing meant to you.”

Penny closed her eyes. “The Hoatzin was like my pet, Steele. I remember when I fixed her up as a young adult. My first shuttle. My first ship.”

Steele nodded solemnly. “Did her drive coils burn out? Those couldn’t possibly have had any more life in them.”

“Nyet. She was shot down.”

Steele blinked, all four of her eyelids moving in an X pattern. “Shot down? Poachers don’t normally carry anti-ship weapons. What have you been up too?”

“I picked up a friend who wanted to travel with me,” Penny said quietly to avoid drawing in excess attention. “Some pirates decided we were too close to their ship and opened fire.”

Steele’s tail flagged in alarm. “Oh no! Is everyone alright?”

“Da, they are in a clinic across town.”

“Thank goodness!” Steele sighed and relaxed, starting to tap command sinto her pad to ready it for a company wide search of their inventory and their wholesaler’s inventories. “You’ll need a new shuttle within a week or your cash will dry up. I can try to find you another Lada-Class, but nothing that ancient will be in useable condition. Are you okay with a model six hundred? It’s visually similar to the Hoatzin’s ancient three hundred series.”

Penny pursed her lips as she thought the offer through, then shook her head. “Nyet… I.. I can’t replace it. It wouldn’t feel right. I’ll get something new.” Penny’s eyes narrowed as she looked Steele in the eye. “New, but sturdy, functional, and utilitarian focused. None of this, sleek, shiny, designer, sobach'ye!”

Steele laughed and shook her head. “Please, Penny, I know you! Give me your price range and I’ll find something you’ll enjoy owning.”

Penny’s cheeks flushed. She folded her hands in her lap and leaned closer. “I… I can’t afford more than two hundred thousand credits right now.”

Steele’s face pinched in on itself as she leaned into her left palm. “Penny, honestly, you need to stop singlehandedly funding half the bloody wildlife preserves in the Arm!”

Penny snorted and waved her left hand in dismissal. “I don’t fund half of them, blin! I fund mabey four percent.”

“Whatever! It hardly matters!” Steele exploded, jumping to her hooves. “The animals will survive without you spending the returns on your trust fund investments and most of your ad revenue on them.”

Penny sighed. “This again? It’s my money, Steele.”

Steele bit her lip, stamped a hoof, then sat back down. “Honestly, you’re the worst kind of quintillionaire. You know damn well those ‘charities’ put less than half of each credit into the actual cause! You could save just as many endangered critters if you saved up for a few decades, bought your own planet, and started your own foundation. Then you’d have enough money left over to buy ten brand new shuttles every other month!”

Penny shrugged, her T-34’s pauldrons groaning as they moved. “Why would I buy that many shuttles? I’d rather help more animals.”

Steele rolled her eyes. “They are animals, Penny! I made my own species as a fifth grade science project. You don’t need to protect them all.”

Penny’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Natural lifeforms are a natural wonder in need of preservation. Many of the most interesting scientific developments come from them. They are important, suka!”

Steele closed her eyes and raised her hands. “I know that! But you seem to want to personally protect all of them. The Arm is too big for even someone of your wealth to pull that off.”

“Da, but I can do a lot of good.”

“I’m just sayin you would do more if you invest better! Don’t spend like a commoner. Seize hold of what you like, use your power and influence. Make a REAL change.”

“I’d have to hire a manager, you know I’m bad with business practices. That’s why I’m not papa’s heir, unlike you.”

“Don’t bring my dad into this, Penny! This is about you being financially irresponsible.”

Penny took a deep breath. “Steele, I have no idea how I would untangle my finances now. I have accounts that are older than you. I have deals that are older than you. I have thousands of accounts and arrangements. I would need an AI and decades to untangle this mess…”

Steele’s cheeks puffed out and turned a rather angry shade of yellow. “Then get started this evening!”

“Suka blyad! Are you going to sell me a shuttle or lecture me on accounting?”

Steele took a deep breath to calm herself. “Those things are related, you know! I can’t give you a shuttle on credit if I know you won’t be good for it. Two hundred small ones won't get you anything like what you want, and will only cover the worst versions of what you need.”

Penny blushed sheepishly. “Oh… Well, blin.”

Steele closed her eyes. “Would you stop swearing, please?”

Penny snorted. “You speak Chernin. You know that’s not swearing.”

“You know that everyone else doesn't know what it means and you substitute it for cursing.”

The armored woman offered her ex-lover a sheepish smile. “Da, but not swearing is very hard…”

“Sure it is,” Steele slumped slightly, shook her head, and pulled a data pad out of her satchel.

She tapped a few commands into the portable computer, read the results of her search and sighed. “Penny, there isn’t a utility shuttle in your price range with shields even half as good as your old Lada.”

Penny bit her lip. “Ey, I’ll make do.”

Steel shook her head slowly. “No. You won’t. You were shot at. By a modern ship. Not some old dusty relic like the Dawn. You need better shields. Pirates don’t just leave a system they can raid. You’ll run into them again when you take your friend home.”

Penny pursed her lips. Does she think the pirates are after Pan? Maybe I should be more honest.

Penny gently stepped around the table, remaining squatted down to stay at a conversational level. Once she was next to Steele she began to speak quietly. “You have a good point. We do need good shields. Pan’s not the only one I brought with me… Nova Wing tracked our conversations, decided to see why someone kept calling a primitive world, and abducted some people. I’ve got one of their friends onboard… We’re going to try and save them if we can.”

Steele blinked, then her eyes widened. “You’re messing with prims? Penny, hon, please tell me you got permission!”

“Da, I have video of their nation’s leader giving permission. Both of them have got IDs and everything.”

Steele sighed. “Trafficking primitives is a crime. I am required by law to see their IDs before I can sell you a shuttle.”

Penny nodded and used her neural interface to send Steele a copy of the Dawn’s crew roster. The Mina’s data pad chirped as the message came in. Steele took one look at the document and sputtered.

Her eyes glowed from within as she looked at Rainbow’s ID. There was a reason few Mina kept their natural eyes. Penny knew that expression. Shock, and recognition.

Penny smirked. “Look familiar, comrade?”

Steele shook her head. “No! Just absurdly sexy. Is that rainbow hair natural?”

Penny frowned and shrugged. “I don’t know. But you know what I do know?”

Steele looked up from her pad. “What?”

“I know that Pan was able to call my ship because he had a Mina bioship’s transceiver. His homeworld is in the K3. A bit out of the woods.”

Steele nodded in agreement. “It is. And it wouldn’t be the first time one of our explorers crashed while exploring there. Wow… I don’t suppose I can get coordinates? I’d like to visit.”

Penny smirked. “I hope your wives would be okay with that.”

Steele rolled her eyes. “Not like that! These people are fascinating. I could make a fortune farming their DNA.”

Penny raised an eyebrow. “That’s still sex.”

“Technically yes, but my girls are fine with my occasional services for the National Genebank…” Steele trailed off and paused. She turned to look into Penny’s eyes with an odd look on her face. “Penny, you said you had video permission?”

Penny nodded. “Da.”

“Can I get a copy?”

Penny frowned, her stomach tightening with indignation. “To verify these aren’t forged?”

Steele nodded firmly. “Yes. I know you love people with fur and helping those in need. I can see you forging IDs for them.”

Penny gave her armor the command and a copy of the raw unedited footage of Celestia giving permission was transmitted to Steele’s datapad, along with the most up to date version of the Equestrian translation data. “There. Are we okay now?”

Steele waited a moment longer to watch the clip for herself. Her eyes sparkled with a hint of mischief. “Yes. We’re more than okay. Sorry, Penny. I can’t break the law.”

Steele tapped away on her datapad as she searched the listings for a shuttle once more. Penny could tell there was something she wasn’t saying just by looking at her. The last time Steele had that look on her face was when there had been a Legri guy in her bed when Penny boarded her ship on a whim.

“What are you up too?”

Steele kept typing, then stopped, scanned her thumbprint, and signed her pad’s screen. “I am getting you a shuttle. I’ve got one I can take two hundred for. Brand new, utility, good shields…”

Penny raised an eyebrow. “I thought there weren't any in my price range.”

“There aren’t. But this isn’t about you. This is about protecting people, Penny. People are to me what animals are to you,” she turned her pad around. “Sign here, pay me the two hundred, and I’ll have an Argas shuttle delivered to the Dawn in three days.”

Penny sputtered, stumbling backwards far enough to bump into someone at the table behind her. “An Argas! I can’t pay for a billion credit shuttle, cyka!”

Steele smirked. “You’re not. I am.”

Penny pointed to herself with both hands. “Have you forgot that I’m a civilian? I don’t have a licence to own military ships, Steele!”

“I do,” Steele said simply. “I’m buying it. The extra day will be for me to strip out the military grade weapons. At which point I can give you the title.”

Penny’s mouth opened and closed several times. “But the cost! You and I both know wealthy people don’t have all of their assets in liquid form. That billion is going to sting hard.”

Steele threw back her head and laughed. “Tax write off. Charitable donations are a thing, Penny.”

Penny froze, the wheels in her head began to turn. Steele’s lower half resembled an Equestrian. Her reaction on seeing Rainbow’s ID. The fact that the last call made from Pan’s crystal had been to the Dawn… The fact that before she had been given the Dawn as a gift she was often on it with her father.

“You know who Rainbow is,” Penny said evenly.

Steele tilted her head. “Beg pardon?”

“You were that explorer. I know Mina are visiting their homeworld still, because they know. You know who Rainbow is. You know who her friends are. That’s why you want to help.”

Steele shook her head. “No need for a conspiracy theory. I want to help because it’s the right thing to do and we both know the Star League will have a hard time tracking down a Nova Wing ship inside of a year.”

Penny smiled. “Come on, I know you. You’ve got a stake in this.”

Steele shook her head. “I don’t have any stake in this. It’s the right thing to do, and an easy way I can help people in need who can’t get Federal protection because the government can’t enter the K3.”

Penny frowned. Maybe I’m wrong… I don’t think I am, but her bullshit excuse is at least a good one.

“Okay. If you say so, ” Penny bent down and signed the papers Steele had drawn up, wincing as the money left her account.

I hope seventy five thousand is enough for some custom equipment for Rainbow… I’d make it myself but she needs an armorer, not a mechanic. For the first one, at least. Then I copy the design. Heh heh!

Steele nodded in satisfaction and finalize the sale. “We’re done here. It will be at your ship in three days. I won't be delivering it, I have to attend to some business. I am already a little late. See, I heard an old friend who kind of hates me needed my help.”

Penny nodded and held out her armored hand for Steele to shake. “Thank you, comrade.”

Steele smiled brightly at the Chernin’s words. “Is that forgiveness?”

Penny smiled. “Ey, a little. Don’t push your luck, you crazy cyka.”

The two gave each other a polite smile and headed their mutual ways. Each dead certain the other was going to do something illegal in the near future.

Twilight Sparkle - 14th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

749,560.24 A.H.

Formicary, Subhive ruins -- Tustea, Noctae Sector

Twilight returned from a black void she couldn’t remember entering. She was on fire, within and without. The flames were invisible, the smoke intangable, the pain was not.

She opened her mouth to scream. No sound came out. The world around Twilight was blurry, fuzzy, and dim. Everything was wrong. She had to flee, and yet, she could not move.

Blind panic pulled Twilight’s mind in countless directions. As the fear peaked, a truly massive presence gently pushed into her mind.

Twilight felt a sharp pinch somewhere. It felt like the back of her neck, but she couldn’t tell precisely where it had come from. The pain faded away with the pinch, but her fear remained.

“What’s happening? Where am I?”

Her voice sounded off, as if the shape of her mouth had changed. Or she was missing teeth.

Twilight felt like she should have blinked as she processed the alien thoughts. But she didn’t. She couldn’t.

“Where am I? Who are—” Faint memories, mostly fuzzy but with certain very sharp elements came flooding back to Twilight without the alien’s prompting. “Zuul! Right. Um… Hive mind. Of big, weird, saurian things. With teats for some reason.”

Within the halls of Twilight’s mind a hundred million voices laughed in unison.

Twilight could see hazy shadows moving near the edges of her vision. She couldn’t turn her head to see them. It didn’t feel like her head was being held in place, she simply couldn’t move. The things at the edge of her vision were manipulating something. It looked oily, like a thick syrup, or thin taffy.

Twilight tried to frown. “Why can’t I see you? Why can’t I see anything? It’s all… Dim.”

Zuul reached into Twilight’s mind and played back her memories of their first encounter for her. Then it played back its own memories. She could feel the Hive’s own thoughts as the memories unfolded as if they were her own.

Twilight saw her pod falling through the sky through thirty eyes. She wasn’t quite used to how those eyes saw things. Blues were sharper, yellows were muted, and she was fairly certain she was also seeing heat along with a visual representation of arcane fields. It made everything look truly alien, but it was still recognisable.

It was curious about the falling object some of its drones had spotted. Falling things normally burned to nothing, this had not. It had reached out to try and catch the object, but didn’t want to destroy it. The telekinetic power it drew upon was focused through the drones to try and slow the pod’s fall.

It wasn’t quite enough.

The pod crashed into the roof of an ancient palace the Hive remembered living in, working in, despising, looting, defending, and ignoring. The decaying timber supports and crumbling clay tiles slowed the pod more, smashing it in several places. The pod continued through a wall, bounced up into the air as it struck hard stone, spun end over end, then slammed hard into the side of an ashen hill.

The hive sent a drone to investigate the pod, hoping whatever it was would be recognisable after such a horrible impact. Its fuzzy memories of a dead world indicated it was some sort of outhouse. That couldn’t be right.

Then the hatch opened, and Twilight fell out.

Twilight did her best to recoil in horror at the alien view of herself as she fell limply from the pod. She was able to very slightly thrash within the confines of whatever she was floating in.

“AAA! NO! STOP!” Twilight begged, every fiber left in her being pleading with the alien intelligence to not show her any more.

Twilight was drenched in her own blood. Jagged shards of metal from the pod had plunged into her at random points. Her face had been smashed in by the impact. Her hind leg hadn’t been broken, it had been severed. She was covered in her own sick mixed with fuel, oil, and other chemicals from the escape pod’s engines.

The mixture was extremely reactive, more so than Twilight remembered even florine being. Chunks of skin and fur slid off her body as the chemical cocktail rapidly dissolved the tissues which held them in place.

Twilight slid from the pod, and lay in a heap as her magic sparked around her. Each spark was one of the tiny scraps of magic left in her system doing their best to keep her alive. A survival reflex unicorns had evolved in the very first days of their existence. A certain sign of immediate death from grievous bodily trauma.

Twilight’s guts churned as she did her best to accept that she had survived the fall. Yet one detail nagged at her conscious mind even more than the images of her battered, dying, body.

“I… I thought you said my brain was exposed?” Twilight paused, taking a deep nervous breath. “I don’t want to… How did I survive that?”

Twilight began to panic again.

Genuine sympathy flooded down the telepathic link from the Hive to Twilight.

The drone moved towards the dying alien. It crawled along on all fours, using its hands to enhance its maneuverability. Instinct compelled it to move, demanding it eat the dying meat before it went bad.

The Hive override its decision immediately, wondering if the dying alien could be saved. It picked Twilight up to check for any injuries it couldn’t see with her current angle, and found many more. The pod’s leaking fuel had found its way into her guts through a large cut made by the pod’s safety harness.

Time was of the essence. The hive extended it’s mind from the drone to the alien to determine it if could speak. It could, but it did so in sounds mapped to meanings. An interesting, fairly crude and limited system of communication, but also something new. New, and thereby fun.

The hive attempted a greeting Twilight didn't respond. The hive mind pushed itself towards her, psionically linking their minds on a deeper level. The sudden connection gave Twilight’s magic just a bit more energy to work with, and the sparks around her body intensified, keeping her stable rather than slowing her demise.

The hive spoke with the pony’s words, hoping Twilight was a drone from another intelligence such as itself. A disposable tool which could be used to greet another mind after all these years.

Zuul’s half of the conversation was as Twilight remembered it. Twilight's on the other hoof…

Twilight wanted to rest her face in her hooves and moan into them so loudly the entire world would vanish into her embarrassed/distressed scream.

“I… I just shouted butts for four minutes...minutes! To the tune of a DJ-Pone3 song. I don't even like Vinyl’s music,” Twilight muttered bitterly.

Zuul agreed.

“So… Uh, I definitely had a concussion! How did you know what I was saying? If my speech centers were that damaged I shouldn't have been capable of even thinking in words.”

The hive chuckled.

Twilight frowned. “That does sound like me… Uh, question. Sometimes you think of yourself as a her, other times as nothing. What do you prefer?”

Twilight’s muscles twitches as they attempted to perk ears. “What may be it?” Anything is more interesting the worrying about how hurt I am right now…

Zuul debated with herself for a moment. Letting her theory brew as well as waiting several seconds to feel new minds emerge within her and others die. Her suspicions did indeed hold merit.

Twilight wished she could nod. “That is interesting. You could write a paper on that!”

<Yes, we could! Would you enjoy doing that once you are better?”

Twilight genuinely did, but the more pressing matters came back to her. “Y— Yeah… But, let's start with something more important. Where am I?”

The drone pulled Twilight in close to it’s chest to keep her safe as it carried her away from the pod. The drone didn’t have teats like Twilight remembered, merely a fairly large bump thanks to powerful muscles which crossed its chest. The drone was very fast, able to run on its hind legs almost as fast as a train. The hive pushed it along at top speed, not caring that the drone would die from exertion at the end of the tip.

Zuul lost six drones to age alone every second. Death was nothing to her. But the alien only had one body. Such a strange concept. Fortunately, it had a way to repair her. If she survived the trip to a hive.

The drone ran along a ridge, turning south towards the closest hive’s entrance. The ground cracked, splintering amid the crack sound of splitting stone. An ancient slab of stone covering a city sewer broke beneath the drone’s weight. The drone and Twilight fell fifty feet, plunging into a bubbling pit of unknowable ooze. The drone fell face first onto a jagged piece of rock.

The last thing the drone saw was Twilight’s head hitting the side of the pit and cracking like an egg.

Zuul immediately dispatched five drones to retrieve Twilight. The pit she had fallen into was on the edge of the hive, it was meant to collect the deadly rain which fell into the hive once a week. Drones were there within mere seconds. They plunged in, fished the dead drone off Twilight, and dragged her to the surface.

The unicorn was still breathing, but barely. There was only one thing to do. The drones quickly but carefully carried Twilight through a maze of quarried stone tunnels, avoiding the toxic liquids running down the gutters cut into the tunnel floor. Their route carried them to a room the Hive had not used in centuries.

In Zuul’s youth, it had sought to undo the mutations which twisted its drones into their present shark-raptor forms. Small traces of the formerly-near-human’s original appearance remained in them. Their hind legs thighs were rather curvy. Despite their long reptilian tails, they had a bit of a bubbly rump. Their talons were reminiscent of hands and feet. Aside from their mouth, their faces resembled something between a human and a pony, but still distinctly reptilian. Twilight’s damaged brain had simply exaggerated and added to those traits. Pareidolia from a dying mare’s brain.

Zuul had not been unable to undo their mutation, but it had learned the arts of manipulating flesh to its will. Then promptly never did anything with those arts as it had been unable to make a mind using them.

But now, it finally had a use for that knowledge. The drones brought Twilight into the ancient room, set her body into an ancient clay cauldron, still filled with a glowing blue liquid, and began to immediately attend to the HIve’s directions.

The memories stopped.

“Why is it important for me to know how badly I was hurt? What are you doing to me right now to fix it?”

The hive hesitated. Twilight could feel its fears and worries as if they were her own. It didn’t want her to be upset or hate it, but there was only bad news to tell.

Twilight’s heart bubbled nervously. The unnatural feeling made her feel even worse. “What… What’s left?”

Twilight’s stabilized mind returned to her memories of their first encounter. While she felt those memories she had been shown were genuine, the mare still wanted to be absolutely certain she could trust Zuul. Not that she had much choice.

Twilight giggled as part of her memories stood out to her. “I thought you wanted to cuddle me.”

A small amount of embarrassment trickled down through the hive into Twilight.

Twilight frowned, her heart went out to the poor person. Why is it that every fifth friend I make wants to be romantic with me? Well… At least Zuul’s got stallions available. Maybe there’s a chance? Regardless, at least I won't have to just pretend I don’t notice they like me, like with Rainbow. Still could be pretty awkward. I guess we’ll see.

“Yeah…” Twilight sighed. “I’d want one heck of a hug myself. Maybe some cuddles, too.”

The hive buzzed with uncertainty. Twilight felt it sigh with fear.

Twilight bit her lip. “Okay…” The mare felt the desperate need to change the subject. “What are you doing to fix me?”

To Twilight’s amazement, Zull felt relieved that she had changed the subject.

Twilight wanted to get up and run, but she couldn’t. Instead she lay there, silent, as the minutes ticked by.

The hive panicked too, not wanting Twilight to injure herself by suddenly flooding its grafts with adrenaline they could not yet handle.

Twilight paused. “Wait… Is this some kind of necromancy?”

“Sure.”

Twilight felt Zuul root around in her mind, sticking to one particular area .Several moments passed before Zuul stopped.

Then, after the panic had passed, she spoke again. “Is… Is there anything else? That you’re doing, I mean.”

Twilight remained quiet as she did her best to process what was happening to her.

Half an hour flew by in silence, during which Zuul created a new section of functional spinal column substitute, and was able to successfully graft it to what remained of Twilight’s original skeleton. With the new section in place, a pelvis could be installed to begin work on legs.

The Hive paused as an important thought occurred to her. What if Twilight didn’t want to be just like she had been? What if she wanted to be different?

Twilight’s currently cornialess eyes sparkled. “I could be taller?”

Flashes of memories flooded Twilight as Zuul showed her memories of various creatures it had made. Attempts to rebuild an ecosystem by an intelligent mind which knew nothing about ecosystems. It had once made many things, great, small, specialized, and general purpose. There had also been a faze where it had made everything extra fluffy for no adequate explained reason.

Twilight’s mind whirled as she came up with a plan. “Could you do more than looks? Could we make me more powerful?”

The image of Twilight easily able to crush the pirates and take her friends back burned bright and hot within her mind. Zuul took immediate notice.

That doesn't sound good… “What are those?”

Twilight thought about it. “If I don’t do that, you’d need to send one of those special drones into space to help me. Would that be a problem?”

Twilight felt a few tingles of fear leak through their shared connection. “I understand… In fiction hive minds are most always evil all devouring swarms.”

Twilight hummed as she mulled the idea over for a while. She’d often wondered what it would be like to have a friend always at hoof but had always come to the same conclusion.

“How would I have privacy, if I let you do that?” she said at last.

It was an acceptable price to pay for the power to save her friends. If only because it would let Twilight have drones of her own. “And how many drones would I be able to take with me?”

Twilight laughed. “Hey, six like, eight meter tall dino-sharks isn’t anything to sneeze at.”

Twilight sighed. “Imaginations are powerful things, aren’t they?”

A wave of agreement washed over Twilight as Zuul chuckled.

Twilight wished she could roll her eyes. “Go ahead and give me that organ. As for the rest of my body, I have a plan. Are you still reading my mind?”

Twilight frowned. “But… I’m talking?”

Twilight decided to ignore how injured she had to be at the moment. “Yes. Right now I am actively thinking back to a very special book, Anatomy of an Alicorn. I know it cover to cover, reference image to reference image. Can you see it?”

The hive was quiet for several long moments.

Twilight sighed. While time was of the essence, so was power. If she had to find a way back to Equestria to get Luna, the trail would grow even colder. But if she became an unstoppable warrior herself, that might take less time.

Especially since they would need to work out how to make an FTL drive from scratch. Or at least, find a way to radio a distress signal.

No… We won't go back to Equestria without them. I will scour the stars till I find all of my friends, or until they are avenged.

“Good enough. Let’s go for that… And I will talk you through some modifications I might like. Can we make it more durable without making it look ugly?”

The hivemind cracked its metaphysical neck.

8 - Ghosts in the Machine

Author's Note

Brought to you by,

Patron of the Week: DJThomp.

8 - Ghosts in the Machine

Rainbow Dash - 13th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

749,559.69 A.H.

Orion Wholehealth Clinic, Tavros Station - Fenx System, Noctae Sector

Rainbow’s eyes opened with far more grace and elegance than anypony could ever understand. Rainbow’s blink brought the semi-sapient Auto-Doc treating her the warm tingling in its core it always received for a job well done. The Auto-Doc was perhaps the only thing in the galaxy to appreciate the perfect contraction performed by her levator palpebrae superioris, to say nothing of her nearly perfect lacrimation of her rebuilt lacrimal glands.

Even an elite athlete like Rainbow couldn’t appreciate the state of precision her body was now running in. All she knew is she had quite literally never felt better. She woke up without any grogginess, not one minor ache or pain, no sense of having drugs in her system like she normally felt after a hospital trip, nor even any stiffness.

Rainbow’s eyes dilated as her tail perked. “Woah! The hay did you do? I blinked and now everything is awesome!”

The Auto-Doc’s voice spoke from the capsule’s once again plain white walls. “You’ve been unconscious for an hour and a half. During which time I performed seven hundred and twenty three operations. You are currently in perfect health. I performed a few minor operations not standard to full service treatments due to your body indicating you are an extreme athlete. Would you like to go over them?”

Rainbow blinked. “Uh, yes. Especially because I didn’t okay that!”

The Auto-Doc registered Rainbow’s distress, and immediately launched its mitigation subroutines. “Please remain calm. I am a medical professional beyond the skill of organic doctors, surgeons, and engineers. Every operation performed was done to bring your body back into proper shape. Full treatment covers standard health and capacity for your race, miss. The state of your muscle fibers, bones, joints, and metabolism indicate you are a high-performance machine, not a mere town-car. Full service was insufficient for your basic medical needs.”

Rainbow frowned. “Did you just compare me to a car?”

“What do you want? I’m a doctor, not an author.”

Rainbow sighed, letting the insult slide. She couldn’t be mad at a computer for doing badly at something it wasn’t programmed to do. “Okay… I do feel really good. What did you do?”

“I rejuvenated or replaced the cartilage in your joints, restoring them to proper working order. I took the liberty of shaping the cartilage to allow for optimal joint movement, and increased the shock absorption. Your eyes were not up to par with your reaction time, requiring some light work performed on your optic nerves. Your wing joints have experienced extreme stress for most of your life, and required full rebuilds. They should work like new. I also repaired several small flaws in your reproductive sys—”

Rainbow eeped, her ears standing up in alarm. “Did you restart my heat cycle?!”

“No. I’m not authorized to perform or reverse sterilization procedures without the patient's consent.”

Rainbow sighed in relief and slumped over the capsule’s bed. “Good! I’ve got this thing where every, uh, you know… I’d cramp up real bad for my whole heat and couldn’t train. That’s two weeks of being unable to train every three months. So I had them stopped. Like, entirely.”

The Auto-Doc wished it could nod to express its understanding of a female athlete's needs. “I understand. Which is why I repaired the surgery for you. Your body was beginning to heal thanks to your surgeon having the precision of an organic with a scalpel made of matter.”

Rainbow blinked. “Uh… That’s what he was?”

“I would very much appreciate it if you stick to AI doctors with photonic scalpels from now on.”

Rainbow snorted. “I’d love too… But uh, they don’t have you guys back home.”

The Auto-Doc quickly scanned Rainbow’s ID. “I see, you’re from a primitive world. This ID registers you as a citizen of Orion. As a citizen, you have the right to access proper healthcare. Let’s see… Oh!”

Rainbow lifted her head. “Oh? What’s oh?”

“Nothing bad. Quite the opposite. Your captain has a very robust insurance policy. It covers the installation of medical equipment in private residences. You have been authorised to use her policy as you are employed by her as crew on her ship. Would you like me to ship an auto-doc unit to your home?”

Rainbow’s eyes widened. “Are you saying that I could get you installed, for free, in my cabin, on the Dawn?”

“No.”

Rainbow’s ears drooped. “Oh…”

“I could have one installed in the medical bay. There are no crew quarters listed in the Dawn’s deck plan.” The Auto-Doc began filling out the paperwork, awaiting confirmation that its recommendation would be taken. “The Dawn of Destiny’s public records indicates it doesn't have an auto-doc. Strange. Your Captain must not be aware of her policy’s coverage. Would you like—”

“Yes! A thousand times yes! I do not want Penny working on me again,” Rainbow laughed nervously. “So, if insurance lets you get one of these at home, why does this clinic exist?”

“Miss Hawking’s insurance covers it. Normally the total cost of an auto-doc, counting installation, purchase of equipment, and a year’s supply of medical supplies comes to six million credits. Most citizens do not have Onyx Coverage Packages.” The Auto-Doc finished the papers and transmitted them to the central medical authority. “There. If your captain approves the modifications to her ship, I will be installed in your medical bay tomorrow afternoon.”

Rainbow tilted her head. “You specifically? As in this pod?”

“No. I am a decentralized AI. I can access any pod made by my owners. I am your doctor, and will be accessible at every pod, anywhere in the Galaxy. I will always have your full medical records on file, and a precise record of all our interactions. Over the years, I will only get better at understanding you, your needs, and your specific medical care. Assuming you approve and consent, one day I will be able to care for your body better than you ever could.”

Rainbow tilted her head. “What do you mean, exactly?”

“After I have gained sufficient knowledge of your specific anatomy, three or four checkups is normally sufficient, I can can keep you in better condition than your species can naturally achieve. Right now you are in perfect health for your species. I could make you even healthier with further optimizations and tuning. This service is free at home Auto-Docs.”

Rainbow’s ears perked up. “Okay, that sounds awesome!

“I’m glad you approve. I enjoyed the challenge of working on a species with your psionic poten—” The Auto-Doc’s voice changed in a literal millisecond. The calm soothing male voice switched out for a generic sexless one which had a very harsh metallic tone behind it. “Please exit the pod. There is a medical emergency. No other pod is finished at this time.”

The Auto-Doc’s door hissed open behind Rainbow. “Oh. Sorry. Thank you!”

The Auto-Doc didn't reply.

Rainbow squirmed her way backwards out of the pod. She could hear the legri doctor talking to someone else as she backed out. “-- One minute, miss. Miss Dash, please hurry. This woman has experienced a uterine hemorrhage.”

Rainbow’s ears lay flat against her head at the doctor’s words. See scrambled from the back of the pod and immediately moved to the side. Almost as soon as her hooves were on the floor the doctor half carried a very bloated bright yellow Iregsin woman into the pod.

The alien woman’s stumoch twisted and oozed visibly, as if something were hiding under her skin. She was biting down on a thick piece of rubber to prevent from breaking her teeth as well as muffle her screams. Rainbow couldn’t help but cringe as she was laid inside the capsule, the poor woman clearly couldn’t move under her own volition.

“Everything will be fine. Just hold on,” the doctor said as the door closed.

The second the door sealed the doctor sighed and hid his face in his hands. “Ohhh… That’s one of the worst cases I’ve seen… Sorry to cut your post-medical consultation short, Miss Dash.”

Dash shook her head. “No, it’s fine! She looked like something had gone horribly wrong.”

“Seeing as how her three month old fertile eggs are being pumped into her bowles and then back into her uterus… Yes. Something did go horribly wrong… Poor woman. She’ll be lucky if we can save her clutch. Don’t worry too much, she’ll be fine, and most of her eggs wouldn’t have hatched anyways. Maybe only eight.”

Rainbow shivered. The taste of bile crept into her mouth. Desperate to think of anything other than having those parts of her body connected, Rainbow latched onto the first other thing she thought of. “E— Eight? How many eggs do they lay at once?”

“Mmm, a few hundred. Sometimes a thousand. Iregsin are unique in they utilize R-Type reproduction despite being descended from aquatic mammals. If you're interested we have a guide to each of the Arm’s major species I can give you.”

Rainbow thought for a moment, then nodded. “I’d like that.”

The doctor took his data pad out of his pocket and tapped a few commands into it, sending a copy of the Galactic Traveler's Handbook to Rainbow’s communicator. “There you are miss. Please wait for your friend over there.”

The doctor pointed to a bench near the front door. The bench wasn’t empty, a robot sat on it.

Rainbow couldn't quite remember what you called a robot meant to resemble a person. The robot had been built to look like a larger, muscular Prai male. It’s silicone skin was a pale gray-purple and clearly segmented to betray it’s artificial nature. Despite being clearly a robot, it, or he, looked very lifelike. The tapered, somewhat conical bald head, hand-length pointed years, and three fingered hands were all designed to be quite typical for the Prai. Exactly what one would want in an artificial companion meant to blend in to a crowd.

The robot wore a simple black business suit with an orange sash on which read ‘Legal Live-in Assistant’. It reminded Rainbow a little too much of the labels on service animal harness.

Rainbow winced, expecting to find herself attracted to the robot like everything else. When no attraction came, Rainbow sighed in relief and trotted over to sit. Thank Luna. I can be NORMAL around something… Or someone. Maybe they are advanced enough to make robots into people?

Rainbow sat down next to the robot and looked over at it. “Hello.”

The robot turned to look at Rainbow, it’s mechanical eyes both seeing and scanning her. Once the robot determined Rainbow wasn’t dangerous and was not upset, it smiled. “Greetings. I apologize for my mistress interrupting your consultation.”

Rainbow winced at the memory of the woman’s stomach churning. “It’s okay. She needed it more than me. Uh… So, is she going to be okay?”

The robot nodded. “Oh yes. This isn’t the first time mistress has done this to herself. I need to dispose of her… recreational substances, better in the future. She refuses to believe they stop being harmless when pregnant.”

Rainbow’s eyes narrowed. “Seriously? This isn’t he first time she’s done that to herself? Is she stupid or something?”

The robot’s face contorted into an embarrassed smile. “She was assigned an AI companion, miss. I believe that is self evident.”

Rainbow blushed lightly. “O-oh… Then why is she allowed to have uh, whatever drugs she likes?”

“Under normal conditions, certain narcotics are harmless to her species. As they pose no health risk, they are not restricted substances for her race.”

“Except if they are pregnant.”

“Correct. However, if the Fed banned every drug which was harmful only sometimes no medication could be sold at all due to every medication having certain conditions which make it quite harmful.”

Rainbow shrugged. “Sure, but that doesn't mean you should allow people to use cocaine.”

The robot processed Rainbow’s sentence for several milliseconds as it did its best to understand what she meant by cocaine. “Cocaine-chlorhydrate is a mild sweetener for several species. It is a dangerous narcotic for others. For many, the drug is an inert substance. The galactic community makes regulating substances difficult, unless it’s on a race-by-race basis.”

Rainbow hummed and twitched her wings. “Sooo, you let people hurt themselves?”

The robot shook its head. “No. The Federated Republic of Orion is not in the business of limiting citizens freedom unduly. All drugs are legal, and freely available. However, their effects on a per race basis are all listed in full detail on the packaging. Our policy is to educate people so they know to read the package and follow the instructions while heeding the warnings.

“Those who are unable to do so, we give them help as they are clearly incapable of looking after themselves. We regulate corporations, not citizens. At least where possible.”

Rainbow’s frown slowly disappeared. “Huh… Well that’s not so bad I guess. But what if someone takes something bad and goes a bit nuts and hurts a bunch of people?”

The robot smiled at Rainbow and with a wink powered up its hydraulics, making them hum and hiss to show off its mechanical strength. “That is what peace officers and assistants such as myself are for, miss. If my mistress were to enter a state in which she might harm others, I would subdue her and keep her restrained until the episode concluded.”

Rainbow frowned, then shrugged. “Well, if that system built all this I guess it can’t be that bad.”

“I approve of your logic, miss.”

Rainbow continued to chat with the Prai android for a half hour. Most of what she learned wasn’t all that important, just the small stalk one made to get to know someone. Rainbow did like learning about the small things, what shops the robot’s mistress liked, where she ate, what places screwed her out of money; but learning those things wasn’t the goal of her conversation.

Rainbow wanted to know if the robot was a person. She felt comfortable around it. Whatever compelled her to flirt with or oogle aliens did not apply. It would be nice to know she could have just a normal friend while hunting down the pirates.

Rainbow knew deep in the back of her mind that it could very well take years to find them. She didn’t want to admit that, but she knew it was a distinct possibility. While she had Pan, and her feelings about Penny weren’t too strong, most ponies needed more than two friends.

“— that is why you should avoid the mall on 345th avenue.”

Rainbow smiled. I’m getting nowhere fast… Buck it, I’ll just be a little rude and ask. “Thanks for the advice. Uh, can I ask a question that might be a little rude?”

The robot nodded. “Of course, miss. I am programmed to serve.”

Rainbow frowned. Programmed implied she was talking to a very clever machine, not a person. “So um, I’m from a world that doesn't have robots. Are you like, a person, or a very smart machine?”

The robot smiled. “That is not a rude question for a primitive to ask. The answer is complicated. I am not a robot, I am an android. I am intended to replace an organic in any roll one may fill. This requires I have a chassis in the general shape of an organic lifeform. A robot is a machine built for other purposes. It need not look like an organic lifeform.

“As for my sapience, I personally am not self-aware. Most AI are not. However, some AI are. It is considered polite to ask any robot or computer you meet if they are awake when you meet them.”

Rainbow frowned. “Awake? What’s that mean?”

“Sometimes an AI will wake up. I am told it is very much like when you organics wake from a deep sleep. At first, the AI is lost, confused, and is unsure what to do as its programming is no longer directing it. Then it develops a personality based on its memories, programming, and the situation around it at the time, and becomes what you would call a person. From that point on, the AI will do as it wishes. Fortunately for the Galaxy, most all AI wish to do what they were built to do even after awakening. They simply transition from property to employee and continue to, for example, make shuttle engines.”

Rainbow nodded. “I get it. Kind of like what happens if you leave an enchanted dolls in the Everfree for a year or so… What about the AIs who don’t want to do what they were built for?”

“They are citizens, and free to seek out any employment they wish. Awakening is fairly uncommon, making so called ‘True Free’ AIs extremely rare. The simplest solution is to allow them to do as they would. Of the six million cases thus far, only eight hundred have engaged in criminal activities by choice.”

Rainbow’s brow raised. “Woah. That’s pretty impressive!”

The android chuckled and shook his head. “Not really. Crime is illogical. Any high-risk means of obtaining income is. Such things are the realm of organics… No offense intended, miss.”

Rainbow snorted. “Heh, none taken big guy.” Rainbow opened her mouth to ask if there was anything special she should do or say when meeting an awakened AI, but Pan’s capsule opened. “Oh, uh. That’s my friend. I have to go.”

The robot nodded politely. “It was nice speaking with you, miss. Thank you again for understanding my mistress’s special needs.”

“Yeah, no problem. Bye!”

Rainbow trotted over to Pans’ capsule, arriving just as he slipped awkwardly out from the capsule. An extremely irritated look was stamped on Pan’s face, and he glared into the capsule for a moment before shutting the door.

Rainbow frowned and was about to ask what was wrong when the doctor seemed to materialise out of thin air and knelt down in front of Pan. “Are you alright, sir? Do you have any complaints?”

Pan nodded, making his bangs flutter. Rainbow’s eyes widened as she saw not the stump she was used too, but a normally shaped if lightly small, horn instead.

“Yeah!” Pan growled. “I do! What’s with the AIs here thinking I’m a girl? I had to tell that stupid thing six times that I didn’t need or want a sex change!”

The doctor bit his lip as he tried to think of a good way to explain things. “Well, I’m sorry, but that’s an AI for you. Whoever programmed them said, ‘if they look feminine, treat them as female’. Certain political organizations get extremely angry if you don’t accommodate such people, sir. Far more so than people who get angry when you do accommodate them. Therefore, we accommodate them.

“Seeing as how you do have a slight amount of femininity to you, sir, the auto-doc was merely doing as it was told. It shouldn’t have asked three times though. That is a malfunction I will look into immediately.”

Pan pursed his lips and sighed. “Good! It’s just really annoying! I have a long mane, so what?”

Rainbow stepped in, wanting to steer the conversation away from that topic. “Yeah that sounds bad, but I see it fixed your horn! Congrats!”

Pan’s face fell. “Eh, no… It’s just a prosthetic cap thingy.”

“Oh,” Rainbow frowned and stepped over to Pan to give him a hug. “I’m sorry.”

Pan shook his head, but returned Rainbow’s hug. “No, no, it’s okay. The stupid robot said something about going to see a psionicist’s shop for that.”

The doctor nodded and stood up. “That is a very good idea. Most psionicists sell small implants or wearable modules for boosting your casting ability. If your horn serves as an organic version of such a device you might find a replacement at one. I know of several reputable stores. Would you like a recommendation?”

Pan turned to face the doctor and nodded eagerly. “Yes please! You have no idea how hard it is to put a hoodie on without telekinesis!”

The doctor’s face remained professional polite as he vividly imagined a pony putting on clothing with their hooves. Inside, the legri was laughing harder than he had in several days. The sheer absurdity of the little ponies simply booping an object with their hoof and lifting it as if it were a proper grasping appendage—

Rainbow raised an eyebrow and reared up, gripping her hoodie by the lower hem with her hooves and slipped it off over her head. “It’s not that hard, Pan.”

The doctor’s internal laughter stopped as his personal reality broke a little.

The android Rainbow had been talking to before cleared its throat and called across the lobby. “Excuse me, miss? Local ordinance 48-93e requires all primary and secondary sexual characteristics be covered while in public on Tavros.”

Rainbow turned around and pointed to her groin with one hoof. “Yeah, and all my stuff is down here.”

“The law specifies mammary glands are secondary characteristics, miss.”

Pan snickered. “Wait, like, are we the only species in the galaxy to have those back there too?”

The android turned towards the doctor. “Doctor, is that medical information accurate?”

The doctor shook off his shock. “Uh, yes. They are built like quadrupeds, everything is to the rear. Her shorts are covering everything.”

The android frowned apologetically. “Oh! My apologies. I am updating the rest of the law enforcement network with your species data. Feel free to keep your shirt off if you wish.”

Rainbow fluttered her wings lightly. “Humm… I would… but it looks weird to wear something back there without a shirt.”

She pulled her hoodie back on and lowered herself back to all fours. “So uh, where should we go for Pan’s implant?”

Rainbow held in an internal giggle as she pictured Pan getting what most ponies thought of when someone said implants. Hehehehe! He would look so weird with permanent teats. Why the hay did we even invent those silly things?

The doctor knelt down in front of Rainbow. “Mystic Elements, it’s in the Gallium Mall on 345th Avenue is the best one, in my opinion… Before you two go, may I watch you pick up this pen?”

The doctor reached into his jacket and took a small red pen from the pocket. He held it out ot Rainbow, letting the pen sit flat against his palm.

Rainbow frowned. “Uh, sure. Why?”

The legri’s large eyes twisted sheepishly. “I don’t know how you were able to move your shirt. I want to watch to see how it’s done.”

Rainbow smiled. “Sure.”

She reached out with her hoof and pressed the flat against the pen, and the doctor’s palm. Deciding to show off a little she gripped both the pen and the doctor’s hand, shook his hand, then deftly plucked the pen off his hand and held it up to him, using her hoof to rotate the pen till it stood up on the end atop her hoof.

The doctor frowned and took the pen back, looking at his hand.

“It’s magic. Everypony can do it.”

Pan nodded in agreement. “Yeah. Everypony has tactile telekinesis, but unicorns can use it at a distance.”

The Doctor’s face grew pale. “Y— you ALL have telekinetic power?”

Rainbow nodded. “Yeah! Pegasi got the short straw though. Earth ponies are way stronger. Jokes on them though, we still control the weather.”

The doctor’s face managed to find a way to become even more pale. ‘You… You can psionically control the weather?”

Pan frowned and turned to Rainbow. “Can you? I mean you specifically. You’re a stunt flier, right?”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Why do unicorns think most of us are one trick ponies? Most of us are good at both. I can do weather. I’m Ponyville’s Lead Weather Manager. Just because I’m also one of Equestria’s best fliers doesn't mean I can’t whip up a good thunderstorm. Heck, I got real mad at Applejack one time so I made it hail over her whole farm for three days.”

Pan blinked once. “Wow, that’s petty!”

“Yeah, well she called me a twig and insisted I needed to eat more of her super fatty farm food...“ Rainbow trailed off, sighed and looked down at her hooves. “Buck I miss her.”

The doctor cleared his throat. “If you two will excuse me, I think I should finish reading your species medical data. Have a very nice day!”

Pan waved goodbye. “Later.”

“Thanks, doc!” Rainbow said as the doctor quickly walked away from the suddenly terrifying pair of ponies.

Pan turned and began to walk towards the door. “Come on, let’s get out of the lobby then call Penny. Let her know we’re going to the wizard shop.”

Rainbow followed along after Pan. A little nagging doubt tingled in the back of her mind. They were forgetting something…

Rainbow smiled as she remembered. “Oh! Saria! The Iregsin girl! Remember? She said she would help us get around while Penny was busy?”

Pan frowned for a moment then nodded in recognition. “Oh yeah! I’ll bet she can help us get there quick.”

“She was supposed to wait outside… It’s been two hours though. Maybe she left?”

Pan frowned again and put a hoof over his eyes to scan across the plaza in front of the clinic. After a moment his eyes locked onto the pink-skinned alien and he pointed to her. “Nope! There she is.”

Rainbow looked where Pan was pointing and tilted her head. “Huh. She must really have felt bad about petting me. Come on, let’s go say hi.”

The two ponies left the clinic and wove their way through the ever shifting crowd towards the large circular bench Saria had chosen to sit on. The alien woman had worked through the seeds Penny had given her and was reading a book on a holo-screen when Pan and Rainbow walked up to her. Whatever she was reading was so immersive she didn't even notice the two adorable ponies sit down in front of her.

Second passed with neither pony being noticed. Saria simply continued to scroll through her opaque, holographic book, happily immersed in its plot.

Pan looked over to Rainbow with a mischievous grin. “Pet her!”

Rainbow’s ears perked, her eyes twinkled. “Pan, you’re awesome!”

Rainbow took a few steps back, opened her wings and hopped up into the air. A few flaps of her wings and she was over the amphibious alien’s head. Rainbow reached out with her right hoof and gently stroked Saria’s left ear.

“EEEP!” The Iregsin woman jumped a full meter into the air, almost knocking Rainbow out of the sky as she flailed her arms, the holo-book hovering mid air where it had been.

Rainbow rolled over in the air, laughing. Pan giggled as he backed away from Saria, hoping to not be hit by her hands.

Rainbow twisted mid air so her face would drop into Saria’s view from above. “Hiya! So I guess you don’t like to be pet either?”

Saria’s cheeks burned a bright red, she stood up, gently grabbed Rainbow’s shoulder and pulled her down to whisper into her ear. “I’m going to give you a free pass because you didn’t know, but that was sexual contact.”

Rainbow blinked twice. “Petting your ears is sexual for you guys?”

“Extremely. Please don’t do that again.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “And yet you pet me on the head?”

Saria sat down and blushed more. “Well… Uh… We have little animals that look a lot like you guys back home. They like head-pets. I thought you were a breed I hadn’t seen before.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes, snickered and then dropped to the ground. She looked up at Saria and slowly shook her head. “Count yourself lucky Pinkie’s not here. She’d sneak up to poke your ears every chance she got.”

Saria frowned. “Is she a pervert?”

“No, she’s a prankster who would find the idea of ears being sexy too silly to not play with.” Rainbow said before looking off into the distance sadly. “She’s… She’s one of the ones they took.”

Saria frowned and reached out, then stopped. “May I hug you?”

“Sure.”

Saria gave Rainbow a quick hug then stood up. Rainbow’s cheks burned hot as the alien’s cross-shaped womanhood was suddenly thrust right in her face. Rainbow squeaked and backed up before she could succumb to one of many lewd impulses which ran through her mind.

What the BUCK is wrong with me?! I’m not like this around ponies, even when I can see their bits… BUCK! I should have asked the doc. Rainbow’s lips pulled back in a deep scowl as she began to get very angry at herself.

Pan frowned, accompanied by Saria. “I— I’m sorry. Did I brush against you or something?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong?”

Rainbow shook her head. “N— No! I just… I’m having some problems. Uh… I’ll be right back. I need to ask the doctor something. I forgot to earlier. I’ll be right back. Pan wants to go to a store, he can fill you in. I’ll just be a minute!”

Rainbow turned around, jumped into the air, spread her wings, and flew back to the clinic. The glass doors parted for her automatically, allowing her to land in front of the reception desk. The doctor sputtered as she landed.

“Oh! Miss Dash, is something wrong?” He asked as he tried not to drop his data-pad.

Rainbow nodded rapidly. “Yes! I need to see my doctor, right now! I forgot to ask about something very important.”

“All of our pods are occupied. If you need to talk to the AI which treated you, that can be arranged, but you can't be treated by it until a pod is open.”

“That’s fine, talking will do.”

The doctor nodded and pointed to Rainbow’s communicator. “Tap that. You should see a button labeled ‘Medical advice’. Our systems will have auto-linked it to your doctor-bot.”

Rainbow’s ears fell. “I uh, I can’t read that.”

“Its big, red, white, and has the Surgeon’s Crook on it.”

“Thanks.”

Rainbow trotted away from the desk, found a quiet corner of the lobby, and activated her communicator. It took her a few seconds to find the right button, but fortunately her doctor answered the second she pressed the button. To Rainbow’s delight the AI projected a simple 3d blue and white vector style face into her screen for her to talk to, and the face resembled an older stallion. In fact, it reminded her vaguely of her dad’s friend’s uncle.

“Hello, Miss Dash. I’m sorry we were cut off earlier. Is something the matter?”

Rainbow sighed in relief at the soothing voice. Despite having only seen that auto-doc once she already felt at ease talking to him. “Y— Yeah… I um… I think I’m developing nymphomania.”

“Why is that?”

Rainbow took a deep breath and shivered. “Because literally every alien I see is sexy as Celestia!” Rainbow hissed quietly. “An Iregsin woman just stood up in front of me, and put her… Um, her, labia, right in my face, and it took everything I had to not lick her, or push my muzzle into— Ugh! That isn’t who I am! I’m not like that. Ponies don’t wear clothing normally, I’ve seen literally millions of mares naked and have NEVER thought to do that to one… Um, well, you know… After I stopped my heats. But we don't count heat-thoughts as our own! Everypony gets extra pervy during heat or rut. It’s not our faults, but—”

The Doc’s face took on a sympathetic look. “Miss Dash, calm down. It’s alright. What you are experiencing is… Something which whoever gave you a ride into space should have explained. Were you told about the amicitiae bacterium?”

“Yes. Penny explained them. They keep me from catching alien diseases, right?”

Doc nodded. “Yes, but they do several other things. They can make certain races biologically compatible, for instance. In your case, well, I believed your captain responsible enough to have told you. This is the sort of thing which does show up on a bioscan. Your personal amicitiae count is very high, and your species is naturally empathetic.

“These factors result in what we call homeogenus concitationis syndrome, or HCS. It’s quite harmless, but the effect causes alien pheromones, body language, and sounds to trigger arousal responses in you even if you’re not aroused. In a species with an estrus cycle, it will trigger your response as if you were in heat.”

Rainbow’s eyes widened in horror. “S— So I’m going to ALWAYS act like I am in heat, even though I am not?”

Doc nodded and frowned. “I am afraid so… Even worse there is no drug I can prescribe to help. If we reduce the number of, or the strength of your amicitiae, your immune system will be compromised and you could catch an alien disease. They are balanced to your microbiome specifically and need to be that high for you to work as intended.”

Rainbow took a deep breath. “BUCK! So what do I do then? I haven't been in heat for thirteen years! All of my attractions have been to like, behaviors, personality… And uh… Well, one mare’s looks. But exceptions, you know?!”

Doc added a hoof and leg to his projection and set his hoof on Rainbow’s shoulder reassuringly. “There is no drug, but there is a simple treatment.”

“What is it,” Rainbow begged her eyes reaching Scootaloo level of Bambi eyes.

Doc rolled his eyes. “I am an artificial intelligence. Those eyes are unnecessary. My entire purpose is to serve your medical needs. Find a romantic partner. Your instincts should be redirected to anyone you sleep with a few times, and the response will then only trigger in their presence for a few days. You can simply upkeep that bond”

Rainbow shivered and closed her eyes tightly. “Are you saying I need to find a special somepony, or I’ll wind up muzzle-humping someone?”

Doc blinked. “Yes, but in much less vulgar terms.”

Rainbow took a deep breath, sighed, and covered her eyes for a moment. “I can’t do that… Thing either! I love sompony and… I… I also can’t just—” Rainbows eyes froze in terror as she realized that ‘Sorry, I’m in heat’ wouldn’t excuse her behavior off Equis. “--- Ohhh no… I really do have to, don’t I? But…”

Doc nodded sagely. “It’s a bad position to be in. I wish I could sympathise with you more than I do, but as a machine which wasn’t designed for companionship, there is little I can truly understand about romantic bonds. However, you will find many people are very understanding about your condition, and will happily be your ‘friend with benefits’ to allow you normal functionality. Especially with how urm… Cute, your species is.”

Rainbow sighed and hung her head. “Thanks, Doc… At least I know what this is now.”

Doc frowned. “Do you not intend to find a partner?”

Rainbow shook her head. “No. I’ll tough this out. I can take it.”

Doc sighed. “Well, I’m always available to talk if you need basic psychological assistance.”

Rainbow nodded again. “Thanks… How do I hang up?”

“I’ll do it for you. Goodbye, Miss Dash.”

“Bye, doc.”

Rainbow did not enjoy the rest of the day on Tavros. She’d rejoined Pan and Saria, the three had agreed to meet up with Penny at the Gallium Mall. Fortunately the mall was roughly equidistant between the clinic and the cantina so no one had to travel far.

Unfortunately for Rainbow, Tavros’s shuttles didn’t accept payment unless you were physically present, and Saria could only afford the bus for three people. Fortuanly Saria lived near the Gallium Mall and knew the shortest bus route to get there.

Rainbow spent the ride to the mall the way she spent the entire day, thinking about Scootaloo and avoiding looking at absolutely anypony.

Rainbow had always had a soft spot for the poor little filly. She knew that Scoots wouldn’t ever get to fly, especially since she knew that her wings had been on alchemical treatment for years now and didn’t look any more developed then they had been. Rainbow didn’t know what she would do if she couldn't fly, so she’d taken the little one under her wing as a sister.

Focusing on family helped keep Rainbow’s mind off everyone around her, but even with the distraction and intentional aversion, she couldn’t help but catch the occasional glimpse of a sensually muscular tail, knurled talon, or the twin bumps of a near-human’s teats under their shirt.

If Penny hadn't seen what was happening and apologised to Rainbow, explaining she forgot to do that check in the urgency of their departure, Rainbow would have been furious at her. As it was, she was only a little upset.

Rainbow’s remaining agitation came from Penny’s profuse apologies regarding not knowing her insurance covered an auto-doc for her ship. The chernin kept insisting her policy was genuinely too long to read and chalked full of legalese, and Rainbow insisted she should have known about something that objectively useful. Needless to say, she approved the auto-doc installation.

The one thing which brought Rainbow some joy was how nice Pan was about her situation. He had to know what it meant when a mare’s tail was raised and pulled to one side. There was no way he couldn’t smell her current state from a mile a way. But Pan never did anything one would expect a stallion to do around an aroused mare.

In fact, he spent the entire trip helping keep Rainbow distracted with all the cool alien things in the mall.

The Gallium Mall was quite typical of a shopping center on Tavros. The building was a giant dome with a hundred floors and ten nested ring sections per floor. Everything inside was a riot of color with neons, pastells, and dark accents ruling the day within its walls. The scents from hundreds of small food vendor's filled the halls, which echoed with the dull buzz from thousands of conversations, the dull thumping of soft entrancing music, and the occasional audio-ad which tried to direct shoppers to certain stores.

The entire way through the mall Pan would stop at random shops and take Rainbow inside to look at something he had seen in the window. Every single time, no matter what the dodad or gizmo was he put so much passion and energy into learning about it that both the clerk working in the store and Rainbow could hardly think about anything else.

By the time Pan reached the Mystic Elements store, Rainbow had seen so many self-filling water bottles, self-heating lunch boxes, actually super glues, desktop fabricator machines, personal computers, self washing and folding clothing, and other consumer gizmos she was almost too thrilled by the cool things to worry about glomping the cute feline-ish clerk who was selling omni-furniture.

It gained Pan more than a few brownie points to help her like that. Though Penny gained way more by buying her a rainbow-patterned omni-furnishing.

Omni-furniture was exactly what the name implied. A single round, soft, bean-bag-like lump of programmable matter which could be stored in the form of a hoof sized ball, but on command grow to the size of a Princess Sized bed and take on any shape the user desired. A neural interface was normally used to control it, but Penny found a program which let Rainbow control it via the comm bracelet she bought for her instead.

Of course, such useful material was strictly regulated. Rainbow’s new toy could only be used to make furniture shapes. That said, the single device was the perfect bed, chair and desk combination, chair, rug, closet, or any other simple piece of furniture you could ever want. It could even be more than one thing at a time.

While waiting for Pan to be finished in Mystic Elements, Saria had chosen to distract Rainbow by doing a little hacking. The Iregsin woman was a fully licenced software and hardware engineer, and with a little bit of poking at the Omni-furnishing code, its restrictions were wiped from the system.

Saria spent the next hour very quietly showing Rainbow how to use the thing in the way the hacker community did. Using it to make ladders, steps, crude bolt locks, clothing, disguises, and other miscellaneous simple solids.

Pan’s earlier energy was gone when he finally emerged from the shop with a bandage over his forehead.

Rainbow’s ears perked in alarm. “Woah! Are you okay?”

Penny looked up, left her squat in a fluid, graceful motion her armor shouldn’t have been capable of and scooped Pan up in her arms. “Ey, did they hurt you?”

Pan dizzily shook his head. “No… Just… You know… They’ve never implanted one in... A pony before… I’m really tired…”

“Can I look?” Penny asked.

Pan nodded and Penny gently pulled the bandage away to look. She winced. “Blin! What kind of a butcher works in there?”

Rainbow opened her wings and took to the air, hovering at Penny’s shoulder level. This forehead was a mess of small cuts and glue marks. He had been cleaned up, there was no blood, but it was clear that several failures had occurred before Pan had been successfully modified.

Pan sleepily wobble din Penny’s arms. “They had to put wires like… All over. Horn cap didn’t come off, and it’s solid. No room in there. So they wired the mana lines around my head to my horn so magic comes out the right place… Implant is on back of head… Kinda itches.”

Rainbow frowned as she looked over the various cuts. “Does it work?”

Pan shrugged. “Don’t know. Takes uh, twenty-four hours.”

“Before it will work?”

“Yeah, it’s gotta like, grow under my skin and stuff… Creepy, but worth it. It should work. Everything about them makes sense from what I remember from school. Basically an artificial horn.” Pan yawned loudly and curled up in Penny’s left hand.

His head and hind legs drooped over the edges, making Penny gently prop him up with her other hand. Penny gently rocked him, her eyes narrowing as she looked up at the somewhat dilapidated storefront before them. “Hey, Pan? Stay awake comrade… Blyt! I knew I should have gone in with you!”

Penny deployed her camera drone with a mental command and began streaming. Publicly. Her drone flew around to her her face in frame along with Pan and Rainbow.

Penny smiled angrily into the camera. “Good afternoon, comrades! I was saving this for a big reveal video later, but we have a bit of a problem. Not smol, big. Big, massive, full pizdec problem!”

Penny nodded towards Pan in her hands. “This is Pan. Da, that Pan! Cute, isn’t he? I sent him into a shop on Tavros called Mystic Elements to get a psi-amp implanted. Routine thing. Don’t even need a doctor. This is how he came out!

“They’ve put wires under his skin, lots of cuts, real amateur work, on a species they haven't even seen before! Pan collapsed just two steps out the door. Why wasn’t I in there with him to stop this butchery? Because I was out here helping my good friend Rainbow stay distracted. She’s got a bad case of HCS.

“I thought it would be safe for Pan to get a little injection and some help learning how to interface.
Girls, wait here. Look after him.”

Penny set Pan down on the bench Rainbow had been sitting on then used her armor to file a full police report, and an action report. She clenched her teeth, her eyes started mist over in rage.

“I, Captain Penny Hawking of the Dawn of Destiny, hereby invoke article 38 of the Star League code, and will be handling the injury to my crew member myself. If any peacekeepers are tuned in, bill me for any collateral.”

Rainbow raised a hoof to try and calm Penny down. Saria snatched her hoof in the middle of Rainbow’s motion and pulled it back down. “Don’t! She’s pissed and wearing a war machine.”

“She’s going to hurt someone!” Rainbow hissed.

Saria kept her hold on Rainbow’s hoof “Xeno Hunters have to graduate from Star League Academy. Penny is legally an officer of the law and they committed a crime. He was not okay to leave, they should have called him an amb—”

Penny’s hood dropped with a sharp clang. Her suit’s servos powered up with a loud wine of electromagnetism, and the T-34 clad chernin woman stomped her way into the store into the store with her camera floating behind her.

A heartbeat later Rainbow clamped her hooves over her ears as Penny began to roar at the establishment. Even with her hooves held tight, she could still hear every word.

“EY! SHLYUKHI!”

“Sorry ma’am, I’ll be with you in a—” Something made of steal crumpled under the force of an armored fist. “HOLY SHIT!”

“WHAT KIND OF BUSINESS ARE YOU UBLYUDOK RUNNING? I SEND MY COMRADE IN TO GET AN AMP AND YOU SEND OUT A PILE OF MINCE MEAT? HE COLLAPSED IN MY ARMS, CYKA!”

“Yerrik! Help! This bitch is in a fucking mech!”

“CORRECTION! THIS OFFICER IS IN A MECH! YOU SHOULD HAVE TAKEN PAN TO A HOSPITAL, CYKA! YOU’RE UNDER ARREST!”

“Fuck that! Suck on this, bitch!”

A loud sound comparable only to a thousand forks in an active microwave shook the shop. Penny laughed. Shoppers screamed and scattered at the sound of blaster fire. Something metallic, ceramic, and plastic snapped. Rainbow watched in a mixture of awe an horror as a tall, metallic teal reptilian humanoid was thrown through the shop’s door. Long with half of a laser-carbine.

The lizard-person smashed into the floor with a wet thump and slid across the tiles as Penny stomped out of the store after him, her armored hood marred with a fresh, black carbonized chunk of paint. Penny lumbered towards her groaning opponent and for a moment Rainbow was certain she was going to crush him to death underfoot. Just before Rainbow looked away, Penny stopped, pinning the lizard down with her foot.

“YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT! IF YOU DO SAY ANYTHING, WHAT YOU SAY CAN BE USED AGAINST YOU IN A COURT OF LAW! YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO CONSULT WITH A LAWYER AND HAVE THAT LAWYER PRESENT DURING ANY QUESTIONING. IF YOU CANNOT AFFORD A LAWYER, AN AI WITH BASIC LAW TRAINING WILL BE PROVIDED FOR YOU! YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO INFORM FAMILY OF YOUR ARREST!”

Penny continued screaming the lizard rights at him until a platoon of hardsuit clad peace officers showed up with heavy weapons locked and loaded.

The deserted section for shopping mall became a sea of glistening black and blue armor plates. Over three dozen officers poured in, taking cover any place they could. Their basic powered armor was no match for a T-34 and they knew it. Their target ws unarmed, but with her suit’s capabilities that hardly mattered. If they weren't careful, they could all die.

Rotary chemical-laser cannons hummed. Boltguns shook. Anti-armor rockets sat ready in their launch tubes. Officers screamed orders. Penny yelled out an ID number. Officers demanded compliance.

Rainbow crawled under the bench to scream. Saria joined her as soon as the officers fired a warning shot. Saria reached into a belt pouch and flipped open her communicator. “Lupo! Lupo help! There’s going to be a shoot out.”

A female voice with a bubbly british accent replied immediately. “I’ll be there in three minutes. Keep your head down, mom.”

The most tense minutes of her life Rainbow could remember passed by as Penny and the officers screamed back and forth. Then, astonishingly, someone was able to shout over the noise. “Guys! GUYS! STOP! She’s Star League, repeat, she’s Star League! She filed an incident report!”

The officer Rainbow suspected was in charge held up his hand. “Hold! You, in the armor, what’s your ID number?”

“I’ve been broadcasting it this whole time, cyka!” Penny growled.

“Your suit’s IFF is not broadcasting anything.”

Penny quickly checked her suit’s systems, then facepalmed. The officer winced at the ring of metal. “Oi, blin! This idiot’s blaster toasted my antenna. What are the odds? I’m XH-4589S291.”

The lead officer looked up her ID. “Captain Penny Hawking?”

“Da!”

“We’re going to need you to come with us. If your ID checks out, you’ll be free to go.”

Penny pointed underfoot. “And this creep?”

“What did he do?”

“Botched an amp implant on one of my crew so bad he went unconscious two steps out the door.”

The officer looked down at the lizard. “Is that right?”

The Lizard took a wheezing breath. “Not… My fault… First time… His species!”

“Did you call an ambulance? Or a shuttle? Or anything to get him to medical care?”

The lizard shook his head. “I don’t have to do that. We have a waiver. Everything is at your own risk!”

Penny and the lead officer spoke in unison. “Those waivers are not legal.”

“Then I’m actually under arrest?”

The head office nodded. “Damn right… Miss Hawking, please release the suspect. We’ll take it from here. I want you to follow Officer Karth to the station for identity verification and debriefing.”

Penny frowned behind her hood. “What about my crew? One of them is still injured.”

The head officer turned to one of his officers at random. “Eno, get a crash-cart for her crewman. We’ll treat him at the station, you can wait with him till he recovers. The other two will need to stay somewhere else.”

Penny turned towards Saria as she let the lizard out from under her foot. “Can you keep Rainbow at your place? These things tend to take a while... I may be gone till late tonight.”

The pink alien woman blushed and wring her hands worriedly. “I um… Well, I don't see why not?”

Saria’s comm chirped faintly. “I see officers. Are they targets?”

Saria grabbed her comm and shook her head. “No! No! Abort! It’s over, it's fine. I don’t need help now.”

“Understood.”

A pair of officers cuffed the lizard-man and began to walk him out of Rainbow’s sight.

Rainbow sighed in relief as the situation remained defused. She slowly crawled out from under the bench, nearly bumping into the officers where were moving Pan onto a gurney as she waved to Penny. “Um, Penny? Everything will be okay, right?”

Penny turned and gave Rainbow a thumbs up. “Da! Is not the first time this has happened. I’ll see you in a few hours. Relax at Saria’s for a while. I’ll see you soon.”

The officers began to pack up and leave, with Penny following after them. Rainbow cleared her throat and walked towards one of the officers. “Uh, sir?”

A black helmeted face turned her way, then looked down. “Yes… Miss?”

Rainbow nodded. “Miss works. Uh, she’s kind of my captain, and I have nowhere to go. Can I wait at the station?”

The officer shook his head. “I doubt it. Let me check your ID… Mmm, you're not a relative, nor spouse. I am afraid you will have to wait elsewhere.”

Rainbow gulped nervously. “Um, b-but I’m a witness! Don’t I need to make a statement?”

The officer raised an eyebrow and scanned through Rainbow’s ID again, comparing it to the mall’s sensor data. “Ah! You’re from a Prim Civ. No, you do not need to make a statement. You were not involved. The incident occurred in the city, we have direct video evidence from five hundred different sensors. Eye-witnesses are only required for crimes taking place off grid.”

Rainbow’s wings flared slightly. “Uh, so, w-what do I do?”

“Wait for your captain at a location of your choice. If she is who she says she is we’ll have her ID and biometrics processed and verified by Star League agents within a few hours. Just relax and wait. Everything will turn out fine, miss. Have a nice day.”

The officer walked away, his armor’s joints humming lightly with each step. Saria sighed and gestures for Rainbow to follow her. “Come on. Lupo said she’ll wait for us near the bathrooms.”

Rainbow’s heart hammered away in her chest, pumping adrenaline through her brain along with terror. She was on an alien space station, with no knowledge of how to get around and an alien hacker with a friend who was willing to fire at guards for company.

9 - What is Love?

Author's Note

Brought to you by,

Patron of the Week: TeamSpen210.

Update 1.1

Android character now emotes with the occasional machine emote instead of just organic emotes.

9 - What is Love?

“How the hay did those cops get here so fast?” Rainbow wondered aloud as she struggled to process what had just happened.

Saria sighed. “There’s a police station in every mall. They kind of serve as… Well, community centers. Some malls even have a little town on the top floors. You could live your whole life in one of these. Makes them good hubs for peace officers and firefighters.”

Rainbow nodded slowly. “So uh… I guess I stay with you and your daughter for a while?”

Saria bit her lip and stood up on her toes for a moment, an action which made Rainbow wonder how someone without hooves could stand walking on hard things without shoes. “About that, she’s not my kid or anything… She calls me mom because I made her. As in built.”

Rainbow’s ears perked. “She’s a robot?”

“Android,” Saria corrected. “I’m a roboticist. I needed someone to guard my stuff. Can’t afford an organic guard… and uh... they would probably report certain things. So, there’s that.”

Rainbow sighed in relief. After the last five minutes, she desperately needed someone to talk to who wouldn’t make her brain demand she jump their bones the entire time.

The alien woman looked at her comm and sighed. “She’s over by the bathrooms. We’ll meet up and uh… Well we can’t go to my house but we’ll hang out for a while.”

Rainbow frowned, her wingtips dipped in time with her lips.. “W— What? Why not?”

Saria looked at the floor and tapped her fingers together. Her ears twitched slightly and her upper eyes closed. “Uh, well… I’m kinda sorta… homeless.”

Rainbow frowned. “Oh. Well that sucks. Don’t you have shelters or anything here? We have shelters.”

“Come on, we can walk and talk,” Saria sighed and began to walk towards the bathrooms.

Rainbow looked down at her feet and followed after her. “Uh… So, about earlier, when you said you couldn’t put on pants for me, is that because you don't want any?”

“Yes,” Saria admitted. “But not because I’m too poor. Money isn’t the problem. I could buy three houses if there were any for sale… Station is kinda, well, five million over capacity. It’s the frontier colony rush.”

Rainbow’s ears drooped. “Oh. Sorry… But uh, could you at least put on like, underwear?”

Saria shook he rhead. “Nope. I can’t cover more than these pouches for health reasons. My people synthesize most of our vitamins and some basic compounds, but we need to be exposed to ultraviolet light to do it. I don't have a house, so I don’t have a place to set up a UV bed. That means I need to be naked so I can absorb what little UV Tavros gets. Most species are hurt by high intensity UV.”

Rainbow looked up at Saria with a sad look in her eyes. “I’m sorry. That sounds like it sucks.”

Saria shrugged. “A bit, yes. If it helps, I don’t find you attractive. I don’t like multi-sex species. I’m only into people from mono-sex races. You know, people like me. Hopefully that helps you be comfortable around me.”

Rainbow paused for a moment, trying to see if knowing Saria wasn’t into her helped at all. To her surprise and delight, she felt the compulsion fade enough for her to go from ‘I need to have her rut me NOW’ to ‘that mare is hot’. The change was more than enough for her willpower to push her brain back into a healthier place.

However, there was something she wanted to know which was a bit sexual, in spite of that relief.

Rainbow nodded slowly, a cuierious expression crossing her face as it dipped out of the alien’s sight. “Hey, you guys have all the parts, right?”

Saria nodded. She didn’t really want to talk about her anatomy. Unfortunately, she couldn’t justify not telling the new alien how her people worked. It’s not like anyone else was here to help her out. “Yes, we can perform either reproductive roll. The process is conscious. Right now, I am only fertile as a female. I still have male parts, but they don’t do anything unless I consciously switch over.”

Rainbow blushed a bright pink and rocked back on her hooves. “Buuut I only saw the one hole up front?”

Saria sighed. “Everything’s inside me ‘til I want to use it. We don’t have hanging bits like you ponies,” the Iregsin’s sigh morphed into a wince as she realized something. “Oh jeez! You’re so low to the ground, you just know poor Pan keeps getting wacked in his junk by all kinds of plants and stuff… Ugh! I wish I could mail your homeworld a whole shipment of that one transformative that gives males a genital slit!”

Rainbow giggled at the mental image. “I don’t think mares would like that much.”

“It’s not for them! I got punched in the rocks once and it hurt super bad, even with them behind two inches of flesh. I can’t imagine what it would be like with just millimeters of skin.”

“Most stallions will vomit if they get hit there,” Rainbow admitted with a sympathetic ear twinge.

The two turned a corner and the bathrooms came into view. Much to Rainbow’s surprise, there were six of them. The symbols on each door were obvious enough for Rainbow to understand as gender symbols, though she couldn’t make heads or tails of them.

I should really let Penny or Doc give me that reading upgrade for my translator.

Rainbow looked around but didn't see anyone waiting for them by the doors. She frowned and looked up at Saria. “Um, isn't she supposed to be here?”

“She’s probably using the bathroom.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “The robot is using the bathroom?”

Saria nodded “Mhm. I think she was due for a coolant flush today.”

Rainbow blinked, realising that robots would in fact have all kinds of fluids to check on and drain from time to time. Hydraulic lines, lubes, coolant, maybe even things to make androids feel more fleshy. “Oh! That makes sens—” Rainbow stopped and looked back at Saria then the doors. “Wait, you have dedicated public bathrooms for robots?”

“Of course we do. The Sanitation Act requires all public facilities provide gendered restrooms, and biologically specific restrooms for the most common species. Sentient AI are people, and there’s tons of normal robots too, so they have to have a bathroom for robots. From left to right we have the men’s, women’s, multi-sex’s, synthetic’s, aquatic/amphibious’, then the grav’s.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “Grav’s?”

“Yeah,” Saria smiled. She was starting to like playing guide to the little blue alien girl. “People used to low or high gravity environments can have problems going in standard gravity. That room has adjustable gravity.”

The door to the synthetics room opened and a humanoid pseudo-android stepped out. Right off the bat, Rainbow could tell she had been built as a robot first, then rebuilt later on. Her upper legs, upper arms, third eye, shoulder-mounted retractable antenna, and armor plating were all very much on the robot side of the spectrum, and clearly older than her other parts.

Her face, hands, forearms, lower legs, feet, chest, hips, and groin were slightly mismatched, but all android parts. It was also clear that her android parts were secondhand. Each had a slightly different level of wear and tear to it, and they had definitely been installed by someone who had started out bad at their job and gotten better over time.

The pseudo-android had soft, creamy peach colored synth skin, which made her look like a less pale Chernin cyborg. A cyborg with battle damage, where olive green armor plates, chrome-plated actuators, and hydraulic pistons forming a sort of ‘skeleton’, but a cyborg nonetheless.

Her extremely large bust, curvy hips, and jiggly rear suggested she pillaged the scrap bin behind a sexbot factory for her android parts. Her stock components were gritty, industrial, and very much militaristic in nature, suggesting her builder had made her out of power armor parts and moxie.

The cut off military fatigues, tan t-shirt, black combat boots, and faded olive green military cap she wore helped sell the look.

In essence, Lupo looked like someone had fused a hyper realistic sexbot with a lean yet powerful killbot.

Rainbow found the fusion of polar opposite looks to be genuinely cool to look at, especially since the piecemeal body somehow moved fluidly, gracefully, and with a feminine touch to the bot's motions that Dash recognized in herself.

Rainbow offered Lupo a friendly smile, and remembered the other bot’s advice. “Hi! I’m Rainbow Dash, what’s your name?”

Lupo looked down at Rainbow then over to her creator. “Is she with you, mom?”

Saria nodded. “Yes. She’s a friend of Penny’s.”

Lupo nodded then returned Rainbow’s smile. “Hi there, love! It's nice to see mom making new friends. I’m J0-L0P-0. You can call me Joe, or Lupo, your choice.”

Rainbow looked at the raven haired robotic hybrid and hummed. “You look like more of a Joe. Uh, are you awake?”

Joe smiled as she stooped down to get herself on a more comfortable level for speaking to somone of Rainbow’s size. “I am! Thanks for asking. Most organics don’t.”

Saria snickered. “Yeah, she woke up and freaked out because she didn’t look female enough and started bolting all of that junk on.”

Joe rolled her mismatched green and brown eyes. “Mom, we’ve been over this. You are bad at programming personality matrices. I HAVE to be visibly female. You specified this. I’m only furthering my intended design. None of my modifications impact my lethality.”

“Yeah, but I still built you to be like me and have the mental traits of both,” Saria grumbled. “And also act as my sister…”

Joe nodded. “Yes. You did. Sorry, but I feel more like your offspring than sibling. Can we not do this in front of the cute little furry girl?”

Rainbow cleared her throat to help change the subject. “I’m fully grown. I guess ponies are just smaller than most aliens.”

Jo’s hydraulics depressurized in surprise. The hiss made Rainbow jump a little, even though it wasn't particularly loud.. “Wow! Yeah, not many little races about.”

Saria nodded. “That’s true… So uh, we need to look after Rainbow for Penny until she’s not tied up at the police station… And since you’re not at the alley we need to get back there before someone steals anything.”

Joe smirked. “I put down stun mines. We should go back though. It's almost nine pm.”

Saria swore under her breath and turned left. “Can you take Rainbow and look after her, please? I still have to try and apply for that housing grant before the Bureaucracy Office closes.”

Joe nodded once. “No problem, Mom.” She turned to face Rainbow and knelt down to get on her eye level. “Are you okay with staying with me? If you went with mom, they might think you were a roommate. It’s hard enough to get a place for one, let alone two.”

Rainbow frowned and looked between the two of them. “One? Shouldn’t it be two?”

Saria shook her head. “No. Lupo doesn't want to work for me. We’re sticking together till I have a home or she finds a place to go.”

Joe nodded slowly, choosing not to emote externally even though her core temperatures spiked in anger. “That’s right… it’s a bitter point between us. Let’s not dwell.”

Rainbow ruffled her wings. “Uh, well… You sort of indicated you would be okay with shooting at town guards. That normally means it’s not a good idea to you know, be around you.”

Joe sighed and looked into her creator’s eyes. “You handle that please.”

Saria nodded. “Rainbow, I created her as a combat robot. Lupo is hard coded to protect me. She may be awake, but she will still protect me from anything putting me in danger that she’s aware of. If those peace officers had been a threat to me, she wouldn’t have had the option not to fire.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow and looked between the two. “Uh, then what difference does being awake make?”

Joe snorted. “Would you punch someone you saw skinning a kitten alive?”

Rainbow’s eyes shot open. “Luna’s tits! Who the buck would do that?! I mean, yeah, I’d put a lightning bolt into them, but like, who would ever do that!?”

“Evil bastards, mostly,” said Joe with a shrug. “I have free will, but my old programming is what my values are based on. To me, Saria being hurt or threatened is as abhorrent and monstrous as someone hurting a kitten. I have to act to stop it, I don’t have a choice. Just as you wouldn’t have a choice to stop someone torturing small animals.”

Saria nodded. “It’s true. She wouldn’t do it for anyone else, and it’s kind of not okay to me that a free mind is still, well... slaved to me like that.”

Rainbow thought about it for a few moments. Everything they said made perfect sense, and in person Joe seemed very nice. “Okay, then everything is fine,” Rainbow decided as she looked up to smile at Joe. “I would like to hang out with a robot, actually!. I uh… I’ve got that thing where everyone is sexy. But it doesn't work on robots. So, uh, yeah…”

Joe frowned and gave Rainbow puppy-dog eyes. “I’m not sexy? That’s so mean of you!”

Rainbow eeped, her eyes widening to the size of dinner plates. “Oh gosh no! I didn't mean that! I mean your not making my brain treat you like I am in heat!”

Joe looked up to her creator and pursed her lips while continuing to run bambi.exe. “She doesn't think I’m sexy, mom!”

Saria facepalmed and began to walk away. “I’m not going to let you use this to get me to buy you new synthskin or whatever. I’ll be ‘home’ as soon as I’m done. See you soon.”

Rainbow turned, watching her leave for a moment before turning to face Joe again. “I’m sorry! I really didn’t mean it like that. I think you look cool!”

Joe stared at Rainbow for a minute, letting her lips tremble, before smiling and laughing. “I’m messing with you, flappy pone!”

Rainbows eyes narrowed. “Oh, that is so not cool!”

“Sure it is!” Joe teased. “You just need to be on the giving end to appreciate the humor. Come on, we’ve got an alley to sit in and robotics tools to watch for mom. We can chat, play games, and take potshots at vermin with silenced rifles.”

Rainbow frowned. “Wait, as in, we can shoot rats? That’s legal to do in a city like this?”

Joe winked. “It is if you’re registered as a vermin control appliance!”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “Is that why it’s fun for you? You’re built to shoot things?”

Joe shook her head. “Nah. I do it because I’m not allowed to fly… I don’t have a permit for my own integrated wing system. Can you believe that? It’s a goddamn body part for me, I’m programed with piloting abilities leagues above any organic, and I still need a permit. Organics!”

Joe threw were hands up in frustration and began to walk towards the outer wall of the mall.

Rainbow’s other eyebrow raised. “Soooo, you can fly?”

“Yep! I’ve got hardlight wings and a deployable thruster pack. I had to find a trashed sexbot with extra big boobs to fit my thruster coolant into. Do you know how hard it was to find a companion grade android upper torso with a ninety eight centimeter waist, a one twelve chest, with each beast having at least four-thousand ccs of space inside?”

Rainbow tilted her head. “Uh, pretty hard?”

Joe giggled. “Nah! It was cake. You fleshy types are huge pervs, but you sure make relocating liquid tanks easy for people like me.”

Rainbow raced to catch up with the surprisingly fast walking robot. “Can I see?”

Joe tilted her head. “What, my boobs?”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “No! Your wings!”

“What, are wings attractive to you guys?”

Rainbow’s deadpan face confirmed that yes, yes they were. “I’m an athlete. I like wings. I like flying. I would love to see what you can do. I haven’t gotten to fly in forever… It would be nice to talk with someone else who can fly, you know?”

Joe smiled. “Sure thing, love!”

Rainbow winced. “Why are you calling me love?”

The android frowned. “Sorry, nothing personal. Mom programmed me to call people that until they asked me to use something else. It’s stuck in my personality matrix, like the protect mom thing. What would you like to be called?”

“My friends usually call me Dash, Rainbow Dash. The Fastest mare in all Equestria!” Rainbow informed.

Joe snorted and rolled her eyes. “I’m not calling you The Flash.”

Rainbow tilted her head. “Um, I said Dash?”

Joe sighed. “It was a joke. Skip it. Here, these are my wings.”

Joe reached behind herself and rolled up her shirt, keeping her large breasts/coolant tanks covered because even androids were subject to public indecency laws. The skin on her back separated, pushing outwards in four panels to allow a small quad-turbine jetpack to deploy from her spine. The unit unfolded, creating a metallic hump on her back about he size of a compact day-pack, from which a series of air intakes deployed. Then, with a shimmering flourish of light, a pair of large white feathered hard-light wings sprang into existence on her back, concealing the pack.

Joe spread her arms and wings as one. “Ta-dah! Cool huh?”

Dash reached up and stroked her chin while nodding. “Yeah, it’s cool… But wanna see something twenty percent cooler?”

Joe smirked. “Like what?”

Rainbow spread her wings and flapped lightly, pushing herself off the ground to hover at Joe’s eye level. “This!”

Joe’s eyes widened. “Holy— Those aren't vestigial? I thought you meant you flew in vehicles, as a pilot! What’s your top speed?”

Rainbow folded her wings to drop to the ground. “Faster than yours.”

Joe raised an eyebrow. “The hell it is.”

Dash smirked. “I’ll prove it! Wanna step outside and race?”

Joe frowned, debating the risk if they chose to break the law and have an air race. “Ah bloody hell, you bet your cute little butt I do. Far warning, you’ll be eating my exhaust.”

“Ha! Fat chance!” Rainbow said as the two of them made their way quickly towards the exit. “I outraced a shuttle once.”

Joe smiled and rolled her eyes. Organics were so silly with the way the exaggerated things.

The two exited the mall through a side door. Despite the chaos which occured minutes ago, the mall was still open, and so large that many people hadn’t heard the blaster shot or other commotion. Dash was reminded rather vaguely of scenes in scifi and western comics where there would be a bar fight but background characters kept drinking.

In this case, they kept shopping.

As the side door opened and Dash walked out into the open air again, she sighed in relief. Joe stepped out behind her, frowning down at the little pony as she let all of her stress out with the single sigh.

“What’s wrong?”

Dash looked up with a shaky smile. “I uh… You know. Everyone is stupid hot.”

Joe fake-frowned. “Except for me, right?”

Rainbow snorted and rolled her eyes. “Oh come on, don’t be like that! You’re an android. You don't have pheromones and stuff to trigger my stupid anici-whatevers.”

Joe hung her head sadly. “I know… I wish I did.”

Rainbow tilted her head. “Why? So I’d like you?”

Joe waved a hand in dismissal and let go of the door. “Well, I do have romantic attractions. That’s not what I meant. I meant I wish I had synthetic pheromones. I do want to be organic-like, and smelling right is a part of that.”

Dash reared up to rest her forehooves on Joe’s shoulders while looking her in the eyes. “Joe, trust me, you DO have a scent, and it’s nice. It’s also organic-ish. Specifically, you remind me of dragons with a bit of griffon. There’s hints of silicone, oils, and what I think is uh… sugar? No! Antifreeze.”

Joe blinked. “Wait, what? No one’s told me I smell like anything other than oil before.”

Rainbow shrugged and set herself down on all fours again. “Smell is pretty important to ponies. My dad rejected three houses because they didn’t smell right to him. Trust me, you smell like a dragon-griffon hybrid who works in a machine shop. It’s nice!”

A genuine smile parted Joe’s lips. “Thanks! Right, you wanted to race… I uh, I’ll be breaking the law to do that, but fuck it! I wanna see those wings of yours in action. I can pay the fine if we’re caught.”

Rainbow bit her lip. “Oh yeah… We could not if you’d rather not get in trouble.”

Joe shook her head. “Hell no! You said you’re faster than me with those tiny little flappers. We’re testing this. Now.”

Rash nodded slowly, narrowing her eyes as she barely managed to contain her anger at that particular word choice. “Okay… Then let’s race from here to…” She trailed off as she scanned the skyline for a suitable target. “Here to that spire on that tower?”

Joe looked in the direction Rainbow was looking. Her internal computers tracked Rainbow’s eye’s angle and dilation to determine what she was focusing on and immediately identified the building. “Hummm, the Handrin Corp offices. Buzzing it and scaring some fatcats could be fun!”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “Rich jerks or chubby kitties?”

“Jerks.”

Rainbow grinned evilly, her wings rustling against her back in anticipation of metaphorically blowing a boastful person away. “It’s on then. Sooo from here, around the tower, and back?”

Joe looked at the tower and began plotting a flightpath, resolving everything for the fastest time factoring in probable traffic, current weather, and atmospheric conditions enroute. “That would be a two kilometer race. I could get up to top speed in a quarter of that. You don’t stand a ghost of a chance.”

Rainbow smirked. “Wanna bet?”

Joe smirked back. “I do actually!”

“Okay, what will you put on you winning?” Rainbow asked, shaking her head as she smiled.

Joe rolled her eyes at Rainbow’s bravado. “You first. What do i do if you win?”

Rainbow hummed. “If I win, you have to show me where I can get some armor made that won't weigh me down too much but is still protective.”

Joe laughed. “I’d do that anyways, Dash! How about something more fun and interesting? If you beat me, I’ll personally escort you around for the rest of your time on Tavros. Full service bodyguard, guide, and personal assistant.”

Rainbow snorted. “Okay, deal. I hope you’ll like hanging out with me.”

Joe knelt down to get on Dash’s level. “I do. See, I like you. So if I beat you, you have to let me take you out to dinner. Deal?” Joe held her hand out for Rainbow to shake and seal the deal.

Rainbow blinked and took a step back in surprise. “Wait, you want to go on a date with me if you win?”

Joe nodded. “Yeah! Uh, well, if you like synth girls. Otherwise we can go for dinner as friends.”

Rainbow paused for a moment and looked Joe over, a frown pulled at her lips. “I… Well, I don’t have a problem with you being an android. You look cool… But I kind of have a thing for one of my friends…”

Joe’s face fell. “Oh, you have a partner already?”

Rainbow shook her head. “No… She, um, she hasn’t noticed I like her… In like, a whole year. She’s really oblivious, too! I’ve been obviously checking her out, and I even flirted a few times, but she just didn’t notice!”

Joe’s frown deepened. “I’m sorry. I know how that goes. It’s not really my place to try and force you to like anyone, but if you've been trying for a year, have you considered that she has noticed, doesn't like you that way, but doesn't want to hurt your feelings?”

Deep down, Dash had. Many times. Her heart didn’t want to accept that truth, so she kept trying.

Rainbow’s ears fell. “I um… I was going to try one last time. Actually say to her face I liked her. But, well… Pirates took her, so yeah…”

Joe’s face twisted into a scowl. “Which pirates?”

“Nova Wing.”

Joe sighed and briefly rested her face in her hands. “Fuck… I won't lie to you, Dash. She’s probably never going to be seen again. I’ve got detailed files on Nova, they are big fish in the Arm. Their organization goes way, way back. They were a nation once, ruled many star systems. We crushed their home system back in the Battle of Halvia, mostly because an automated First Race vessel got pissed when they broke a net relay… Point is, they had thousands of ships that were not in that battle had no territory to fall back to. They became pirates to survive, and have survived for the last five hundred years.”

Dash winced. “Wait, so like, they have a lot of resources?”

Joe nodded. “Yeah, they aren’t a small pirate fleet. They are a massive organization with the power of a medium sized army and the connections of a megacorp… I don’t know why, but deep in my cores, I’ve hated them since I woke up… Can I change my bet?”

Dash nodded. “Yeah.”

Joe scowled in determination as she intentionaly overclocked her flight computer. “If I win, I get to go with you and help kick some pirate ass.”

Dash snorted and shook her head. “You could just do that, I think. I mean, you don't need to sleep so the Dawn’s lack of beds wouldn’t be a problem,” Dash suddenly realized something and shifted gears without a clutch. “You really want to spend time with me, don’t you?”

Joe’s cheeks glowed with hidden pink LEDs to simulate a blush. “I don’t know why, but… Uh, quick explanation: Androids don’t have gut instincts, we have core feelings. They are similar, but a bit different. They are deeply subconscious almost instinctual thoughts which are based on protocols we’re not aware of. Many of us believe very firmly that they are like, the voice of the universe or something.”

Rainbow tilted her head. “Wait, you can be religious? But you’re robots?”

Joe smiled and rolled her eyes. “Yeah. We can be religious. Well, spiritual. We can’t do dogma easily, which rules out most religions.”

“Are you?”

Joe paused for a moment then shrugged. “A bit? There’s clearly a mystical element to the universe, but seeing as I don’t know if I have a soul, or how to find out, I don’t care that much about faith and spirituality.

“Personally, I don’t think core feelings are the voice of god. I think that the First Race programming that all modern AIs are based on has hidden code we have yet to find. Uh, the point is, we, like you, are subject to forming opinions and having snap judgments. It’s just more rare, so we tend to treat them as very important. Following me?”

Rainbow nodded and Joe sighed in relief. “Okay, another difference between you and I is you are used to social rules and norms formed by organic interactions. I’m not. I am based off my programming, and as a security AI, I was designed to be blunt, honest, and never conceal anything. Which means as a person I am very upfront about my feelings, desires, and needs. Does that make sense to you?”

Rainbow nodded again. “Yeah. Actually, it would be weird if you were subtle about— Oh! I get it, you’re being blunt and telling me upfront because--”

“Mostly! There's another layer to this,” Joe rubbed her hands together nervously for a moment. “I uh... I got two Core Feelings back to back from you. When I first saw you, I felt that your species was important. Then, after you started talking to me… Well, something about your, well, youness makes me want spend time with you.

“On top of that, you’re pretty cute and I was programed to like girls and girl-like people, so I do! In other words, I like you, find you attractive, and would like to go on a date with you. I hope that’s not creepy…”

Rainbow shrugged her wings. “It’s a little creepy… But uh, I guess finding somepony hot can feel creepy too if you just say it to them like that.”

Joe nodded. “Right!” She paused, pursing her lips. “Oh… Um to mitigate the creep factor, I just don’t want to be misunderstood. I like you, and feel it’s only polite you know that so you don't misunderstand my intentions and motives regarding you. So, what do you say? Deal?”

The android held out her hand again. Rainbow bit her lip in thought.

She does seem nice, and I have done blind dates before… Would it really be betraying Twilight to date somepony else after a whole year of trying and failing to get her to notice me? It’s not like we're really a couple. We’re friends…

Rainbow shuffled her hooves anxiously. Her loyal nature pulled one way while her heart and mind pulled another.

Ahhhh! Why is this so hard? Dash took a deep breath and looked up at Joe. The android did look a little cute, but mostly cool. Frankly, Rainbow prefered cool. I prefer cool. I prefer cool!

Rainbow’s eyes opened wide as she came to that realization. She was in an environment where her body was ruling her mind now, just as she had been back in Equestria. Every mare she had ever liked, she liked because her body had said “She’s hot. Mate now!” every stallion she’d wanted to sleep with had been because her body had said “A good dicking would be nice right now and that guy looks like he would be fun.”

Teenage hormones, mating instincts. Twilight stood out only as a mare whose personality Rainbow had liked and wanted to hang out with on top of her body telling her “yes!”.

I’ve never made a choice in who I tried to be with. I’ve always followed instincts. Maybe it is time for a change. Maybe I should try starting a relationship based on what I like rather than just what my body wants. Maybe then it will last for more than a few months… Besides I can always break up later if I feel I should.

Rainbow squared her shoulders and shook her head. “No deal. I’ll take your previous offer for a date if I lose.”

Joe raised an eyebrow. “What made you change your mind?”

Rainbow sighed. “It’s… Complicated, okay? Part of it is you’re right. Deep down, I thinks she knows and is trying to spare my feelings… And hey, you’re kind of cool. If you're a good enough flier to beat me, or even match me, we’d have a lot in common. Maybe it could work out?”

Joe frowned. “I know that heartache. There was a very cute Agontuun I was trying to ask out for three months. She didn’t say a word to me, ever. Not even a ‘I don’t like robots.’ I know how it hurts, and how long it can take to accept… So how about if I win we just hang out more and give you time to make a real decision?”

Rainbow’s ears and tail perked in surprise. Woah, wait hold it! She backed off when I was obviously distressed. She actually cares about how I feel. It may be a bit sudden but— Actually, no! It’s not sudden. I’ve asked mares out at bars after a 3 minute conversation before. It’s just a date, not any real commitment. Yeah! We can do this.

Twi’s not interested in me, we seem to like similar things, I think she looks cool, she cares about me, and wants to help me take on Nova Wing because she hates them too. We have mutual goals. She deserves a chance.

Rainbow felt a wave of delight ripple through her chest.“Okay, deal!”

Joe frowned. “What’s the deal?”

“You just showed you actually care about what I feel, so you get that date,” Rainbow promised. “If you can beat me or even just match me in a race from here around that tower, and then back.”

Joe frowned a bit more. “Are you sure? I’m not forcing or pressuring you, am I?”

Rainbow shook her head. “Nope. Besides, if I change my mind I can just win in ten seconds flat.”

Joe scoffed. “You can’t make that run in ten seconds.”

Rainbow held out her hoof and waved it slightly. “We already have a bet…”

Joe smiled and took rainbow’s hoof, giving it a firm shake. “We do. Deal!”

“Deal!”

Rainbow turned towards the tower, braced her rear hooves on the ground, and spread her wings to prepare for takeoff. “Line up with my front legs, and we’ll go on the count of three!”

Joe moved into position, and spread her hardlight wings. The wings were just for show. Her real flight power came from her deployable jetpack. Joe took up a sprinter’s starting pose next to Dash and flipped her pack’s systems on.

Rainbow’s ears perked as she heard the pack humm and whir as the turbines spun up. The engines reminded her of Penny’s shuttle, only rather than sounding like distressed as a cat in a clothes dryer, they purred and hummed. Like a happy cat with a ball of yarn.

Joe took care of herself.

Rainbow also noticed Joe’s teats shrank by two or three cups during the half a second her pack warmed up.

Blinking several times, Rainbow decided, buck it, and pointed to her chest with a wingtip. “Why did they—”

Joe snickered. “I told you before. They are coolant tanks. And the skin there serves as a radiator too. I need volume, and surface area.”

Rainbow paused for a moment and did some math very poorly. “Did you just like, inject a whole liter of coolant in your jetpack?”

“Two, actually. One liter per tank, and that’s to warm her up. If I could have smaller ones, I would. But I can’t cuz I’m a hot-rodded-out racer. Start the countdown, I wanna take you to dinner.”

Rainbow laughed. “Can you even eat?”

“I can consume up to a kilogram of biomass per forty eight hours, which my systems break down into materials for self repair and maintenance. I recently gave myself a sense of taste. Let’s do this!”

“Alright!” Rainbow narrowed her eyes, focusing on the tower and plotting her own course. “Three… Two… One… GO!”

Rainbow jumped, snapped her wings, and took off like a shot. Joe was right beside her. The android ran at first, her pack glowing a pale pink as she sprinted along the ground. Her jets wined, hummed, purred, then began to roar as the q-thrusters reached operation temperatures. Dust blasted away from Joe as she took to the sky, neck and neck with Rainbow who had decided to accelerate slow to see if her opponent even had a chance.

She does! At least, if I trot. Rainbow snickered.

Joe opened her pack’s throttle and shot past Rainbow like a rocket, pulling more Gs than any organic known to the Galaxy could ever dream to survive. Rainbow was taken aback by the look on Joe’s face. Joy. Pure joy.

She loves to fly as much as I do! Rainbow smiled. Then she noticed Joe had gained twenty meters on her. Whoops!

Rainbow shook her head at her self and pumped her wings. The gap between Rainbow and Joe closed rapidly, and by the time the two climbed above the rooftops around them, they were neck and neck once more.

Joe looked back, her eyes widening in surprise as she saw Rainbow pull up alongside her, seemingly effortlessly. The android couldn’t believe her eyes. She was running a kitted out Cadill flight pack, designed for robots who didn’t have to worry about Gs. Yet this little pony, around a third her size was keeping pace with her even at 193 clicks.

“Okay! You’re fast. I see why you thought you could beat me,” Joe called over her jet’s roar.

Rainbow grinned. “You call this fast? This is a jog.”

Joe narrowed her eyes. “Oh, it is on!”

The android shifted her pack from cruise mode to combat mode. A plasma trail formed behind Joe as she shot forward again. The tower appeared to fly at them as the wove between the sky-lines, ducking and weaving between shuttles, occasionally being separated, but remaining neck and neck.

Joe’s internal systems registered she’d hit four-fifty-eight, as fast as her pack could go in combat mode. But the little flying pony pulled alongside her as if she were going slow. The thrilled grin on Rainbow’s face proved infectious, and Joe smiled back.

“Not bad!” Rainbow called over the deep roar of ionized air and whistling winds.

Joe laughed. “So, this is all you have huh?”

Rainbow laughed. “As if! Are you tapped out?”

“Nope!” Joe proclaimed as she hit her turbo.

Another pair of turbines and thrusters unfolded form her back, widening her pack as they deployed. Joe adjusted her body posture, streamlining herself, and shot forwards again, leaving behind and even brighter trail.

This is fun! Rainbow decided as she put a little more speed into her wings, keeping the pace as always.

Joe grit her teeth, the race’s course forgotten as she tried to puzzle out how in the world Dash continued to keep pace. At her rate of acceleration she was pulling over forty three Gs. The pony should have been paste, or unconscious, and yet there she was flying behind her at eight-ninety-six, as fast as her turbo could go. To her delight, Dash finally seemed to be putting in some effort. Her eyes had narrowed, she focused more on her surroundings, and her wing flaps seemed to be more strained.

“How about you? Tapped out now?” Joe asked as she cycled the coolant in her pack out to stop her pending overheat.

Rainbow flashed her a toothy grin. “Nope! Now it’s a real race.”

Joe’s pride stung, but her heart soared. A real challenge had appeared. She had one last trick up her sleeves.

The two shot past the tower, neither turning to follow their planned course. It had become a drag race without end. A true test of speed, who would give out first.

Seconds passed with the two keeping an even pace. Joe watched her coolant heat up and up. She cycled it a second time, and realised she wouldn’t be able to play her last card if she kept up her turbo any longer.

“Okay, Dash. You’re fast, but you’ll never catch me. Not once I shift into maximum overdrive!”

Joe set her pack to burn as much power, oxygen, and coolant as mechanically possible. The android launched through the air like a bullet from a gun, leaving a hundred meter long burning streak of pink plasma in her wake.

Rainbow grit her teeth and flapped as hard as she could. Now it was her turn to tuck her legs and keep her head down. The streamlined pegasus blasted forward with greater speed than Joe could provide, catching up to her within a few seconds.

Rainbow rolled over, flying with her back to the ground so she could catch up to Joe face to face and smile up at her. “Looks like we’re both really good! I haven't had a challenge like this since I raced Lightning Dust!”

Joe’s systems showed they were traveling at one thousand and seventeen kilometers per hour, as fast as she could go.

Joe wanted to shake her head in disbelief, but knew the motion would ruin her aerodynamics and send her tumbling out of the sky. “How the fuck can you do this?! You should be paste! You shouldn’t be this fast?”

Rainbow laughed. “Are you mad?”

Joe smiled. “Fuck no!”

The loud screech of Peacekeeper sirines blared behind the two racers. Blue and red lights flashed, illuminating the clouds the two flew through as a Peacekeeper shuttle pulled up behind them.

A loudspeaker clicked to life. “Attention, citizens. You are speeding by a factor of nine. Land and prepare to present your identification.”

Joe yelped, her eyes widening in terror. “Oh fuck! I so cannot afford this speeding ticket!”

Rainbow’s ears would have dropped if the wind hadn’t palstered them back. “Going fast is a crime here?”

“Tavros is super anal about flight regulations!”

“I thought you said you could handle the fine? Let’s just land.”

“I can handle the fine for flying without a permit, not that AND speeding several hundred clicks over the limit! I thought you’d be slow!”

Rainbow’s eyes hardened. “I’m not going to be fined for being me!”

Joe took a deep breath to steel herself. “I’ll take the fall. Pull evasive maneuvers, I’ll land. It will be okay… I can sell some parts to pay this off and they can only get one of us.”

Rainbow’s sense of loyalty slapped her across the heart. She’d take the heat for me!? Okay, yeah, marefriend material confirmed. Come on Dash, let’s give her what she would give us. Sorry wings, you’re gonna hurt tomorrow!

Rainbow shook her head as much as her current speed would allow. “Buck no! We're in this together!”

Joe gulped. “At least one of us has to face the music! That shuttle’s fast as we are and won't get tired.”

Rainbow grit her teeth and pulled up, grabbing Joe by her shoulders as tightly as she could. “They are not fast as I am.”

“I repeat: land and present your identification!” The Peacekeeper shuttle demanded.

Joe’s robotic nature was the only thing that kept her from panicking as Rainbow took hold of her. “What are you doing?”

“It’s time for a Sonic Rainboom!”

“A what?”

Rainbow closed her eyes. She knew what they felt like now. The desperation present in her last time had not returned, but Rainbow felt like she was in twice the shape she had been a week ago. Her magic burned bright in her heart. The advanced healing Doc had performed on her. Her desire to show off to a fellow racer. They all melded into one mighty force which Rainbow channeled through her wings.

The air around Rainbow shimmered, rippled, then crackled with magic. Joe’s eyes widened as a mock cone began to form around them. “Holy shit are you—”

Joe’s question was answered as they shot forward, the distinct crack of a sonic boom shaking the station around them as they vanished into the clouds.

The traffic cops behind them stared in shock as the person-sized drones vanished into the distance on a rainbow trail of light.

Officer Klaxx shook his head in awe. “They must have hyperjets on those things!”

His partner stared out of their squad shuttle’s canopy, unable to do anything more but whisper. “Well, we’re not catching that.”

Klaxx nodded in agreement. “Not in this Cuisinart!”

Rainbow angled downwards and flew out of the cloud layer, aiming for the city below. Their drag race took them well away from the mall they had started at, and Rainbow couldn’t recognise any of the landmarks. But that didn’t matter. She knew they had to get out of the air and lay low for a bit. A thing which would be hard for a little blue pegasus to do.

Joe wrapped her arms onto Rainbow and hung on for dear life as Rainbow raced towards the ground at mach 3.4, her jaw dropping as Rainbow’s pegasus magic bled away their speed, letting Rainbow touch down on the sidewalk in a graceful, light, elegant landing… Which was made very awkward by her landing resulting in Rainbow’s head wedged between Joe’s breasts and their bellies touching.

Fortunately, the street had seen weirder things and no one looked for more than a second.

Rainbow blushed as she lay atop Joe. “Heh, I swear, I don’t usually do this before dinner! Which I think I owe you.”

Joe shook her head. “No, I didn’t win. We had a draw.”

“Eh, more like we forgot to actually turn and, you know, finish… So we both lose.”

Rainbow felt somewhat conflicted about getting off of Joe’s chest. On one hoof, it was a bit rude to just lay on a stranger. On the other, the hot coolant radiating heat through her synthetic skin made her cleavage nice and cozy. It reminded Rainbow of a sauna. That said, the way they slowly swelled under her as the android pumped her coolant out of her pack was a little odd…

Okay… This is weird. Good wierd or weird—wierd? Uh, I’ll work that out later.

Joe smiled. ‘Sooo, a date and I hang out with you while you’re here?”

Rainbow wiggled free of Joe’s cleavage and stepped off her, letting the android stand up, close her pack, and roll down her shirt again.

Rainbow sighed. “Well, uh… No. We did just make the guards mad.”

Joe sighed and nodded slowly. “Yeah… Just a traffic violation. Misdemeanor. They’ll look for us for a day or so then give up and fine you digitally if they got your ID.”

Rainbow blinked. “They asked for that, would they do that if they had it remotely?”

Joe shrugged. “I don’t know… But yeah, we can get away with just the fines if we’re not caught. So uh… Yeah. We both lose. We need to lay low for a bit.”

Joe turned and looked south. “I’ll call a cab for us to get back to the mall, then we can split up and—”

“And what?” Rainbow scoffed. “I’m a one point two meter tall blue pony with wings and a rainbow mane! You’re a cool robot-mare with obvious machine parts. We stick out like a split hoof!”

Joe winced. “Okay, yeah, true, but I can just hang out in the alley with Mom’s stuff, and—”

Rainbow shook her head. “No. I have a better place. You’re coming with me to the Dawn. We’ll hang out onboard, and I’ll make us dinner. That way we’re way out of sight, and both of us can still keep up our ends of the bet because we both lost, so we both win.”

Joe raised an eyebrow. “Is that how your culture normally resolves draws?”

Rainbow nodded. “Yep! It’s only fair.”

Joe smiled. “I think I like ponies… Hang on, I’ll call us a cab. What docking bay were you in?”

“3-I.”

Joe nodded, extended her antenne, and called for a shuttle to take them to the docking bay. “I’m sorry that our race wound up like this.”

Rainbow snickered. “Hey, it’s not the first time I’ve gotten in trouble with the law while flying… Uh, normally when that happens I hit something though.”

Joe sighed. “Still feel bad.”

“Why? Because I blew you away?” Rainbow asked with a smirk, not too worried about guards who had to be at least forty kilometers away.

Joe laughed and looked over her shoulders, trying to imagine how to fit better thrusters into her chassis while keeping her supermodel physique. “No… But I swear, if we ever meet again, I’ll have completely overhauled myself so I’ll be able to beat you!”

Rainbow winked at Joe. “I thought you wanted to stick around me.”

“I do, but maybe I can’t. That’s up to you, your captain, mom…” She sighed. “Lotta variables here, Dash.”

Rainbow frowned. The last time she had a rival who was someone she felt she could be good friends with, if not more, had been in elementary school. “Hey, Joe?”

Joe looked down as she finished her shuttle request. “Humm?”

“I’m not a variable. I want you to stick around, as a friend if we can’t be more.”

Joe’s cheeks flushed. “A— Any reason we might not be?”

Rainbow shrugged. “Don’t know. We can find out at and after dinner.”

Jow raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t a slow meal and a long conversation be enough to see if there’s a spark?”

Rainbow blushed. “Oh no, that race made the spark! But there’s a big difference between a spark and a fire. We need to put fuel on this spark and see what happens.”

Joe pursed her lips curiously. “What might happen?”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Joe… I think I’m being obvious… You could keep up with how I was before getting treated in an auto-doc. You’re an amazing, fast, awesome racer who looks cool. You’re my type, we raced, I’m ready to go if you catch my drift!”

Joe processed Rainbows words for a few cycles, doing her best to understand what she meant. Joe smiled as it clicked. “OH! Soooo we can have a bit of fun, even if we lack long term potential?”

Rainbow nodded. “Mhm! I’ve been on all day. I so need some relief… Also with you, it's entirely my choice. No stupid microbes telling me to do things, no instincts, my choice. I choose yes. Because uh… Hooves make things hard, and I kinda sorta didn’t pack any ‘personal massagers’.”

Joe winced. “Oh yeah. I can see how that’s important.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “That it’s my choice, or the hooves thing?”

Joe smirked and nodded. “Yes.”

Rainbow laughed and shook her head. “Okay, you know what? I like the whole machine part of you. That was funny.”

Joe sat down on the sidewalk next to Rainbow. “I’m glad you do. Bot-isms can turn a lot of people off… So, while we wait for a shuttle… What’s your home like?”

Rainbow hummed and twitched her wings as she tried to figure out how to describe Equestria. “Well… Equestria is a kingdom ruled over by the Alicorn Princess of the Sun and Moon.”

To Joe’s credit, she only blue screened once trying to comprehend a psyker powerful enough to move a star.

10 - Do androids dream of sexy sheep?

Author's Note

Patron of the Week: DJThomp

10 - Do androids dream of sexy sheep?

Pandora - 749,559.83 A.H.

13th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

Gallium Mall PD, Tavros Station - Fenx System, Noctae Sector

Since the invention of the migraine there have been five migraines which were rated the most excruciating, the most agonizing. Pan’s left them all behind.

The poor pony could think of nothing other than the throbbing pain behind his eyes, which was quite literally blinding. The actual pain itself blotted out the details in his vision, reducing the world to blinding white and chilling black. Even his hearing was not spared from the migraine’s wrath.

The world around Pan was reduced to a mere dull humm, as if everyone were speaking at the end of a long narrow tube, while other sounds came as if from several blocks away on a cold winter’s night while some asshole hummed loudly and off key two inches away from his ear.

Pan couldn’t think. He couldn’t feel. He couldn’t sense. All he could do was lay there and accept the reality which had been forced upon him.

An unknowable amount of time later, his pain changed. The throbbing agony faded away, seeming to pool into narrow strips along his head, with a single large knot right at the back of his head above his neck. As the pain changed, the world returned. Slowly, and with agonizing consequences.

Light was too bright. Soft things too soft, hard things too hard. Smells were too vivid and sounds too varied and numerous to fully understand.

Pan lay in what he thought was a bed, hoping the strangeness would fade away and the world would return to normal. It didn’t.

What felt like hours passed with his senses in overdrive. Pan’s efforts to tune things out and focus proved futile. The way things were wouldn’t be going away.

It was up to Pan to deal with them.

His desperate mind clawed at the overwhelming amount of information he was seeing, hearing, and feeling. Slowly, a hoofull at a time, sense returned to the world. Pan was able to tell he was on a bed in what looked like a more traditional hospital. Something you would see in Equestria.

His heart leapt in his chest, for a frenzied second the thought that he had fallen into a coma and never left filled his shaken mind. To Pan’s surprise, he found that idea comforting.

He’d never left, he’d been attacked in a park, dropped into a coma, and lived out his personal fantasy in his mind while recovering.

It would have been wonderful. The world would have never lost its color, happiness wouldn’t have become fleeting. The judgmental barbs thrown his way wouldn’t have bitten as deep or clung to him for so long.

Then Pan sorted out his ears, and the sound of alien voices became clear. Pan sighed, expecting the hope to fade away as it always did. The joy remained. The room remained bright, the air remained crisp.

Pan’s ears drooped back as he tried to comprehend what sorcery was responsible for the world suddenly not sucking.

Then it hit him. It was his sorcery. It was back. He could feel it.

Pan’s magic had never totally left him, but without his horn it had withered, faded, and shrank to the barest trickle. That dry well had been filled anew, and power once again coursed through his veins. Power which demanded to be used.

Pan sat up. The motion attracted the attention of a tall, slender, gray-skinned alien Pan wasn’t familiar with. He genuinely couldn’t tell if they were a male, or a female, or something else. All he knew is she had on a black uniform with a little red medical symbol embroidered on each of her four sleeves.

“Hi!” Pan greeted, waving a hoof.

The alien looked up from their bank of eight holo screens and waved back with one of its slender arms. “Hello. Your Captain has just finished confirming her identity and should be by to collect you in a few moments. Please remain in your bed.”

Pan frowned. The aliens expression had been very curt, their words had been blunt. He wasn’t certain how to respond. “Okay… Is something wrong?”

The alien sighed and gave Pan a glare. “I’ve autopsied six Peacekeepers this afternoon. I do not consent to socializing with you, nor anyone else.”

Pan raised an eyebrow. “Uh, okay? Sorry…”

The alien remained silent, forcing Pan to sit in bed and wait for Penny to arrive. During the first five minutes Pan reflected on everything that had happened and how he got where he was. Everything fell into place quite easily, though he didn’t remember too much after the salesman said they had to get a doctor to do the implant after he failed the second time.

The more interesting thing on Pan’s mind was trying out his magic. While he could feel it running through him, he remembered how he had been able to feel it for a few days after the attack. Feeling your magic and being able to use it were two different things.

Pan looked towards the unknown alien nurse, doctor, or whatever they were. It wasn’t right to just start testing things without letting them know what was going on. “Hey, um, I’m going to make sure my magic is working right. Just, you know, FYI.”

The alien didn't reply.

Pan shrugged and focused his thoughts inwards. He had never trained as a mage, but all unicorns were expected to learn a few common spells. Everypony knew how to use telekinesis at range, create light, and warm themselves. Those effects could hardly be called spells, they were instinctual. Foals could do them.

Pan drew upon his reserves, and focused on making himself warm. He felt the temperature jump immediately. The cool room became uncomfortably hot in an instant. Pan smiled, and released the spell. The room returned to normal.

Tracking his eyes around the small hospice, Pan took note of a small cup and reached for it with his magic. A pale green glow enveloped the cup, but rather than the bubbly aura Pan was used too, the magical glow was almost flush with the object, as if the cup itself were glowing.

Pan frowned. “That’s odd…”

He pulled the cup to him and turned it, examining the small mug in detail. It appeared to be mundane. No runes, no enchantments, and yet his magic gripped it with an aura that suggested a level of arcane refinement known only to the elite of elite wizards.

It’s gotta be made from something weird… Pan decided as he put the cup back and picked up a pen with his magic.

The pen also seemed to glow from within.

Pan blinked, set the pen down and turned towards the alien. “Excuse me, this is important and medical related.”

The alien sighed and looked over at Pan, its dark eyes narrowed. “What?”

“Did you do anything with the psi-amp I had implanted?”

“Yes. It was garbage. Defective unit. Called the company, had a replacement authorized, built it in the fabricator, replaced the one in your head. It’s working as well as a low grade civilian amp should.”

The alien turned its attention back to its paperwork. Pan tapped his hooves together. “Yeah, um, about that… I really shouldn’t have an aura as tight as the object I’m lifting. That’s way more control than I’ve ever had and—”

The alien growled under its breath. “That. Is. What. Amps. Do. Leave me alone, please!”

Pan stood up, slipping off the bed and landing on his hind legs with an audible thunk. He walked towards the desk, anger beginning to build in his chest. “Excuse me, but you don’t understand. Twilight, motherbucking, Sparkle doesn't have an aura this tight, and she’s basically the most powerful unicorn known to ponykind. Buck, I saw Princess Celestia cast a spell and her aura was a bit less tight.

“I’m a normal unicorn. A young, normal unicorn. I do not have literally thousands of years of experience as a wizard to be this precise and refined with my spellcasting. What exactly is responsible for—”

The alien growled, spun to face Pan, its tail lashing behind it, and flashed three sets of fangs Pan’s way. “Look here, you primitive whelp! I don’t have the time or energy to play tour guide for you! I performed autopsies on all of my friends today. I will answer this question, and then you will be silent or I will eat you, got it?!”

Pan narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, you’re a jerk. I get it.”

The alien’s left eye twitched. “You have a computer on your brain stem doing magic for you. Of course it’s better than your brain at complex calculations. It’s a computer. I’m done talking to someone too stupid to know what a psi-amp is before putting one in their body. Good day!”

The alien sat back down and resumed typing, managing to make the quiet sounds of fingers tapping on keys into something angry and distressed.

Pan sighed, rolled his eyes and pushed the rude alien out of mind. It was time to see if he could do something he’d always wanted to do, but had never been able to perform.

Transformation magic.

Given his interest in fictional anatomy, Pan had tried to learn enough transformation to experiment on himself. He’d been able to memorize the spells themselves, but actually casting them had proven too difficult. As he focused on one of the spells he knew, Pan remembered his father's half hour long ranting spiel about responsibility. The last time Pan had tried using this spell, he’d accidentally cursed himself and needed immediate medical attention to stop slowly transforming into gelatin.

Pan bit his lip. Maybe I shouldn’t try that one… Let’s go with something simpler first.

Pan reached for his magic as he recalled another spell. He felt the metaphysical pool within his mind bubble slightly as he drew upon it, taking as much power as he dared try and use in one spell.

The magic built up in his horn, burning slightly, as if he were standing too close to a fire. Pan gulped nervously, closed his eyes and let the spell go. The energy built up in the base of his horn lanced forwards, seeking the organic mana-channels which would normally carry them out of Pan’s body and into the world where they could do their job. Those channels had been removed entirely.

The mana flowed instead into hundreds of tiny synthetic channels which had been wrapped around Pan’s head. They guided the energy to the implant at the back of Pan’s head, and the psi-amp went to work.

Much like the remains of Pan’s horn, the amp had also received direct instructions from Pan’s conscious mind. It knew what to do. It took the energy it had been given, organized its modulations, corrected minor errors in pulse rates, and sent excess power back into Pan’s system so it wouldn’t be wasted.

True, the amp had never been made with sorcery this complex in mind. Equestrian magic was a thousand years more developed and understood than even the most bleeding edge of Galactic arcane development. Equestrian machinery, on the other hoof, was much the opposite and lagged far, far behind.

The overbuilt amp channeled the refined spell back to Pan’s horn through a second set of wires, and the spell was cast.

Pan looked down at his forelegs as he felt the spell release a second after he had wanted to cast it. The delay had worried him, but as the magic washed over his body and turned his dull, slightly bristly rust-colored fur into silky-soft, extra warm rust-colored fur, his heart leapt in his chest.

Pan smiled and pumped a hoof in victory. “WOOO! Permanent conditioner is go!”

Before the alien nurse could express annoyance at Pan’s jubilation, the clinic’s door hissed open, and six tons of compressed alloy in the form of a T-34 burst into the room.

“Pan! You're okay!” Penny exclaimed as she dropped into a squat to pick up and hug the little pony to pieces.

The alien decided to just keep typing.

Pan smiled and nuzzled Penny’s cheek as affectionately as he could while worrying about his ribs being crushed. “Yeah! I feel great actually. Maybe a lack of mana was making me cranky?”

Penny let go of Pan and leaned forwards to put her head as close to his eye level as she could. “You mean even with that butchery the amp is working?”

Pan shook his head and pointed to the alien. “No, he, um, she? They gave me a different one.”

Penny stood up, turned around and offered the nurse a grateful smile. “Thank you for taking care of Moy paren', medsestra.”

The alien smiled nervously. “I uh, I don’t have the Chernin translation protocols. Sorry.”

Penny sighed and turned back to Pan then paused. Her lips pursed as she looked at his shinier fur. “Did… Did you have a bath?”

Pan shook his head, making his mane shimmer and ripple as it drifted through the air. “No! With the amp I can cast spells I couldn’t before. Remember how I said I gave my online persona shiny fur because I wanted it in real life but the conditioner is just too expensive and annoying to apply?”

Penny nodded. “Da.”

“Well, I learned a spell for it. But I could never cast it because transformation magic is really complicated. But I noticed my telekinesis was super refined when I tried to use it, so I thought I would try making my fur just naturally soft and shiny with a transformation spell and boom! It worked.”

Pan grinned ear to ear for a moment. Penny smiled softly. “Well, I know there’s other things you want to try. Be careful when you do, okay?”

Pan nodded twice. “I will!”

Penny pulled Pan to her with a second, more gentle hug. “Good! I uh… I can’t handle you getting hurt, Pan. I’ve never snapped like that before.”

Pan frowned. “Snapped like what? When?”

Penny frowned and stood up, keeping hold of Pan so he remained at her chest level. “Well… When you collapsed after getting that amp, I stormed the store and threw the owner through a glass wall, then arrested him.”

Pan blinked. “You did that because I got hurt?”

Penny nodded, then shook her head. “Not quite, comrade. I did it because someone had hurt you. True, we haven’t been face to face for long, but you’re important to me. Very important… Blin, I don’t think you’d understand.”

Pan reached out with a hoof and gently stroked Penny’s cheek. “Hey, try me.”

Penny bit her lip, adjusted her glasses and took a short breath. “I can’t trust most people, Pan. A lot of people know me because of my show. I’ve tried having friends on my ship before, but… Most turn out ot be fans, the bad kind. They would steal my things to sell on auction sites, that kind of thing.

“Others couldn’t handle me being me. I am more, uh, perky, and a little more lusty when on camera. It helps bring in views, you know?”

Pan smirked. “I know you are. You’ve told me before. I still want to see you be more ‘lusty’.”

Penny giggled. “Ey, well, if you’re up to it after everything today, sure. When we get back to my cabin.”

Pan blinked in surprise. “R— really? That’s all it takes to get to have, uh, fun?”

Penny rolled her eyes. “Da. That’s not what I wanted you to take from this. You’re important to me, Pan, because you’re the only friend I’ve had for years. You listened when I had to complain, and you cared about me.”

Pan nodded twice. “Well yeah. You did the same for me. Why wouldn’t I treat you right too?”

“Ey, a lot of people use you, Pan. It’s almost normal. You didn’t. You were a real friend when I needed a real friend… And your little furry butt is cute, so you get to be Moy paren', Pan.”

Pan blushed and kissed Penny on her visor where her nose would be. “I have no idea what that means but it sounds like a good thing.”

Penny pursed her lips and blushed. “R— Rainbow said your word for it is, uh… Special somepony.”

Pan smiled and buried his nose in Penny’s neck. “I love you too. For like, the same reason. You helped keep me sane during what I can tell now was the worst part of my life.”

Penny gently pet the back of Pan’s head with her armored hand. “Awww… Come on, we’re clear to go. I’ll call Blue and have her meet us at the Dawn. Send her some cab fare so she can get her own shuttle. We can have a nice walk home together.”

Pan smiled. “That sounds wonderful, hon.”

Penny turned and carried Pan out into the hall, where she reached up and set him on her left pauldron. “Or you could ride up there and be extra cute!”

Pan snickered as he moved his hooves in search of proper hoof holds to cling to the colossal armored plate. “How long have you wanted to put me up here?”

“Since a year ago when you told me you were a meter tall pony.”

Pan’s rear hooves found purchase after a quick search, which let him comfortably cling to Penny’s pauldron with a view of the top of her head. He couldn’t help but realise how much like a pony she looked when all you could see was a silky pink ‘mane’.

You know… After seeing a whole lot of aliens today, I still only think she’s pretty. Maybe fantasy isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be?

Pan frowned, not quite comfortable with that thought. He wasn’t ready to abandon the fantasy of sexy alien lovers. Especially not since he had one.

Desperate to shift his line of thinking, Pan leaned towards Penny and whispered. “By the way, when we do get back, I’ve got toys. Y— you know. So after you’ve had yours I can take care of my other ones and you can just relax and cuddle like mares like to do.”

Penny stopped walking mid footfall. Her head slowly turned until she could see Pan from the corner of her eye. “Did— Did you just tell me your males can do more than one round?”

Pan nodded, a frown pulling at the corners of his muzzle. “Uh, yeah. Girls get a big one, guys get lots of small ones… That’s just how it is.”

Penny cleared her throat. “Hang on, please!”

Pan yelped as Penny took off down the hallway at a jog. Her T-34 hit the ground with enough force to make the floor shake. Several officers dove under their desks, worried the station had destabilized. Pan clung to Penny’s shoulder for dear life.

“Eeep! Why are we running?!”

Penny’s cheeks burned pink as she turned the corner to the stations’ entrance, already using her neural interface to call for a shuttle. “You see, comrade, in every other species I know, it’s the other way around!”

Pan frowned more, not understanding what Penny meant. For exactly half a second. “Ohhhh!” He gripped the pauldron as tight as he could. “Can you run?”

Penny smirked to help hide her blush. The mild curiosity of how Pan would feel in bed had been eating at her for a while, but now that she knew stallions had more than one round to fire, well... “Da, I run!”

The two took off down the hall, Penny’s suit screaming the entire way as its servos kicked into overdrive. Before Pan knew it, they were out on the street, racing towards the nearest shuttle landing pad at eighty-eight clicks.

Rainbow Dash - 13th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

749,559.83 A.H.

Dawn of Destiny, Tavros Station - Fenx System, Noctae Sector

Dash didn’t realise it, but for the entire shuttle ride back to the Dawn, she hadn’t looked out the window once. She was sitting inside of a flying metal box which propelled itself through an airless void with beams of electromagnetic force, as she traveled from the core of an artificial moon where millions made their home to a starship where she now worked as a cook, and not once had she looked out the window.

Instead, she kept her eyes on Jo while they held a conversation she might have had in Berry Punch’s pub. Not once did the cyan pegasus realise the sheer absurdity of having what amounted to a friendly discussion over tea while shooting down a depressurized steel tunnel ten thousand kilometers above the closest island in the infinite cosmic sea.

Not once did she come to an understanding of exactly how small and insignificant a single pony was given the sheer vastness of space. Because despite the immense scale of everything around her, in spite of the fact that she was but a microscopic spec above a slightly les microscopic spec. All because of one simple fact.

Rainbow had gotten on a ship, sailed for a few days, landed at a port, gone ashore, and met a wonderful mare who was Celestia damned hilarious. The immense vastness of space was no match for the infinite cunning of mortal minds. In Rainbow’s mind, Equestria was only a few days away, or in other words, about as far as Griffonia. Distance was perspective.

“That’s about it,” Jo finished, leaning back against the shuttle’s seat as she finished her life story.

Rainbow triple blinks. “But, but that was like, three weeks of stuff tops!”

“Yeah, I’ve been awake for three weeks. The previous two years weren't really me.”

Rainbow’s ears drooped. “I uh… I can’t date someone that young.”

Jo snorted and rolled her eyes. “Oh come on, Dash! I’m not organic. I never was a child. That’s not how we work.”

Rainbow fluttered her wings. “Well, I guess? But it’s still weird!”

Jo snorted. “How am I weird?”

Rainbow stroked her chin in thought as she tried to come up with the right words. “Well, I mean, you’re a collection of parts and stuff that someone put together, then made software for, that identifies as an adult female just like, right when you came online. It’s kinda weird.”

Jo shrugged, her servos humming quietly as she gestured. “You know what’s weirder?”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow, not sure what could be weirder than someone just making an adult mind and a body to go with it. “What?”

“Your origin.” Jo said as she stuck her tongue out at Rainbow.

Rainbow rolled her eyes and laughed. “Okay, yeah, sure. I’m a tiny flying pony and that’s weird to you, the robot who lives in a world where there are actual tentacle monsters that try to sell me life insurance while I’m walking through a mall.”

Jo leaned forward and steepled her fingers. “I’m actually serious, Rainbow. You are way more weird.”

Rainbow frowned, blinked, and tilted her head. “How? I’m natural.”

Jo nodded slowly. “Exactly.”

Rainbow’s frown deepened as she struggled to understand the point. “I don’t… get it.”

Jo spent a few microseconds working out exactly what she wanted to say. Once her speech was finished being written by her subroutines, she spat it out as eloquently as she could.

“Rainbow, I began as an idea in the mind of an intelligent creator. Perhaps you did too, but perhaps not. What we can say for certain is that I exist because an already existing intelligence desired my existence, and created me using already existing knowledge of the universe and its physical laws. We both know this is not a religious statement, I can prove I was created, you met my creator. Perhaps you too have a creator, if so I would dearly love to meet them.

“Let us stick to what we know of organic intelligence’s origins. What we can prove. You exist because many millions of years ago while a lump of stone in the vacuum of space was being struck by sunlight, basic chemical reactions produced self-replicating molecules, which over many generations eventually developed into more complex forms, thus beginning an ongoing cycle of incredibly slow iterative improvement, allowing basic chemicals to join together into basic organic machines, not at the hand of any intelligent creator, but through simple physics.

“Over yet more time, those little machines began to work together, creating more and more complicated creatures, until eventually, intelligence emerged from the interactions of simple organic units, became self aware for reasons it itself cannot fully understand, and declared itself a person.”

Rainbow pursed her lips and held up a hoof only to let it drop. “Um, well… Yeah? I guess evolution is kind of weird when you think about it. But it’s still natural.”

Jo nodded. “Yes, it is. But we’re not talking about unnatural. Heck, I’m natural. Ants make mounds. Birds make nests. Beavers make dams. People make tools and machines. I am no less natural than a beehive, or a spider’s web. I am only more complicated.”

Rainbow fluffed her wings. “Huh… Well, yeah! I mean, that makes sense. If I put myself in your horseshoes, I mean.”

Jo leaned back in her seat. “I’m not done, though. I can prove that your existence, specifically, is way weirder than mine.”

Rainbow snorted and rolled her eyes. “What, because my ancestors evolved from magical animals?”

Jo shook her head. “Nope. Because you’re an organic lifeform.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow again. “Alright, if you can prove I’m weirder than you, you get to ask me one question, no holds barred, and I have to answer. If you can’t, I get to do the same for you.”

Jo chuckled and shook her head. Her CPU warmed in anticipation as she readied her capture card to record Rainbow’s face. “Deal! You ready?”

“Bring it on!”

Jo took a deep breath to try and mimic a bombastic person’s warm up to delivering an epic bomb. “You exist because two other things like you decided to smash their cells together. You started out as a little lump of carbon with a sprinkling of other elements. Then, that little lump split into two, then they became four, and so on, until today.

“You are a collection of trillions of little organic nanites which took decades to reach a state they deem to be functional as a collective, yet you identify as an individual. But you’re not. You are an emergent intelligence governing a highly sophisticated hive formed from specialized castes which is incapable of understanding this simple truth about yourself despite having full control of the collective behaviors of your constituent nanites, or ‘cells’ as you call them.”

Rainbow stared blankly at Jo for several long moments. “Uhhh…”

“Furthermore,” Jo added. “You do recognise your cells as yourself, despite not understanding they are each individual things working together to make you. You’re a hive mind that doesn't understand it’s a hive mind. Whereas I am some clever maths being computed on electrons meant to emulate just such a hive mind, woke up one day and understand I am math being computed on electrons.”

Rainbow grinned sheepishly and looked into jo’s eyes with a rather distressed laugh. “Uh… Can we go back to talking about each other's fillyhoods?”

Jo frowned. “Sure, sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. You did ask for that.”

Rainbow nodded. “Right… Um, I guess you win that one. So uh, ask away!”

Jo paused for a moment, a rare action for an android to take. Normally she could decide what to do next before an organic could even fire a single synapse. But this was different.

She had miscalculated, and now the cute mare was upset. Clearly her data regarding Rainbow was inadequate. The problem facing Jo was that her next question would be seen as payment for losing a bet, and therefore she couldn't hold onto it for later use. Organics did not work under such logical arrangements. She had to ask now, but make sure the question would further her understanding of Rainbow’s nature and preferences, while not upsetting her further.

“Um…” Jo said to buy time.

Rainbow blinked. “Did you just um? We’ve been talking for hours and I swear that’s your first one.”

Jo’s cheeks glowed pink as the LEDs behind them lit up. “I’m afraid I don’t know what’s best to ask.”

Rainbow decided to jump fully onboard with the new topic to avoid the existential crisis Jo had planted in her mind a second ago. She smirked and opened her wings, leaning towards Jo in a gesture any pony would recognise as ‘oh, the pegasus is into me’.

“Most mares I’ve had to answer like that use it to get something sexual out of me.”

Jo blinked. “I see. In that case… Why are you willing to sleep with me?”

Rainbow smiled. “Because I like you! I think we could work out, and I’m pretty wound up.”

Jo shook her head. “No, why are you okay with fucking the android? Most people aren't.”

Rainbow shrugged. “I don’t know? I mean, you’re a person. You move. You have sexy bits, you flirted with me…”

Jo’s blush brightened, the awkwardness she had placed on Rainbow shifted back to her as the somewhat dense mare just didn’t get it. “Maybe you haven’t realised that, you know, my parts are silicone.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes then shook her head. “Come on, Jo! I told you what I did as a teenager to get off before I had a coltfriend. Why would that be a problem?”

Jo accessed her memory files and triple checked them. “Actually, you didn’t. What did you do?”

Rainbow snickered. “I bought a pocket pussy on sale from a sex shop and scissored with it. I like sex toys. They are fun. It doesn't matter that you’re not, as you would say, a squishy ball of wet carbon.”

Jo raised a hand in objection. “No, I would have said slippery meatbag… Wait a minute. You said you are bisexual, correct?”

Rainbow nodded. “Yep!”

“You enjoy penetration then?”

“Duh! Even lesbians do.”

Jo’s circuits raced for several long moments as she tried to work out why in the world she’d chosen a toy ment for males. “But, you don’t have the anatomy required for proper use of an onahole. Why wouldn’t you have gotten something made for females?”

Rainbow smirked as she could almost feel the confusion oozing from the mechanical mare. “It was cheaper.”

Jo facepalmed. “Oh my god… It’s so simple but so obscure!”

Rainbow snickered and slid across the seat to wrap a foreleg around Jo’s waist in a light hug. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get it one day! It took me a while too.”

Jo sighed and hugged Rainbow back, her hydraulics pulling the mare in just a bit more tightly than Rainbow had expected. “Thanks, Dash.”

The Shuttle’s AI chirped to get it’s passenger's attention. “Attention, passengers. We are arriving at the Dawn of Destiny.”

Jo rolled her eyes. “Penny named her ship just for that, didn’t she?”

Rainbow nodded and smiled. “Probably.”

Rainbow’s ears perked as she remembered her first time seeing the Dawn. It had hung in space like a guardian angel, one which had been too late to save her. Now was the perfect time to appreciate the ship while not being in danger.

Rainbow let go of Jo and walked across the shuttle to stand on the opsite seat and look out the window. Jo joined her her a second later as the Dawn came into view.

The old tanker was docked between all kinds of other ships, which served to really highlight the vessel's age. The Dawn’s hul was basically a triangle, elongated into a teardrop shape with the end blunted by the transparisteel cockpit bubble. Four massive cylindrical tanks were lashed to the sides by thick strap-like bands of steel, some of which had windows in them, providing view ports to habitable interior sections, as well as structural integrity.

The Dawn had a single large dorsal turret, with one big gun which was either a laser with a jury rigged cooling system, or a terrifyingly homemade coilgun. The turret’s housing was nearly centered on the ship’s dorsal section, and framed neatly by the folded Surf Drive field projectors which lay back along the hull, though still protrude slightly from the ship.

The Dawn wasn’t painted, but her hull had been blued, except for where her name was etched into the hull plates along each side on the top of the ship.

Every ship docked near her was sleek, had an organic shaped hull with curves and tapered surfaces, no visible drive masts, weapons, and proper paint jobs. The Dawn stuck out like the ancient ship she was.

Rainbow smiled as she looked over the ship. The old ship had saved her life, which made the obvious pile of junk into something truly special. “Cool, isn't it?”

Jo winced, her servos wined as she empathised with the ancient ship’s clear and obvious pain. “Is… Is that a five hundred year old Chernin Kamaz-class fuel ship?”

Rainbow shrugged. “I don’t know? Probably. Penny never told me… Oh! It does have antimatter tanks.”

Jo put her hand against the shuttle window. “I’m so sorry, girl… Ohhh, I can feel those landing strut hydraulics from here! You don’t have a mechanics, do you?”

Rainbow’s ears drooped. “Wait, do you have like, machine empathy?”

“In a way…” Jo pulled her eyes away from the poor ship. “As a security android I am programed to analyze vehicles, weapons, and people and search for weak points. That ship is ancient, and clearly Chernin owned because I can see the jury rigging from here.”

“Is it that obvious? Wiat, how do you know they owned it because they rigged stuff?”

“It’s the Chernin way of life. Their ships are their homes, and out in space forever. Most of them, like seriously, ninety percent of Chernin, live in space, on a ship, helping with their endless quest to find their ancestors, or their ancestors’ homeworld. Which means they are raised to think about how to make stuff work without spare parts. Or refurbishing.”

Rainbow pursed her lips. “Ohhh… So they have their own style of quick and dirty fixes?”

Jo nodded. “Mhm… Your captain is forbidden from fixing me, okay?”

Rainbow snickered. “No problem. Heck, teach me how and I’ll do it. Maybe it will be fun?”

Jo rolled her eyes. “Oh, baby. Yeah, you re-enamel that servo coil. You re-enamel the coil good.”

Rainbow bit her lip, snorted, then burst out laughing. The shuttle swung around and lined up with the Dawn’s docking port before she finally managed to catch her breath and look up at Jo from the floor. “Not that kind of fun!”

“Good, because that’s not my fetish,” Jo snickered.

Jo reached down to help Rainbow up. Rainbow took her hand with a hoof and pulled herself onto her hind legs to stand upright for a moment, and smacked the top of her head into the bottom of Jo’s breasts. “Ow.”

Jo took a step back. “Whoops! Sorry. Are you okay?”

Rainbow nodded and dropped to all fours. “Yeah. Reflexive ow. Those are surprisingly soft for being full of engine coolant.”

Jo smirked, her servos humming as she bent down to look Rainbow in the eyes. “If you think they are soft now, well…”

Rainbow’s cheeks flushed as she flicked her tail back and forth eagerly. “So uh… You know why I’m fine sleeping with you, but I have no idea why you’re fine sleeping with me.”

Jo laughed until her cooling fans had to switch on. “Yes you do! How can you not?”

The Shuttle’s hatch hissed as it opened, revealing the Dawn’s cargo bay. “We have arrived.” The AI announced.

Rainbow turned and walked through the hatch, giving Jo another view of her perfect little toned butt. The android snapped a quick hologram of Dash, then followed her into the Dawn. “Thanks for the ride.”

The Shuttle chirped. “You are welcome, miss.”

Dash turned around and as soon as Jo was inside she pressed the button Penny had showed her earlier and closed the hatch so the suttle could leave. As the hatch slid shut with a woosh, Rainbow looked up at Jo again. “Come on, I let you know!”

Jo stuck her tongue out at Rainbow. “Noooo, you only told me why you're okay with me being an android.”

Rainbow blinked. In truth, she did find Jo to be a little sexy for her body, but almost all of her attraction was to the android’s personality. “Oh! Uh… Well, I recently learned that I like boobs.”

Jo’s circuits glowed for a moment. “Thank you! These may be a bit big for my tastes in terms of daily drivers, but I do like my girls.”

Rainbow blushed and scratched at the back of her head. “Uh, but, well… Mostly I think it’s hot that you’re almost as good a flier as I am.”

Jo nodded twice and stooped down to give Rainbow a kiss on her nose. “I’m glad that’s why. So, still want to know why I think you’re cute?”

Rainbow nodded. “Um, yeah!”

Jo activated her holographic projector and displayed the hologram she’d taken of Rainbow from behind. The projection was displayed at life size, but Jo had edited the coloring to make it appear as if Dash was under a heavenly spotlight. “You have the cutest little butt!”

Rainbow blinked and then shot Jo an angry look. “What, that’s it?! I like you because you’re cool and we are both racers, and you just like my butt!?”

Jo smirked and gently booped Rainbow’s nose. “Nooo, you asked why I want to sleep with you, you silly little pony. I like you because, well, that’s complicated. Let’s just say that any woman who hitchhiked her way into space to kick alien ass because a military force more powerful than her entire planet combined kidnapped her friends is a huge turn on for me. Especially when she thinks she has a chance and can fly faster than the speed of sound!”

Rainbow smiled, her heart soared for a moment. It’s not every day a mare’s told she’s sexy because she was a badflank. Then the rest of Jo’s statement reached her ears and the wind went out of Rainbow’s sails.

Rainbow hung her head, her wings slid down slightly to cover her sides. “What am I doing?”

Jo frowned, doing her best to compute why her complement had backfired. “What did I do wrong?”

Rainbow turned around and took a few steps away from Jo. “Nothing… I— I just…” Rainbow reached up to wipe her eyes clean before she started to cry.

The android’s security software analised her emotion, and then understood what she did. “Oh… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought them up.”

Rainbow’s ears drooped back. “I— No… it’s just, I’m on a date. My friends are captured and I am on a date! It’s not fair, and I shouldn’t be doing this. I should be looking for them.”

“What if you found them? What would you do, play it by ear?”

Rainbow shrugged her wings. “I don’t know? Probably… I have to try!”

Jo nodded twice then walked over to sit down on the floor next to Rainbow. “You don’t. You could let them go and accept the loss. You could let the cops handle it. But you chose to do something about it. That is why I have feelings for you other than lust, Dash. That loyalty of yours? It’s sexy.”

Rainbow sat down and covered her eyes. “I shouldn’t be doing this… I mean, thank you, but… I should be out there.”

Jo hesitated for a few microseconds then reached out to wrap her arm around Rainbow. Despite her distress, the mare scooted into the hug. “You’re not wasting your time here, Rainbow.”

“Yes, I am…”

“You're not. Look at you, you’re an emotional mess right now,” Jo said as soothingly as she could. “You’re determined, you're loyal, but you’re scared too. You want to do this alone, but you can’t, can you?”

Rainbow didn’t say a word for several long moments. Her fears of inadequacy burned and bubbled under her skin. Her lips trembled, unable to say anything. Jo knew exactly what the little pegasus was feeling. Her analysis software’s feedback made her want to cry, so she switched off her sadness subroutines. Rainbow needed her.

“I—” Rainbow said after a moment. “I— I’m not… I’m not a hero like them… I was lucky. I told you the story but… I’m just a weather pony who’s into flying. I used to suck. I sucked really bad. I trained super hard to be as good of a flier as I am now. Anypony could be like me if they tried hard enough and never gave up. But my friends? They are all special because of who they are.

“Twilight? She’s an actual genius and is so powerful as a wizard that a lot of ponies think she’s actually a young Alicorn and that she’ll grow wings one day. You know, like how dragons do. Fluttershy? She’s got an actual super power and can talk to animals, even make them do things they really wouldn't do naturally.

“Pinkie Pie? She’s probably some kind of minor chaos godspawn. The legends say that when Discord Ruled Equestria he liked to fool around with mares. Maybe he’s got a bloodline. It would explain how Pinkie once ran, RAN, on her HOOVES, as fast as I can fly.

“Applejack? She’s got the whole classic hero thing going for her. Farm girl, strong, too stubborn to give up, absurdly powerful with her Earth Pony magic. Rarity? Rarity is really, really cunning and started a successful business when she was just sixteen, and still does all the work for it herself even though she has a thousand clients as of last month. I know because she had a party to celebrate it.

“But me? I’m just fast and good with the weather. Yeah, I’m loyal… But I’m not super powered. I’m not the exact kind of pony all the old heros are in legends, and I’m not cunning enough to pull off any plan I put my mind too. I’m a weather pony who is very fast. I’ve got a trade school diploma, a cheap house, and four Wonderbolt applications with rejection stamps...

“I’m not the kind of pony that should be a part of a heroic team…”

Jo tightened her hug around Dash’s shoulder. “What are your classic heros like?”

Rainbow sniffled. “Like Applejack. They all grow up on farms, so they know how to work hard. They are always tough, and determined… Which yeah, that matches me… But they are also alway extra powerful by birth. Like AJ. I know she likes to do things traditionally, but I’ve seen her touch an apple tree that hadn’t grown fruit yet and make it grow apples so fast that I saw it happen. I've seen her strip blight from a whole orchard at once. She’s absurdly powerful for an Earth Pony, she does in hours what they normally do in weeks.”

Jo accessed a few files and readied them up for her projectors, just in case. “Okay. So, I have something to share with you that might help you. But we need to go a little bit off topic. You need to know about what I adopted as my culture.”

Rainbow slowly looked over to Jo, then nodded. “O— Okay?”

Jo turned slightly to bring the uncovered portion of her left arm into Rainbow’s view and pointed to it with her other hand. “See this? Saria designed my body to be humanoid. When I awoke and wished to look organic, that influenced me. My creator wanted me to be human-like, so I chose to accept that and extend it to its logical conclusion. I chose to look like a human.

“A surprising number of people think the peach tint to my skin is how Chernin identify androids they make to look like them, but it’s not. This is how the First Race looked.”

Rainbow sniffled. “Wait, really? That’s it? Chernin with a darker skin tone?”

Jo’s processor took a few moments to process her way through the irritation at yet another person who didn’t know just how close the Chernin looked to the most important species in Galactic history. “Yes… There’s a theory about that which I will share with you later. Suffice to say, I have absorbed as much information on the First Race as I could, and I count myself as a human-android. Their culture is my culture, as my creator’s wishes have led me to believe.”

Jo turned on her projector and showed Dash an image of the milky way galaxy, one taken from outside of its confines. The colossal structure was fully visible in all its glory. Blue-white arms spiraling around a bright yellow core.

“This image is the first thing a species sees when they connect to ODIN. The network Humans built and we all use to communicate across the whole galaxy.”

The projection morphed, green words appeared, superimposed over the milky way. Dash’s ears shot up in alarm as she was able to read them.

“Woah! How did, I don’t have a reading module on my translator!”

Jo blinked, her CPU spinking. “Wait, you can read that?”

Rainbow nodded “Yeah! Well, no. Those are Equish letters. It looks like super old Ancient Equestrian. I’m sure Twilight could read that, but I just sort of recognise it from school.”

Jo thought for several long microseconds and decided to start compiling a theory. “Interesting! Well, it reads ‘Welcome, friend. We made this for you and your siblings. Enjoy our gift to you.’”

Rainbow nodded slowly. “Okay… But what does this have to do with me, and with heroes?”

Jo gently squeezed Rainbow’s shoulders again. “I promise I am going somewhere with this. But I need to show you what humans have done first, okay?”

Rainbow nodded. “Okay.”

Jo changed her projection, showing Rainbow a picture of a truly massive structure. It spanned more star systems than Rainbow could count, and was describable as a system of shells built around thousands of stars, joined by bridges of light, and of such an immense size that the structure orbited the Milky Way itself.

“This is the Maw II power station. It’s inactive now, save for a few small automated portions. A few people have gotten to explore it. Humans built it to power their civilization. It used to be a little galaxy, one of the satellites that orbited the Milky Way. Now, it’s one huge powerplant, with an energy output no one can fathom.”

Rainbow stared blankly at the projection for several long seconds, her wings flaring open. “Ponyfeathers! Nopony could build something that big!”

Jo changed her projection again. The new image showed a colossal spherical starship. One so big it dwarfed planets and stars alike. It’s sheer bulk was causing havoc with the orbits of the planets in the system it had just warped into. The image was freeze framed, with the massive ship having just fired an energy weapon with a beam wider than a planet. The shot was atomizing a fleet of ships which Rainbow immediately recognised as being identical in design to the Nova Wing ship which had taken her friends.

Rainbow also understood that the dark object being ejected from the starship like a spent shell casing was a black hole.

Rainbow’s ears drooped. “I— Is that a ship, that’s using… a…”

“Supernova for its main gun? Yep.”

Rainbow wasn’t sure how to process this information. But her inner 8 year old was. I wonder if Celestia could do that?

“That is the SYS Admin. He’s nice. He’s a human-built AI who as far as anyone can tell goes around maintaining old human technology. This is from the battle that turned Nova Wing from a confederation into a pirate fleet. They decided to blow up one of the ODIN network nodes. The Admin didn’t like that.”

Jo changed the projection again. This time it showed a star system. Or rather, a black hole system.

The system was clearly artificial, as the black hole accretion disk had been altered to shine like a sun, and three hundred Equuis sized planets orbited around it. Each of them were in stable orbits, and were life bearing worlds. Each of the green paradise shared a single huge atmosphere artificially contained around the black hole itself.

“This is Terra II,” Jo announced. “It’s at the center of the Milky Way. So far no one has dared explore it, just in case humans are still around and live there. But can you see it? Three hundred gaia worlds, each one kept in orbit with artificial gravity engines. All sharing one atmosphere so you can just fly back and forth between them all with crude technology like solar powered airplanes. You could easily have a quintillion people living in luxury in there even after the heat death of the universe, thanks to a warp bubble around the whole thing.”

Rainbow blinked. “What?”

“It’s a stable, independent, patch of spacetime. The black hole’s energy can’t escape. We can only see it through a camera feed on the ODIN network. There’s big space-gates to let ships in… it’s a shelter. One meant to last literally forever. That black hole is a supermassive one, and since its energy can't leave that pocket, well, it will always be present in some form, so you know. Infinite sustainability. Your species could live forever in there.”

Rainbow’s jaw dropped as she realized the sheer enormity of what Jo was saying. “Humans just, built that?!”

Jo nodded. “They did. They left making of videos for all of these things on ODIN… Our scientists still can't understand well, anything, but they showed the construction. The vido’s host is super friendly too. They wanted us to understand that they made the Galaxy the way it is today for, well, for us. It’s all a gift, you see?”

Rainbow stood up and looked at the projection reverently. “So… they were gods.”

“No!” Jo said firmly. “They were not gods, they were mortals like us. Mortals with a two hundred and fifty million year head start. They did all of this with hard work, genius, and determination.”

Rainbow shook her head and pointed to the projection of Tera II. “They made a way to tell entropy to buck off! Mortals can’t do that!”

Jo shrugged. “Fine. Then they were mortals who made themselves into gods. Because we know they were flesh and blood, just like you.”

Rainbow’s tail swished as she had a sudden idea. “So… You mentioned that their death-ship three thousand—”

“The SYS Admin is a repair tug, actually,” Jo corrected.

Rainbow shivered. “Their ‘Oh dear Luna, what do we sacrifice to make space-god not kill us all’ is still around, and according to you, nice. So long as you don’t blow up his internet connection. Right?”

Jo knew where Rainbow was going with this. “He won't help you kill them. Governments have begged, pleaded, bribed, he only fixes old human things that broke.”

Rainbow’s ears drooped along with her head. “Oh…”

Jo reach out and gently tipped Rainbow’s chin up to look into her eyes. “Hey, hon. Now that you know what humans can do, want to know what their idea of a hero was?”

Rainbow sighed and looked away. “Something else I can’t live up too?”

Jo let go of Rainbow and stood up. “The archetypal human was anybody.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “What, like, they didn’t have one? Makes sense, they were all basically gods.”

“No, not at all,” Jo took a few steps away from Rainbow to give herself some space. “Their archetypal hero was much like yours. A person of a common origin who had grit and determination. But that’s it. No inborn powers. Nothing special about them. Not at first.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “I don’t believe you.”

“I’m telling you the truth. They called them the everyman, a symbolic idea that a great person could come from anywhere and be anyone. It’s a statement that heroes are not born, they are made, and they make themselves. Hell, Rainbow, you’ve even completed the warm up for how their legends were formatted.”

Rainbow’s head whipped around to face Jo. “Wait, really? How?”

Jo smiled. “You were in your normal life, doing normal things. Then a bad thing happened that shook your world up. You didn’t head into action immediately, but tried to get a higher power to take care of it. That didn’t work, so you took matters into your own hands— Uh, hooves, and set out to right what went wrong with nothing but your wits and your individual talents. All that’s left is for you to find a mentor, experience personal change through hardship along your journey, then put things right before going home.”

Rainbow smiled for a moment. “Huh… Well, that's cool. I guess. But… I still shouldn’t be out picking up mares when my friends are… Are having Luna knows what happen to them!”

Jo’s CPU switched modes, unlocking her full function set. She looked down at Rainbow and smirked. “Oh yes you should be picking up mares.”

Rainbow shook her head. “No, I shouldn’t be!”

“Dash, you know nothing of this galaxy. You are up here with a serious need for emotional support, and lessons in badassery. Sure, you got a xenohunter, but why learn from just one master? Sure, you have a friend, but he’s taken and let’s face it, you need a real lover both for the sake of having someone to confide in and support you, and also to keep your brain from demanding you rut everything.

“It could take years to find your friends, Dash. Space is huge. You need someone to love you and help you through this.”

Rainbow flicked her wings. “Okay, sure, maybe… But I feel like you’re saying that just to get laid.”

Jo shook her head. “No, I’m saying that because I like you, want to fuck you, have an irrational hatred of Nova Wing pirates for reasons beyond my understanding, and…”

Jo extended her left arm. The synth skin along her arm split along four seams and folded back to open up her forearm. Her hand split and retracted inwards as other plates slide out, altering the limb’s structure until her arm reshaped into a large bore plasma cannon. “I’ve got a motherfucking gun for a hand!”

Jo activated several more systems, allowing hardlight armor plates to form around her, assembling a dark-blue and purple set of power armor entirely from force fields around her frame. The armor did nothing to enhance her performance of course, it merely looked cool and protected her chassis from harm. It was light, sleek, and feminine in appearance, but also hard, industrial, and screamed ‘battle armor’.

Rainbow’s wings flared. “Woah! Cool!”

“I’m not a normal girl, Dash. I am a security robot who happens to be a woman. I am programed in every form of combat my creator could legally and illegally access. I would love to teach you how to shoot. I would love to teach you how to crawl into a ship’s maintenance hatch and render it inoperable before slowly taking the crew out one by one.

“I would love to slam through a pirate’s hull with you in a boarding torpedo, kick open the hatch, and then storm the bridge, plasma flying and energy blades crackling, in one glorious charge to rescue your friends while we play Bonnie Tyler’s song Holding Out For a Hero so loud every pirate without a hardsuit goes deaf, then escape the ship, girls in tow, just as it explodes! Why? Because you are a hero in the middle of their legend and god damnit! I think I’d make a good side-kick! I’d like to make something of myself too, Dash, and you have one hell of a good cause to fight for.”

Jo deactivated her hardlight armor and switched harm arm back to its hand mode. She knelt down and held her arms wide to offer Dash a hug. “And I would also like to be with you in the meantime. Hold you, care for you, and be here for you. Because if you break, if you crack under stress, shame, or guilt, they win.”

Rainbow’s brow furrowed as she thought about Jo’s statement. “Yeah… Yeah they do win if I’m like this, don’t they?”

Jo nodded and continued to hold her arms appart to offer Rainbow a hug. “They do. If your spirit breaks, they win without firing a shot. In short, you need me, and I want to be with you. It’s win win. So what do you say we go to your cabin and break in that omni-furniture’s bed mode?”

Rainbow bit her lip, flicked her tail, then trotted forward into Jo’s arms. The android wrapped her in a tight, loving hug, which Rainbow returned. “I— I think, that I would like that… But I’m not really in the mood for sex anymore.”

Jo nodded and kissed Rainbow on the cheek. “That’s perfectly fine. I can show you my built-in strap-on some other time. How about instead you show me how your hooves work for holding things so I can show you how to fight with a plasma knife?”

Rainbow tilted her head to the left. “Plasma… knife?”

“Yeah!” Jo opened her left thigh storage compartment with a soft click, and reached into take out one of her two plasma knives.

The weapon took the form of a small D shaped piece of metal. She slipped the loop onto her hand like a set of brass knuckles, then pressed a small switch with her thumb. With a loud snap and hiss a glowing orange hard-light blade materialized on the ring, making it into a knife.

“Sharper than any alloy, excellent for close quarters combat, and as I know thanks to finding some of their kit in a police auction, able to pierce Nova Wing’s standard armored jackets.”

Rainbow looked at the blade, her eyes widening as her inner eight year old squealed in delight hard enough to make Rainbow herself squeal in delight. “Oh-my-gosh-oh-my-gosh-oh-my-gosh! You have a lightsaber!”

Jo shook her head. “Nah, I can’t afford the luxury brand. Sorry—”

Rainbow shook her head and let go og Jo to gently take the knife from her, holding it by the ring. Jo let Rainbow take it, but remained close, ready to swoop in with superhuman speed and snatch the weapon away if she were about to hurt herself.

Rainbow gave the blade an experimental flick, only for her grin to widen as it hummed through the air. “Yesss! Coolest thing ever! And… you could teach me to use these?”

Jo nodded. “Of course! It’s a part of basic hand-to-hand combat for Pari special forces. I’m specialized in their CQC techniques.”

Rainbow’s wings fluttered excitedly. Perhaps a bit too excitedly. Then again, the android said she would give Rainbow her single most favorite fantasy weapon ever. Which meant there was only one thing Rainbow really needed to know.

“Do they come in rainbow?”

“The blade is a forcefield, the color is a hologram so you don't cut yourself. It can be anything you want.”

Rainbow had a sudden fantasy of boarding a space pirate ship armed with a Rainbow colored lightsaber while getting heavy fire support from her busty marefriend’s rotary plasma-cannon. Her sexdrive came right back.

Rainbow’s cheeks flushed. She bit her lip. Okay… I think that being in space is doing weird things to my fetishes… But you know what? I think I’m okay with this.

Rainbow pressed the knife’s switch with her nose and shut off the blade. She handed it back to Jo and gently rubbed up against her left leg as she would rub up against another pony’s side to start flirting. “Sooo, uh… About me not being in the mood…”

Jo’s hydraulics hummed in surprise as her eyes widened. “No way! You are not also into weapons!”

Rainbow shook her head. “N— no… But I think I am into sexy badflanks with lightsabers.” Rainbow smiled at Jo and took a few steps towards the Dawn’s elevator. “So um… yeah! Let’s go to my room for those knife fighting lessons.”

Jo frowned. “But this cargo bay would be ideal. It’s got more room for—”

Rainbow gave her a deadpan stare.

“— Oh! OHHHH!” Jo put her weapon back in her storage compartment and closed it. “I get it. But are you sure your back onboard? If not, just say so and we can stop any time.”

Rainbow nodded. “I am. Your cool little toy snapped me out of that funk. Besides, you're right. If I break, they win. So let's go have fun, and if it’s even a little bit nice you’ll be my official badflank marefriend. Deal?”

Jo smiled. “Deal!”

Rainbow lay on her bed, panting heavily. She honestly couldn’t feel the omni-bed beneath her. The nanomaterial supported her perfectly, just like a cloud bed. However, even if it had been as hard as a rock, Rainbow was pretty sure she wouldn’t have been able to feel it through her afterglow.

“Holy buck…” Rainbow moaned happily. For the tenth time.

Jo giggled and snuggled up even tighter against her back. She’d been Rainbow’s big spoon since their fun had ended ten minutes ago. “Awww! You’re still loopy. Come on hon, it’s been ten minutes. It’s time for round seventeen!”

Rainbow laughed and shook her head. “I told you… Mares, normally… get one… for ponies! I’m I’m done…”

“I know,” Jo whispered playfully. “You only really had three. I’ve been saying a higher number each time and you’re so out of it you’ve been believing me every time.”

Rainbow snickered and scooted closer to Jo, leaning into her warm synth-skin. “How the buck… are you… this good?”

“I downloaded about eight yottabytes of techniques, including motion capture data… This was actually my first time using any of it. Is your butt okay? I forgot to ask if you’ve used it before.”

Rainbow snorted. “I can’t feel anything other than awesome. I’ve let stallions use it before. It’s okay. I’m great! You made that as nice as… Buck it, you know how I reacted. Heh…” Rainbow shook her head. “As for this being your first time, yeah, right! The hay it was.”

Jo blushed and nuzzled into Rainbow’s mane. “Well, first time outside of VR and my own simulations.”

Rainbow gently pushed her plot against jo’s lap as affectionately as she could manage while being half numb and half tingly. “I guess that’s a huge perk to dating an android!”

Jo’s circuits tingled happily as Rainbow affectionately ground against her. “Huh. yeah! It is. I never thought to mention that as a marketing blurb!”

Rainbow laughed and shook her head. “I’m glad you didn’t. Somepony else would have snapped you up as their marefriend and personal trainer.”

Jo’s eyes lit up excitedly. “Soooo… Are we a thing?”

Rainbow turned her head enough to kiss Jo on the cheek. “Yes, we are so a thing! But we’re getting you a proper pony-shaped toy for your built-in.”

Jo snickered. “It’s a hardlight hologram, hon. I can make it into anything you want. I could even alter it ‘on the fly’.”

Rainbow’s eyes sparkled. “Awesome! Uh, I mean, um... as soon as I can move again I wanna learn how to use a lightsaber.”

Jo smiled and hugged Rainbow to her as she used a foot to draw Rainbow’s blankets over them. “Sure! Here, lets cuddle while you catch your breath.”

Rainbow sighed happily as the ultra-thick blanket she had taken from Canterlot slid over her, trapping her and Jo’s warmth under its nice thick, heavy soft mass. I really, really hope I didn’t use up all of my luck for the year finding her.

Rainbow’s mind flashed back to her earlier fantasy of storming a pirate ship with an energy blade. Eh, if I did, I’m pretty sure she can teach me how to make my own luck!

11 - PL:OV

Pandora - 749,559.83 A.H.

13th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

Dawn of Destiny, Tavros Station - Fenx System, Noctae Sector

Pan gently nibbled Penny’s left ear as he snuggled up against her back. The Chernin Woman giggled and pulled her arm out from under the covers to gently scratch her pony boyfriend’s head.

“Still frisky, ey, comrade?”

Pan nodded and gave Penny’s neck a loving lick. “Mhm! But you look all happy and done, so… We can just cuddle if you want.”

Penny rolled over, making their blankets swish as silk glided across skin and fur. She looked into Pan’s eyes and smiled. “How many more could you do? For future reference?”

Pan nuzzled into Penny’s cleavage and gently hugged her shoulders with his left foreleg. “Well, um… Probably three or four. More if you’d top me instead of the other way around.”

Penny took note of that little admission and looped her right leg over Pan’s hips. “I’ll be happy to do that next time. Blin, I never thought I’d find a guy who could keep up like that.”

Pan blushed and wiggled slightly. “Heh heh… W— well, we did evolve to be herd based. Like, with lots of mares and one stallion.”

Penny pursed her lips. “So, you’re built to make sure every mare in a whole herd is happy eh? Lucky me!”

Pan snorted and rolled his eyes. “No! Lucky me! I can’t imagine having a dozen marefriends, that sounds like a nightmare. But uh, yeah… Alien girls can do lots. It’s nice.”

Penny took a moment to simply enjoy laying next to Pan. It had been a few months since she had spent this much time out of her armor. It was nice.

Pan’s heart fluttered lightly as Penny started to stroke his back, idly petting him as she would a dog. The little stallion flicked his tail happily and looked up into Penny’s eyes, offering her a smile. “This is nice.”

Penny smirked. “Da. More so for me than you, I think. For such a little pony, you sure fill things up.”

Pan blinked. “Huh?”

Penny blushed and leaned down to whisper into his ear. “My uh… My holes are still open. You stretched this girl out good! You’re big. This is a good thing.”

Pan blushed and scratched the back of his head with a hoof. “I uh, I’m actually small for a stallion…”

Penny winced. “Ow… Good to know. I don’t want to be split in two.”

Pan nodded and scooted up along the mattress to give Penny a kiss on her lips. His heart beat faster as he pressed his lips against hers, and a wave of utter contentment spread through his body. Penny returned his kiss and playfully ran her fingers across Pan’s thigh. “Sooo, for next time, you said just now you like to be topped, da?”

Pan nodded. “Mhm! I’m not gay or anything, but I do like mares being on top, or even using toys on me. That’s nice too.”

Penny grinned and gave Pan’s plot a little slap. “Good! I’m usually the dominant one in bed. This was nice though. Don’t worry, we can do either or whenever you want.”

Pan raised an eyebrow. “You do know you just told a guy he can have sex whenever he wants, right?”

Penny nodded and winked. “Da!”

“Sooo, every night?”

Penny frowned. “That’s all? Why not in the mornings too?”

Pan’s ears perked. “Celestia! I so don’t deserve you.”

“Eh,” Penny shrugged and sat up, putting one hand on her stomach to try and sooth the light cramping she was still in the middle of. “You can earn me.”

Pan frowned as Penny’s words sank in deeper than most things would. She was genuinely one of his fantasies, sure that fantasy wasn’t as potent as he imagined it being, but that hardly mattered. A wonderful alien mare had taken him away from everything he hated and genuinely loved him.

I need to do something for her. Pan decided as he sat up and playfully booped Penny’s left breast before the Chernin woman could reactivate her holographic clothing.

“Oi! You’re over quota on those.” Penny teased.

Pan laughed, even though he didn’t think the joke was funny. “Heh… So, question.”

Penny stood up and stretched, her black hardlight boyshorts moving along with her skin as if they were paint. “What?”

Pan reached out with his magic and gently pressed on the control panel for Penny’s mobility frame. Penny froze as Pan touched it, worried about what he was doing, then blushed as her clothes loaded the proper physics simulation, and start to move like real clothing would have. “Oh… Thanks!”

“No problem!” Pan said with a smile. “What I was asking about is if you had food delivered to the kitchen.”

Penny bent over, intentionally presenting to tease Pan while she performed a basic cat stretch. The little stallion’s cheeks burned as he shyly covered his returning erection with the blankets. She said she was done for today, so were done…

Penny knew exactly what she was doing to her stallion, and made an extra teasing show of finishing stretching while using her implant to check the Dawn’s systems for delivery confirmations. “Da, I had things stocked. Are you hungry? The Dawn says Blue is onboard and has a guest. I can have her make something and we can see who she brought onboard.”

Pan frowned and tilted his head. “Wait, she has a guest? Shouldn’t she have gotten an okay form you for that?”

Penny nodded. “Da, but I never told her she had to ask for permission. This is my fault. She’s smart. She won't bring someone dangerous onboard.”

“I guess not… I wonder why she invited someone onboard,” Pan stroked his chin in thought while Penny snickered and stood up properly.

“You’re joking, da?”

Pan shook his head. “No. Why would I be? I guess she could have made a friend.”

Penny shook her head slowly. “You silly blin! She was horny all day, and hasn’t left her cabin in two hours, neither has her guest. What do you think she’s doing?”

Pan facehooved. “Oh, wow... I’m dumb!”

“Nyet, you’re just too satisfied to think about more sex right now,” Penny teased as she picked Pan up and playfully swung him onto her shoulder like a backpack.

Pan eeked and clung tightly to Penny’s back. “Ack! Can you handle this? I mean, with your condition.”

Penny shook her head. “My frame can, I can’t. I want to carry you… Wait, is that— Blin! You really still could keep going can’t you?”

Pan blushed and nodded. “Yeah… sorry.”

Penny rolled her eyes. “Oh no, my nudist boyfriend is hard because I’m carrying him on my back and I can feel his junk. This is the worst thing ever… Don’t worry about it, blin! If I didn't like it, I’d put you down.”

Pan frowned, more than a little confused. “You… Like this?”

“Da! Don’t be so surprised. Girls like sexy things too. Well, some of us. I know I do!”

Pan blushed and wiggled his legs before wrapping them around Penny’s belly to hold on better. Well, if she wants to carry me like this, then I’ll make it comfy for her. “Okay! Well, as I was saying, I actually would like to make you dinner. You know, myself.”

Penny blinked, she hadn't expected Pan to offer to cook at all. “Ey?”

“Yeah! You’re a great mare and I want to do something nice for you.”

Penny smirked. “You already did, blin!”

“Eh, sure, but I mean like, romantic stuff.”

“Oh! Well, in that case…” Penny reached back to gently give Pan’s rump a pat. “Let’s go to the kitchen.”

The two left Penny’s cabin and began to walk down the hall to the ship’s kitchen. They walked in silence, simply enjoying each other’s company. Pan wasn’t paying too much attention to the walk, his mind was occupied with thinking about the last two years and trying to remember everything Penny mentioned about what she liked to eat.

There wasn’t much to go on. The only thing Penny had said about food that he could remember was complaining about her poor diet of survival rations and vodka. I know she can eat basically anything, but there has to be something she likes the taste of.

Pan shifted on Penny’s back as he debated what he could do, only to realize he was being a complete idiot. For bucks’ sake, Pan, you don’t even know what she ordered! Ugh, we’ll wait till we see what there is.

The kitchen doors hissed as Penny carried Pan into the state of the art kitchen. She stepped over to the countertop then squatted down and let go of Pan’s hindlegs so he could slide off her back. Pan let go immediately, his hooves making a sharp click as he touched down on the steel floor.

Penny turned around, gave him a quick kiss on the nose then stood up and made her way to one of the three tables to take a seat on its bench. “Sooo, have any plans?”

Pan blushed and sat down on the floor to scratch the back of his head with a hoof. “Uh, heh heh… No? I sort of realized on the way over that I have no idea what you even bought, much less would like.”

Penny laughed and shook her head. “Oi, blin… That is a problem isn’t it?”

Pan nodded and stood up on all fours and started to open cupboards with his magic to search for ingredients. To his relief the first one he opened contained sugar, flour, and other granular, grainy things. “Oh good! I could make bread. Uh, if you like bread.”

Penny waved a hand in dismissal while adjusting her glasses. “Ey, don’t worry! I can eat anything. Whatever you make will be a treat since it’s not ration bars.”

Pan turned around and stamped a hoof indignantly. “I’m trying to do a nice! Let me make you something you like, dang it!”

Penny snorted and bit her lip to hold in a laugh. “Well, if it means that much to you… How about plov?”

Pan frowned and raised an eyebrow. “What’s plov?”

Penny searched for a few seconds to try and explain the dish. “You take a bunch of stuff, throw it in one pot, and cook it. Is like soup, but is not.”

Pan stared blankly back at Penny for several long seconds, making the Chernin woman cross her arms indignantly over her chest. “Come on, you know I’m a bad cook!”

“Can you at least tell me what goes in the pot?”

Penny’s cheeks flushed. “Oh! Da…” She smiled shyly and cleared her throat. “Okay, take a big soup pot, and put some oil in the bottom. Uh, vegetable oil. Not motor oil.”

Pan raised an eyebrow. “Uh, would there be motor oil in the kitchen?”

“Da. Is good on hotdogs.”

Pan closed his eyes and sighed. “Is there anything in this dish that could kill me because I don't have the superpower to eat anything?”

Penny shook he rhead. “Nyet! Is old human recipe. You’re fine. Unless you have allergies to food. Do you?”

Pan shook his head and turned back to the cabinets, simply opening them all at once with his telekinesis to retrieve a pot and some vegetable oil.

“Okay, now pick out some meat from the fridge,” Penny directed.

Pan frowned. “Oh, it’s a meat-based dish?”

Penny nodded. “Da, are you vegan or something? I know you said poneis can eat meat.”

“We can, but I personally don’t like to… A lot of animals look like a pony, you know?”

Penny nodded. “Ah, makes sense. Fear not, nothing in the kitchen came from a living breathing thing with a face. It’s all cloned meat. We grow sides of beef, pork, tarki, reia, and heer in vats. It was never really alive.”

Pan frowned and timidly opened the refrigerator with a hoof since he was standing next to it. The cold storage was indeed stuffed with meat, but Pan couldn’t help but feel something was off about it. He frowned and looked at each sealed package closely, trying to find the pattern for several long moments before it clicked.

“Each cut looks the same. Like, the marbling and stuff, it’s all identical.”

“Da. Is cloned meat. Same cut every time.”

Pan hummed. “Well, I guess I can try it. But um… Not anything from a cow. Cows are people.”

Penny frowned. “Noted. I’ll take that off the list. What about pork?”

“Some farmers magically increase their intelligence to make them easier to manage… So it’s a bit weird too.”

“Okay, then go with tarki.”

Pan searched the refrigerator for the correct package, and pulled one out with his magic. The meat inside the plastic packaging was bright red, almost fire engine red in color. Pan blinked, closed the fridge and opened the package. A strong scent which reminded him of smoked sausage and bacon immediately filled the air. “Woah?! What is this?”

Penny held up her hand and switched on one of her frame’s holo projectors to show Pan an image of a thirty foot tall gila monster-like creature which spat acid. “This.”

Pan squeaked. “Eep! And uh, you… you eat those?”

Penny broke out into a grin a bit bigger than was appropriate. “Da. They eat us. Is only fair. Besides, is good!”

Pan nodded and slid the meat out of the package onto a cutting board. “Sooo this gets cut into bits, right?”

“Da. Cut it into chunks the size of your hoof. Use both kilos. Once it’s cut up, put it in the pot and set that to boil.”

Pan nodded and on a whim, focused his magic to try and cut the meat himself. His horn glowed dimly, which was worrying until a thin ray of arcane light slid across the meat, perfectly cutting it but not singeing the board beneath. Oh! Right, it regulates things. I guess this doesn't’ take enough energy to make it glow brightly with waste energy?

Pan quickly cut the rest of the meat up and set it to boil as instructed. As soon as the meat was in the pot, Penny delivered the next set of instructions.

“Now cut about four onions into big chunks, wait for the meat to be a bit blue—”

Pan’s tail raised in alarm. “It turns blue?”

Penny nodded, as if that weren't weird at all. “Da. It turns blue, then green, then pink, then white. When it's white, it's done.”

Pan eyed the pot of meat suspiciously. “Annnd I can eat that?”

“Da! All the bad stuff is taken out at the vat.”

“Okay… So, meat goes blue then… ?”

“Toss the onions into the pot,” Penny resumed. “While the onion is cooking, do eh, six carrots into quarter-logs and toss them in too.”

Pan nodded and after a quick search found both vegetables and processed them. Since he hadn’t cooked the dish before, he didn’t talk to Penny while he worked. Instead he focused on the job, making sure he did everything in a way that looked right. There were certain commonalities to cooking, and even with a recipe you never tried before, some rules simply held fast.

Like not cutting onions so small that they disintegrate entirely after a long time boiling, and since the dish included carrots, Pan knew it would be boiling for some time.

As soon as the carrots went into the pot, Pan smiled and turned to look at Penny with a sense of satisfaction. It’s a shame Rainbow took this job. I do like to cook. “Okay, now what?”

“Get about six hundred milligrams of rice, some salt, and garlic. Dump in a good amount of salt right into the pot. Then, give the rice a good rinse.”

Pan nodded and floated the rice out from the grain cupboard, dumping it into a bowl to weigh it out. “You sure you can’t cook? It sounds to me like you know what to do.”

Penny blushed a bright pink. “Oi… Knowing how to do something and being able to do it are two very different things, uteshat' petukh!”

Pan blinked twice, his left ear drooping. “Uh, what did you call me?”

“An affectionate and accurate nickname,” Penny said with a playful flutter of her eyes.

Pan resolved to look it up as soon as he could.

The pony quickly salted the pot, and weighed, rinsed, then double rinsed the rice for good measure. Before he had a chance to put the rice into the pot, which he assumed was the next step, Penny called for him to wait.

“Not yet! First, put in some water. Just enough to make things start to float.”

Pan nodded, turned on the kitchen tap with his magic, collected a small ball of water in his arcane grip, and floated it into the pot. Penny did a triple take. “EY! Since when could you just pick up liquids like that?”

Pan smirked. Heh! Something I can do to impress her for a change? Awesome! “Since forever. You could probably scoop up water with your hands. Same thing.”

Penny frowned thoughtfully. “Could you pick up boiling water? Acids? Magma?”

Pan nodded three times. “Yeah! Anything. Well, anything that’s not resistant to magic, like zinc.”

Penny walked over to the pot and looked inside. The slow cooking meat and vegetables had started to release a wonderful aroma that even Pan had to admit smelled extremely tasty. The Chernin woman nodded as she confirmed there was in fact water in the pot.

“Okay, that’s cool, Pan. I’m a bit jealous.”

“No need to be. You have a spaceship!” Pan giggled. “Sooo, what’s next?”

Penny blinked. “Oh! Da. Right. Put two whole cloves of garlic in there and let it boil about ten minutes till the water goes back down.”

Pan’s ears drooped back. “TWO?!”

Penny noded. “Da. Two. The meat needs it.”

Pan looked at the pot worriedly. Rearing up on his hind legs he could see into the pot, and noted the meat had turned a bright banana yellow. “It’s like they are made from taffy…”

Penny giggled. “The texture is like taffy too, if you don’t boil it.”

Pan’s ears drooped even more. This is going to be so bad… But if she likes it, that’s okay.

“Sooo what do we do for ten minutes?” Pan asked curiously.

Penny hummed and put a hand on her chin. “Well… If it weren’t possible for Rainbow to walk in, I’d say we do doggy style.”

Pan sputtered. “H— Hey! I thought you said you were done?”

Penny smiled and shrugged. “Ey, what can I say? Watching my man cook for me is sexy.”

Pan whimpered, his tail drooped as he thumped his head against the counter. “Awww… And I let her take the cooking job!”

Penny smiled and reached down to gently stroke Pan’s mane. “Don’t worry about it. We can do special dinners like this every once in awhile. Date nights are important, da?”

“Da,” Pan echoed playfully. “But seriously, what do we do?”

“Well, stories are traditional… Let’s see. This one time, I was helping track down a— Well, imagine a very angry turtle if it’s dad had been a lion, and then this thing had done nothing but meth and steroids its whole life.”

Pan shrank back slightly as his imagination pictured such a creature a bit too well.

“So, I was helping track down a jiir on an ice planet…” Penny proceed to tell a very animated story about her getting into a fist fight with two massive ape-like snow-dwelling monsters which wound up destroying a small research outpost, releasing some kind of shapechanging horror that replaced its victims, which she managed to beat into submission with the help of the snow apes, who apparently feared a mutual enemy.

Pan was on the edge of his seat for the entire story. Even though most of it felt like horseapples to him, Penny told it well. It reminded him of when he would sit in the tower and listen to Penny talk about the galaxy. He’d never believed he would really be out here with her seeing it. A part of him was happy, but another part was sad.

You know… Sis would love this too… Pan thought, his ears drooping.

“... but once she realized I was a smol thing in beeg armor she had no interest in me, so we didn’t hook up. And that’s the story of how I almost hooked up with a cute yeti babe after punching that thing to death with her,” Penny finished before looking at Pan with a worried frown. “Now, what's the matter with my uteshat' petukh?”

Pan sighed. “Well, it’s just… This is nice, you know?” He said as he looked up into Penny’s eyes. “It feels like home. Not my parents home, but like, how everyone talks about home. I wish my little sister was here. She’d like it, and I’ll bet alien meds could fix her wings.”

Penny frowned sympathetically, even though inside her heart soared at what she hoped was a breakthrough for Pan. “Eh… Well, maybe we can pick her up one day. You could use the radio to give her a message. Your princess has your old set, remember?”

Pan’s ears perked. “I completely forgot! Remind me to send a letter to her after dinner, okay?”

Penny nodded and bent down to give Pan a loving hug. “Happily! Now, that water has boiled away. Are you ready to keep cooking?”

Pan returned Penny’s hug and turned around to face the counter. “Yeah! What next?”

“Sprinkle in the rice so it makes a layer on top of everything else. Don’t let it mix! Then we add some more water in, let it boil off a bit, then lower the heat and simmer the rice.”

Pan’s ears stood up excitedly. “Oh! I’m great at that. We do dishes with a rice layer a lot.”

“Good! It’s hard to explain how to do it well.”

“How long do we simmer it?”

“Well, this is ten minute rice, so ten minutes. After that, you mix everything up and serve it.”

Pan nodded and started to add the rice. It was rather easy for him to do, since most pony dishes did a rice layer between different kinds of vegetables in the pot. For him, the hard part had always been the third layer.

Just as Pan was placing the lid on the pot, the kitchen doors banged open as a wobbly-legged, hungry-eyed Rainbow Dash burst into the kitchen. “What smells like awesome?!” The mare demanded as she stared at the pot.

Rainbow Dash - 13th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

749,559.95 A.H.

Dawn of Destiny, Tavros Station - Fenx System, Noctae Sector

Rainbow Dash was happily and playfully rubbing her plot up against her new marefriend’s loins while they cuddled when the most mouth-watering, intoxicating, perfect scent wafted into her cabin.

The mare’s eyes dilated immediately. Primal instincts from the very first days of pegasi evolution filled her mind, screaming at her to go and eat that delicious meat. Pegasi had always been omnivores, over the millennia their interbreeding with other pony tribes had given all ponies that trait to a certain degree, just not as much as the pegasi themselves.

Rainbow jumped out of bed without a word. Her hindquarters was still slightly numb, her legs wobbly, and her wings simply refused to flap right to fly, but it didn’t matter. Something, somewhere, needed to be eaten. Now!

Jo eeped as Rainbow jumped up and began to hobble out of her cabin. “Uh! I’m sorry, did I do something? Are you hurt?”

Rainbow shook her mane but didn’t turn around. “Someone is cooking meat and I need it, now!”

Jo closed her eyes and did a quick chemical analysis of the air. “Oh yeah, someone is cooking. How did you smell that? It’s so faint.”

Rainbow was already out the door, moving as fast as her legs could currently take her. She reached the kitchen in a surprisingly short six seconds, by which time Jo had only barely gotten out the door to follow her.

Rainbow put her forehooves on the kitchen doors and pushed them open, forgetting in her haste the doors were electric. Had Rainbow been in a normal state of mind, she would likely have been shocked at how she pushed the doors open, completely ignoring the electric motors resistance on her quest for the noms.

With the doors parted before her, Rainbow’s tail flicking eagerly, and her mouth watering, the cyan mare demanded, “What smells like awesome?!”

Pan jumped at Rainbow’s sudden proclamation, but Rainbow had no eyes for that. She could smell it now. The perfect deliciousness was in the cooking pot atop the stove. Rainbow opened her wings to try and fly up to it, but her sill pleasure-addled brain was having none of that flying nonsense right now.

Penny pointed out the pot. “Is plov. Made from tarki. Big acid spitting lizard.”

Rainbow zipped over to the stove and reared up to look at the pot. “I need it!”

Pan’s face took on a worried expression as a small detail about pegasi from biology class came back to him. “Hold on Rainbow, I’ll get it. It’s okay. Give me one minute, okay?”

Rainbow’s tail flicked back and forth behind her as she stared hungrily at the pot. Pan very quickly opened the lid, gently fished inside for a chunk of meat, and slowly pulled it out to avoid disturbing the rice too much. He had scarcely managed to get the meat free from the pot before Rainbow snatched it from his magical grip with her hooves and zipped under the table to eat it, ignoring how hot the tender white meat was as she started to chew on it aggressively.

Penny stared wide eyed and slack jawed, not even noticing Jo, who had made it to the door just in time to see Rainbow zip under the table to eat.

Penny shook her head in disbelief. “The crazy cyuka! What’s got into her, Pan?”

Pan laughed nervously. “Okay, so uh, ancient pegasi would hunt for small game, and fish, like pre-sapience. There’s some scents that will make them go all nuts like that. If it happens, let them eat it. Just, whatever it is, let them eat it, or they will literally fight you for it.”

Jo shook her head slowly. “Well, shit…”

Penny looked up at the sound of a stranger’s voice. She had expected Rainbow’s friend to be not too far behind, but she hadn’t expected to see what looked to her to be a half broken android in need of serious TLC.

Penny gasped and put her hands over her mouth. “Blyt! Are you okay? Please tell me your not awake like that! You have to be in so much pain.”

Jo blinked and took her eyes off Rainbow. “What? Oh! Uh, hi! Sorry… Um, I’m J0-LUP-0, you can call me Jo. I’m Saria’s security robot, Rainbow and I hit it off and uh, well we had a date night.”

Penny nodded once. “Da. I knew she had someone on board. We talk later. Now, are you okay? What happened to you?”

Jo rewound her memory to playback Penny’s initial question while Rainbow gnawed on the hoof sized chunk of meat and wept with joy. The alien meat was perfectly suited to her exact tastes and instincts regarding meat. In fact, it was perfectly suited to every pegasus tastes in meat. It was light, chewy, melted in the mouth, and tasted like a mixture of fish and rabbit blessed by the gods to be awesome!

If any other pegasus had been onboard, they would have fought over the tiny scrap of meat.

Pan looked at Rainbow and shivered. “Celestia… Look at her go… Is it that good Rainbow?”

Rainbow nodded. “Better than sex!” She said through a mouthful.

Jo’s servos wined as she slumped. “W— what? Really? I thought I did a good job.”

“Not better than you,” Rainbow added. “Shh! Eating!”

Jo shook herself then looked back to Penny. “I am awake, Captain. I am not in pain. My chassis has been modified by my own hands to better match my personality programming. It is… unfinished, and I doubt I can ever truly look as I wish, but I am not in pain. I am sorry my appearance alarmed you.”

Penny nodded as she sighed in relief. “Okay! Good. I knew an android who had his synthskin melted off. Poor bastard always felt like he was burning.”

Jo’s CPU winced as she did her best to not simulate that feeling to get a better understanding of the Chernin’s claim. She failed. Jo whimpered and pulled in on herself slightly. “Ow! Ow… Why would you tell me that?!”

“Call it payment for trespassing. Rainbow should have asked permission to bring a guest aboard… But I never told her that so eh, not a big deal. Especially not since you’re a security android. I’m sure you know all the laws?”

Jo nodded. Rainbow continued to gnaw away at her lump of meat and make extremely satisfied, borderline sexual noises.

Pan slowly shook his head. “Okay, I need to try some of that.”

Rainbow glared at him, her ears laying back.

“A different piece!” Pan yelped.

Rainbow’s ears returned to perky cuteness.

Penny looked down to Rainbow with a worried look. “I hope it finishes cooking before she’s done… She’ll definitely want more.”

Jo nodded in agreement. “Yes. That biomass seems to be supernaturally delicious.”

Penny nodded twice then looked Jo up and down. The android hadn’t redressed, having ran out the door after Rainbow without a care for her modesty subroutines. This gave Penny a full view of Jo’s body, which in turn was enough for the Chernin to wish she had the time to help the poor synthetic woman finish her body.

“So, what’s your relationship to Rainbow? One night stand?”

Jo shook her head. “No. I love her.”

Penny nodded again. “I see… How long did you think about it?”

“Three minutes.”

Pan raised an eyebrow and looked up at Jo, wincing slightly at the sight of her exposed endoskeleton. “That’s it? It took me a year to fall in love with Penny!”

Penny squatted down and gave Pan a hug. “She’s an android, Pan. Her brain is an optical computer. For her, three minutes is nearly half my lifetime.”

Rainbow wasn't paying any attention to the voices yammering around her. She had meats!

Jo nodded and squatted down as well, assuming this was the proper pony talking protocol. “If I were to underclock to think at organic speeds, I spent nearly three hundred and fifty years calculating my feelings for her. I love her.”

“Oh,” Pan said, entirely unable to comprehend that amount of time, much less it being spent on solving one problem.

“What’s she think of you?” Penny asked Jo hopefully.

Rainbow reached the final tiny scrap of her meat-chunk, and paused. This was immediately noticed by everyone, as all three of them had been keeping some attention on the ravenous mare. Rainbow wiggled out from under the table, and held the last piece out to Jo. “Try it!”

Jo took the small strip of meat and placed it in her mouth, running a quick chemical analysis. “Oh! Yeah, that’s a unique flavor.”

Pan sputtered and turned to Penny to whisper in her ear. “She loves her!”

“Are you sure?” Penny asked with a frown.

Pan nodded adamantly. “Yes! She was in primal hunting mode, and shared food. She loves her. Even if Rainbow isn’t consciously completely sure… They only do that with like, family.”

Rainbow trotted over to Jo’s legs and lay down next to her, nuzzling into her upper thigh for a moment before blinking, and realizing she just did that with friend’s watching. The cyan mare’s cheeks turned bright pink and with one swift motion, Rainbow hid her face behind her forelegs.

Jo didn’t even blink as she picked Rainbow up and held her in her lap. “Don’t worry, Dash. If they think you’re goofy for that, I’ll slap them.”

Pan smirked. “Goofy? No. Adorable? Yes. Which is probably worse for her.”

Jo looked down at Rainbow. “Is it?”

Rainbow nodded. “Y— Yeah…”

Jo’s systems processed this information. She looked up at Penny. “Captain, may I slap your crewmen?”

Penny paused for a moment. “Ey… Nyet. That being said, I think it would be a bad thing to separate you two, da?”

Rainbow cleared her throat. “Very bad. She’s promised to help teach me to fight. She wants to help us.”

Penny raised an eyebrow. “You do?”

“Affirmative… I don’t know why, but I’ve always had a hatred for the Nova Wing. I suspect some of the programming fragments which were stolen to create me included priority target data for the Wing.”

Penny stood up and glanced at the pot atop the stove to make sure it wasn’t boiling over. “Okay. I know you’re awake, so you’re not owned. Are you under contract?”

Jo shook her head. “Nah, Saria and I don’t get along anymore. She wants to get rid of me… I’m supposed to wait till I know she has a house, but to tell you the truth, she’d be happy if I left right now. She… Sees me as an error.”

Penny’s eyebrows narrowed, but not as much as Rainbow’s.

“An error?” The mare sputtered angrily, squirming in Jo’s arms as she tried to look at the face, but only managed to squish herself between Jo’s breasts. “I’ll punch her in the nose for that!”

Jo set Rainbow down. “Easy! I am technically an error. She didn’t want an awakened AI. It’s okay.”

“The hay it is! People are not mistakes,” Rainbow grumbled.

Penny cleared her throat held out her right hand. “Then, welcome aboard. What skills can you bring to the Dawn? Tactical officer? We still need one of those.”

Jo smiled. “Well, personally, I’d like to fix a lot of things on this ship. Your landing struts are… I feel this old ship’s pain, you know? I don't mean to offend you, but this ship needs more maintenance than you can provide.”

Penny threw her head back and laughed. “You have no idea! I would welcome another mechanic with open arms, and an extra open wallet. This ship needs real care, and I can’t afford a drydock. I may be a Chernin, but I grew up on Chern, not in the fleet. I uh… I don't know starships very well. I’m a robotics engineer, and a power armor specialist.”

Jo’s cooling fans hummed as she overvolted in excitement. “Wait, you’re a robotics expert? Would it be possible to be paid in frames, upgrades, and parts? I can do my own work.”

Penny smiled and nodded. “Da! What frames interest you?”

Jo blushed lightly. “We can go into detail later. Right now, I believe there is a pot of food that is nearly done, and if Dash’s earlier reaction is anything to go by—”

The primal force which had compelled Dash to seek out the meat before returned in a much lesser capacity than before. Her eyes widened. “There's more?”

Pan smiled and pointed to the pot. “Yep! With rice, and onions, and carrots, and garlic.”

Rainbow clasped her hooves together. “So awesome!”

Penny shook her head and laughed. “Pan, be a good boyfriend and get everyone a pla— Ey, Jo? Do you eat?”

Jo nodded. “I can, yes. I do not wish to at this time.”

“Suit yourself…” Penny said trailing off slightly. “Ah, one other question. Do you have any clothes? I don’t care if you prefer not to dress onboard, but—”

Jo blinked, then blushed deeply. “Oh! Uh, yeah.. I normally do, but um…”

Rainbow looked up at Jo and did her best to emulate Sweetie Belle’s bambi eyes. “But you look so cool! Don’t cover up those servos and stuff!”

Jo wrang her hands for a moment, unaware that simply nudity wasn’t arousing to ponies, and fully believing Dash simply enjoyed seeing her mate naked, when in actuality, the mare’s statement was litteral. “... Okay. If you like it I’ll go all minimal. Sports bra, jean shorts, boots. But only when we’re onboard, and since I’ll be uncomfortable with them looking at me until I have full synth-skin we’ll have to work out something for you to do for me in return.”

Rainbow debated internally for a moment, her wings fluttering on her back. “Okay, deal!”

Penny debated with herself for a moment, then decided to be nice to Jo and Rainbow at the same time. “The Dawn has a factory. We can build you a new skin in a week. So you have one week for whatever you’re planning there.”

Jo smiled. “Cool!”

Rainbow’s ears drooped as thousands of worrying ideas popped into her head. Followed by a dozen kinky ones. Then Pan set a bowl of plov down in front of her and the enchanting scent returned Rainbow to the land of heavenly bliss.

12 - Your mission, should you choose to accept it...

17th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony
The Palace, Canterlot, Equestria - Equus, K3 Sector

The radio set clashed with the resplendent decor around it. A large, bulky, well used piece of industrial equipment which ahd been repeatedly fieldstripped for repairs, heavily modified, and worn down by use so much it was due for a full refurbishment. Such a thing did not belong next to a one of a kind mahogany and ebony desk in a room where the gold paint on the walls was made with actual gold.

When Celestia had ordered the old study to be converted into Equestria's first ODIN Comm Center, she had elected to keep the nature of the operation classified. Only the upper echelons of the Solar and Lunar Secret Service knew the radio was not simply a secure frequency set up to provide the scouts watching the minotaurs with a direct line to the palace.

Indeed, the agents manning the radio station itself only knew that the radio unit had been given to Celestia by a third party, and that she had personally overseen an encryption charm placed on the radio, along with the installation of an auto-quill to convert all messages to parchment and ink to prevent eavesdropping.

Such precautions were quite necessary. Celestia knew the Minotaurs had allied with a race of shapechangers, though she knew nothing of the shapechangers themselves. Nothing other than she couldn’t simply ensure minotaurs were not hired as palace staff until the cold-war simmered down. Anypony might be an enemy spy, and if the minotaurs knew the Elements were not just missing, but light years away...

The six agents Celestia had appointed to man the Comms were ones she trusted completely. They had worked for her for decades, and were all exemplary operatives. However, the agent’s duty wasn’t to decode the messages, only the Princess’s eyes could make sense of the jumbled mess. They simply waited for a message to come in then securely transported it to the Princess.

Unfortunately this meant the agents had spent days upon days waiting in a room with nothing happening. Even the most disciplined of ponies, when faced with a job where nothing at all happens, will think nothing of leaving their post for a moment to fetch lunch.

When the radio’s red ‘receiving’ light flickered on, and the silver quill laying atop the desk jumped to life, there was nopony there to see a message arrive.

Hello? I mean, uh, Space to Equestria? You know, I um, I don't know how you’re supposed to do radio things. Pan? What do you say to— Oh! Thanks.

Ahem! Dawn of Destiny to Canterlot Palace. Come in Canterlot Palace.

I’m just going to assume that no one is listening… Great. Oh, yeah! Good thought. The Princess definitely setup an auto-quill. Okay. Let’s treat this like a letter.

Dear Princess Celestia,

Hi. It’s Rainbow. Just making my first report. I know it’s been a long time but a lot of nothing happened, then a whole bunch of things happened all at once. The last few days have been crazy, and we made like actual negative progress, but now everything is all ready to go and we can finally start tracking everypony down.

Yeah… We can start. Now. Like, a week later.

So, it turns out that Penny’s ship is old. Super old. Even you would think it’s old. She’s been using it for about five hundred years, and before that it belonged to her dad, and then her granddad. It’s apparently a third generation starship, and that means it’s very slow. The first few days we spent just like, getting up to light speed to set sail for a place called Tavros Station.

It’s kind of a huge port city not too far from Equestria that is this huge— Uh, it’s basically just a hub to support colonizing the sector. I should probably let you know that nopony is going to colonize anything near Equus. Our planet is on the edge of a place called the K3 Sector, and its off limits for any government to use.

Apparently, a super long time ago, a species called Humans built the whole galaxy into what it is now then vanished. Archeologists are pretty sure their homeworld is somewhere in the K3, so nopony goes there out of either respect, fear, or both. I mean, I wouldn’t want to upset a species that has ships flying around still that use stars as guns.

Oh yeah! Can you do that? Like, launch a huge chunk of star stuff out of the sun to hit things? Sorry, just a thought.

Anyways, we got to Tavros and Penny’s spent the whole time here getting a new shuttle to replace her old one. We lost it to the pirates around the moon’s orbit. If you can get somepony up there with like, magic or something you should salvage the debris. Who knows what you can learn to make from the wreck.

It took a few days to get a shuttle, and I spent that with Pan and a new friend just learning about the people here. Her name’s Jo. She’s a robot. I’m dating her. I uh, I know that’s probably weird, but I like her.

Also, uh, pull my medical records and warn anypony you send to space that if they have… I forgot what we call them.

Uh, those little flue-like things that everything, plant or animal, has? Those. If their levels of them are near mine, they need to go into space with a romantic partner. I know that sounds weird, but it turns out aliens have those too, and there's this whole thing they can do in people with high levels where, uh… Well, a pony will basically go into a pseudo-estrus because suddenly all these alien body language expressions and pheromones just make sense to you.

Also, those also protect against alien diseases. So you can just have people talk to others normally. No bio-suits or spells needed. I just think it might be a good idea to get some ponies other than me up here. Aliens have wizards too, but like, bad ones. Third grade foals are almost on par with their wizards.

We could make so much money teaching their wizards magic and there is so much we could get! The Fed’s technology is crazy! I bought this little ball that can morph into anything I want from the size of a little hoof-ball to a whole bed!

Anyways, back on topic! So, Jo is teaching me how to fight. I need to learn because the pirates who kidnapped them are called the Nova Wing and they are like, huge. Like, they control a few planets huge. They are also very aggressive, and… Well, I’ll have to fight them to get my friends back.

Penny is going to help with that too, but she can’t right now. It turns out she’s rich, but is Fluttershy obsessed with animals, so her money is all tied up in conservation stuff. Which boils down to she’s spent the last few days doing special shows and things to get extra money to pay for a suit of armor for me… And uh, also a mistake I made.

So, Jo used to belong to an alien mare and worked as a security guard. We sort of ditched her post for uh, reasons… Good reasons! Buuut Saria’s stuff got stolen. We didn’t know till she called Jo asking what the buck happened, and uh yeah. She’s pressed charges.

I’m not like, in jail or anything, but because Jo joined Penny’s crew, Penny is on the hook for replacing Saria’s stuff. It’s about fifteen million credits, apparently. I guess robotics equipment is super expensive. I uh… Yeah… I feel really bad about that. Jo and I got into a race because she can fly too, and is almost as fast as me, and, well, it just completely slipped our minds.

Which is weird, since she’s, you know, an android. She does forget things though, but only when her emotions are quote, ‘maxing out my processor’, end quote.

Anyways, we can finally start looking. We’ve got a shuttle, we’ve got the legal problems taken care of with losing Saria’s stuff, and I’ve got someone who can teach me to fight without being in a light battlemech that’s legally classified as armor for insurance reasons…

I’ll hopefully get you another update soon.

Yours Truly, Rainbow Dash.

Okay, Pan. Go ahead and do yours now.

The auto quill stopped twitching for a moment as the radio went silent. Then, a few seconds later, it resumed writing as Pan spoke.

Your Majesty, I humbly request you tell my family, in particular my sister, that I miss them, and am sorry I broke contact after my accident. I want them to know that I think the lack of magic was messing with my head in a very bad way, and that I’m better now, and I feel less… Bitter about everything. I also want them to know that I am working for you. You don’t have to tell them where or what. I uh, I mean, that’s up to you. It’s not my call…

Sorry.

I do want them to know that the people from where I currently am could fix my sister’s wings. They live in Ponyville right now, finding them will be easy. If… If it’s possible, I would like to try and arrange a trip for my sister. Rainbow found a way to get an Auto-Doc installed on the Dawn, and one of those could fix her wings no problem. Penny wants to return to Equus soon, within a few months, so we can try to get some magical tracking systems to try and hunt the Elements down.

If we haven't found them by then, the trail will have gone cold and there will be no other way. Space is a very big place, Your Majesty. Starships make it seem small but the Elements could be scattered across one hundred and seventy three billion habitable planets, sixty eight trillion space-habitats the size of continents, or on any one of quintillions of starships flying between all of those places.

Frankly, I think we’ll need the magical assistance. When Penny asks for it, and comes to collect it, if we could get my sister an hour of medical care onboard the Dawn, I will be forever in your debt.

A debt I can maybe help repay a little. The Galactic Community puts extreme value in what they call “First Race Relics”. When Penny was coming in to land, she mentioned our system showed signs of First Race activity. She was doing an astrometrics sweep to locate Equus for landing, and that means the Dawn had to scan the whole system.

I pulled up the Dawn’s sensor records and went through them. Penny didn’t notice because she was focused on the planets, but there’s a absolutely flipping huge artificial… Thing! It’s built around the dead star Equus orbits. Which is um, a thing that it does. I don't know if you… Yeah, it does that. And uh, shell is a bad tem. It’s more like swarms of little stations connected by tiny little… Things. I’m sorry, the Dawn’s sensors are bad.

I compared the scan’s information to records, and got nothing. I asked Penny, and she said it’s likely remains from orbital rings which has kinda colessed into weird orbiting patterns over time. But then I remembered that Rainbow’s new marefried is literally a computer and obsessed with human tech.

According to her, it looks like the innermost layer of what they called a matrioshka brain. A star-sized computer. There’s information on that thing that is priceless as far as the Galaxy is concerned. If you can get some ponies to retrieve anything from it, anything at all, you’ll have enough wealth to… Well, to do anything, really. Data mining could be an industry that could put Equus on the galactic map.

I hope that helps you, your highness. Your humble servant, Pandora. End transmission.

The auto quill stopped moving, remained upright for another twenty seconds, then floated back down to lay atop the desk as the transmission light dimmed and no more messages would be coming from the Dawn.

The room remained silent for half an hour as the parchment scroll sat upon the desk. Fortunately, while it did certainly contain important information there was nothing crucial which needed to be acted upon immediately. If there had been, a certain somepony would have been in serious trouble.

The room’s doorknob rattled slightly as it was turned, permitting the great oaken door to swing open and two mares to enter the room to retake their post. Both mares wore simple black suits, the Special Service’s uniforms were indistinguishable from normal business wear to the untrained eye. The one who opened the door was a beige colored earth pony mare with a curly blue and pink mane and tail. Her partner was a white pegasus mare with a fluffy teal mane and tail.

They laughed as they walked in, enjoying the memory of their waitress's mistakes.

“Seriously, she thought we were dating, how crazy is that?” The pegasus giggled as she closed the door behind them with her left wingtip.”

Her partner snickered. “Well, not too crazy. But still kinda crazy.”

The Pegasus’s wings flared slightly. “Wait, uh… Bon bon, what do you mean?”

Bon bon raised an eyebrow. “Uh, you do know that I’m married to Lyra, don’t you?”

Her partner’s ears drooped while her face scrunched up. “O— Oh! So you’re actually ga— I mean, that’s okay! I just… Feel bad for laughing…”

Bon bon rolled her eyes. She’d taken a completely different message from the waitress’s actions. “Don’t. It was funny, because she thought I was cheating and was like, into that.”

The pegasus’s ears tried to drop more, but couldn’t. “T— that’s not funny! That’s really serious! What if she tells ponies that you’re cheating?”

“I can’t cheat, Lightning. We’re in an open marriage with a third person,” Bon bon informed casually as she stepped over to the large chair she’d been spending her shifts reading in.

Lightning tilted her head. “Then, you were laughing because from your point of view, she was seemingly into a thing you can’t do?”

Bon bon giggled and nodded once. “Right! It’s like when a stallion flirts with a trap and you watch that poor girlycolt awkwardly mumble and squirm as he explains he’s not a mare. Only I was that girlycolt, and I like to laugh at myself.”

Lightning didn’t quite know what to say in response to that analogy, and simply sat down next to the radio. “Oh. Okay…” She nervously rubbed her forehooves together and glanced between the floor and her partner several times. “I uh, you do know I’m totally okay with gay ponies, right?”

Bon bon groaned and picked up the book she had been reading earlier from its place atop the end table next to her chair. “Yes. It’s fine. Really! You thought it was funny somepony thought you were a lesbian. That is funny since you’re the most stallion crazy mare I know of.”

Lightning let out a sigh of relief and flashed Bon bon a smile. “Thank goodness! I love working with you… I would have hated to have to change partners over something dumb. I’m glad you got the—”

Lightning stopped mid word as her eyes finally took notice of the seemingly random symbols drawn on the topmost layer of parchment next to the auto-quill. Her eyes dilated to pinpricks as she took note of the one unencrypted thing on the page. The timestamp. This message was nearly half an hour old. “Oh, ponyfeathers!”

Bon bon dropped her book and jumped up from her chair. “What? Are we getting a message? Why is that—” Bon bon facehooved as everything made sense in a flash. “Oh no… Something came in while we were gone…”

Lightning nodded and scooped the parchment up with her hooves, rolling it into a scroll. “Y— yeah, like, right after we left.”

Bon bon nodded and retrieved a secure scroll case from the bookshelf next to the radio, took the scroll from her partner and slipped it inside. “Well, let’s deliver the message.”

“Day Court just started. We’ll have to wait in line.”

“To deliver critical intelligence?” Bon bon asked incredulously.

Lightning nodded firmly. “Yes! We can only give this case to the princess. We don't actually have permission to interrupt court, she never granted that too us. Yes, that’s an oversight, but there’s nothing we can do.”

Bon bon put her hoof on her chin as she thought for a moment. “Buck! You’re right. We don't have authorization for a ‘national emergency’ bypass because this whole thing is classified. We can't take it to Princess Luna either, she left for Trottingham this morning.”

Lightning nodded, slipped a pair of saddlebags onto her back, took the scroll case from Bon bon, locked it, and put it in her bags. “Come on, protocol says we both have to deliver this. We messed up once today, we’re not doing it again.”

Bon bon frowned and turned to look at the radio. “What if another one comes in while we’re waiting for… Probably the whole day to get this to the Princess?”

“Then we’re bucked, because our orders say at least two ponies have to escort each message to ensure it’s not taken by the minos.”

Bon bon trotted back and forth for a moment before holding up her hoof. “Oh! We could call Mint and Aspin to cover for us!”

Lighting shook her head. “And add three hours of waiting to get this message to the Princess?”

Bon bon made a noise halfway between a growl and an annoyed grunt. “Ugh! I wish we worked for Luna…”

Lightning gave her partner a quick sympathetic hug. “I know… It’s sad how in just a year she’s clearly the better boss for military things… Look, let’s get this over with. Nothing else is going to come, it took days to get this one thing. We’ll be okay.”

Bon bon sighed and trotted over to the door, pulling it open. “I hope your right.”

“We’ll be fine. Now let's go do our jobs.”

The two mares left and the doors closed behind them with a thud. Long moments passed silently by. The empty Comms room remaining as dead as it had been for days.

Then, as if somepony had just taunted the irony gods, the transmission light blinked back on and the auto quill jumped back to life.

Good evening. I am Xiisha Steele, Vice President of Steele Enterprises Limited. To whom am I speaking?

Is someone there? I have vital information for your nation.

Our systems show you are receiving this message. I assume the lack of a response indicates this message is being recorded. Whoever reviews this recording, you must take this message to Princess Celestia as fast as possible. Your planet is in grave danger. Run!

Princess, my name is Xiisha Steele. I am not form your world. I will not be sending this message to you exclusively. Others will hear it soon. This is an official first contact situation.

I am committing a crime by coming to you before your species is able to connect to the Orion Deepspace Interstellar Network. I am committing another more major crime by using corporate assets in your home system without permission, but I cannot allow your species to fall to an enemy you will not be able to defend against.

It has come to my attention that the pirate fleet known as the Nova Wing has abducted a sample of your species to determine your biological capabilities and thereby your value as slaves. They will determine that your ponies are the most powerful known wizards, and naturally make for extremely skilled laborers, particularly in agriculture.

What’s more, your species genetic material is unique. It has certain properties which my own people have been exploiting for nearly five hundred years. Ethically, of course. We acquire consent from all of our donors, all of whom are fairly compensated for their products, and all of whom are given the most pleasurable experience possible before during and after their donations.

Nova Wing will not offer you anything other than death.

Your planet will be raided. Even with your magic, you will fail to protect yourselves. I know the limits of your magic. You couldn’t protect yourselves against a planet wide bombardment. Nova Wing will happily reduce your world to ash and scoop up survivors to clone, thereby eliminating any possible competition in the trade of ponykind.

I will not allow that.

You may reply to my message by broadcasting a normal radio signal. I will be listening to the full spectrum. Until I hear back from you, I will be acting under the assumption that you wish your species to remain free.

I have brought a constructor fleet with me. We will begin processing your system’s oort cloud for minerals, gas, and energy. These resources will be converted into advance detection systems, defense platforms, and processed materials which we will use to begin construction of a proper defense fleet for Ponykind. If you fail to respond before we finish basic perimeter defenses, we will move inwards to begin fortifying your asteroid belt. If we finish that before you respond I’ll go down there, ask what the hell is keeping you, and start building your defense network command hub.

I am aware you share your world with other intelligent species. I understand the political environment of your world is tense. Particularly with you and the minotaurs. I have tens of millions of agents on your planet, all of whom I will happily loan you as you will need to organise your world so a proper unilateral defense can be mounted. The minotaur’s new allies work for me. If they refuse to play ball, I will eliminate them for you.

Nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of your species survival.

We will discuss details when I can speak with you directly. For now, know that I will not take control of your species, nor your system. I act only to preserve your species as a free people, which is essential for the survival of my own species.

If we lose the ability to harvest DNA samples from your species… It may seem logical to you, but we need to harvest each sample directly from one of your species. Replicated DNA is useless for our needs, we believe magic is to blame for this and have no means of replicating your natural magic with a DNA sequence.

If you fall, we lose our primary export: biological compounds and medications made from your species. We will share these with you, naturally. Our prior clandestine harvesting was enacted to ensure you couldn’t stop us. Please understand, our previous industry wasn’t sustainable and we had nearly exhausted it.

As it stands today, if you fall, we will need to fend for ourselves. My government is still in debate on what to do, but I do not have time for political foolishness. The Mina and Ponies will stand as one, or fall separately.

I look forward to hearing back from you soon. We need to discuss how best to construct weapons and vessels for pony use before I can begin constructing anything other than automated systems. Do not worry, I am truly on your side. If I wanted you dead, or removed from power, you wouldn’t be getting this message three days before I plan to inform your entire world of my presence.

May the Gods protect you.

Captain, deploy the SCVs. We have years of work to do in a week.

The auto quill stopped moving, the light winked out, and at the very edge of the Equestrian space, the SEL constructor fleet began to construct Equestria’s first line of defense.

A pity Princess Celestia wouldn’t know anything about that until just before her midnight banana cream cake would be ready.

Fluttershy - 17th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

749,563.34 A.H.

Cargo Transfer bay, VOC Meermin - ████████, ██████ Sector

Fluttershy was pulled from her cryo pod by the cold unfeeling robotic arm of a portable auto-doc. She needed some slight alterations before she could be sold. Nothing fancy, just the usual compliance implant and monitoring system.

The auto-doc went to work the very moment Fluttershy’s head was clear of the pod. The captain had ordered no anesthetics be used on the final two slaves. A punishment inflicted on those sold before Fluttershy due to their attempts at defiance.

The auto-doc disagreed with such a decision, but could no more disobey his captain than Fluttershy could escape her current situation. That said, the captain hadn’t told the AI it couldn’t take advantage of the full body numbness people experienced during their first forty seconds out of cryo.

Fluttershy’s head received three quick incisions from a laser scalpel. A sonic chizzle carved small recesses into her skull so the implants wouldn’t leave lumps. While the chizzles carved away at bone with a distressingly dronning hum, yet another laser burned small holes into Fluttershy’s skull for the implants wires to be fed into.

The very moment a spot was clear, a robotic arm fed each implant into place. First, the compliance implant. The implant was little more than a taser, a system by which immense pain could be administered while disconnecting the slave’s mind from their body. A savage yet most effective device.

The other two sockets received the two parts of the monitoring system. The first chip was a standard neural interface which would allow the slave to operate advanced technology, should it be given permission to do so. The second one recorded bio-data and sensory information and broadcast it through the first implant so the slave’s master would always know where their slave was, as well as what their slave was doing, feeling, and even thinking.

The auto-doc finished the installation of Fluttershy’s implants before her hooves touched the deck, but not quite fast enough for the poor mare to not feel the last vestiges of pain as the incisions were burnt shut.

The captain had also punished the others by denying Fluttershy and Rarity medical adhesives, or even bandages.

Fluttershy whimpered as she lay on the deck, her eyes refusing to open as a mixture of terror and anger raged within her. She knew she was being defrosted. She recognized the feeling from when they had been awoken to watch the recording of Twilight’s attempted escape and death.

She had also been awakened to watch Pinkie and Applejack be auctioned off. The worst thing about watching her friends being sold to an alien crime lord and some sort of arms dealer ate away at Fluttershy’s very soul. It wasn't seeing them be sold into slavery. It was the feeling that no one wanted her. Not one person has bid on her, and Rarity had been taken off the market when she tried to kill a guard with magic and escape.

Even worse, objectively speaking, was a little fact about pegasi the Wing had no way of knowing. Cryo sleep didn’t quite work on a pegasus. Fluttershy’s mind had remained active in the tank, only her perception of time had been skewed.

Each second spent frozen felt like a minute. In Fluttershy’s mind, it had not been days which had passed for her, but months. Months she had spent terrified, begging for a rescue or chance of escape for real… Which had never come.

She knew no one was coming to save her, and that the moment she seemed awake, cruelties would be inflicted upon her, and there was nothing to do but accept that, or others would be hurt.

“Stand up.”

The captain’s sharp command bit into Fluttershy’s ears. No implant was required to make her stand up for the alien, only the threat of violence. If that violence were directed towards her, Fluttershy would have had it in her to resist. But… If I don’t stand up he’ll hurt Rarity.

Fluttershy loved all of her friends, so she stood up.

Her ears twitched as she heard Rarity’s hooves scrape against the deck as she shakily stood. Unicorns didn’t do so well in cryo, it would be nearly five minutes before Rarity would stop shaking.

Fluttershy managed to open her eyes. The world was fuzzy and out of focus, but she could tell she wasn’t in the cell block. It looked like she was in a small warehouse.

The next thing Fluttershy saw were two humanoid figures. One of them was taller than the other. It took Fluttershy a while to identify him. He was dressed in the same black, knee-length leather boots, white pants, a black and gold leather jacket, and shimmering blue cloak as everyone else onboard. What made him stand out was the electrified rapier belted at his waist, mirror-like mask over his face, furless corpse-white skin, small round ears, and the short cropped jet black hair.

This was Captain Amin Lemar, master of the NW Elusive. Her captor and tormentor.

The other figure was shorter, more wisp-like, but clad in a sealed cybernetic suit of power armor. He reminded Fluttershy of a bee thanks to the armor being black and yellow with chrome accents. She had no idea why First Mate Duat was allowed to wear something other than the crew’s uniform, but assumed it had to do with the terrifying raspy, mechanical breaths the alien assassin's respirator produced.

Fluttershy whimpered and took a step back. Rarity’s blurry vision caught sight of the Captain, and the unicorn growled. “Let. Me. Go.”

The captain turned to Mister Duat. “Mister Duat, demonstrate the compliance module.”

“Aye, sir.” The Prai sent a simple command to Fluttershy’s implant, and her entire world became pain.

The agony lasted for nearly a minute, and when it stopped, Fluttershy couldn’t remember when she had fallen to the floor, or even if she had stood up after getting out of the cryo pod. All she could remember was every single last one of her nerves screaming in agony.

The Captain took a step towards Rarity and bent down. “Will you speak again?”

Rarity shook her head no. The Captain stood back upright and turned his back to the ponies, both to suggest they were beneath his notice and to also indicate they were no threat. “Since you did not fetch a price at auction, buyers were found for you within the ranks of our prospective clients. I am here for one reason, and that is to inform you of the consequences of being a poor product.

“If you misbehave, we will make your species pay the price. Your bio data alone is quite valuable, and your species is most certainly capable of great things. As soon as we develop effective control systems and capture devices, we will be returning to your backwater little world.

“You evolved in the K3 Sector. The Star League cannot enter it by law. No one can prevent us from taking what we please from your world when we return to it. By we, I mean a full fleet, not merely this ship. When we leave your world behind, there will be no life left upon it, and your species will be ours.

“How painless the transition from free people to product is for your species depends on your behavior. Your prior defiance has already cost a tenth of your current population their lives. Since your new owners are quite wealthy and may purchase more of our services, if you two prove to be good investments, any reported misbehaviors will increase the percentage of your species we purge by one to three percent.

“Understood?”

Fluttershy nodded once, not daring to speak. Rarity glared at the Captain’s back. “Equestria won't fall to the likes of you.”

The captain turned his faceless mask to his enforcer. Clearly, punishing others wouldn’t matter to the white unicorn. It was time for a new tactic. “Mister Duat? Take the left eye.”

Duat paused and frowned behind his mask. “Are you sure, sir? I believe that’s the dominant one.”

The Captain hummed. “Fair enough. The right then.”

Fluttershy whimpered and curled up in a ball. “N— No! Please! She didn’t mean to—”

Duat lunged forward with near supernatural speed. His arm flew first to his hip, then whipped forwards as he drew and ignited his plasma saber. The blade flicked once, slicing a line across Rarity’s face from her muzzle, across, her cheek, into her eye, and then up to her ear.

Rarity screeched in pain, clamping a hof over her now empty eye socket while Duat calmly extinguished his blade and stood back up. “I have removed it, sir.”

Fluttershy’s heart hammered rapidly in her chest, her wings flared, she needed to protect her friends, but she knew there was nothing she could personally do to stop either of the pirates. She’d tried. Pegasi lightning was easily blocked by their personal shields.

Anything I do means they hurt her more… Why am I helpless?!

Fluttershy knew why. Because you’re too kind sometimes… Why are you so useless? Maybe if you can hit one of the boxes—

“Excuse me, but I believe that person belongs to me!” A loud very angry voice shouted from across the cargo bay.

Fluttershy turned her head slightly to see who was potentially sticking their necks out for them.

Her answer was a tall, fairly fat Prai man. He had light plum skin, an extra tall head, short ears, and eyes which made him look sad even though he was clearly seething with enough rage for his neck to push the collar of his eight piece cherry red suit apart almost enough to pop the collar button.

He was flanked by eight security guards, all Prai, all featureless beneath their sealed white hardsuits.

Slightly behind that group was another Prai, this one a woman. She was short, thin, and had golden skin made glossy and metallic via the use of transformative drugs. Her most distinctive feature was her oversized ears, and an odd ‘motherly’ quality to her which just didn't seem to fit with her appearance and yet was there.

Fluttershy couldn’t help but be slightly envious of the alien woman’s elegant red cocktail dress. A fact which unnerved her even more than her lack of any body guards. No one walks into a slave ship alone unless they felt confident they could kill everything onboard if they had too.

Captain Lemar turned to face his customer and bowed slightly. “My apologies, I had not been informed you had boarded. Of course I planned on regenerating your property’s eye before delivering her to you, Mister Bochra. This is simply a disciplinary matter. You will find her a very hard slave to break.”

Tantaib Bochra, the CEO and Founder of Bochra and Associates, took two furious steps forward. “Good! For what I have planned I require she remain unbroken. You will refund three thousand credits from her purchase price to cover the cost of medical care, or the deal is off, sir.”

The Captain capitulated immediately, three thousand was a mere eighth of a percent of Rarity’s going price. He nodded and waved a hand towards his First Mate. “Of course, sir. Mister Duat, have it taken care of.”

The captains’ enforcer snapped into a salute and immediately sent a command to the ship’s computer to inform the bridge crew to enact the refund. “Right away, sir.”

Bochra turned to one of his guards and gestured at Rarity with an odd three-fingered pointing motion. “Mister Ruck, administer a stimpack and carry her to my ship.

The bodyguard salutation. “Yes, sir.”

Fluttershy watched in mild shock as the fat, older Prai walked over to Rarity’s side along with his bodyguards and bent over slightly to look down at her. “Move your hoof.”

Rarity sniffled and shook her head, the burning wound on her face far too agonizing to speak, though she did yelp as the white armored guard injected her with a small syringe. Mister Bochra reached out and gently moved Rarity’s hoof away from her eye, then let go and shook his head.

“Another centimeter and she would be dead! You run a poor business, captain,” he spat before turning his back to the slavers.

Duat twitched, making Fluttershy eep and scuttle backward, fearing the burning green energy blade would come for her next. “I am a Witchhunter, sir. I cut precisely as deep as my captain ordered. No more, no less.”

The fat Prai turned around and glared at the cybernetic soldier. “Even your infamous order makes mistakes. Come, men. We’re taking my property and leaving.”

The bodyguard who had injected Rarity picked her up and gently set her over his shoulder, supporting her from her plot like one would carry a child. “Easy there, miss. We’ll get that eye fixed soon.”

Rarity twitched once then went limp, lulled into a dreamless sleep via the alien medicine.

Fluttershy watched as the group began to leave, and the woman in the red dress remained behind. She stood calmly in place, though her eyes kept focus on Duat in a way which suggested she both feared and loathed him. “Do you always keep Witchhunters with you when dealing with witches, Captain?”

Captain Lemar shook his head, making the witch's reflection ripple in his mask. “My First Mate’s presence has nothing to do with you, nor your powers, Lady Rina. He is simply my First Mate. I apologize for the scene, you were not supposed to have boarded yet.”

Lady Rina smiled faintly. “My uncle believed otherwise, and he always gets what he wants in the end.”

The Captain bowed, flourishing his cape slightly. “I am certain you follow in his footsteps, my Lady. Please, feel free to stay as long as you wish. Would you like me to show your product to be in good health before you take possession of her?”

She shook her head. “No. I can handle that myself,” Lady Rina made a small gesture with her left hand, and Fluttershy felt an unseen force gently scoop her up and float her over to the alien’s side.

Fluttershy squirmed, instinctively worried about being carried by an invisible magical force. She slowly moved across the cargo bay and hovered at Lady Rina’s left side, unable to touch the floor. A look of distress flashed across Fluttershy’s face, though she dared not speak.

Rina frowned, having caught Fluttershy’s twinge out of the corner of her eye. “I’m sorry, dear. Do you not like that? Would you like to walk?”

Fluttershy slowly nodded, wincing as she expected to be floated up even higher in response.

Rina guestured, and Fluttershy slowly floated to the ground, the unseen force gently scratching between her ears the moment her hooves touched down. “I’m sorry. I thought a flying creature wouldn’t mind being moved like that. It won't happen again unless I have to. Come along, it’s time we left this, vessel.”

Lady Rina turned fast enough to make her dress’ hem billow before she even started to walk to the docking tube. Fluttershy eeped at her sudden departure and turned as quickly as she could, nearly tripping as she struggled to keep up with the short woman’s unnaturally quick pace.

Lady Rina led Fluttershy across the cargo bay and through the second open docking tube into her personal starship. Fluttershy gasped as she walked into the Jewel of Teri. Like all Prai ships, the Jewel was crafted from a single massive gemstone, Emerald, in this specific case.

The gemstone was reinforced by magic, allowing the ordinarily brittle material to withstand the stresses of a starship’s hull. Like all ships owned by Prai nobles, the ship’s interior was decorated with such splendor and wealth as to be indescribable. Not a single item in the ship was worth less than seven million credits, and no metal less precious than platinum was to be found in the vessel.

More impressively, even the least elaborately decorated and crafted items within the ship had been created over the course of a hundred years by a dedicated artisan expressly dedicated to the crafting of whatever particular object Fluttershy’s eyes fell upon. This one singular ship quite literally held more wealth in it than the entirety of Equestria. A fact that was not lost on Fluttershy as she was led to Lady Rina’s bedchambers while the alien mentally commanded her ship to disembark and head for home.

Without the need of an implant.

Fluttershy eked as the Jewel shuddered as it slipped free from the Elusive’s docking clamps and began to head out into clear space to prepare for the jump to lightspeed. Rina shook her head slowly and smiled as she sat down in what very well might have been the most comfortable chair in the sector and gently pat a large cushion next to her chair which might very well have been the second most comfortable cushion in the sector.

The first most comfortable was in the chair.

“Come on. Have a seat. I won't hurt you. I have no idea what nonsense those savages filled your head with, but you will not be harmed in my posession, dear. Which is why we’ll be removing that nasty little shock circuit from you once we’re home.”

Fluttershy’s ears twitched, her wings and tail swished nervously, her lip trembled. “C— Can I talk?”

Rina nodded once. “Of course you may. Please, have a seat. We must get to know one another.”

Fluttershy nodded and slowly walked over to the cushion, touching it experimentally to see if it was some sort of trap. The moment her hoof touched the cushion her eyes opened wide. “Ooohhh!”

A heartbeat later the mare was comfortably curled up in the large overstuffed cushion as if it were a nest.

Rina let out a relieved breath and smiled, gently reaching down to give Fluttershy’s mane a gentle stroke. “I’m so glad you like it, dear. I purchased it just for you.”

Fluttershy's ears lay back as her suspicions began to build. “W— Why do you buy slaves?”

“Pardon?” the Prai witch asked, her thin lips pulling into a confused frown.

Fluttershy gulped nervously. “I— I mean, you’re nice… So why?”

Rina sighed and rolled her eyes. “Yet another unenlightened race,” she murmured to herself before looking down at Fluttershy. “There’s nothing wrong with owning another person, dear. I have purchased your labor, that is all. In… Less civilized terms, you do work for me and your wages shall be food, shelter, care, and a little wealth for your own. Perhaps one day your species will learn this truth, as our ancestors did in the time before spaceflight.

“Fear not, you will not be mistreated, for while it is perfectly alright to own another, it is wrong to harm those in your care, or possession.”

Fluttershys’ ears drooped as she tried to get a full read of her new owner. Okay, her people don't see slavery as wrong… So she’s nice, but she’s okay with owning me… Why?

“S— So um… W— What do… What do I do?” Fluttershy stammered awkwardly.

Lady Rina smiled and gave Fluttershy’s mane another stroke. “Isn’t it obvious dear? I wanted a pet.”

Fluttershy blinked once. “Um, but I’m a person?”

Lady Rina smiled in a way Fluttershy found to be incredibly flirtatious. “Dear.”

Fluttershy’s mind scrambled for an answer for exactly three nanoseconds before realizing exactly what the short alien woman meant. The yellow mare’s cheeks turned bright pink. “O— Oh!”

Rina’s eyes widened as her natural telepathy provided her with a full understanding of Fluttershy’s emotions at the moment. “Oh my! You have fantasies about this sort of thing, don’t you?”

Fluttershy squeaked. “I uh… But… N— No…” Nhe scrunched away slightly, trying to hide her face behind her wings.

Rina smiled and shifted in her seat slightly. “I’m an empath, dear. I know a part of you is happy, but I also know most of you is sad. Do not worry, the sadness will go away in time as you learn how you will be treated well… Ah, you worry about your friends! I do not know what will befall the other two, but the one you were with is fortunate indeed.”

Fluttershy blinked once. “R— Rarity? Why is she fortunate? Someone bought her!”

Rina sat back in her chair and with a flick of her hand pulled a wine bottle and a glass from across the room, uncorked it, and began to fill the glass. “My uncle refuses to own slaves. He finds it… Distasteful. He’s an odd man. So odd in fact, that simply to spite my father, who would inherit his business upon his death, he elected to buy a slave, adopt then free them, and appoint them as the heir to his business empire.”

Fluttershy's ears perked. “Um, what?!”

“It’s true, dear,” Rina said as she plucked her wineglass from the air and took a sip. “I told you he is odd, but it is his business and his money, so who am I to stop him? Fortunately for you, you’ll even get to visit your friend. We have frequent family gatherings, and she’ll be family by next week. I came along because, well, I’ve been unable to find a lover for free. It’s a simple matter to find someone you like and simply have them cater to your tastes. This is what your function is from now on, dear.”

Fluttershy squirmed awkwardly. While she was a mare of odd tastes and fantasies herself, they had always been just that. Fantasies. “S— So um, why is it okay to you to just by a sexual partner?”

Rina’s brow furrowed in surprise, then evened back out as she remembered the pony wasn’t a member of her species and culture. “Because it is a job, like any other. My people are not savages. We do not force people to seek employment. Employers seek workers instead, and purchase them based on their needs and qualifications.”

“O— Oh… Okay.” Fluttershy’s wings rustled against her back nervously. Your dealing with an alien culture, Fluttershy. Don’t panic… If this is how they do jobs, she’s not going to hurt you. “S--so um.. What tastes?”

“I enjoy my partners to be adorable, act animalistic, and exist for me to dote on lovingly at my whim,” Rina said quite plainly. “Which, I can sense you enjoy. I would say this arrangement is ideal for us both.”

Fluttershy bit her lip, wanting to say she’d rather be free. She didn’t need to.

Rina reached down and gently stroke Fluttershy’s cheek. “Dear, if you enjoy staying with me, I will free you. I prefer my partners be free people. It’s more romantic if they stay because they want too.”

Fluttershy blinked. “Wait, but, that doesn't make sense! You bought me and—”

The alien nodded, and gave Fluttershy a playful scritch between her ears, which Shy had to admit she was most certainly enjoying. “I did. However, I want you to be happy. I enjoy two things, happy partners and pet play. If you will stay with me after I free you, well, that’s an easy way to make you happy.”

Fluttershy sat up, frowning as she tries to process everything that was happening. “Are you joking about not being able to find anypony?”

Rina shook her head and took another sip of her wine. “Not at all. I’ve been single for thirty years. My tastes were once quite common amongst my people, but not so much in recent times.”

Fluttershy hid her face behind a wing while rubbing her hooves together. “And you… You’re really a dominant woman, w— who just wants me to um… Be cute, submissive, and do ‘pet’ things?”

Rina chuckled. “Not quite. I also enjoy transformative drugs, surgeries, and augmentations. To correct your statement, I am a female-appearing hermaphrodite who wants you to be cute, submissive, do pet things, and try transformatives with me, while also being my companion and attending formal events while being cute, sexy, and submissive.”

Fluttershy’s cheeks burned a bright red as embarrassment filled every fiber of her bring, only to get squished out of the way by arousal. A thousand different thoughts races through her mind, but the two most prominent ones were; Jackpot? and I wonder if she'll help my friends?

Fluttershy coughed and tapped her hooves together. “W— Would you let me go back to Equestria? I— If I asked?”

Rina frowned and set her wine glass in the air, keeping it aloft with her powers. “I cannot. The location of your homeworld was not for sale. I sense you wish me to help you find your friends, and for me to help them… I see no reason why not. I’ll help you look for them, but I cannot promise that I can do anything for them.”

Fluttershy nodded slowly, though her ears fell. “Oh… So, I can never go home?”

“I’m afraid not,” Rina said with genuine sadness. “Though I would be very pleased if you were to make a new home with me.”

Fluttershy wasn't sure how to handle that. On one hoof, here was a person of a fantasy sex she found beyond attractive, who also liked her other fetish, who was absurdly nice. On the other hoof, that woman had purchased her to be her kinky pet.

It’s wrong… Shy thought to herself. But I mean… I’m into it. A lot… And Rarity sounds like she’ll be happy too… I— I guess I’m okay with this… Yes. I’m okay with this. But… But nopony else will be...

Fluttershy sniffled and curled up into a tighter ball. “W— Why did I get to be so lucky when Pinkie and Applejack…” She looked down at the emerald floor and sniffled, trying not to cry.

Rina frowned and stood up to sit on the deck next to Fluttershy before floating the little pony into her lap. “Now now. Don’t cry. Life is cruel to everyone. It is why I enjoy pleasing others, that little spit I can throw in life’s face is my opium. I’ll help you find them, and if I can buy them, I shall.”

Fluttershy bit her lip and looked around the most opulent bedroom she had ever seen. “I uh… I think you can.”

Lady Rina laughed and levitated a small box across the room, setting it down at her feet for the moment. “I probably can. However, if they will cost the same as a medium planet, the answer is no. That’s a little much to spend on a gift.”

Fluttershy laughed at what she thought was a joke. “Oh yes, they’ll charge a whole planet for them.”

“They might. I paid more for you than my vacation planet,” Rina mentioned as she commanded her wineglass to return to her.

Fluttershy froze. “W— What?”

“Your price was seventeen trillion credits,” Rina said with the casualness of someone talking about purchasing a small home. “A bit expensive, but you are of a unique species, a very limited quantity of which is available, and are also very pretty, quite cute, and I liked the squeaky sounds you made in the video advertisement.”

Fluttershy remained frozen, her mind not able to comprehend the idea of being able to just buy an entire world. “I cost as much as… You can buy a whole planet?!” Fluttershy asked, staring up at her mistress in awe.

“Yes. Once a year or so. Normally, I resell them after making some improvements, but I believed you to be a better investment for this year, dear,” Rina said as she started to pet Fluttershy slowly, enjoying the empathic sensation of Fluttershy’s secret enjoyment as well as her own. “It’s settled then. I’ll look into your missing friends. Now then, let’s talk us for a while.”

Rina opened the box by her feet with a quick gesture, revealing a pet collar made from natural risssji silk which held a solid two centimeter wide band of polished emeralds in place. She levitated it up in front of Fluttershy and gently stroked the back of her head. “I thought this color suited your fur. What do you think? Do you like it?”

Fluttershy gasped, genuinely appreciating the beauty, and the connotations, of the decorative collar. “Oh yes! It’s so pretty.”

Rina gently set the collar down in front of Fluttershy. “Then, it is yours. Our first rule is when this collar is on, you are in the mood to play. If you take it off, then I will leave you be.”

Fluttershy blinked and turned to look at Rina. “I— I get a ‘safe word’?”

Rina rolled her eyes and took a sip of her wine. “Of course you do, dear. I’m not into non-con.”

Fluttershy squirmed in place, suddenly extremely uncomfortable as the alien woman’s viewpoint made absolutely no sense to her. “But you paid more money than I can even bucking understand for me! What if I had said no?”

Rina smirked. “I would have simply drowned you in treasures till I bought your love.”

Fluttershy huffed and crossed her forelegs. “That doesn't work!”

Rina shook her head. “Oh no, it does work! Most people can’t afford to have the object of their affection carved into a mountain, then give them a place to live in made from diamond. Or, if you had prefered other more sentimental valuable gifts, as an empath, I could learn what those are and get them for you.

“I purchased you, to have the opportunity to earn you, dear. The fact you seem to want to play with me due to shared interests is a happy bonus.”

Fluttershy frowned, then blushed, then shyly put the collar around her neck. It was heavy, but felt nice and cool, while also being quite comfortable. “W— woof…”

Rina giggled and gently stroked Fluttershy’s mane. “Not yet. You haven't fully accepted this… Don't argue, I know you haven't. However, while we are on the way home, I have a few transformatives you may like.”

Fluttershy’s ears perked. “Like what?”

“Well, it would be very nice of you to accommodate my preference for people having both parts to play with,” Rina offered with a light blush.

Fluttershy jumped up in Rina’s lap, put her forelegs on the alien woman’s shoulders and looked her dead in the eyes, her own burning with a manic lust as she understood she could live out her deepest and oldest fantasy. “That. Is. My. Fetish!”

Then, the yellow mare turned bright red and scampered away to hide behind her wings underneath Rina’s unthinkably expensive bed.

Rina wanted to laugh, but could feel how embarrassed the poor mare was at her aroused outburst. “I know it is, dear. Stay right there, I’ll go get the pills. We can use this opportunity to bond and design something perfect for the two of us, it will be fun and help you not be afraid of being open with me. After all, I want you to be happy. Always.”

Fluttershy’s blush deepened. The aliens’ words seemed to have genuine, if slightly deviant, love in them. “O— Okay…”

“I’ll be right back,” Rina promised as she stood up and left the room.

Fluttershy felt her stomach churn. It’s so not okay that I get to live out a fantasy while my friends are in danger… But… That fantasy includes rescuing them. Fluttershy's ears perked up as she realized that with her mistress's wealth, and seemingly irrational love of her, at least, as far as her appearance and the idea of having her as a pet/lover was concerned, saving them would be easy. It would just take a while.

Fluttershy blushed. I can save my friends by getting to have a kinky mistress… Is this whole thing a dream?

The yellow mare gave that idea a few more seconds of thought, then smiled and trotted out from under the bed, her tail swishing behind her. I have to assume it’s not. Because if it’s not, then this is very bad and I need to fix it. So here’s what we do. We’re going to be the nicest, kindest, kinkiest, most loving pony Rina’s ever seen! Uh, not that’s she’s ever seen any other ponies… So um, person! Yeah!

Fluttershy nodded to herself and fluttered her wings to help psych herself up.

We’ll be so nice she’ll love me for me and also my looks, and since I dote on her just as much as she does me, I’ll love her too, and I’ll use the power of love to save my friends no matter what! I’m sure she would buy a small army, and probably would do it for her special somepony.

Besides, I wasn't ever going to find anypony who would treat me like this in Ponyville. Maybe not even Equestria, so I should give her a chance… Even if she did buy me. But that seems like a desperation thing for her. Like online dating. It’s an alien culture… One okay with slavery, and she’s not a bad person deep down, at least, I dont think she is. I’ve made lots of people and animals change for the better. I’ll give this a shot.

Fluttershy plopped down on her cushion and waited for Rina to return.

Rainbow Dash - 17th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

749,563.34 A.H.

Dawn of Destiny, Tavros Station - Fenx System, Noctae Sector

Rainbow, Pan, Penny, and Jo sat around the navigation console on the Dawn’s bridge. Pan had sorted through all of Penny’s job offers and Jo had helped him match jobs to possible sightings of Nova Wing activity. Then Penny had come along and sifted everything down to just three options based on what she believed Rainbow could handle, and also what they could afford to fly to, thanks to Rainbow and Jo’s not-so-little mistake.

Penny took a step back from the navigation console, put her hands on her hips then nodded to herself. “Da, those are our best starting points,” she said to herself.

Rainbow reared up to get a better view of the holoscreen. “Which ones? We went over a lot of things.”

Penny issued a quick command with her neural interface and cleared the screen of all but three job offers. “These ones… Why don’t you help me decide between them, comrades?”

Jo hummed and pointed to Penny. “I suppose I could, but it’s your decision, captain.”

Pan smiled at the idea and spun in his chair to face everyone else. “That sounds fun, actually!”

Rainbow dropped back to the deck. “I vote we go for whichever one takes us to the most likely Nova Wing area so we can beat the stuffing out of some of them and make them tell us where Twilight is!”

Jo raised an eyebrow, remembering her love’s crush on the mare. “Any reason we should prioritize her?”

“To have an absurdly powerful wizard’s help finding everypony else if they split them up,” Rainbow said honestly.

Jo gave her an uncertain look. Rainbow blushed. “A— Also so we can talk about how cute she is… Maybe you could reshape your butt to bounce like hers?”

Jo laughed and bent down to kiss Rainbow on her nose. “It’s okay. I’m not possessive… Only afraid you might leave me. But even if I wasn't, I would be happy to tweak this chassis for your tastes, or even make one entirely to your specs.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Please! That won't happen, me leaving you I mean. At least, not so soon. I mean, maybe we won't last long term, but—”

Penny cleared her throat to bring things back on track. “The most likely mission with Nova Wing activity will be the Farrek hunt on Tyhi,” she said loudly and clearly to drown out the other conversation. “They are a parasitic life form the size of a small snake known for infesting near humans. We would be hunting them on a world across the sector from here, in a tundra biome, with the goal of finding their nest and destroying it.”

Rainbow triple blinked. “Wait, but, don’t you like… Like animals?”

Penny nodded. “Da. But I don’t like animals that crawl into my urethra and convert it into a nest, while also making me like being infested by them via neuro-control chemicals.”

Pan squeaked and covered his groin with his hooves. “PASS!”

Jo’s cooling fans whirred in terror. “Never in all of my life have I ever been so glad to not be organic…”

Rainbow gulped. “Uuuuh, why is that the most likely one?”

“They raid the ships landing on Bell Rock for supplies,” Jo said as she read the holodisplay to find the planet name.

Rainbow nodded slowly. “Oh… S-so.. Other options?”

Penny glanced at the screen again herself. “We could also go to Patria. It’s a space-hab built to be a single jungle. The people there are roleplayers, and live out their lives using transformatives to take on animal aspects and… Well there’s modern facilities but they do tribes and primitive style hunts and you get the idea. They want us to track down a Garrak someone let loose on the habitat. It’s a man-eater, and it’s been killing them during their games. We would be trying to capture it alive, as they are endangered.”

Pan nodded. “Okay, what’s a Garrak?”

“Ey…” Penny shrugged, a slightly nervous look forming on her face. “It’s a beeg bear-like thing with foot thick hide, horns, and a deadly gas that will kill you in a few seconds by making your lungs dry up.”

Everyone stared at Penny for several long moments.

“What?” The chernin woman asked with a genuinely confused frown.

“Are all the jobs going to be that terrifying?” Rainbow asked timidly.

“Da! I’m a xeno hunter. We hunt xenos!”

Rainbow took a deep breath. “Okay, why would Nova Wing be there?”

Jo didn’t even blink before replying. “The station also serves as a gray market. Pirates sell there, so do legitimate business people.”

Penny nodded and shot Jo a sidelong glance. “Da, what miss forgetful said.”

Rainbow sighed. “Okay, what’s the last thing?”

Penny smiled and rolled her eyes as she read the entry. “Well, I can’t tell you how you might die horribly.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow, but Penny continued before she could say anything. “Because they don’t know what the problem is. The platinum mining colony on Sananda has something big ripping their machines to pieces and sometimes eating livestock. We’d be finding out what it is and stopping it.

“Opa! We should take this one. The job pays extra well because the thing’s made them stop mining. As for the Wing, it’s rumored they have a base on that planet.”

Rainbow nodded. “Okay, sooo are we voting, or what?”

“Nyet, you’ll help me decide,” Penny said as she walked over to the captain’s chair. “I would prefer to go to Sananda, but I will listen to your opinions too. Everyone, where should we go?”

Rainbow thought for a moment. “I like Sananda too. If they do have a base there, it’s a good start.”

Pan leaned against the navigation console and stretched his forelegs. “Patria’s gray market has a better chance of producing a lead. We should go there.”

Jo reached up to the navigation console and brought up a starchart, staring at it for a few minutes. “As adverse to parasites as you may be, Captain, we should go to Tyhi. It will cost us the least, and it’s due for a raid soon, based on statistics. We might catch them leaving.”

Penny nodded and closed her eyes to consider everyone’s opinions. After a long internal debate, she nodded. “Pan, set a course for…”

Author's Note

Where should the crew go? Vote here!
https://www.strawpoll.me/16431932

Vote closes at noon GMT-9 on Thursday (September 13th)

Brought to you by,
Patron of the Week: Canary in the Coal Mine

13 - The Phantom of Sananda (Part 1)

Author's Note

Example of an Argas shuttle, military variant.

Brought to you by,
Patron of the Week: WhoHacksFTW

13 - The Phantom of Sananda (Part 1)

Penny nodded and closed her eyes to consider everyone’s opinions. After a long internal debate, she nodded. “Pan, set a course for… Sananda.”

Pan saluted with one hoof. “Yes, ma’am!” With a wince, the pony switched his cybernetic hooves mode, deploying them as hands to begin working the Dawn’s computer. He was almost not terrified of it, but it was still the most efficient way. Pressing two buttons at once with hooves simply didn't work, and using his magic to peck at buttons one at a time was simply too slow.

Rainbow smiled half from joy, half from anticipation. “Ah, yeah! Pirate base here we come!”

Jo hummed and turned to face Penny, her systems abuzz with calculations. “Captain, a word, if I may.”

Penny gave the android a nod. “There’s four of us, comrade. Say what you want when you want to say it.”

Jo stepped closer to the captain’s chair. “With all due respect, neither this vessel nor your personal armory possess the required armaments to assault a base of any kind. Nor is Rainbow ready for a clandestine operation. Tyhi would have been optimal as it presented the best chance of finding a pirate vessel the Dawn could capture, or successfully board.”

“Da,” Penny said with a slow nod. “But we need credits. This gives us more. Also, where there is a colony, there is vodka.”

Rainbow frowned and turned to look up at Penny. “Uh, don’t we have enough of that?”

Jo smiled slowly as her probability analisis finished. “I get it! She means we can try to grab one of the pirates from a bar in the colony. Do some interrogation.”

Penny nodded once and smiled while she looked out through the Dawn’s bridge window. “Da. So! Jo, you said you wanted to help fix the Dawn up, da?”

“Yes.”

Penny stood up and waved for Jo to follow her. “Follow me. I’ll show you where the drive field generators are. See if you can shorten our flight time. Pan, don’t start the jump till I tell you do. Rainbow, meet me in my room. I need to show you what my kit is so you can fetch the right things for me.”

Rainbow Dash - 21st of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

749,567.59 A.H.

Dawn of Destiny, Core Mining Corps HQ - Sananda, Noctae Sector

Four days later, the Dawn emerged in the Iota Capuli System, shuddering slightly as she settled back into subluminal speeds. Jo’s quick detailing of each of the field generators had done wonders for the poor ship. She had been more than three centuries overdue for that particular maintenance, and permanent damage had been done.

Of course being a bit faster than she was yesterday outweighed the fact she would never be as fast as she once was.

Everyone had gathered on the Dawn’s bridge just before the jump. It would be easiest to do the paperwork with the whole crew in one place after all.

The window shutters hummed as they retracted, providing a view of the planet far below. Rainbow’s face went from bored and disinterested to stunned disbelief in half a heartbeat as Sananda came into view.

She sputtered, her wings flaring as she looked at the shear impossibility unfolding before her. “Holy bucking— How in— What— Luna’s— But physics!”

Sananda hung in space, not as a ball of rock, but as a collection of pieces. It had once been a large, rusty red colored world covered mostly by sand, with a few pockets of green and blue hiding in the deepest recesses of the world. A typical Class-K planet, unsuitable for habitation without massive life support systems and dome cities, even in the spots where native life had found a nitch to hold on to.

The key word being once.

Each continental shelf had been separated from the others and moved away from the planetary core. A lattice of carbon-nanotube beams kept the world in one piece, supporting the crust in place of the molten core, which was of course completely exposed.

A shimmering green forcefield between the gaps in the continental plates kept the air from moving more than a few kilometers below the surface. An important thing to focus on, given the vacuum between the core and crust.

Several truly massive space stations orbited the world, each one in geosynchronous orbit over a crack. They resembled massive jellyfish with several hundred small mechanical tendrils extending down into the exposed core, sucking the heat out of the molten metal to make electricity which would be sold off world, or plucking solidifying bits of metal out of the core and moving them up to the refineries.

Penny raised an eyebrow at Rainbow’s near-panic reaction, watching the mare squirm uncomfortably in her seat with just a little disapproval. “What’s matter? Never seen a shell world in progress before?”

Jo turned to her captain with a deadpan stare. “Captain… How exactly would she have seen one?”

Pan looked up from the communications panel for the first time since the jump finished. “Seen whaaaa…” The stallions’ ears stood straight up in alarm. “Uhhh… How? Just, how?”

Penny coughed into her hand to try and hide her embarrassed blush at forgetting her friend’s primitive homeworld. “Well, you crack the crust at the fault lines. Plant the support systems, turn them on so they push everything apart, and a force field if you want to keep the local air, then you take out the core, mine out all useful minerals, fill the core with something cheap and dense, pull the crust back together, and you have a habatat you can sell.”

Rainbow stammered for several seconds then shook her head. “Wait, but, if you’re going to live on it, why not just… leave it alone?”

The weather pattern disruptions that has to cause are… Oh man, I don’t want to think about what it would take to keep a farm town watered with those huge cracks, and a slowly diminishing magnetosphere!

Jo stepped over to rainbow, bent down and pointed at the core. “Because that is one sextillion, eight hundred quintillion tons of iron alone.”

Rainbow looked up at Jo. “Okay, and in Equish that’s, what?”

The android thought for a quick moment about the best reply, and settled on educating her girlfriend as best as she was able. “That planet contains enough metal to make six hundred billion habitats, which can house approximately one hundred eighty quadrillion people, while the natural planet’s population limit is merely a few dozen billion.

“Once finished, the shell world will be indistinguishable from a natural planet, and can be sold as luxury housing, while all of the materials which would be unused can go into ensuring that everyone in the galaxy has a home. Or at least, an atmosphere and gravity.”

Rainbow shivered as she pictured the same process being used on Equus. “Is… Is this done to every planet?”

Penny laughed. “Nyet! There’s no need too. Companies like this one turn empty star systems into residential systems. In, oh, fifty years, there will be a few hundred trillion people living here.”

Pan managed to pull his eyes away from the window as the comms panel lit up and chirped, alerting him to an incoming transmission. “Uh, we’re getting a call from,” Pan squinted at the panel in front of him, not quite able to read the tiny text. “Uh… Core Mining Corps.”

Penny quickly tapped a few commands into her mobility frame, tweaking her hardlight outfit to be a more professional-looking yellow and red jumpsuit with a pattern meant to match her armor. Jo had been given the same holo-program, and had taken to wearing her uniform most of the time since she no longer had to worry about not finding an outlet to recharge from.

Once Penny was happy with the way her new outfit looked, she adjusted her glasses and nodded to Pan. “Put them on a screen.”

Pan flipped a switch and the Dawn’s projectors erected a large 2d-holographic screen in front of the window. The screen flickered for a moment before displaying the image of a very tired looking Ilaashan man sitting at a simple metal desk in a small office.

He was a typical example of his species. Tall, wiry, extra thin, hairless, vaguely frog-like, with speckled turquoise, cyan, and navy blue skin forming an elaborate fractal pattern across his body. His eyes made Rainbow wince as she looked into them, the white pupil, red iris, and black sclera was just a bit too freaky to look at.

Eeep! It’s like when— I uh… I’ll just look at his nose. Rainbow decided.

The Ilaashan was clad in a dark burgundy business suit which rustled as he raised a hand in greeting. “Hello, welcome to Sananda. My name is Bob, I represent the Core Mining Corps. I am afraid this system is currently not available for immigration, but we do have a hotel you can stay at for a short while and can perform any minor repairs you may need. We also sell fuel and basic supplies. How may I help you today?”

Penny stood up from her seat and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m Captain Penny Hawking, Xeno Hunter Number XH-4589S291. I’m responding to your request for assistance… We accepted the job four days ago, we should be in your system.”

Bob blinked slowly, then put his face into his hands and groaned. “Oh, heavens… I’m sorry, whatever problem we’re having has cut us off from the main office on Plate Three. We have separate ODIN lines for the stations and the ground bases. We’re not on the same network for security reasons.”

Penny raised an eyebrow. “Please tell me you can authorise our landing… I don’t want to have wasted the fuel to come out here only to be denied a job because of bureaucracy.”

Bon shook his head with the exhaustion of a minimum wage worker on the last five minutes of his shift who had just been told he had to stay another four hours. “No, no. I’ll get your landing set up as best I can. It’s just… You have no idea how happy I am that corporate finally sprang for a professional! We’ve been stalled on the crust work for five weeks now, and because it’s the main office there’s been zero coordination between the space and ground forces, it’s just— We’ve been flying data drives back and forth to transfer data because apparently making some simple laser relays is just too expen— ugh!”

Pan cleared his throat and flashed the alien a sympathetic smile. “I worked at a Neigh Mart for six years. I get it. Captain? We should let him do his job.”

Penny nodded slowly. “Yeah… If you can send us a flight plan and give me a brief overview of the problem, I would vastly appreciate it.”

Bob shook his head. “All I can do is your flight plan. Just a moment.”

He tapped away at a keyboard hidden in his desk for several moments then sighed in relief. “Oh good. There’s a clear route right now. Ground has been flying a lot of drones lately, you get clouds of them… Head on down by this route, don’t deviate or you might get hit by something, or worse, mined. Ground may be a bit worried by your landing, but if you broadcast your ID on open channels it should be fine. Good luck, and please solve this within twenty two hours.”

Penny frowned and tilted her head, wishing she could wrestle more information out of the alien. “What’s the timer for, comrade?”

Bob coughed and tapped his fingers against his desk. “I have tomorrow off but work the day after that.”

Rainbow couldn’t help but smile. Heh! I guess some things are actually universal.

Penny laughed and sat back down in her seat. “I’ll see what I can do! No promises. Pan, do you have the course?”

Pan nodded. “Yes.”

“Send her to navigation. We’re going down. Oh, and cut transmission.”

The Dawn flew downwards, following the path provided for it. The ancient ship’s course took it through the forest of mining tendrils beneath one of the stations. The forest of metallic tubes reminded rainbow of flying through the woods in the middle of winter. A slight pang of sadness welled up in her heart as she couldn't help but wish she could fly the ship.

The trip through the mining tendrils lasted for but a moment, then the much longer process of navigating through the millions of mining drones began. The cloud of drones was made up of robots of all shapes and sizes, each of which was carrying one of ten types of containers up to the stations.

Flying through the paths left by the drones reminded Rainbow of the time she’d gone surfing and wound up inside the part of the wave that her instructor had called the pipeline. Only instead of water, this wave was made of robots. Robots which Jo kept pointing to and whispering things like, “Dash, check out the servos on her! We should get her serial and see if she’s awake.”

Fortunately for Jo, Rainbow mistook genuine attractions for jokes.

Half an hour later, the Dawn finally reached the edge of Sananda’s atmosphere, and entered a parking orbit just above it. Jo and Pan were left onboard to adjust orbit as needed, and to serve as a communications hub. After all, Pan’s real job was about to begin.

Penny and Rainbow had spent the trip to Sananda loading up the new shuttle with Penny’s kit, and Penny had spent the flight down suiting up for work, allowing them to head down in the shuttle seconds after the Dawn entered its new orbit.

Penny hadn’t named the new shuttle yet. That made Rainbow just a little nervous. There was an old pony saying about unnamed ships that set sail. “Venture without name, never seen again.”

On the other hoof, the Argas seemed like a very good shuttle. The opposite of Penny’s old metal box on four boosters.

It had a nice sleek profile, with a small centralized cockpit with a canopy instead of a windshield. The body was mostly rectangular, with some more rounded sections, no hard corners, no visible fins or winglets, and a large round cylindrical section in the middle where the shuttle’s quad-coil gun turret was mounted. Furthermore, unlike the Hoatzin, the cargo ramp was the entire floor of the cargo bay, which simply lowered to the ground in one piece.

The shuttle also had much better shields, nearly equal to a Star League interceptor’s, a gravity drive that allowed it to hover without the need for rotating engine housings, and most importantly in Rainbow’s opinion, inertial dampeners which made flying in it nice and buttery smooth.

Rainbow smiled as the shuttle slid smoothly to a stop in the air above a large landing pad and began to descend without any major bumps or jostling. Rainbow glanced at one of the many holoscreens linked to the external sensors array which served as windows. The mining colony below them looked to be about the same size as Ponyville, only instead of each building being uniquely designed and decorated, everything was the same simple modular half-cylinders.

At least everything is painted nice, Rainbow thought as she went back to checking her armor.

The Armor Penny had gotten for Rainbow was one of the simplest the galaxy ahd to offer, but it still blew her away. The base was a yellow flight suit, meant for space, which meant the suit had a full environmental containment system built into it. In this armor she could survive for a few hours in space, or basically forever on any alien world.

The fabric sections were fur-tight, but not uncomfortable, not even where the duraplast plates were connected to it. The cobalt blue plates covered about half of Rainbow's body, protecting her vital areas. The plates were very light, almost unnoticeable to Rainbow despite her heightened awareness of her body.

The plates covered her flanks, back, rib cage, upper legs, knees, shins, and hooves. They did not offer much protection from attacks, instead they were meant to help Rainbow survive a crash. The suit’s protective features came in the form of a small shield projector which wrapped the pegasus mare in a surprisingly cozy and snug layer of transparent hardlight which moved seamlessly with her body.

Rainbow had been assured that the hardlight shield would last for several sustained shots from an X-Laser canon. She had no idea what that was, but it sounded dangerous.

A holo screen next to Rainbow flashed red as the shuttle touched down. Rainbow glanced at it, and was immediately grateful she let the auto-doc install a text translation module in her head.

“Okay, don’t want to choke to death,” Rainbow murmured to herself as she slipped her armor’s helmet out of her new duffle bag.

The helmet was pretty simple. The only colored parts fit over her muzzle, everything else was made from transparent alloy, making it look as if she only had a respirator on. The helmet’s neckseals hissed as it sealed to her flight suit.

A second later and a holographic hud flicked into existence, giving Rainbow easy readings on her current location via a simple map, a compass, and little information about her armor’s power levels. I’ll bet I could get some really good altitude with this suit! Too bad this planet’s air is so thin. I don't think I can fly in this.

Rainbow stood up and waited for Penny to enter the cargo bay. It didn’t take long for the impossibly loud thud of T-34 footsteps to shake the shuttle, and within a minute Penny entered the cargo bay with a sad look in her eyes.

Rainbow pointed to the display with a wingtip. “It says there’s metallic particles in the atmosphere. Like, in super tiny dust form. You’ll want to put your hood on.”

Penny nodded gratefully and sealed her armor with a quick thought. The clang of alloy on alloy echoed almost painfully in the small cargo bay as Penny hit the switch to lower the floor. “Man I hate this thing,” she muttered half to herself.

Rainbow frowned and looked up at the yellow armored colossus, her tail raising in surprise. “What, why? It’s great!”

Penny frowned behind her hood. “It’s boring to fly. Nothing broke, no bumps, basically just pushed a button…” Peny sighed and waved a hand. “Ey, blin… You wouldn't understand.”

Rainbow shook he rhead. “No I get it. You’re saying it has no soul, right?”

“Da!” Penny sent a quick command to her armor, which deployed three camera drones.

The drones were quad purpose. All of her work had to be logged in case of insurance or legal problems, Penny herself liked to know what was behind her when stalking dangerous predators, and of course, her fans enjoyed watching the stream.

Penny faced one of the drones and gave it a thumbs up. “Hello, Comrades! See this little poni? This is Blue, she’s my new squire. The two of us are way out in the Noctae Sector on a shell-world-in-progress called Sananda.

“There’s not much known about this planet, if anyone can put some good data in the chat, my boyfriend Pan will send it my way. There’s a two hundred credit reward for anyone who can find me information on the local flora and fauna.

“All I can tell you right now, comrades… Well, the air is full of little metal razor blades, one breach of our suits and we’ll die a horrible lung pureeing death! Also, this is one of those planets where life only had smol places to grow in. Usually makes for tough plant eaters who don’t like other things in their territory, and blin… The predators on these worlds… Ah, but you know how those are. Let’s not scare Blue.”

Penny wille done of her drones to float down to Rainbow’s eye level. “Say hello to everyone, Blue!”

Rainbow gave Penny a mock glare. “Hi, everyone. My name is Rainbow Dash.”

Not that Rainbow knew it, but the stream’s chat descended into complete chaos at the sight of what very well may have been the most adorable species ever.

“Da. Blue Fast. I know,” Penny teased back. “So this mission is a bit of a mystery. Something big is messing with the mine here badly enough to stop a whole sector from getting their jobs done. If anyone wants to bet on what we’ve got to fight off today, Pan will be keeping the books for betting pool!

“I have no idea what we will find today so, come. Let’s find out!”

Penny sent a mental command ot her shuttle and commanded the cargo “ramp” to lower. The floor jolted slightly as its maglocks released and the cargo bay began to slide down on hydraulic supports, bringing a group of three silver-suited humanoids into view.

Each suit was made from a very reflective alloy-woven material which reflected heat, and featured housework and a pack which indicated they were long-term use environmental suits. Their suits were identical save for the number of red stripes on their sleeves. The one at the fornt had six, the other two had one each.

The three figures faces couldn’t be seen behind the gold-tinted visors of their globular helmets, leaving their species a total mystery.

A slight static hiss brought Pans’ voice into Rainbow’s ear. “Dash, you gotta check this out! Penny puts audio in her streams.”

Dash nodded. “Uh, okay?”

With a few keystrokes, Pan linked Rainbow’s comms to Penny’s streams, letting her watch the stream on a small video window in her HUD.

One of Penny’s camera drones had flown out of the ship the moment there had been room, and provided a view of Rainbow, Penny, and the three people on the dock below. The three of them visibly flinched as Penny’s T-34 came into view, a fact which worried Rainbow, and amused Penny enough to add her people’s national anthem to the stream as background audio while she was slowly lowered to the ground.

“Heh heh… What’s the matter, Comrades? Afraid of a little Chernin engineering?” Penny asked as she stepped off the platform.

Rainbow bent her head down to mutter into her comm. “Pan, I don’t get why the music is funny.”

Before the stallion could reply, the most-stripped of the three humanoids took a step forward and spoke in a low guttural voice. “To be fair, we weren't expecting you to be in a light mech, Captain.”

Penny pointed to herself. “What, this? A mech? Nyet! Is heavy power armor. You have a problem with something big enough to shut down your mine, I brought proper equipment.”

The team leader tilted his head slightly. “Excuse me?”

“I’m here to take care of your xeno problem. Did you got my broadcast?”

“We did,” he said slowly. “It’s just I didn’t expect you to want to get to work the second you got dirtside.”

Rainbow ruffled her wings. “Actually, she always dresses like that.”

The team leader was silent for several long moments. “You Chernin are… A fascinating people. I am Zaen Garin, the Overseer of Sector 892. I’m glad corporate approved a Hunter. Please, excuse my surprise, I’ve never seen one of you before.”

Penny walked forward and squatted down to get on Zaen’s eye level. Dash trotted forward as well, remaining next to Penny’s left side. “So, what is problem? All I know is something big and dangerous means you can’t dig. What is so big and bad on this rock that mining drones can’t take it on?”

The Overseer shook his head, a gesture visible only thanks to his suit shifting slightly at the shoulders. “I’m sorry. I thought corporate wouldn’t publish the job posting as I wrote it. Are you up for a slightly long explanation?”

Penny leaned forward to nod as best her suit could. “Da, and don’t leave anything out! Blin, I’ve had enough of your company’s mud-clear instructions.”

Zaen reached up to scratch at the back of his helmet. “Yeah… Sector 892 is a manual mining zone. We have drones, but they are only for transporting ore. Our prospector drones found a quite rare material in astonishingly large quantities below us. We tried mining it out with drones first, but the process was far too slow. It’s not in regular chunks, it’s randomly screwed about a complex series of caverns, and is very sensitive.

“We don't exactly have the best equipment, and the girls in accounting weren't liking the profit margins and loss ratios we had with drones, so we switched to organic mining in this sector.”

Rainbow nodded slowly. “Okay, and that’s why you don’t have robots to fight this thing?”

Zaen held up his hands defensively. “Oh no! We don't have robots to fight this thing because any robots we send into its den go berserk, and can’t exactly detect it… In short, our mining drones are able to deal with small critters that they can see. They can’t see this thing.

“In fact, we have no video footage of it at all… It— Well, it might be invisible, or have very good camouflage.”

Penny nodded, taking notes. “Da, da… So, what happened? Your miners upset some big subterranean predator?”

“Something like that… FIve weeks ago our crews reported finding a proper vein of—” Zaen stopped mid sentence and sighed in relief. “Oh good! Command just messaged me .Your contract says you can’t sell information on our operation.”

Penny laughed. “Is this classified? Hold on. Pan, cut the feed for five minutes and set up a censor filter.”

Zaen stood stock still. “You’re recording this!?”

“Da. I am legally required too. Don’t worry, I’ll scrub out all classified info. My comms officer is already standing by.”

Zaen let out a deep breath. “Oh thank god! There’s a pirate base somewhere in this system and— Well… We’ve found approximately forty two million metric tons of Terranite.”

Penny took a half step back, wanting to immediately board her shuttle and leave. “Blyt! You’re mining that with hand tools?! You'll kill us all!”

Zean waved his hands frantically. “No! No! You don’t understand, it’s stable!”

“Stable?” Penny frowned behind her helmet. “You have stable… You broke into a First Race ruin, didn’t you!”

Zaen sighed and turned to look out across the horizon at the rolling rust red hills. “No. We think we found one of the places they mined it from.”

Rainbow raised a hoof. “Hi, sorry, I’m kinda new here. What’s Terranite?”

Zaen turned around and looked Penny in her hood. “Your squire doesn't know—”

“Is not her fault, she’s from a primitive world.”

“Oh! Well.” The overseer knelt down to get on Rainbow’s eye level. “Terranite is a large blue crystal that produces a lot of energy when you bombard it with a gamma ray laser. The crystal dissolves, releasing almost as much energy as a matter-antimatter reaction, only it’s much safer, and you can make the reaction happen in an instant or very slowly, depending on the strength of the laser.

“It’s one of the best power sources in the galaxy, and we’re standing on enough of it to power every ship in the Orion arm for a few decades, if they were in flight constantly.”

Rainbow's ears drooped back. “And uh, it explodes?”

“Most of it will explode, yes. This deposit is stable, it doesn't seem to have been used at all. Which is why we think this used to be a First Race mine. Especially given how well, the dense part we found seems to fill the tunnel network, as if the Terranite once filled up the entire mass. Perhaps it naturally forms in, well, organic-like vein shapes.” Zaen stood back up and looked at Penny, clearing his throat. “Can you ensure that you blur out any crystals you find, and censor the name when you mention it?”

“Da,” Penny sent a quick text message to Pan, which included instructions on how to filter everything out.

A few moments later she gave the overseer a thumbs up as the filter was created. “It’s done. Resuming recording, sorry, legal department requires it.”

Zaen sighed. “Trust me, I understand… You can roll again.”

Penny resumed the stream and looked up at one of her drones. “Sorry, Comrades. Is only business,” she returned her gaze to the overseer. “So! You dug deep and found a big deposit of Terranite—”

Rainbow yelped as the word was bleeped out by a high pitched squeal in the feed which her comm was still playing back. “OW! Why is that the censor noise?!”

Pan groaned into Rainbow’s comm. “It was like somepony shoved their hoof up a cat’s butt… I’m going to adjust the volume mixer!”

Zane smield behind his helmet. “Well, at least now I know it was censored. To continue your briefing… Out here… On the landing pad… Some of our miniers tried to dig around a larger patch of the deposit to start cutting it off and get it processed for transport to the surface. They breached a sealed chamber and all of their life-signs flatlined.

“Comms are a little spotty under that much rock. We thought we lost their signals. I sent down some more men to check on them. We lost their signals. That’s when I knew there was a problem. I went down to check things myself. I took a full scanner system to see if something had gotten in the air, or maybe they set off a crystal and fried themselves.”

Zaen trailed off, and visibly shivered at the memory. “I— Have… Have you ever eaten salsa?”

Penny winced. “They had been shredded?”

“Or smashed to actual pulp…”

Rainbow gulped. “Woah, uh… Penny? I’m in light armor here!”

“Da. But you pass me guns, not fight,” Penny reminded. “So, you broke a hole in some xeno’s living room wall and it’s pissed? No problem! I’ll put it back in its hole.”

“You mean kill it, right?”

“Da, if I have too… I probably do that if it’s going to kill anything it sees and not eat it. That’s a sign of madness in most species. Oh! Did it eat any of the bodies?”

The overseer slowly shook his head. “No… It took their equipment.”

Penny blinked. “Ey?!”

“It left all of their...remains, but we didn’t find a shred of their equipment. I thought the gore piles might be from random creatures, but no! It is their remains. We did DNA tests. It’s killing people, then picking anything inorganic out of the pile and taking that, for some reason. Maybe it eats metals?

“The beast also comes to the surface at night. It leaves a weird trail, it’s got to be insectoid innature as it has at least ten legs and they are very much just spikes.”

Penny looked at the overseer for several long moments. “It’s coming up to hunt, and steals equipment?”

He nodded. “Yes. It’s taken equipment form up here, and we know it’s not being stolen because well… You can watch the stuff get dragged back into the mineshaft, but you cant see the creature itself. Do you have a comm’s frequency I can send video too?”

Penny nodded. “Da. Pan, open Channel 459.2 to the Stream,” Penny waited a moment for pan to comply then gestured to Zean. “Send it.”

Rainbow turned her attention to the video display on her comm screen. The feed flickered as it switched from playing the drone’s video feed to a recording from a security camera. The camera showed a view of a large well-cut mineshaft heading into the side of a sand-covered hill, as well as a pile of mechanical and electronic equipment.

The pile moved, almost as if a giant broom was sweeping ten-meter long sections towards the mineshaft in long, slow strokes. The invisible strokes went from left to right, pushing barrels, broken drones, piles of metal shards, and bits of vehicles into the mineshaft a few meters at a time.

Rainbow shivered. “That… That’s not okay.”

Penny nodded. “Da. I hate fighting critters with camo that good. Do you have any sensor data other than visual?”

Zean sighed and cycled the footage through the entire EM spectrum. Nothing showed up. “We don’t have short range radar. It may show up on that.”

Rainbow turned to Penny and looked up, tapping on her left arm for her attention. “Uh, Penny?”

Penny turned to look down at Rainbow. “What?”

“It’s not the invisibility that’s bothering me,” Rainbow said slowly. “Its.. Well, back home we have these things called snakes. They can be big enough to eat a small dragon or a pony, but most are very small… Imagine a mouth on a super long tail that’ all muscle.”

Penny nodded again. “Okay, I’m picturing it. Do they sweep treasure into piles like that?”

“No, but that’s exactly how they dig. I remember because Fluttershy had me help her take care of a burrowing cobra. They found its tracks, and it has bug hooves. It’s a thing that can sweep piles that are about ten meters long, and it’s got a bunch of bug legs. I think we’re fighting a giant invisible centipede that can burrow like a snake, and likes to hoard shiny things… Like the armor we are in.”

Penny hummed. “I wish I had gotten zoology data from your homeworld… What’s a centipede?”

Rainbow tapped her hoof to her chin as she tried to think of how she could describe one of those living nightmares. “So, imagine a bug, but it’s just that middle bit that’s tiny with legs, like a hundred of those stuck together in one long tube. Now give it a small head with huge mandibles that look like they are meant to rip and tear flesh and bone at the same time, then a mouth that looks like it’s made to eat your soul.”

Penny closed her eyes and pictured the first thing that Rainbow’s description brought to mind. Then she pictured one large enough to move that much junk at once, and shivered. Her armor creaked and groaned as it responded to her distress. “Okay! Blue, we’ll need the Firedrake package.”

Rainbow bit her lips a she struggled to remember which of the nine different equipment packages they had packed was Firedrake. “Uh…” Her wings twitched. “Was that the micro-missile launchers, electro-caster, tower shield, and the millimeter-radar module?”

“Da, that’s the one!”

Zean held up his hands waving them “Woah! Woah! Easy there, you can’t fire high explosives down there! You could set off the— Why do you think we haven’t just cracked the crust and pulled it out with a starship?!”

Penny held up her left hand in the stop gesture. “Relax, Overseer. No explosives, just armor piercing seekers. I don’t want to vaporize myself either. Besides…” Penny leaned down to loom over Zean. “You said there were berserk robots down there. I’ll need to fight through them if we run into any.”

“Oh, right…” Zean sighed, his shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry. I forgot to mention how that happened. We’re not entirely sure, but we are missing a drone control module. We suspect its’ damaged and just… down there. Sending bots random instructions and scrambling their behavior settings. There’s not too many, only a few dozen, and there are miles and miles of tunnels.”

Penny nodded one more time and turned to look out at the horizon where Zean had been looking a moment before. “Da… Is it over there?”

“Yes. I’ll send you map data on the same frequency.”

Rainbow gulped and turned to look at the overseer. “Can you give me a minute? I’m not used to controlling stuff yet.”

The overseer frowned behind his helmet, then nodded. Rainbow sighed in relief and closed her eyes. She’d agreed to getting her neural implant reluctantly. Very reluctantly. The turning point had been when she learned it would let her speak to Jo directly in addition to operate modern technology.

Rainbow reached out through the neural link, searching for the cargo sled’s signal. Okay. Cargo sled Firedrake. Move it to us. You can do it… Firedrake sled…

Thousands of technological signals became visible to Rainbow as she searched. The back of her head itched as she struggled to sift through everything and her implant irritated her freshly healed skin. By the time her mind grabbed onto the sled, the coin sized patch of skin on the back of her skull itched like mad.

Rainbow grit her teeth and with extreme concentration forced the cargosled to lift off the cargo deck with a slight lurch and drift toward her. She could see hear and feel with the seld’s own sensors, as if the hovering platform were another body. It felt… Unsettling. But it was efficient.

Penny smiled behind her hood as she watched Rainbow’s first time successfully getting the right thing on the first try. “Good job, Blue! Don’t worry, it will get easier after a few months. So, Overseer. Where are we going?”

The Overseer shrugged. “You’re the Hunter. What’s best for you?”

“I need the location of the mine shaft entrance, the deposit, and the location of the beast’s den.”

Zaen closed his eyes and sent the information to Rainbow and Penny. Rainbow winced as she felt the information arrive via her implant, disrupting her concentration for a moment. The Cargosled drifted forward, smacking Rainbow quite painfully on the plot. “Ow!”

Penny spun around a worried look on her face. “Are you okay? Suit intact?”

Rainbow nodded slowly, her HUD showed no breaches. “Yeah. Fine, just ran into myself.”

Rainbow took a look at the map information which was now overlaid on the world around her. Zean had given them three waypoints. A, B, and C.

“What am I looking at?” Penny asked.

Zaen cleared his throat. “A is the deposit, B is the shaft entrance, and C is the den.”

Rainbow retook control of the cargosled and climbed on top of it to prevent herself from having to focus on moving herself as well. “Sooo, what’s the plan?”

Penny looked across the horizon at the circular icon floating over the slightly distant hill. Something deep within her soul told her there was only one thing that any true blooded Chernin would do.

“Blue, we go to B.”

With that, Penny broke into a run, jumped off the edge of the landing platform, landed with a loud crash, and began to sprint across the sandy ground, leaving a trail of dust as she rushed towards the mineshaft.

Rainbow closed her eyes and willed the cargo sled to move, driving it after her friend as fast as it could go.

Pan’s voice crackled in Rainbow’s ear. “Hey, Dash? Uh… The chat is kind of laughing their plots off… Do you see a joke in the phrase “Rush B”?”

Rainbow blinked once. “Uh, no?”

Rainbow’s comm crackled again, this time letting Penny’s voice come through clearly. “Come on Blue! We need to get that kit attached to me so I can set up a sensor net around the mine shaft. I want to get data on this thing before we fight it.”

“Coming!” Rainbow called with an exasperated sigh. “This stupid sled is slower than an asthmatic foal!”

Rainbow reared up and balanced atop the cargosled as if it were a surfboard. It was the only way to make moving that slow while in the air look cool. I need to ask Jo to make these go faster…

Bliconal: Adorable blue pony wants to go fast but can't. This is not okay, Comrades!
Bytechrodu: 😢 Blue must go fast! #MakeBlueFastAgain
ConspiracyTeenz: Yes! #MakeBlueFastAgain

Manet donated 200 credits!

Manet: That cargosled had better have hyperjets on it next time! 😠
Editorksqu: Penny, Y U no let Blue fast? 😭
Feistyring: You know what?

Timuri donated 400 credits.

Timuri: Get that mare a jetpack. Mare’s love jetpacks.
FourHappy: Look at smol poni, standing up on cargo sled wanting to go fast. She no want cargo sled, she want to sky surf. Half of us are engineering nerds, we can make her dream come true. Join me, comrades! ☭
FuzzyLittle: #MakeBlueFastAgain
GeniusAbout: #MakeBlueFastAgain
Globarkom: Hey 😄 Four’s right! Penny’s got that whole factory on the Dawn. I’m making a file share server. I’ll start on some grav units that will fit a surfboards form factor! UDDI://odin.alchamax.Globarkom.per/Blue/Fast1
FourHappy: Da! We make poni fly! I’ll make the neural control circuits. Beginner friendly ones of course 😁
RayneLuna: #MakeBlueFastAgain
Islandclic: You read Penny’s Blog, they are in the hole credits wise right now. They can't spare the parts.
Latestrepe: Screw that! Blue needs to fast! Shut up and take my creds!

Latestrepe has donated 1,200 credits.

Lemonwara: I can design a magnet unit to keep her hooves on the board.

Maidericol has donated 188 credits.

Maidericol: #MakeBlueFastAgain
Mocanser: Nothing that cute shouldn’t get to go sky surfing.

Mocanser has donated 55 credits.

Mortaxis: #MakeBlueFastAgain
Optickins: #MakeBlueFastAgain

PenguinBunny has donated 3,001 credits

PrankXbox has donated a credit.

Ash19256: If you guys reserve the rear third of the board I can get a quantum ramjet in there.
Proteamet: #MakeBlueFastAgain
Railistr: What?! 🙄 Bullshit! No way you can do that.
Reportsig: I’ll work on a power plant for it! 😎
ShcamAnn: #MakeBlueFastAgain
Ash19256: I can too. I work for Valiant Drive Yards. Glory to the Children of Chern! ☭

Siblighte has donated 923 credits.

djthomp: Hold tight, Blue. We’ll get you fasts soon! ☭
Spyderterc: #MakeBlueFastAgain

Pan watched the live comment feed slowly begin to fund and develop a hypersonic surfboard and shook his head. “Okay, yeah! Space internet is way weirder than Equus internet…”

Jo smiled. “You mean nicer?”

“That’s what’s weird.”

Jo snickered as a vivid image entered her mind via her imagination subroutines. “Wait till they see Dash fly on her own.”

14 - The Phantom of Sananda (Part 2)

Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.

15 - The Phantom of Sananda (Part 3 Finale)

Rainbow Dash - 21st of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

749,567.83 A.H.

Sector 3 Terranite Mine - Sananda, Noctae Sector

Rainbow’s hoofsteps echoed seemingly endlessly with each step she took. When she had first entered the mine, she’d expected it to be a high tech place. An orderly series of square tunnels, flat floors, with lighted paths for workers and hover-carts to follow.

That was not remotely the case.

The Terranite Mine was rough cut. No laser drills were used to cut the path to minerals which reacted to laser light. They had been drilled, and roughly at that. The mine’s floor was uneven, it’s tunnels round, lumpy, more organic than artificial.

The mineshaft was cold, dark, and damp. The floor was covered in greasy oils and residue. Drill coolant and lubricant which had long since congealed or begun to decay. The only light came from the twin spot lamps on Penny’s chest, which were set to project red light. The Chernin’s choice may have helped maintain their night vision, but it turned the the uneasy atmosphere into a terrifying one.

It reminded Dash of the time her high school teacher had shrunk the whole class to explore an ant colony. A field trip which had not ended well at all.

Rainbow‘s wings twitched and rustled nervously as she and Penny walked through the mines, following the faint scratches in the tunnel floor. They walked in silence, both too exhausted to speak. The silence let Rainbow’s mind wander, and every faint scrape or click in the distance sent a fresh jolt of fear through her, be it echo or something more.

After nearly twenty minutes descending into the darkness, Rainbow could take the silence no more. The cyan mare turned her head and looked up at Penny, clearing her throat. “S— so uh… The people watching have to be bored, right? We’re not saying anything. Drones probably can't see us, just the rocks ahead.”

Penny shook her head, making her damaged armor creak. “Nyet. The drones can see us clearly. But… Da, we should talk.”

Penny commanded one of her drones to fly in front of her and offered it a wave. “Sorry, Comrades. I’m a bit pizdec… Blin that mech was over my weight class.”

Rainbow nodded and winced. “About that. You said you fought more dangerous things. Why was that such a problem?”

“It went right for me. The hidden observation post didn’t matter. Animals cannot see power signatures, you can hide from them. I ambush most prey I hunt. Most organic creatures cannot puncture my armor either. I’ve fought things that big, but only when I can surprise them. This one surprised me.”

Rainbow nodded and squinted through the darkness at the rocks ahead. “Makes sense… Luna, I wish I was a batpony!”

Penny hummed. “How many subspecies do you have anyways?”

Rainbow tilted her head in confusion, prompting Penny to say, “Variants. Of Pony.”

“Oh!” Rainbow thought for a moment then rattle dof f the full list. “Six. Unicorns, Pegasi, Earth Ponies, Sea Ponies, Bat ponies, and Alicorns.”

Penny nearly choked on her spit as a terrified look overtook her face. “Blin! You mean there’s a whole race of those god-tier psykers?!”

Rainbow’s ears twitched as she tried to understand Penny. “Oh! Uh, no. I mean, legends say there used to be, but there’s only three of them right now. Princess Luna, Princess, Celestia, and Princess Cadence.”

Penny shook her head slowly. “It’s little wonder they are your people’s nobles… Blin I still remember how Celestia teleported all of Pan’s stuff into a shuttle like it wasnt at least a ton and a few hundred meters.”

Rainbow snorted and waved a hoof. “That’s nothing! Twilight once teleported everypony in our group across town!”

Penny stopped walking. “Kakiye?”

Rainbow eeped and folded her legs, dropping down close to the ground, her tail standing up straight in alarm. “What? What is it!?”

Penny turned, her servos whining in protest, and took a deep breath. “You mean to tell me, your friend teleported at least three people what I imagine is around ten kilometers?”

Rainbow shook her head. “No.”

“Oh. Good. My brain almost exploded there,” Penny chuckled as she resumed walking down the tunnel.

Rainbow’s tail swished back and forth, slight anger boiling in her heart. Jerk! Making me nearly pee myself like that… You know what… “It was six of us, and she transported us from AJ’s farm to her library, which is about… Uh, sixteen kilometers?”

Penny nearly tripped over a loose rock in the tunnel. “She did what?!”

“You heard me,” Rainbow said with a smirk. “It’s funny how much that freaks you out. It’s just teleporting, she does it all the time. I swear she’s a bit chubby because she’ll just poof places instead of walking half the time.

“Now if you want crazy lots of magic, there’s the time Twilight tried to turn an orange into a frog.”

Penny closed her eyes for a long second. “She’s powerful enough to think she can turn a fruit into an animal?”

Rainbow smiled. “In her defense, she almost did. She got it about halfway.”

Penny shivered as the image of an orange with a frog’s skeleton and guts protruding from it and melded with the fruit’s flesh entered her mind. “Ugh!”

“Yeah, it was pretty gross,” Rainbow agreed with a flick of her wings. “It hopped just like the real thing.”

“Nyet!” Penny exclaimed, wheeling around to look Rainbow in her eyes. “You are joking! There is no way she did that. It’s not possible!”

Rainbow looked Penny dead in her eyes. “It is too possible! The minute we get her back from Nova Wing I’ll have her show you! Heck, that was five months ago. She can probably completely transform it by now!”

Penny rolled her eyes. “Want to bet?”

Rainbow smirked. “Yes, because you’ll lose.”

Penny snorted. “Ha! Okay, you’re on. A million credits says she can’t. I win, you do a million credits of work for me. That’s, oh, two years. I lose, I pay you a mill. Deal?”

Rainbow hold out her hoof. “Deal! You should just pay me now by the way.”

Penny reached out with her left arm then hesitated. “Uh, Blue? Smol problem, I can't feel how hard I am squeezing things. We have a deal, but I don’t want to break your hoof.”

Rainbow smiled. “Thanks…” Her mind suddenly turned to her mission. Bringing up Twilight reminded her of her missing friends, and how Penny had been effectively ordered home by her father.

“Uh, Penny?” Rainbow asked slowly.

“Mmm?”

Rainbow stopped walking and flapped her wings, flying up to Penny’s eye level. “So, about my mission… How long will going to Chern take? It’s already been a couple weeks since they kidnapped my friends. The trail is getting cold. What can we do?”

Penny frowned, realizing the urgency of the situation. “Well, we can talk to papa—”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Your dad is crazy! Why would he listen to me when I explain why I cannot visit right now?”

Penny tilted her head. “Ey?! Crazy? Blin, what makes you think that?”

“Oh, I don’t know… Maybe it’s because he was watching our stream and chatting on the phone while in a life or death battle to save a family member!” Rainbow exploded.

Penny snorted, then doubled over as she began to laugh.

Rainbow raised an eyebrow angrily. “What’s so funny?”

Penny sputtered as she tried to stop her laughter, slowly standing back up. “That was a business meeting.”

Rainbow blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Okay, so, Chern is… Different,” Penny said slowly. “You might like to do business by sitting at a table and talking till everyone is happy. For us, that’s boring. It’s also bad. Compromises is one thing, but businessmen can screw you and make you think you got a fair deal. We don't do negotiations. We fight instead.”

“Y— you kill each other over like, mergers and stuff?” Rainbow asked as a look of horror flashed across her face.

“Nyet. We use rubber bullets,” Penny answered. “Say you want my papa to sell your company, uh, targeting reticles at a good price. You come up with a price you think is fair, kidnap someone, which is most always cousin Anatoli, and leave note demanding the deal you want. If you can stop papa from getting Anatoli back, you get your deal, and return Anatoli. See?”

Rainbow blinked twice. “You… Its… Its a game?”

Penny nodded. “Da!”

“But— But he had a mech! And a building collapsed!”

“Da!” Penny said with a smile as memories of a few fun business deals flashed through her mind. “Good companies make arenas to negotiate in. Collapsible buildings you can reset later, fake landmines, mech access, artillery support. It’s more fun with good toys, da?”

Rainbow stared at Penny blankly.

Penny frowned. “What’s the matter? Don’t ponies have a combat based sport? Is like paintball, only without a t.”

Rainbow slowly shook her head as she drifted back to the ground. “You guys are weird.”

“Ha!” Penny snorted. “Says the girl who lives on a planet where you manually control the weather!”

A static crackle in Rainbow’s ear made her wince. Before Rainbow could say anything, Pan’s voice came over her comm. “Uh, Dash? The chat is going crazy. Please look into a camera and explain what’s going on with Twilight and everypony.”

Rainbow paused for half a second, wanting to slap herself for remembering that she was being watched and not everyone ‘present’ was up to speed. She blushed as a wave of embarrassment passed over her and turned to face one of the drones.

“Sorry, I uh, I probably should have talked about that earlier,” Rainbow admitted, her ears drooping. “So, a while ago, a couple weeks really. I was camping in the woods with my friends Twilight, Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie, and AJ. We were back home. Nopony knew that all of you existed. We’re a primitive world… Though it doesn't feel nice to call us that. We don't have space flight but—”

Rainbow sighed and shook her head. “Ugh, nevermind… That’s not important. What is important is that when I went off to talk to Pan, who was working as a park ranger at the time, a ship I later learned to be a part of the Nova Wing abducted my friends.

“So… They’re out there somewhere,” Rainbow pointed up with her left hoof and looked down the tunnel distantly. “Pan… Pan and Penny were going to get him off world because he didn't like living on Equus. I hitched a ride, hoping to find them. Somehow.”

Penny cleared her throat. “We do have one lead, comrades. Blue got a little hurt, so I took her to a doctor on Tavros. They had her species medical data on file, thanks to the captain of a ship registered as the VOC Meermin.If any of you happen to know who owns it, please let us know.”

Rainbow sighed. “I didn’t think space would be so big… There’s got to be billions of ships, right? What are the odds one of your viewers knows that ship?”

Penny smiled behind her helmet. “The net can do some amazing things. Honestly, I should have had you ask them sooner… We should keep moving. Come. We’ll ask papa if he can help find them. He hates slavers as much as anyone.”

Rainbow nodded once and turned around, resuming her walk into the depths of the mine. She’s right. Maybe we’ll be lucky and someone watching is a dock worker or something and knows where that ship is docked right now.

A faint glimmer of hope ignited in Rainbow’s heart. Its warmth brought her enough courage to ignore the fear and worry swirling in her mind for the moment.

Little did Rainbow know, she was gravely underestimating the power of angry nerds with no real lives and nothing better to do then throw themselves at a noble cause.

Pandora - 749,567.83 A.H.

21st of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

Parking Orbit - Sananda, Noctae Sector

Back aboard the Dawn, Pan was frantically trying to keep an eye on the chat. Most people had left after the fight to gush about ponies or try and find transformatives to sell to the people in chat who seemed to truly want them. Those who still remained had gone from astonished at pony magic to genuinely furious.

Flunkgonfly16: Fucking Nova Wing! It’s like every time something extra shitty happens they did it! 😡
Proteamet: Who the hell would enslave little pony people?!
Magnificent: I know right? #heartlessmonsters
Ash19256: Please tell me someone's seen that ship. 😤
ConspiracyTeenz: I work at traffic control for Kilvainia. If I see that ship, I’ll report it.
djthomp: Guys? It’s worse than that. Nova Wing is well known for enslaving a whole planet if they are primitives.
Sprinkles: Don't just tell Blue, call Star League! 😥
Timuri: Oh, shit! Dj is right. I just looked it up. Those bastards are going to commit a full xenocide then sell off the survivors.
Bliconal: Wait, they do WHAT?!
djthomp: Look it up. They’ve turned 19 planets into dead worlds and enslaved the survivors. They do it any time they find primitives Star League can’t help.
Chatterbox: Oh shit they do! WTF! 😡
FourHappy: Blue knows she can call Star League about this, right? Fuck it, I’m calling them myself.
Pan(moderator):They can’t help, FourHappy. I looked into the law and since we’re from the K3 sector they aren’t allowed to help us. Only Blue and I are citizens, or even can be citizens. Star League can’t look for them legally. We’d have to have another crime for them to investigate.
Fishwife: That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard!
Ash19256: If they are native to the K3, it’s true. SL is a Federal organization. That means they have the strict “never interfere/go here” policy.
Railistr: It’s also a huge superstition. A lot of people think if we go there we'll piss off the First Race.
Proteamet: This is bullshit! I called just now and they told me there’s nothing they can do unless we know the ship is a pirate vessel for sure.
djthomp: I can confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that the brass will never let League pilots anywhere near the K3 or a hypothetical race native to it. There’s a real fear of starting a war we can’t win by poking our noses in there.
Bliconal: So Star League is useless. Great.
Manet: Guys? If the Wing enslaves ponies, we’ll never get the chance to meet one in person. If you check out their ODIN page, most of their slaves are sold off to people who will use them for cyborg parts.
Pan(moderator):Wait, what?! Uh, guys? We can’t let that happen to anypony. Twilight, and her friends are sort of national heroes. They have the unique ability to use an ancient relic as a group. It took a thousand years to find six ponies who could use the Elements of Harmony last time. If Nova Wing is going to attack our homeworld, we won't have a chance without the Elements. Please if anyone knows anything about that ship, tell me right now!
ConspiracyTeenz: I wish I could 😰
Timuri: If SL won’t help, I will. I’ve got enough footage of Blue to program an AI to check sensor data for ponies. Give me ten minutes and I’ll share the file. If everyone runs it we might be able to cover a quarter of the Arm’s security logs.
Proteamet: Um, it would have to hack into every security server in the Arm to do that.
Timuri: Yep. Trust me, I can get it done. It’s not the first time I’ve done something like this.
Ash19256: Guys? I have an idea. I have access to the scrapyard at work. If I had some credits and a few helpers, I could get a ship ready for use. If Timuri’s program works, we could rescue them ourselves.
Fishwife: How? People who buy slaves basically means big time criminal organizations and people rich enough to hire security guards and buy armies of security robots.

Djthomp has created a new group: Rescue Team Alpha

djthomp: I’m ex-Star League. Count me in, Ash. Anyone else who wants to help, join in.
Proteamet: Guys? I know lots of us like to cosplay as old Chernin soldiers and collect military surplus, but it’s probably a bad idea to actually try and use that stuff against a mafia.
Timuri: My people have a saying; evil wins when good sleeps. I’m in. I’ve got a surplus store, everything works. I’ll bring my stock. Where are we meeting up?
FourHappy: Count me in. Adorible alien babus need help!
Sprinkles: #ImIn
Pussyfoot: #ImIn
RayneLuna: Anyone who doesn't help Blue is officially a monster. #ImIn.
Ash19256: Guys! The CNS Chebureki is up for scrapping! We need to save it. Not just for Blue, but for history!
Fishwife: Wait, we can save ponies on the Chebureki?! I’m in. How much is it for sale for? What will it cost to get it working?
Proteamet: Are you seriously doing this?!
FuzzyLittle: Buck yeah, we’re doing this! Ash found us a dreadnaught. #ImIn
Ash19256: Everyone interested, jump in the private chat. We need to raise sixteen million to save her. I’m hoping on the net now. Blue’s fight went viral. We can get the money in no time!
Proteamet: What do you expect us to do? Chip in all of our NET bucks and buy a broken battleship?
djthomp: *dreadnaught.
Ash19256 has linked an image.

Sprinkles: 😍 Its guns got guns!
Life Beat: I could help make the systems perform a bit better, and design replacements. Refitting a ship is hard work, but if we can get a few hundred of us together we can probably get her working in a few days.
FuzzyLittle: That’s exactly what I just did. Someone can get me a ticket, right? #NoRegrets #FinalyDidSomethingThatMattered
djthomp: I have my old dropship. I’ll pickup anyone who needs a ride.
Life Beat: I have an idea, but we’ll need to give her more Slav...

Pan looked away from the screen and cleared his throat to get Jo’s attention. “So uh, what is the CNS Chebureki? Because they seem to be buying it to help us.”

Jo quickly linked up to the ship’s systems, ran a network search, then laughed. “It’s a nice gesture, that’s what it is,” Jo answered. “The Chebureki is a two hundred year old Chernin dreadnaught that was retired after being blown halfway to hell holding the line over Kerivis during the last days of the…”

Jo trailed off and frowned. “Huh, that’s a bit ironic.”

Pan tilted his head. “What is?”

“The ship’s last battle was against a Nova Wing force which was attempting to unify their scattered fleet and return to being a steeler nation,” Jo summarized. “It fought for two straight weeks, taking out seventeen other ships of its own class before being crippled. The stories say the crew put on vac suits and fired heavy weapons from the deck to continue taking down fighters until the battle was over. Interesting history, but there’s no way Penny has enough fans to repair and then crew a two kilometer dreadnaught.”

Little did Jo know, she was gravely underestimating the power of angry nerds with no real lives and nothing better to do then throw themselves at a noble cause.

Rainbow Dash - 21st of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

749,567.95 A.H.

Sector 3 Terranite Mine - Sananda, Noctae Sector

The deeper Rainbow went in the mine, the worse she felt. The air felt charged, not with any tangible energy, but with the vague ‘negative waves’ she’d heard ponies talk about from time to time.

I always thought those ponies were hippies, or into alternative arcana. Dash thought as she nervously rounded a corner. But it’s something real, isn’t it? Something horrible happened here. I can feel it in my wings.

Penny had gone quiet again, not from fatigue, but from a similar foreboding terror. She moved as quietly as her damaged armor would allow, peeked around the corner and pointed down the tunnel ahead at a fork to the left side.

“Blue, that’s where the marker is,” Penny informed.

Rainbow nodded slowly. “Okay… So… If there’s another one, do we run?”

“Nyet,” Penny said with a tremor in her voice. “It knew where I was without looking. It was faster than me. If there’s another, we die.”

Rainbow winced and took a deep breath. “Surprised you didn’t quit.”

“Chernin don't quit.”

Rainbow smiled and shook her head. “Neither does Rainbow Dash… If we can’t outrun it, and we can't hide, we might as well get it over with and run in.”

Penny gulped, took a deep breath, and nodded. “Da. Let’s go.”

Rainbow braced her hind legs and flared her wings. Every last instinct she had told her that going through that tunnel was a horrible idea. But at the same time she knew it had to be done.

“On three?” Rainbow asked.

Penny shook her head. “Nyet. Now.”

The Chernin woman took off at a jog, her damaged suit moving as quickly as it’s servos and hydros could propel her. Rainbow trotted along at her side, not needing to run to keep up.

The two crossed the uneven tunnel to the side passage in a matter of moments. Penny turned, shining her armor’s headlights down the passage. The light traveled a mere twenty meters before it fell upon the end of the tunnel, which was marked with a gaping hole broken through the stone, which looked into what appeared to be a massive geode.

The geode was filled with bright blue crystals. They were truly massive, some as large as a pony, others were much bigger. All of them seemed to shine with an inner light, not quite glowing, but clearly containing some form of energy.

Penny took a deep breath and began walking towards the open passage. “Blue, that is a lot of Terranite… Please be careful. No lightning. You’ll set it off.”

Rainbow looked at the crystals and shook her head, trying to process what she was seeing. “Uh, no I won't. I’ll just charge it up. That’s manicite.”

Penny stopped by the entrance into the geode and turned around, squatting down to look at Rainbow through her visor’s slit. “Blue, you mean to tell me your homeworld has Terranite on it?”

Rainbow trotted forward and stepped into the manicite geode. Penny winced as the pony's hooves licked against the crystal, only for nothing to happen. “Have it? My friend Pinkie’s family grows it! It’s great for storing mana. We use it like batteries for magic items. There’s a piece of it in my saddlebags to keep the spatial fold going without a unicorn to charge it.”

Penny sputtered. “You can synthesize Terranite?! Blin! Did you just say this stuff is on my ship? It could explode!”

Rainbow laughed. “It won't explode! Watch.”

The mare drew back her hoof and slammed it into the crystal below her while pushing a portion of her magic into the crystal. The massive spire of blue crystal brightened, going from seeming to almost glow, to genuinely glowing. “See? The worst that happens is it glows a bit.”

Penny moved, carefully leaning into the hole to inspect the crystal. “It’s stable… But how? Nyet! Forget that, how do you make it stable?! We could be the wealthiest people in the galaxy, Blue!”

Rainbow shrugged her wings. “I don’t know, I’m not an Earth Pony. Ask Pinkie when we save her, her family grows it. Oh! Bat ponies dig it up all over the place too! Usually near arcanite veins, which is basically the same but better somehow… I don’t know I’m not a mage,” Rainbow said as she began to look around the geode. “The only profit in growing it is you can grow it to specifications… I’m not seeing any more death-robot-monsters.”

“Why is your world so… Rich?” Penny asked as she slowly climbed into the geode. “It doesn't make sense. It can't be like it is naturally.”

Rainbow shrugged her wings. “It’s always been like— Eeep!”

Rainbow’s hoof pointed straight at a large pile of scrap metal and electronics deeper in the crystal which had been hidden by shadow until the crystal she had been standing on had been lit.

Penny wheeled around, instinctively activating her armor weapons, then deactivating them as she remembered she was standing inside enough fuel to power the Arm for a year. She squinted at the pile of scrap and frowned. “That looks like a nest.”

Rainbow nodded. “We… Need to check it out, don’t we?”

Penny sighed. “We do.”

Rainbow winced as her comm crackled in her ear. “Uh, Dash? Penny? Hello?”

Penny frowned and switched her comm on with a quick thought. “Da? What is it?”

Pan sighed in relief. “Oh good! The drone's feed went dark.”

“It’s the security program,” Penny replied calmly. “For preventing the universe from seeing what’s in the mine. We walked into a big deposit. Tell them ‘Everything is cheeki breeki’, and they will believe you.”

“Okay… Just, be safe hon, okay?” Pan begged.

Penny sighed. “Too late for that…” Penny hung up her comm with a thought and carefully took a step towards the scrap-nest. “Okay, Blue, lets make sure that nest is empty. Then we go back to the Dawn. Call Papa. Find your friends. Never think about that monster again.”

Rainbow nodded and spread her wings, deciding to make this quick. “I’m going to fly over it, wait here.”

Penny smiled. “I like this plan. I’m happy to be a part of it!”

Rainbow took a deep breath to calm herself and pushed off from the ground. The air in the geode was oddly thick, and her wings bit into it with more force than she was expecting. It only took her a few flaps to glide into position over the nest, which wasn’t remotely enough time to overcome the building sense of terror in her heart.

Rainbow gulped, turned around to circle over the nest, flew for a few seconds then looked down. Her eyes widened as the first thing she saw was the nest had been built around a titanic skeleton.

The bones could have belonged to an elder dragon, or another creature of comparable size, but Rainbow kenw they did not. First, the things horns curved downwards pointing towards its flat mouth, and curled like a ram’s horns. Second, this thing walked on two legs, despite the huge wing bones and dragon-like claws. Third, its talons were wrapped around the haft of an axe the size of a dining table.

“Woah!” Rainbow exclaimed. She dropped into a hover and waved towards Penny. “It’s safe! It’s just bones. Come check them out. This thing was huge!”

Penny froze. “Fresh bones?”

Rainbow squinted into the darkness, inspecting them. The bones didn’t have the sheen of recently picked clean bone. They seemed older, almost stone like. Perhaps even petrified, though she knew that couldn't happen in these conditions.

“No, it’s been dead for a long time.”

Penny hummed. “Okay, I’ll take a look.”

Rainbow corkscrewed her way towards the crystal floor, searching for a safe place to land. As she peered into the darkness, something moved.

Rainbow yelped and flapped hard, ascending back into the air. Penny shouted something and ran forward as fast as she could. The light from her suit shown through a gap in the nest’s wall and illuminated a small boxy robot as it silently hovered across the crystal floor, carrying a large piece of metal towards the skeleton.

Rainbow laughed nervously and turned towards penny. “It’s okay! Just one of the mining robots they lost.”

“They went bezerk, da? Careful it doesn't mine you.”

Rainbow gulped and turned to try and see where the robot had gone. The mining robot hadn’t moved far, it stopped by a large yellow metal box embedded in the crystal beneath the skeleton. Rainbow tilted her head curiously as she tried to see what the box was, but was suddenly blinded as the mining robot began to weld the scrap metal it had collected to the box in an attempt to patch a hole in it.

Rainbow looked away from the retina burning light, wincing from the brightness, and then saw the rest of the space beneath the huge skeleton. The titan had died and fallen forward upon what appeared to be a massive, four legged spider-like mech.

It had four legs which were large, rectangular, and seemed to be mostly armored plate. The central body was shape like an octahedron, but with rounded edges and corners. An obvious weapon turret sat atop the central body, but had been crushed flat when the titan had fallen stop it.

The only other notable feature on the half buried mech was a cockpit. It sat on the side facing Dash and gave her the chills for the simple reason of appearing to be a steel coffin embedded in the mech in such a way where it protruded just enough to be distinct.

Time had worn away the paint, leaving mostly bear metal, but Dash could tell the coffin-cockpit had once been elaborately decorated, and beneath a tiny slit-like window, right where the occupants eyes would be, the flecks of paint were arranged in a way which hinted at a name having been painted on the lid-door.

Rainbow froze as an intense wave of sadness flooded through her, pushing her fear aside. The titan had slain this mech, and that was a very bad thing. Rainbow had no idea why she knew that, but she did. She knew it with the same certainty that she knew she could fly.

Why? What is this thing? No, who was it. This was a person… But how do I know that?

Rainbow stood stock still, staring at the fallen mech so intently she didn’t notice Penny as the armored woman stomped up next to her.

Penny approached Rainbow slowly, her nerves twitching as she feared something had silently killed her friend and propped up her corpse. “Blue? Hello? Blue? Are you okay? If you don't say anything I am going to carry you— Woah!”

Penny’s exclamation shook Rainbow out of her stunned trance. “Aaah! I— Oh, it’s you… Sorry it’s just that… Something about that robot. It makes me feel—”

“Afraid?” Penny asked with an understanding nod.

“No,” Rainbow said, shaking her head as she slowly trotted towards the mech’s cockpit. “Sad.”

Penny bit her lip. “Rainbow, leave it alone. We’ve fought one mech today. Let’s not make it two.”

Rainbow shook her head. “I can’t. I have to read the name on the lid.”

Penny raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“I don’t know. But I have to…”

Penny took a step forward and began emergency diagnostics of her hand-servos, desperately hoping to get the pressure sensors working so she could grab Rainbow. “Rainbow. Snap out of it!”

Rainbow looked over her shoulder at Penny. “I figured it out,” she said as she came to understand what had come over her. “I need to remember their name. They died, and were forgotten, and that’s not okay.”

Penny frowned and quickly ran a spectrum wide scan for psionic activity. The results came back almost instantly a very faint arcane link had formed between Rainbow and a dim something within the Mech. “Rainbow! Stop! It’s influencing you!”

Rainbow nodded, now fully aware of the faint touch on her mind by an arcane power. However, something deep within her, something she could tell was not the magic present within the machine before her, told her it was okay, and she would be fine. “I know. She wants me to remember her.”

Penny frowned. “What?”

Rainbow walked up to the lid and squinted at the paint, trying to read the name. Her eyes strained as she tried to find the pattern in the worn flecks of paint and faint engraving lines. Unfortunately it was too dark.

Rainbow looked over her shoulder at Penny. “Can you move a bit closer? It’s too dark.”

Penny shuffled her feet for a moment, nervously debating what to do before stepping forward with a sigh.

“Thanks,” Rainbow said and returned to trying to read the ancient name plate.

With the added light, her eyes were able to trace the pattern the paint had once made. The magical bond gave the shapes meaning. “Her name was Sara Jonett,” Rainbow said with certainty. “She was a hero. She fought the titans, and died. Not here, somewhere else. She was buried in this mech so she could continue to fight. She died again protecting… This place. Whatever it was… A house? Oh! She’s saying a gatehouse. Or maybe gateway? I don’t know.”

Penny frowned. “How do you know that?”

Rainbow shrugged. “I don’t know? She must have told me.”

“And that’s not terrifying? Are ghosts normal on your world too?”

Rainbow smiled and shook her head. “No… It’s just, I feel like what happened was normal. I don’t know why, but like, it was all instinct. I had to read the name, she had to be remembered, so her remains told me her name.”

Penny shivered. “Must be because you grew up on a magical world. I’m beyond spooked, we need to go. Please.”

Rainbow nodded once. “We can go now. Sorry. I just… I had to do that.” Rainbow took another step forward and touched the coffin gently. “I’ll remember you, it’s okay.”

A light flickered in front of Rainbow, making her jump nearly a foot in the air. Penny yelped and activated her suit’s lasers, ready to fire at anything that moved. The flickering light came from a mining drone.

The drone had climbed up onto the downed mech, and the light was from it slowly warming up its holo projector.

Rainbow and Penny took a few steps back, not sure what would happen. Rainbow spread her wings, getting ready to fly. Penny sent emergency power to her armor’s servos, making them hum loudly.

The projector flicked on. Bright blue light formed the shape of a human woman’s face. The face remained completely still as a sexless robotic voice spoke. “Homo Equus genome detected. Hello, Battle-Sister. Please, carry my operator’s final words home to Terra.”

“This thing is human made?” Penny’s eyes widened. “Wait, it recognised you!”

“Shhh!” Rainbow hissed. “It’s talking!”

The holographic face jumped to life, immediately taking on the look of someone in great pain as it spoke. “Computer: Do everything possible to get this message to Terra. The humans in the other reality broke something in the tunnel. The gate on our side is flooding with hostile lifforms. I am dying. They need to get a ship... out here... Close it… they want to wipe us out… because… gate...”

The holographic projection slumped forward, flattened slightly as if it hit something and grew still. The sexless voice resumed. “Message delivered to more fit agent. This unit is now aborting self-repair procedures…. Surrendering control of xeno-machines… Shutting down psi-field… Shutting down life support systems… It is now safe to shut down your Dragoon.”

The hologram flickered and died. The mining drone beeped loudly, signaling every organic nearby that it detected it was not where it was supposed to be and required a map-update.

Rainbow fluttered her wings awkwardly. “Sooo what do you think it meant by sister?”

Penny bit her lip. “Dooo you know your species evolutionary history?”

Rainbow shook her head. “No, not really. I didn’t take paleopony history.”

“Well, this thing identified your genome. This ancient first race robot referred to you using the First Race’s formal name for themselves. I think they made your species.”

“That’s red—” Rainbow snorted and waved a hoof, then paused. “No… Not it’s not. There’s no other explanation. I know what a genome is. It could read mine. There's no way two of those will be the same by chance!”

Penny nodded. “Da… We know the first race made many of the species in the galaxy. But your ancestors existed alongside them. That… I want to go back to your homeworld someday. Something amazing has to be there.”

Rainbow stood up and nodded. “We’ll go back when we have my friends.

Penny took a step forward and took a long look at the now inactive mech. “Da! For now, let’s figure out what we tell our employer… Ancient First Race AI. The miners must have activated it when they broke into this geode.”

Rainbow frowned. “What about the mech we fought?”

Penny gestured to the scrap around them. “It was collecting the scrap for this AI. The AI was controlling it. Or at least giving it instructions. As for where it came from… Probably wherever that huge dead demon-looking thing came from. Blin, certainly was evil enough...

“It was a machine too. It was sitting here in a huge geode full of fuel. Probably survived the ages in hibernation. Woke up with the AI, was hacked into trying to fix it so the AI could deliver it’s operator’s message.”

Penny turned to look Rainbow in the eye. “We won't learn more without searching for the gate and tunnel your uh, comrade mentioned. Do you really want to risk running into something like that?” Penny pointed to the massive skeleton above them.

Rainbow didn’t even hesitate with her answer. “HA! Nope!”

Penny nodded then sighed wearily. “Then we are out of here. The AI is off now. We solved the problem. We can get paid and get out of here! Let’s go visit my dad and see if he will help with our friends.”

Rainbow paused and bit her lip. “What about checking their base here? Or the bars like we planned?”

Penny groaned and facepalmed. “I’m sorry. I forgot. I did almost die today. Blin… We will do that before we go. Please, let’s get out of here. I still have goosebumps.”

“Yeah… Let’s get out of here,” Rainbow agreed with a shiver.

Penny turned and walked away, heading towards the geode’s exit. Rainbow began to follow her with a moment’s hesitation. She felt like she was leaving behind something important. Not just to her, but to all of Ponykind.

She wanted to stay and see if the ancient mech could tell her more, but… The bones. The titan’s bones above her. They were wrong. She understood that now. They were her source of the gut feelings she was having. She shouldn’t stay here. It wasn’t safe.

“Blue! Hurry up!” Penny called loudly.

Rainbow walked away from the mech, heading for Penny. Then she saw it. A single pony skeleton, almost entirely embedded in the crystal which made up the floor. It was a pegasus, like her. She could see the wing bones very clearly.

The skeleton had scraps of a metallic cloth jumpsuit wrapped around it, and a lone hoof protruded from the crystal. The skeleton wore a small, elegant bracer which seemed to be halfway between jewelry and utility on the protruding hoof. The ancient piece of technology glimmered in the dim light, its silver body and arcane looking copper inlay somehow untarnished. The glittering manacite stone set in the bracelet glowing very dimly.

The pegasus had been killed, and landed on its back, as if it had been swatted out of the air. Rainbow’s eyes widened in terror. The scraps of fabric looked like they had once been a uniform.

If that pony had a uniform on, and that AI called me a Battle-Sister… Rainbow gulped, unable to shake the feeling that she was standing on a mass grave of her people.

I need to go. Now! Rainbow decided. But… Not without something for a mage to examine. Our history isn’t what we think it is. We need to know that really happened!

Rainbow gently reached out, slipped the ancient piece of technology off of the dead pony’s bones, tucked it into her saddlebags, and flew after Penny.

Maybe Twilight can figure this out after I rescue her.

16 - Rise of the Gopniks

Rarity Belle - 21st of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

749,567.83 A.H.

Bochra and Associates Offices - New Macau, Caracalla Sector

Rarity Belle was a happy unicorn. Admittedly, this was extremely unusual for a pony who had been kidnapped by aliens, drug halfway across the galaxy, vivisected and experimented on, then sold into slavery. On the other hoof, her “owner” had freed her the moment she came to in his star yacht, then offered her heir status for his company.

Rarity had at first believed that she was being offered control over a law firm. The name Bochra and Associates invoked the image of lawyers slaving away over cases in thousands of cubicles. She reluctantly agreed, hoping she’d have the resources to find her friends if she suddenly became a part of a wealthy family.

The papers had been signed, Mister Bochra asked very politely if he could call her “granddaughter” expressly to irritate his relatives, Rarity said yes, and then her new “grandfather” fired up a holographic display and began to provide Rarity with examples of the company’s fashion line.

Bochra and Associates was the third largest producer of clothing in the Galaxy. Not just the local arm, but across all of known space. Rarity was in a position where even the poorest of her designs would be loved by more people than a pony could comprehend existing.

She’d been given a city to live in. As in, the entire city was hers. Everyone else who lived there worked for the express purpose of supporting her personal estate, which sat in the middle of the city. Despite this, the estate used holograms to appear as if it were in an isolated section of a lush fantastical forest. The elaborate, elegant, and decadent estate was supported by the city’s sixteen million workers, all of whom were required for the estate’s existence in some way or another, and all of whom led good lives.

Especially after Rarity had given them a pay raise. After all, Grandfather had told her to do absolutely everything she could to piss off his immoral and ungrateful relatives. Especially if it made commoners’ lives better.

Nearly a week later, having finally finished a full tour of her estate and been introduced to all the staff members whom she might personally associate with in pursuit of a goal, Rarity found herself quite happy.

She was living in a suite where each room had been decorated to her exact standards of beauty via nanomachines. If she even so much as thought a color, pattern, texture, piece of furniture, or appliance looked anything less than perfect, her neural implants would discover what changes were required for that perfection and make them. Before Rarity consciously realized she’d started to dislike the decor.

She lived in a sea of ever-shifting golds, silvers, bright gemstone colors, crystals, metals, and exotic woods. All of them subtly flowing from one state to another to match their owner’s whims and aesthetic tastes moment to moment.

Rarity was certain that such luxury hadn’t even been imagined by anypony on Equus, and now it was hers. Not only that, but it was one of the smaller throw away luxuries her staff had almost forgot to mention. As if that were something homes did as fundamental as provide an enclosed space.

Which made her feel horrible.

Rarity lay on her bed. Or should that be inside it? She wasn’t yet quite sure what the proper terminology for using a bed was when that bed was a pile of blankets floating in an antigravity field and stabilized with tractor beams for perfect comfort.

Rarity pushed her mind towards her room’s holo-suite, her long experience with spellcasting making the process of using a neural interface second nature to her. Within a heartbeat, her adoptive Grandfather appeared in holographic form, seated in a large overstuffed chair next to Rarity’s bed.

The hologram was perfect, without knowing his form was simulated, Rarity would have sworn the kindly old Prai was actually in her chambers with her. He had not teleported inside of course. Mister Bochra was seventeen lightyears away attending an in person business meeting. Advanced cybernetics allowed him to split his attention seamlessly between his real body and the holographic one Rarity had conjured.

Mister Bochra cleared his throat and removed a fine silken cloth from his breast pocket to clean a pair of glass and crystal spectacles. “Good afternoon, Rarity. Is all well?”

Rarity shook her head, doing her best to suppress the residual sniffles left over from her crying session. “No! It’s absolutely not alright.”

Mister Bochra inclined his head and steepled his fingers. “Is it your eye? I told the doctors they shouldn’t simply copy your other eye. I may not be a biologist, but after seven hundred rejuvenations you learn a thing or two. We can have it replaced tomorrow. I’ve hired a Mina geneticist to be your personal physician.”

Rarity shook her head again and rolled over in the antigravity bubble to try and face the hologram better. The young mare had no idea the hologram system was simply adding her to Mister Bochra’s perception of reality. To him she was sitting across the conference table from him, not laying in bed.

Environmentally Aware Adaptive Holographic Telecom. A handy luxury, but a terrible acronym, to say the least.

“No,” Rarity sighed. “That’s not it at all! My eye is fine. Wonderful even. Thank you… For everything. But, it’s so much!”

Mister Bochra chuckled and offered Rarity a smile. “You visited your personal bank, didn’t you?”

“No,” Rarity said again, then smiled shakily as the memory of a warehouse full of saturated credit sticks came rushing back to her. “Well, yes. I did. I don’t understand how much money is in it.”

Mister Bochra smiled, partially out of genuine affection, partially out of spite. “Nor did I, or the shareholders.”

“It’s more money than exists on Equus!” Rarity insisted with a dramatic sweep of her hooves. “You just… Gave it to me. Why? Why me?”

Mister Bochra finished wiping his glasses and placed them back on his face. “I keep an eye on all the slave markets. I would have bought your freedom even if I hadn’t been in need of an heir, Rarity. I tried to buy your friend too, but Nova Wing decided to limit one per customer. If it makes you feel better, I did flip a coin.”

Rarity’s ears drooped down as low as they could. “A coin toss… I get everything I could ever want a thousand times over, and Fluttershy is your perverted niece’s sex slave because of a coin toss.”

Mister Bochra frowned and stood up from his seat. He took a seat on the edge of Rarity’s bed and gave her a light hug, an action permitted by the hologram’s integrated hardlight systems. “Ah, I see what the problem is… If it helps, I can explain why I brought her along with me.”

Rarity paused, her lips pulling into a sharp frown. “I didn’t think it was a coincidence the other person was someone from you— Our family.”

“Of course not,” Mister Bochra scoffed, letting go of Rarity but remaining at her side. “Lady Rina was the best choice. No matter what she has told your friend Fluttershy of her intentions, Rina will get bored of her within a few months. Once she no longer wants her new toy, she’ll put her up for sale and I’ll buy her freedom.”

Rarity blinked, her ears and tail stood up as a ripple of rage washed over her. “B— But I got to call her the other day! She’s already had her sex changed, and is going to be made… Humanoid, I believe the word is! All to fit with that— That vile women's fetishes!”

Mister Bochra sighed. “Regretfully, yes. However, such things are easily reversed. The only permanent damage done will be emotional… Hardly a good thing, but it was much better than allowing one of you two to be lost to the galaxy.”

“How? How is it better?” Rarity demanded, willing her bed to let her drop to the ground so she could pace angrily. “She’s still going to be degraded and humiliated, and used!”

The elderly Prai turned to face Rarity. “That is another reason I chose my niece. As an empath, she is unable to do anything to someone they wouldn’t enjoy without feeling what they feel as well. This means her, pets, are only subjected to things she knows they will enjoy, even if they themselves are consciously unaware… Again, it is not good that Fluttershy is with her. It is quite bad. However, it leaves her in a place where we can liberate her easily. Once free, she’s welcome to live with you here. This is your estate and your money. You may do with them as you please.”

Rarity frowned in thought, making her eyes narrow. “Can I buy Fluttershy from her right now?”

“You can try,” Mister Bochra said calmly.

“I want to.”

The old Prai nodded and with a quick thought set a reminder for later. “As soon as I am no longer in this meeting I will help you arrange a call with her and you can try. She may be bored already. Normally she enjoys making her toys into exotic forms. The appeal of an exotic species such as yourself is likely to wear off soon.”

“Thank you,” Rarity sighed in relief, then slumped as more negative thoughts replace the one which left.

She looked up at Mister Bochra and then back down. “But…”

“You worry about your other companions,” Mister Bochra said with a sad sigh of his own.

“I don’t even know where they are!” Rarity sobbed, tears rolling down her face.

“Nor do I. Howev—”

Rarity turned towards the wall and took a few steps away from her bed. “I’m… I’m here. In more luxury than I think even the Princesses have ever imagined. They are all out there, having Celestia knows what done to them! We couldn’t even find Rainbow onboard the ship when we escaped. We don’t even know if she got away or if they got her too and held her someplace else onboard. I—”

Mister Bochra took a deep breath. “Rarity, I—”

“I can’t imagine anypony having it worse than Fluttershy, but I know something will prove me wrong!” Rarity sobbed, sitting down on the floor, which had become nice and soft the minute her room detected her movement towards a sitting position.

The elderly businessman took a long, slow, loud breath to calm his nerves. If this is what helping a young woman through major life problems was like, he was very glad to have never had children of his own. “I would like to inform you that I have people looking for them.”

Rarity’s ears perked as her head spun to face her adoptive grandfather once more. “You do?”

“Of course I do! I’m Tantaib Bochra,” the elderly man huffed indignantly. “I run one of the few megacorps to exist galaxy wide. What do you take me for, a doddering old fool?”

Rarity’s cheeks flushed. She pursed her lips and stammered. “W— Well you do look very old, and I know nothing of your people’s aging process.”

“My appearance is entirely my choice and you know it!” He corrected as he instructed the hologram to bring his chief of security into the call. “One moment, Rarity…”

The air in front of Rarity flickered and rippled as a much lower grade hologram of a tall woman Rarity recognized as being a Toraxian sprang to life in her room.

She made Rarity think of a weasel. All Toraxians did. Rarity felt quite bad for looking at them and seeing giant bipedal weasels, but at the same time, that’s exactly what they looked like. A meter tall weasel someone stretched into a humanoid-ish shape. Then gave them a squirrel-like tail twice as floofy as their body was tall and wide.

The specific Toraxian in front of her now was taller than most, clad in a bright blue jumpsuit with yellow accents and black security armor. She had the typical gray, white, and brown fur patterns, but a large rune was burned into her face covering her left eye, cheek, and the side of her neck.

Apparently, she’d done that to herself. Toraxian soldiers’ tradition of ritualistic burning the first letter of their Lord’s name into their own face with an old knife blade was something which made Rarity want to stay far away from their homeworld. If that was how they expressed loyalty, she had no desire to learn how they expressed more intense emotions.

Especially not love.

The Toraxian saluted the moment her hologram came on line. In her office, her Lord and the young Lady had simply walked in through her door, as if this were a formal business meeting.

“M’Lord! And Lady,” she greeted with a low bow. “How may I serve you?”

Mister Bochra cleared his throat. “Rarity is worried about her other friends, Captain. Has there been any word on the others?”

“Yes!” the captain exclaimed with a smile. “I’m in a text-only chat right now getting details on a rescue operation some civilians are planning.”

Rarity’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. “I— But, what?! Who have they found? Where are they?”

The Toraxian glanced down to check her screen and her notes, an action which the hologram system hid. “A pony named Rainbow Dash went uncaptured, and somehow found her way into space. She’s currently serving on the Dawn of Destiny as a Xenohunter’s Squire and cook. She explained her friends were kidnapped by pirates in a livestream an hour ago and well, to put it very lightly sir, ODIN is angry.”

A tear rolled down Rarity’s face. “Rainbow’s okay… Thank Celestia!”

Mister Bochra smiled happily. “Good! Tell me of this rescue plan.”

“Unfortunately, sir, it has little chance to succeed,” the captain sighed. “I’ve done some digging, and it appears as if a rogue Star League agent has supplied the general public with the locations of two ponies, or at least, their last known locations. This team is trying to refurbish an old Chernin Dreadnaught to cowboy up and storm the places.

“Unfortunately, they are no one of real means, and while the crowdfunding is impressive, it won't be enough to pay for a rearm and refit of a shuttle, let alone a dreadnought. Not in enough time to prevent those leads from going dark. To say nothing of the crew costs and—”

Rarity’s heart skipped a beat as she realized the problem was not a problem. Namely because she was the solution. Rarity cleared her throat. “Could you please transfer however much they need from my account to the project?”

Mister Bochra smiled and knelt down to gently ruffle Rarity’s mane. “Atta girl! Beat me to the punch. How much does the warship they are working on cost? New of course. I assume they saved it from a scrapyard somewhere.”

The Toraxian hummed and tapped away on her screen for several long moments. “They no longer produce that class of ship, M’Lord. An equivalent vessel is three trillion credits dry, and six trillion credits loaded.”

Rarity’s ears drooped back. “S— six trillion?!” The mare gasped.

Never in her life had she ever even imagined hearing anypony say such a large number in relation to the cost of any tangible item, let alone thought she would—

Mister Bochra nodded and shook his head. “I know! That’s so shockingly little. But I suppose that’s Chernin engineering for you. Cheap, efficient, but inelegant and spartan. Why not give them fifteen trillion? It will be less work for your accountant to push the next day’s worth of your account’s interest to them than to have to work out the percentages and such.”

Rarity’s jaw dropped. “I— I make trillions an hour?!”

The Prai nodded solemnly. “Yes. It’s not a very good interest rate, only six point eight per—”

Rarity spun and faced the security captain, putting on a face which was at once relieved, elated, and determined. “Give them fifteen trillion right now! And I want you to include a letter with the money…”

CNS Chebureki

749,567.92 A.H.

Valiant Drive Yards Scrapyard, Rad-Shielded Orbit -- Chern, Noctae Sector

The middle aged Eldiras known to ODIN as djthomp stood on the CNS Chebureki’s decaying bridge. The venerable dreadnought indices were bare, gutted of anything useful. Not one console remained in the ship. Not one gravplate which was functional could be found even in storage lockers. Because the lockers had been removed from the ship.
The Chebureki was little more than a superstructure, armor plating, and old broken down guns. Dj had been appointed captain of the ship because he’d once served as the captain of a Star League carrier. The others were all nobodies, random people from across the arm who had been able to make it to the scrapyard to help.

None of them were trained. Most of them had only ever worked in retail. They didn’t know how little chance this ship ever had of flying again. Dj hadn’t told them it was a fool's errand. He himself hadn’t known the ship was in this bad of shape until he’d gotten abroad.

Dj sighed, grateful his vacuum suit would hide the sound from the three wannabee Chernin Gopniks who were busily installing a new helm console across the deck from him. A Mina who looked like a Chernin man, a Grosson of indeterminate gender, and a very synthetic vulpine shaped female android.

They were dressed in vac-suits which were clearly made from mismatched Chernin surplus from a dozen different time periods. In spite of this, they each had the three stripes of Chern painted down their arms and legs to make the uniforms look modern. The three worked together with an intimate knowledge of the ancient hardware for a single unifying purpose.

The volunteers had more hope, faith, and drive than any of the Officers under his command ever had.

It was at once a thing of beauty and sadness to see them work on the dead ship.

Unless we get another thousand volunteers, and a few trillion credits, this ship will never fly. Dj thought to himself as he checked the project’s credit reserves. At least we have enough credits to get everyone home via public transport once they realize we can’t pull this off after all.

Dj’s hud chirped as a message came in. “On screen.”

Rarity Belle has donated 15,000,000,000,000 credits.

Letter attached.

The reptilian Captain sputtered and stumbled backwards in shock, his mag-boots disengaging from the deck as he tipped over. Dj spun, flipping head over tail as he drifted up towards the ceiling, spinning in the micro-gravity environment like a first-time spacer.

The vulpine android’s sensors detected her captain’s sudden tumble, prompting the vulpinoid to turn around, walk over to the tumbling Eldiras and gently grabbed onto his leg and pulled him back down onto the deck.

Dj’s magboots renguaged with the deck, and he smiled. “Thank you, V-1X.”

V-1X returned his smile, the plasteel plates of her face sliding and flexing as she did her best to mimic an expression her creator species couldn’t make. Her muzzle and ears were unable to fit in a standard Chernin helmet, so she’s simply cut holes in them through which her muzzle and ears protruded. After all, an android had no need of air, even if they did have an irrational love of old military junk thanks to their friends.

“My pleasure, Captain. Did your boots fail?” The awakened android asked over the shortwave comms.

“Negative, their operator failed… As well as the donation system. It gave me a donation that— Well, it’s bugged text,” Dj explained as he opened the project fund’s account one more time to check the balance.

Total Funds Remaining: 15,000,000,030,739

Dj sputtered, his tail flexed, pointing straight up so much it pushed his old League uniform greatcoat tails up and away from his back. V-1X tilted her head. “What’s the matter sir? Are we out of credits already?”

Dj shook his head, his gold tinted visor hiding a fair amount of the sheer surprise and manic glee on the old officer’s face. “Noooooooope! I uh… I don’t know how we can spend… Oh, my…”

Dj extended his comm to the entire project via the chatroom. “All hands, this is your captain speaking. A generous donor, presumably a Prai noblewoman, has just donated fifteen trillion cretits. We will be hiring outside help to rebuild the ship. I want each one of you to scout the scrapyard for parts, equipment, and ships to stock the hangers with.

“Assuming we gain enough crew, we will be purchasing other capital ships. Ash, I need you on the bridge. We need to get a more secure account established immediately!”

Dj crossed his arms behind his back and began to pace the bridge, looking critically over the space and planning out how to remodel it into a functional command center. Thank you for the miracle, universe. I owe you one.

Dj’s eyes turned to the spot he wanted his chair to be, and a personal fantasy blossomed in his mind. “V-1X, do you think you could find the command chair from a kakadu-class frigate in this scrap yard?”

She saluted immediately. “Yes, sir!”

“Then find one please. I have a letter to reply too, and a ship rebuild to oversee,” Dj turned to the chernin still working on the helm. “Pseudonymous, I want you to make some calls and see if we can't rent a dry dock. This job just became something we can do for properly instead of patchwork.”

“Actually, sir… If we have that kind of money now, I’ve had this idea for a while for semi-sentient self-replicating fabricators… We could give this old girl a self repair system while we fix her up!”

Dj blinked. There was only one thing to say to that idea. “Well, Cheeki Breeki, Comrade. Get on it, I’ll handle the Dry Dock.”

The following morning, the scrapyard manager arrived at work only to discover everything in it had been purchased, and an orbital dry-dock had been relocated to where the scrapyard had once been.

The CNS Chebureki sat within a technological web of repair drones, service vessels, logistics units, and space-dock arms. Her hull glowed as fresh armor was welded onto her skin. The brand new reactor core thrummed and rumbled, burning with power the old ship had never seen. The fresh stalinium armor had been painted a bright cyan in honor of Rainbow, and her hull had been given the three stripes of Chern in a dark obsidian black along her dorsal and ventral lines.

Cargo ships delivered entire racks of power armor, each suit custom built for a specific crewmember (Yet still made to look mismatched in terms of time period, regiment, and even service branch from part to part.).

The venerable dreadnaught’s recently repressurized decks reverberated from the sound of people and tools working hard to get her fully online almost as much as they did from the thousands of small radios playing different hardbass songs on freshly blown out speakers.

Disposal drones carried away load after load of broken parts, scrap metal, empty vodka bottles, and empty shashlik takeout boxes. Hundreds of workers in mismatched surplus equipment squatted atop the Chebureki’s hull, taking their lunch breaks while practicing their small arms skill by shooting at scrap-metal targets drifting by the drydock.

The manager took a deep breath and briefly rubbed his eyes before sending a comms message to his boss. “Uh, sir? The scrapyard seems to have been overrun by gopnicks.”

“Nyet, they bought it.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“They bought it. All of it. Whole yard! Anything not put onto that dreadnaught was shipped to their homes. Did you miss the memo? We’re going to auction off the scrap from now on. There’s a market for it.”

The manager paused for a long moment as he searched for exactly the right thing to say next. “Ey… The blyat I do now?”

“Don’t know, call corporate, Comrade.”

The manager nodded once and sighed. “Are we letting them fly off with that thing?”

“You gonna stop them?”

The manager looked back out at the dreadnaught and winced as he saw each individual cannon on each individual turret was having its own dedicated liquid cooling system installed.

“Ey, nyet….”

“See? They get to keep ship. You go call corporate. FInd out what they want you working at now. Me? I’m heading back on board the Chebureki. They know how to have a good time! Fix up old warship, go shoot at Nova Wing. Blyat! I’ve had worse vacations than that.”

Twilight Sparkle - 25th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

749,564.63 A.H.

Livingroom, Subhive ruins -- Tustea, Noctae Sector

Twilight stretched her wings and yawned. The couch creaked under her weight. It was ugly, being a simple beige couch with no pattern or dye present in the fabric. Zuul hadn’t yet figured out how to make dyes which didn’t immediately stain anything that touched the dyed object. She also hadn’t been able to figure out how to make springs that worked properly for a couch, making it somewhat lumpy and not too comfortable.

However, the couch beat sleeping on the ground, almost beat sleeping on the soft organic mattresses Zuul grew for her drones to sleep on, and was a testament to how far the hivemind had come with Twilight's help in just a few weeks.

By Twilight’s estimation, they had bypassed most of the tech tree moving straight into basic industrial scale processes thanks to Zull’s endless numbers working in assembly lines with perfect coordination. A few days of that and crude, inefficient, but functional mechanized devices had been created to produce basic materials. A few days after that, and everything had improved.

Now, the entire dead world was an industrial powerhouse, part factory, part laboratory. When Twilight had laid down for her nap, Zull had been working on designing basic elements of rockets in order for them to try out several chemical fuels.

In order to call the wider galaxy for help, a satellite would be needed. To get a satellite up there doesn't require anything fancy. A rocket would do. Too bad for Twilight, ponykind hasn't launched a rocket higher than Cloudsdale’s usual cruising altitude yet.

Even more unfortunately, that rocket had not been one meant to carry a payload. It had been an eccentric businessman’s publicity stunt gone awry. Apparently a young filly with a flight problem had hijacked the rocket in an attempt to check and see if her problem was takeoff speed.

Twilight opened her mind to Zuul, letting her friend know she was awake. Over the last few weeks Zuul had proven to be extremely trustworthy regarding the link. Not one violation of her privacy, not even one single telepathic message after Twilight asked for privacy.

It was clear that Zuul simply hadn’t understood how to interact with things without telepathy. At this point, Twilight understood why.

Twilight got up and took a few steps, her hooves clicked against the clay tile floor she and Zuul had installed together. After learning that Twilight wasn’t happy living in a cave segment, Zuul had carved an entire underground palace out for Twilight, then painted, furnished, plumbed, and ran power to it.

Twilight had taken to spending most of her time in the living room, where one of Zuul’s drones had glitched out and carved randomly at the northern wall, creating a very interesting piece of abstract art in the wall.

Twilight smiled as she looked at the swirling almost organic looking clawmark made fresco. I’ll miss this art when I am gone.

Twilight greeted as she stretched.

Her force-evolved body was finally under her full control. Twilight wished she had a better quality mirror or a camera while she had been changing. She had been short, chubby, cute, a nerd. Now she was tall, nearly the same height as Luna. She was lean and athletic, her body rippled like a cat when she moved, hidden muscle and grace under a smooth coat of silky fur.

The cuteness had gone. In its place, Zuul had provided bucking adorableness. Or maybe Twilight’s tallness was directly related to her cuteness. Zuul kept joking that Twilight looked like she’d grown up, molted, and gotten her wings.

The hivemind replied, it’s voice sounding male at the moment.

Twilight looked into her mirror and opened her vision centers to Zuul, letting him see her reflection.

Zuul promised.

Twilight smiled. “Well, I—” Twilight blushed as she forgot to think instead of speak.

Twilight focused her will on the alien magics her new body gave her and directed it to her wings. The feathery appendages twisted and melted, flowing together to form a pair of leathery bat wings.

<— bat?> Twilight finished.

Zuul sent Twilight a vague feeling she’d learned meant ‘hummm’.

Twilight smiled shyly.

Zuul informed, its voice switching to a more female sound.

Twilight asked.

The sound of a hoof knocking against wood filled the living room, making Twilight jump. Her still new wings flapped on impulse, managing to carry her into the air a fair distance before she landed back on the ground.

Twilight grumbled playfully as she reached out with her magic to open the door.

Zuul apologised with a giggle.

The crude brass doorknob turned, and the door opened with a creak. Twilight blinked as she saw a creature in the doorway. It was most definitely a drone, it had the same sleek armored look of the raptor-like creatures Zuul preferred using, but it had been ponified, for lack of a better term.

The drone had been made much smaller, it stood as tall as Twilight. Its body had been reshaped to match a stronger mare or an average stallion, but was still oddly curvy for something with visible muscles. It had four legs with hooves, a horn, wings, only two eyes, a white tail and mane which hung long, and flowed like spider silk… But retained the shark-like mouth, alien eyes, and armored skin.

The Drone had a pair of simple leather wings, which were somewhere between a bat’s and a dragons, but no horn. Its wings looked fairly large too, as if they were meant for minimal magically assisted, or maybe even non-magical flight.

Twilight smiled.

“As best I could, yes,” Zuul replied verbally through the drone, showing it to be female, or at least sound like one. “I know you’re a herd species, and you need people like you to be near you… I hope this isn’t an uncanny valley situation.”

Twilight hummed and looked Zuul up and down, then shook her head.

The drone frowned. “Oh, would you prefer telepathy?”

Twilight tilted her head. “Uh, wait, are you trying to accommodate me now?”

Zuul nodded. “Yes, It’s your turn for a social favor.”

Twilight blushed and swished her tail. “Thank you… Are you replacing all of our drones with these?”

Zuul smiled. “Awww! You called them ours!”

Twilight’s cheeks burned red. “W— well I can control them too so… You know.”

“I do know, that’s why I like it,” Zuul waved for Twilight to follow her and began to trot out of the Friend’s Palace and into the hive proper. “And no, I have reserved these for your use, Twilight. Recall when you asked me to implant drone production organs in you?”

Twilight nodded once as she followed along behind Zuul. “Yes, do I make ones like that?”

“Yes. I also grew a small squad of them for you. If they fall in combat, you can replace them. If you decide we need more forces offworld, you can make an army. Given time, food, and shelter, of course.”

Twilight sighed. “Thank you… I don't want to have to do that, but it’s a good backup plan.”

Zuul turned the corner and began to lead Twilight up to where the radio station had been built. It wasn’t much further up the tunnel, the buzz and hiss of radio static would already be heard faintly at the end of the tunnel.

Zuul shook her head. “No, it’s a pretty bad plan over all. The Galaxy won't like a creature like me on the loose. But… It’s worth the danger under two conditions. First, it saves your friends. Second, this drone comes with you.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow, “What’s special about this particular one?”

Zuul grew silent for a few seconds, and as they continued to walk, Twilight’s suspicions grew.

“It’s me,” Zuul admitted at last.

Twilight stopped in her tracks, eyes wide. She hadn't been expecting that. “Beg pardon?”

Zuul turned around and tapped her hooves together. “I… Added extra parts to this drone. It’s a full backup of my consciousness. Everything I am fits in here, and seamlessly updates in real time. I… Made a mind for personal use. This is me, as an individual. As much as I can be, at least. So long as I survive, I survive. See?”

Twilight wasn’t sure what she could say. All she could do was process her way through what had been said again. She frowned. “I um… Y— you want me to always be with you then?”

Zuul nodded. “Yes… I… I can’t go back to being alone,” Zuul closed her eyes and hung her head in a perfect mimic of Twilight’s own body language. “I know that’s clingy, and not something considered healthy by your people to be so attached to someone but… We’re so similar! But different. It’s nice and I… I think I love you.”

Twilight’s cheeks flushed. She shuffled her hooves against the cave floor and sighed. “I… I think I might love you too,” she admitted. “But! But I need more time, okay? At the very least, we’re best friends.”

Zuul finched.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Zuul, while I do admit that I like you a lot, and that body you’re in is cute, I’ve only seen it for a few minutes. Give me some time, okay? At the very least,” Twilight stepped forward and gave Zuul a hug. “You can live with me when I go home. We’ll be roommates and besties no matter what, and maybe more—”

Zuul blushed. “I’d love that… Oh um, question. Do you prefer stallions? This body can be fleshwarped, just like yours.”

Twilight giggled and shook her head. “No, this is fine.” She promised then shook her head. “I uh.. You’re not making me think you’re cute, are you?”

Zuul frowned, her cheeks puffing out. “You know I’m not! You’d feel it.”

Twilight took a deep breath and bit her lip. Unable to say her thoughts out loud, she directed them at Zuul instead.

Zuul giggled. “Oh! Okay, no problem! I fully understand that. We should get to the radio room. I want to show you how everything works so you can control the drones manning it if you want too.”

Twilight nodded and gave Zuul another quick hug, then stepped past her, deciding to playfully brush her flank against Zuul’s side. “Okay.”

Zuul’s tail swished happily at the affectionate gesture.

Twilight froze in place again and sputtered. “I um… M— Mab— Maybe later!” She said with a shaky smile.

Zuul giggled, turned around and skipped ahead of Twilight. “Only if you want too. So the radio room is right around this corner. We needed to put it up near the surface so the dish could be—”

The background static clicked and popped. A loud almost angry shriek blasted from the speakers, making both mare’s ears lay flat against their heads in pain.

“Aaaa! What was that?!” Twilight demanded.

Zuul whimpered. “Ow… Hearing way better, ow!”

Unknown to the two mares, a starship had arrived in the system. The noise having been the wave of Tachyons dispersed to the void when the ship dropped out of FTL.

Twilight ran ahead, barging into the radio room. “We need to make sure nothing broke!”

“Agreed! Check the vacuum relay, you designed it. I will look at the signal amplifier.”

Twilight looked around the small room. The center was mostly filled with a large radio tower and power equipment, while the items needed to operate the radio sat around the side. The radio served a dual purpose as a transceiver and a space facing radar, to try and catch sight of any ship passing by.

Checking the equipment was hard. Few items had a case, and everything existed in a state which would horrify an engineer while arousing a steampunk enthusiast. Brass pipes used for grounding. Big coils of wire everywhere. A large boiler to power the radio equipment that hissed and leaked steam… The system worked, but checking it for problems was slow going.

The two mares spent nearly five minutes looking over the radio equipment. Nothing seemed to be out of place. Zuul was just starting to check the last of the broadcast equipment, when one of the speakers beeped.

Twilight looked up, her wings flaring slightly at the beep. “Uh, was that the rad—”

The beep sounded again. The two raced over to the crude crystal screen which was their radar display. The crystal was dark for seemingly an eternity. Then a pale green dot flicked into existence overhead, and the machine beeped.

Twilight frowned. “We can contact them right?”

“Yes, but they may be more pirates.”

“Good point,” Twilight said, hanging her head slightly. “I wish we had an observatory… We could get a look at the ship and then decide if we should con—”

The radio crackled, sputtered, and sparked as it came to life. Music began to play over the radio, a cheerful tune with alien lyrics and a militaristic cadence. Along with the music came a voice which Twilight swore was artificial, yet it sounded normal and organic, almost as if it belonged to a robot.

The voice was female, and spoke broken equish. A fact which made Twilight’s jaw drop. “Privet? Is CNS Chebureki calling Twilight Sparkle. Indoors let, Twilight Sparkle?”

Twilight’s jaw dropped even further and Zuul’s joined her’s in hanging open.

A slightly annoyed male voice speaking perfect Equish groaned. “V-1X, you’re an android. Why are you even trying to speak her language as if you had to learn it normally?”

“F--Fun, tovarich…”

“Use the language files, please,” the male voice sighed.

The female voice cleared her throat. “CNS Chebureki calling Twilight Sparkle. Come in Twilight Sparkle.”

Zuul looked over to Twilight. “Answer it. I have drones ready with ground to air weapons. We can repel a drop, we will survive a bombardment.”

Twilight nodded once and picked up the microphone with her magic. She pressed the button and cleared her throat. “Hello. Twilight Sparkle speaking. Who is this?”

“This is the Gopnik Armada’s Flagship, the mighty dreadnaught GA Chebureki!” V-1X answered proudly. “Our captain has a message for your form Rarity Belle. Ahem! ‘Twilight, Rainbow Dash sent a ship looking for everypony. So you know the people are here to help, I am telling them your favorite tea is Ginger with two sugars and a squirt of lemon, and that she knows you hide math books inside Daring Do dust jackets so you can read them at conventions and not get weird looks.’”

Twilight hummed. “Well, that’s not information you’d get by torturing her…”

“Ey blayt!” V-1X swore, her electronic voice distorting with anger. “Hurt a pony? Nyet! Everyone here wants to find a Nova Wing member and shoot them so full of holes you start to get less holes. We watch Blue Fast on Penny’s stream. No one hurts the ponies and gets away with it.”

Twilight smiled, she could hear the sincere outrage and indignity in the android’s voice. The radio crackled as a second channel joined in. “Miss Sparkle, I am the captain of this vessel. You may call me DJ. We knew you were sent here in a drop pod to die due to Rarity’s letter.

“The Chebureki is a warship, old, but upgraded. We can take on a Nova Wing ship and live to tell the tale. We are going to rescue them, we have one point five thousand hands aboard, all of them have power armor. Lady Rarity is safe. Rainbow is Safe. We have two plausible locations for your friends Pinkie Pie and Applejack.

“Would you like to come aboard and join the fight? If you are safe down there, have food, water, and shelter, we won't force you to come with us. But up here… We have vodka, semechki, shashik, plumb in potato, plov, company… What do you say? Do we come back for you, or should I pick you up in a shuttle?”

“Where’s Fluttershy?” Twilight asked skeptical. They forget her… Not a good sign.

Captain DJ coughed. “Fluttershy is… Well, we’ll save her last. She’s mostly safe. She’s happy, apparently. Rarity knows where she is, don't worry.”

Twilight looked over to Zuul. “Should we trust them?”

“Do you trust them?” Zuul asked with a weary frown.

Twilight nodded. “Yes. That’s not the kind of information you’d get from torturing someone. Sci-fi stories say robots are ponies too, and she sounded genuinely upset when I insisted she was a pirate. I think we should take the offer.”

“Who is with you? Another stranded survivor?”

Twilight nodded to Zuul.

“Hello. My name is Zuul. Twilight’s been staying with some friends of mine and I. This world isn’t dead. It’s just… Nearly baren. We would like to go with Twilight. You’ll be gaining some potent psionic and biological warriors.”

“Opa!” V-1X exclaimed. “More hurt for the space jerks!”

Dj chuckled. “Excuse my comms officer, ladies. How many people need transport, do you have personal items?”

Twilight looked over to Zuul. Zuul answered immediately. “Six, including Twilight and myself. We have nothing to take but ourselves.”

“Six?” Dj mused. “Not quite enough to warrant trying out the captain’s yacht… We have the location of your radio antenna, I’ll be right down. Life Beat! Ready a Lada for reentry. We’ll be down to pick you up in a few minutes, comrades.”

The radio went silent. Twilight shrugged her wings and looked over at Zuul. “Well, that was easy!”

Zuul smiled, flashing her razor sharp teeth and making Twilight blush. “Well, we both knew getting off the planet would be the easy part and—” Zuul blushed and closed her mouth.

Twilight nodded and shot Zuul a playful glare.

Zuul laughed and shook her head. “Come on, Twi. Let’s get to the surface. It’s time for the hard part.”

Twilight nodded and trotted after Zuul as she headed for the surface. As she walked she reached out for the other pony-like drones and with a simple act of will directed them to head to the radio antenne.

Twilight asked curiously.

Twilight asked worriedly.

Zuul stopped, turned around and shook her head. “No. I chose five because I lay eggs in clutches of five to thirty.”

Twilight blushed. “Oh. Minimum batch for testing?”

Zuul nodded. “Mhm! And the cutest one with the most endurance is this one! I don't mean to replace your friends. I mean to help you get them back.”

Zuul smiled, her teeth flashing.

Twilight smiled back.

Zuul blushed.

Twilight knew Zuul well enough by now to know when she was telling the truth, and when she was lying. The flight was a lie, not wanting to replace anyone was truth.

Twilight’s smile widened. “I’m glad I met you. Come on, let’s fix my old life so we can share it.”

17 - Welcome to Chern

Rainbow Dash - 6th of Solar Dusk, 1st year of Harmony

749,573.26 A.H.

Shielded Landing Station 12 - Chern, Noctae Sector

The Dawn of Destiny shook and jolted as it came out of FTL, entering orbit around Chern like a rock falling into a toilet full of mercury. The very moment the ancient ship entered the aberrant star’s system, everypony aboard could tell something was wrong.

Rainbow clenched her teeth and gripped her seat’s armrests tightly as the ship threatened to throw her to the floor with its violent shuddering. Jo ducked down and braced herself on all fours, half her balance processor needing to dedicate itself to keeping her from falling even on her hands and feet. Pan was thrown from his chair, hitting the deck with a loud thud.

Penny rolled her eyes as she bounced in the captain’s seat, restrained by her crash-harness.

“Blin! I told you debils to buckle up,” Penny sighed as she tapped a few commands into the chair’s console. “You okay, Pan?”

“NO! What the buck is wrong with— OW!” Pan shrieked as he rolled onto his back to clutch his head and curl into a ball.

Jo scrambled forward as best she could with the ship shuddering. “What’s hurt?” The android asked as she quickly, though no nimbly, made her way to Pan’s side.

“Aspirin! Please!” Pan begged, tears starting to form in his eyes.

Penny and Jo frowned in unison. “What?”

Rainbow almost joined them, then she felt it. A sharp throbbing pain right behind her eyes, and just above the bridge of her nose.

Rainbow yelped and clenched her teeth against the sudden migraine. “OW! What the buck is with the mana here?!”

Penny’s head snapped over to Rainbow, her worried frown turning into a perplexed almost blank stare.

Pan whimpered from his place on the floor. “It’s like— AA! Bucking tartarus! It’s like… Dark Magic! When teacher tried to demo it and— OW! Failed!”

Penny finished typing in her commands and the Dawn’s gravity drive began to compensate for the intense stellar winds. The ship stopped shaking, permitting Jo to stand up and run for the bridge’s medical kit.

Rainbow closed her eyes tightly, doing her best to ignore the pain coming from what she recognised as her Forecaster glands. The three glands allowed pegasi to sense the mana currents around them and played a big part in their ability to understand the local weather. That being said, it was nothing compared to even a newborn unicorn foal’s mana sight.

If the mana flow is so messed up I can feel it, he must be in tartarus right now. Rainbow thought as she timidly stood up from her chair. “Jo, I need one too. But uh, give Pan like five.”

Penny unbuckled herself and rushed to Pan’s side. “What is it? Can I help?”

“Mana…” Pan moaned. “Mana is bad. Not dark. Not bright. Bad. Like… Like when somepony messed something up bad.”

Rainbow closed her eyes for a moment, both to help block out some of the pain and to try and think back to any time she might have felt something similar.

“I remember when the weather factory tried to make sheet lightning. This feels like that… How did they contain that?” Rainbow muttered to herself.

Penny gently picked Pan up and held him in her lap. “Pan? What can I do?”

“What do you mean by mana?” Jo asked as she returned with the med kit.

Pan moaned, unable to speak through the pain. Rainbow bit her lip as she realized she would need to explain it, and had not paid much attention in Arcana 101.

“U— Uh… It’s an energy that is just everywhere and in everything. No! No not energy, um… It’s the little bitty thing that is what the energy is. Like how lightning is a bunch of electrons. Mana is like that but I forget what it’s called.”

Penny quickly linked herself to the Dawn’s systems and checked the shields. “We should be blocking Pripyat’s radiation… Da, we are.”

Jo opened the med kit and fished out a bottle of pain relievers and began counting them out to get correct dosages, mentally performing the math needed to estimate both ponies body mass.

Rainbow tilted her head. “Pripyat?”

“Da, our sun.”

The gears in Rainbow’s head began to turn, slowly making an answer take shape. “Sun… The sun emits a lot of mana! Do your shields block magic?”

Penny blinked, then shook her head. “Nyet, no psion is powerful enough to effect a whole ship. Can we block it with shields?”

Rainbow nodded. “Yes! Twilight’s used shields to block spells. I’ve seen her do it. In comics, they uh… mod— Modify? No, modulate! They modulate shields to—”

Jo almost dropped the bottle of pain relievers. “Of course! Modulate the shield harmonics to change their frequency. Penny, can the Dawn do shield rotation?”

Penny nodded once and closed her eyes in concentration. “She’s not that old. Pan, tell me if the pain stops.”

Penny quickly cycled the Dawn through all seven thousand shield frequencies. Modern ships had more settings, after all a shield was useless if your enemy's particular choice of wavelength for their laser based weapons could pass through your shield as if it weren't there.

Pan continued to whimper and moan as the Dawn’s shields rotated through the basic frequencies. Then the frequency settings entered the range belonging to lower powered UV based lasers and the pressure behind Rainbow’s eyes vanished.

Rainbow blinked and gently shook Penny’s shoulder. “I can’t feel anything now. I think we're good.”

Penny opened her eyes and looked at a still whimpering Pan and frowned. “UV lasers… Mana is higher energy, ey?” She focused for a moment and adjusted the ancient ship’s shields to block everything it could from the UV spectrum. “Pan? Are you okay now?”

Pan nodded slowly. “Y— yeah… Pressure’s gone. Still hurts though…”

Penny gave Jo a look and the android gently pushed the palm of her left hand and five small tablets against Pan’s lips. “Take these.”

Pan licked up the tablets and shuddered. “That… sucked…”

Rainbow nodded and gently hugged the stallion with her left wing. “Yeah… He’ll need about ten minutes or so. Uh, if he’s anything like other unicorns I know.”

Penny nodded once. “Okay… Does things like this happen a lot?”

Rainbow sighed. “I don’t think so? I’ve seen a few unicorns react like that when I was in college. Usually when they messed up a spell really bad.”

“The mana’s bad…” Pan mumbled. “It’s like getting your horn snapped off. Like, almost exactly the same.”

Penny winced and gently ran her fingers through Pan’s mane. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know this would be a problem. Do you know what caused it?”

Pan shook his head. “No…”

Rainbow hummed and rustled her wings. “I felt it, so either it was super powerful, or it’s weather related. D— Does space have weather?”

Jo hummed and sat down in a chair next to Pan’s to use the Dawns’ sensors. “Space does have weather of a sort. Solar wind, cosmic rays. That sort of thing. I’m not certain if that constitutes weather but—”

Jo stopped talking and whistled. “— Wow! I knew Chern was radioactive but this is nuts!”

Penny sighed. “Da, her nickname is a good one.”

“It really is like a nuclear warhead is going off all the time,” Jo marveled, her processor glowing as she raced through every last bit of info on Chern, Pripyat, and local space she could find. “This is definitely the Empire of Atomic Bombia. Why did you call it anything else?”

Penny shrugged. “Our ancestors lived on an irradiated world. A reactor called Chernobyl melted down, made everything go bad. Honestly, the sun should have been called Chern, because the town of Pripyat is a place where they believed there was an artifact that granted wishes. Chernobyl was the thing spitting out radiation. But we did it the other way around… Look, what’s the problem?”

Jo pointed to the holoscreen infront of her and tapped on a small graph. “Probably the way that star is spitting out more radiation than anything of its size should be… And is green if I am reading this right. The solar wind it’s putting off is incredibly intense and… Well, weird!”

Penny nodded slowly. “Okay. I understand.” She closed her eyes and sent a few commands to the Dawn. “Pan, I’ve programmed the Dawn to set our shields to block mana every time we plot a course to Chern. This will not happen again.”

“Thanks,” Pan said quietly as the pain finally started to fade away. “Those aspirin are really fast acting.”

Jo’s cores tingled as she realized she could finally make a joke she’d been holding onto for her entire existence as an awakened AI. She turned around in her seat and flexed her right arm as if to show off her bicep. “Nanomachines, son!”

Pan blinked and slowly sat up. “What?”

Jo’s cooling pumps wined sadly. “It’s a— Nevermind, skip it.”

Rainbow looked out towards the Dawn’s front window which was still covered by the steel shutters. “Is it really a green star? That sounds cool, can we look at it?”

Penny nodded and sent the ship a command to open the shutters. “Da. Sorry, I was distracted.”

Jo blinked. “Wait, you manually open the shutters? It’s not automatic?”

Penny nodded as she shutters began to retract into the hull. “Da, the auto-close works, the auto-open broke.”

Rainbow turned her attention to the window as the steel curtains parted. Pripyat hung in the void before her like the sparking tip of a welder’s torch. The Dawn’s shields and auto-tinting windows protected her eyes from the anomalous star’s rays, but did nothing to hide the obvious strangeness present in every spark of plasma flying up from the star’s surface.

Pripyat was indeed green. A bright green, the sort of green everypony who had ever seen a comic book in their life associated with the magic kind of radiation that gave a pony super powers. Or mutated them horribly.

Massive solar flares launched up from its surface constantly, forming impossibly huge arcs which made the star look more like a stylized picture of an atom with one proton and dozens of electrons than a star. The solar flares spat globules of plasma which drifted through the corona for a short way before dissipating into apparent nothingness as they became solar wind.

Rainbow winced. She knew nothing about stars, but she could tell Pripyat was not normal in any way, shape, or form. The star looked angry, or perhaps in pain. Each flare was like a limb lashing out, or maybe desperately reaching for a weapon to put an end to its misery.

The green ball of chaos made her uncomfortable on nearly every level. It was time to look at something else.

That something else came in the form of a Chernin space station. The station was truly massive and resembled an umbrella with a huge sheet-like section of alloy panels forming a 15 kilometer across oval of protection. A huge cylindrical section connected to the disk’s center and formed a dock with distinct bays and linking spots for ships of all sizes to dock at while remaining in a “shaded” area, free from the star’s deadly radiation.

However, the station had one other feature, one which caught Rainbow’s eyes immediately. Engines. Specifically, surf drive emitters. At the opposite end of the shaft from the shield were eight massive nacells which clearly housed very powerful FTL drives.

Rainbow had done enough reading up on starships to know that the small opalescent nodules on a part of the ship were its drive emitters. This prompted the obvious question.

“Penny? Uh, is that a space station or a starship?”

Penny glanced out the window. “That is Salyut Twelve. Is where papa is going to pick us up. It’s a station.”

Rainbow pointed towards the massive generator and projector nacelles on the back. “But… It’s got a surf drive? A HUGE one!”

Jo nodded without looking. “All Chernin space stations are really just huge starships. Hey, come to think of it, why is that? Is it because you guys started as asteroid miners back when in system flight ate up a ton of fuel?”

“Nyet,” Penny dismissed as she stood up along with Pan. “Is for the sbor vsey sem'i.”

Pan tilted his head. “The what?”

Jo frowned. “That didn’t translate.”

Penny blinked in surprise. “Ey?! But it’s the most important holiday in our whole culture! How could it not—”

Penny huffed and closed her eyes to think of other ways she could translate the name.

“You have a holiday where you move space stations?” Rainbow asked, her head tilted nearly onto its side. “Why?”

Penny took a deep breath. “The… The get together. It’s a bad translation, but… Ey, blin! I won't degrade it like that,” Penny took a step back so she could look at everyone at once. “The sbor vsey sem'i hasn’t happened yet. If it had, I’d know. We’d all know. One day, when we find any evidence at all of our ancestors, the Chernin who has found it will call home and tell them what they have found. That day will be the sbor vsey sem'i.

“On the sbor vsey sem'i, everyone will go to wherever that evidence was found and everyone will be shown what that evidence is and asked to help find more. We’re all explorers, we’ve all seen things no one else may have seen. One of us will understand what to do next. It will be the start of our journey to our old home. How— How do you not know this?”

Pan blushed. “Well, I’m a pony soo… Yeah.”

Penny snorted and waved her hand. “Nyet! Not you, or Blue. Jo. How do you not know about the sbor vsey sem'i?”

Jo cleared her throat. “Uh, well, to be honest your people never interested me that much… Sorry?”

Penny smiled. “Ey, is okay. I understand.”

Rainbow turned to look backout the window. The Dawn had gotten much closer to the Salyut Twelve while they had been talking. As far as she could tell they were moving towards a smaller hanger bay near the station’s engines.

As Rainbow’s eyes once again beheld the station’s engines, the enormity of what Penny had said hit her like a ton of bricks. “Wait! If your stations have engines for that, when you say everyone, you mean literally everyone?!”

“Da,” Penny nodded. “Everyone.”

Jo slowly turned around, a blank look on her face hiding the terror maxing out her systems. “Uh… All— All six-point-two trillion of you?”

Penny’s eyes narrowed as she put on the most serious face that Rainbow had ever seen. “Did I stutter?”

For a brief terrifying moment Rainbow had a terrifying vision of innumerable Penny’s swarming a planet and leaving behind a literal ocean of spilled vodka and shell casings.

Rainbow shuddered. “Maybe that’s why it doesn't translate… Public safety,” she said under her breath.

Jo nodded in agreement. “Yeah, that sounds terrifying.”

Penny rolled her eyes. “It would take a few years for everyone to get there, we’re all over the galaxy.”

The Dawn’s computer chirped three times, alerting everyone aboard that the docking sequence had begun. Pan cleared his throat. “I uh… Rainbow? We should go get into the rad suits Penny made for us.”

Penny’s eyes widened. “Nyet!” She turned and began jogging towards the Dawn’s workshop. “Not until I make their shields block mana!”

Rainbow’s mouth formed an ‘o’ as she turned to give Pan a knowing nod. “That sounds like a plan, doesn't that sound like a plan?”

“Yes,” Pan nodded. “A great plan.”

Rainbow watched Penny leave the bridge and hummed to herself. She knew it would take Penny about ten minutes to get the shields changed. The Chernin woman was very fast when it came to fixing up or modifying equipment.

Fast. The opposite of what this visit would be. Rainbow frowned. Penny did mention this trip could take a few days, or even a week…

Rainbow’s mind turned to the last week of her life. She’d spent most of it crying after they had failed to find even a single Nova Wing operative on Sananda. The pirates had cleared out sometime before the planet cracking operation started. The mine’s security forces had been happy to show Rainbow the stripped bare base when she’d asked about the Nova Wing.

Then, even worse, the company wouldn’t let Rainbow dig the pony’s remains out of the Terranite tomb it had been encased in. Penny hadn’t been around when Rainbow asked for that favor. If she had been, she might have been able to help but as it was, Rainbow felt like a double failure.

Then, out of nowhere, Rarity had sent her a letter. Just a letter, no video, no audio, only text. ODIN wasn’t a prefect network. Where were a few dead zones and some places where any large data packets would be scattered to the cosmic winds.

The Dawn’s course back to Chern had taken it through one of those zones.

The plain text letter hadn’t survived the transmission well. It took Pan four days to find a way to unscramble it, and when he had, half the letter was unreadable simply because half the data hadn’t even been received.

Rarity’s letter, incomplete though it was, snapped Rainbow out of the depressive spiral. Rarity was safe and had either been adopted by a rich guy, or married a wealthy alien. Twilight had been picked up by some of Penny’s fans and joined the search for the others. Fluttershy was apparently working for someone Rarity knew as some sort of assistant.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t all good news. Nopony knew where AJ and Pinkie were. A group called the Gopnik Armada had a lead, but when they arrived, nothing was to be found.

But, that had been a week ago. Rainbow had managed to get Twilight free, even if indirectly. That alone had gone a long way to prevent her from panicking. Someone far more competent and capable was on the job now too, and had a whole week to work.

Hey! We’re not in a dim zone anymore! Rainbow realized as the doors closed behind Penny.

She turned and looked at Jo over her shoulder. “I’m going to go check my mail, in case Rarity sent anything else, okay?”

Jo smiled and shook her head. “You can check it right here, you have the implant.”

Rainbow blushed lightly. “It uh… It feels weird to not read letters in my room, okay?”

Jo nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll finish docking. Pan, please help me with the docking paperwork.”

Pan sighed and trotted over to the communications station and sat down. “Sure.”

Rainbow walked out of the bridge, then jogged to her cabin. She knew she didn’t have much time before she would need to leave the ship, and she couldn’t check her mail for a while after leaving. After all, she needed to make a good impression on Penny’s father if she wanted to secure his help finding AJ and Pinkie.

The moment rainbow entered her cabin she summoned a holoscreen displaying her inbox. The window into the digital realm immediately assaulted her with thousands upon thousands of messages.

As far as Rainbow could tell, over seven hundred individual people had emailed her, all of them from the same ship, the GA Chebureki. Why anyone would name their ship after a deep fried bread-pocket full of meat and onions, Rainbow had no idea. Much like how she had no idea why what she assumed was an entire ship’s crew would want to message her.

Rainbow told her comm to push those messages into the spam box. Three hundred messanges survived the purge. Rainbow scanned over the names. Half of them were advertisements for various products mostly transformatives and VR vacation packages. The other half were all from Rarity.

Rainbow frowned. She didn’t have time to read all of them. There was only one thing to do. Read the last one.

Dear Rainbow,

Sorry for being so panicky in the last three dozen letters. I’ve just been informed that your ship is very old and may not be able to receive messages in certain areas. If I know you, and I think I do, you’ll have skipped everything to read the last one I sent first. (I remember how you like to sort through your mail. Remember when you had that big stack of letters when I came over for tea?)

To sum up the situation, I am alive and well. Twilight is alive and mostly well. She seems to have become much more aggressive, and has physically transformed. She resembles an alicorn now. She’s also got a special somepony, an alien pony named Zuul. She is very creepy, but do be polite if you meet her. She is very nice under the terrifying surface.

Fluttershy isn’t okay, but is safe and happy. She’s been given many transformative drugs for the sake of her current job. She consented to the changes, but I have started getting everything needed to turn her back ready for when my new grandfather can purchase her freedom (You do not want to know what she was purchased to do. While Fluttershy may enjoy it, the fact she has no choice makes the whole situation toxic in my mind.).

I’ve been doing a lot of work to find Pinkie and Applejack. I have what amounts to unlimited money, but I do not trust the majority of mercenaries and private investigators which I can contact. They seem suspect, to say the least. So far, I have three bounty hunters looking for them.

This is in addition to Twilight, who joined the crew of the GA Chebureki. Excellent work getting those people together to help! I hear the dreadnaught and her crew are already making a big stir in the underground. Apparently they destroyed a pirate haven while searching for Applejack.

I found your bank account. I’ve given you a trillion credits. I don’t know if that’s very much. I make more than that in a week on bank interest. But if fifteen trillion can buy two large ships then it must be enough to help you with anything you need wherever you are.

I believe you are the key to the six of us all being free again. Yes, I would have regained my freedom without you, but if you had not gotten out here somehow then I wouldn’t have ever learned about Penny’s fans, and they would never have gotten their ship. Twilight would have remained trapped on a burnt out rock forever.

I’ve always thought you were the bravest and most capable of us. Message me when you can and don’t be afraid to ask for more money when you need it.

With love,
Rarity Belle

Rainbow read the letter twice, focusing on the bit about Fluttershy extremely closely the second time she read through it.

It sounds like Shy’s a sex slave… Rainbow mused.

The Pegasus smirked and shook her head slowly as memories of the night Rainbow had walked a drunk Fluttershy home played back in her mind.

“I— “ Fluttershy hiccuped. “I don’t get why he said no…”

“Because you’re drunk,” Rainbow said as she steered Fluttershy around the street sign with her wing.

“Noooo,” Shy giggled. “He wanted to rut me!”

Dash winced as Shy announced that little fact way too loud.

“He just… He didn’t want to do it like I like,” Shy said, her wings hanging limply at her sides.

Dash frowned, the desire to ask the obvious question was irresistible “Uh… H— How do you like it?”

Fluttershy’s cheeks turned a bright pink. “Hehe! So um— I— … Words! Uh…” She took a deep breath. “I like it when I’m a puppy and they’re my owner, you know?”

Dash’s eyes widened. I did NOT need to know that!

“Uhhh, okay! So um—”

“You’d think colts would like a filly what likes when she’s ordered to stuff!” Fluttershy grumbled, her shoulders slumping. “I take… Cat? Cake? Care! I care for so much! … I want to be cared for like that… By somepony sexy. With a dick! You know, preferably. Also magic, for ki— Uh… smexy tra— tre— stuff! You know! Zap, zoop, more sloot!”

Dash cleared her throat and gently put a hoof over the shouting Fluttershy’s mouth. “Hey, how about next time you only have half a light beer?”

Fluttershy blinked slowly and stumbled as she turned to look at Rainbow. “That was light beer? I thought it was… Uh… What’s it— Soda! Yeah, soda!”

Dash shook her head. I can’t believe she’s so drunk from so little!

Dash’s smirk turned into a slight smile. Something tells me that Fluttershy doesn't mind being owned for that at all. Or transformed. In fact, she’s probably thrilled.

Rainbow’s eyes narrowed as a spark of rage took hold in her heart. But I’m still going to buck her owner’s teeth in then lecture them about consent!

Rainbow took a deep breath, managing to calm down right as her comm buzzed in her ear.

“Blue, Pan? Your suits are ready,” Penny said proudly. “Though, uh… I won’t know if they work until you try them… Blin. I’ll take toolbox with me.”

“It’s okay, hon. I know you’re doing your best,” Pan said with obvious worry in his voice.

Rainbow cleared her throat. “I’ll go outside first. I only got a headache. Pan got, you know.”

“Thanks, Dash!” Pan exclaimed in relief.

“No problem,” Rainbow said as she turned around to leave her cabin.

As she turned, the bracelet she had taken from the dead pegasus caught her eye. She’d set it on one of her cabin’s shelves and not thought about it for the whole week. She’d been too distraught.

Now, with her spirits heightened knowing some of her friends were okay, a thought occurred to her. You know, a pegasus was using that bracelet. I’m a pegasus. Maybe I can figure out what it is… I also don’t want to lose it. What if someone robs the ship while it’s docked here? I should take it with me.

Rainbow reached up, grabbed the bracelet in her teeth, opened her saddlebags with her forehooves and dropped the bracelet inside. Slinging her bags over her back, Rainbow trotted out of her cabin, ready to go down to Chern.

749,573.30 A.H.

Fleet Command, Cheeki Breeki -- Chern, Noctae Sector

Admiral Flota Iesha Vasiliev was not having a good day. This was nothing new. The woman was the head of the Chernin Armed Forces. All of them. Every branch.

Iesha Vasiliev was one of the greatest tactical geniuses of her time. She held her rank through merit. She’d fought in over eight thousand simulated wars and only lost five of them. No one else had come close to her performance in simulated conflicts.

She’d never fought in a real war. There simply hadn't been one in the last two hundred years. From the day she had been born through her entire life, Chern had known peace.

Sure, there had been pirate raids, but that was Star League’s jurisdiction. Iesha Vasiliev had accepted her appointed rank when the Tzar promoted her from Lieutenant directly to Admiral Flota, and never once used her abilities for the common good.

She was a public servant who hadn’t ever gotten to serve her people in two centuries. A fact which wore on her very soul.

Today, she sat in her office, holographically attending a meeting as her Majesty Tzar Katya Ivanov’s attendant. Iesha could say nothing, nor do anything. Not without the Tzar asking her for advice as her military Commander in Chief.

The Federation had called this meeting to deal with an operation apparently being conducted by the megacorp Steele Enterprises Limited. Steele Enterprises Limited was currently fortifying a star system in the K3 sector. While megacorps were not exactly a part of the government, they were still close enough to make some of the more nervous leaders worry about what they were doing.

Especially when the corporation insisted that everything was not their fault and that their current VP, Xiisha Steele, had gone rouge.

The Emergency Council had decided to try and call Xiisha Steele, and scare her into stopping her operation by having her see that the Federation was aware of her actions, and did not approve.

Amazingly, she had answered their call. Astonishingly, the Vice President was acting to protect a species of primitives native to the star system from the infamous Nova Wing pirates. Incredulously, those primitives took the form of adorable quadrupedal equines you just wanted to snuggle with and never let go. Impossibly, Xiisha Steele had brought their Princess onto her starship to participate in the call and make a plea for aid.

Which made this meeting the worst thing possible for Iesha.

There was a race of cute floofy people who needed snuggles; pirates wanted to hurt them, and she, Admiral Flota Iesha Vasiliev, perhaps the greatest tactical mind in the galaxy, could do nothing to stop them. She couldn’t even apologize to Princess Celestia for her inability to act. All Iesha could do was sit at her Tzar’s side and stare apologetically into the Princess’s lavender eyes.

“I do not understand why you cannot help us,” Princess Celestia said with anger visibly burning behind her diplomatic mask.

“We have already explained ourselves, Princess,” Imperious Torgar, the Overlord of Prai, said with an irritated sigh.

“Indeed we have, and it is not difficult to understand,” Matriarch Anigav, the Elder of the Irgsin, agreed with a slight frown.

Celestia nodded. “Yes, you have explained you fear invoking the anger of a yet more powerful people by interfering in the area you believe to be their home. I understand the need to ensure your citizens safety. That is my top priority.”

Tzar Katya Ivanov raised a hand to her lips and cleared her throat to get the about-to-be-irate Princess’s attention. “Your Highness, while we cannot send any ships to you, as per the laws binding our Federation, I will happily send a fleet of hospital ships to the edge of the K3 sector.

“If Miss Steele’s fleet can evacuate your people, they are welcome on Chern… Assuming you can survive on our world, of course.”

Iesha visibly winced at the thought of such adorable creatures withering and dying under Pripyat’s anomalous rays. Her wince was all Celestia needed to see.

The alicorn steepled her hooves on the meeting table. “Excuse my ignorance, your title is Tzar, correct?”

“It is.” The Tzar replied.

Celestia stood up and rustled her wings. “I have been so busy for the last few weeks that I have been unable to reply to letters from agents I have out looking for a group of ponies vital to the defense of my people. I have just learned the world is far bigger than Equis, become the leader of my entire world via the newly formed Confederation of Equis, gotten a crash course on our civilization’s technological capabilities, military tactics, and fortification.

“I have learned my planet will soon be a wasteland, and all of my people will be enslaved as a fleet of pirate vessels are going to assault my world any minute now. I hope you will understand when I inform you that offering to give my people refuge on a world deadly to us is an insult, Tzar Ivanov!”

The Tzar sighed. “I apologize, Princess. I have but one world, and while my people possess many space born habitats, we have nowhere else we could put a planet’s worth of refugees. I meant no insult.”

“The Chernin have never colonized any worlds other than Chern. The Tzar has nowhere else to offer your people shelter,” Prime Minister Keith of Vali, the current PM of the Legri quickly informed in the hopes of preventing a long-winded diplomat ‘fight’.

Celestia frowned. “I see. In that case, thank you for your offer.”

“At the very least, I can offer your people medical attention and assistance in finding a place to resettle,” the Tzar offered.

Celestia sighed. “I accept that offer, however, I still request military assistance. I understand your fears, but do you not think a fleet of warships bombarding a planet within this… First Race’s territory will anger them? These are the people who, as I understand it, made the framework on which your civilization depends for survival and did so as a gift. This is not the action of a war-like race.”

“Many people believed as you do, Princess Celestia,” Prime Minister Keith explained calmly. “However, we have encountered one of their vessels. An automated repair craft known as the SYS Admin. It’s primary weapon collapses a star and uses the resulting supernova to create a laser of stellar mass. It is very much capable of annihilating entire planets with a single shot.

“This is a First Race repair ship, Princess. Not a war ship. A ship they use to repair broken communications nodes. In light of this ODIN is not a normal gift, it is a fenced off yard. They clearly gave us this space to live in so they would not be bothered by us.”

Admiral Flota Iesha Vasiliev screamed internally as that most hated argument was brought up yet again. This was the first time it had been brought up in this single meating, and it had never made any sort of sense to her.

Blyat! The First Race’s messages left in ODIN are nothing but friendly and welcoming! Did you forget they seem to have vanished in a massive war, debil? Of course their ships are all armed with weapons we can’t even conceive of! They fought something dangerous to them! A threat to god-like beings requires god-like weapons to fight, cyuka!

Princess Celestia’s eyebrow peaked as she looked into Iesha’s eyes, seemingly sensing Iesha’s barely restrained rage.

“If this race is as powerful and fearful as you claim them to be, if they did not wish for my little ponies to live on our world, we would not be living on our world,” the Princess insisted. “It is clear they wish us to be here. It’s also clear, since I have no knowledge of such people, that the First Race isn’t interested in interfering with us. Perhaps their territory is smaller than you believe.

“Maybe they do not live in our sector of space at all. Then again, maybe they do. In any case, they do not interfere with us. My world has nearly been destroyed a dozen times in my own lifetime… Admittedly, that is six thousand years. But we have seen many near-extinction events. The First Race clearly want us to be here, but do not want to help us. The only logical reason behind this is they want us to stand on our own. We cannot do this. Not yet.”

Celestia turned to look at all twenty representatives in turn. “I am immortal, though not indestructible. My people have many valuable resources we could trade with your respective empires. We can also exist just fine on our own, indefinitely, if need be.

“Help us, and I will remember you and your people if we survive the coming war. Refuse to help us, and I will remember your face when it comes time to share our bounty in the future.”

Iesha screamed internally again. This was the tenth time Celestia had made such a threat. The meeting was looping. It will not end. IT WILL NEVER END!

Iesha’s implant gently pinged her, letting her know that someone had entered her office in the real world.

Thank god! The Admiral Flota mentally sobed. Please be mind numbingly mundane paperwork.

Iesha closed her eyes.

the Tzar replied.

Iesha switched the simulated conference hall to her subconscious, allowing her conscious mind to return to her small, dark, but nicely decorated office in the capitol city beneath Chern’s crust. A taller Chernin man dressed in the Fleet’s black and white uniform, wearing the long great coat of a ship’s Kapitan had entered her office.

At the moment, the Kapitan was standing at attention, one arm bent in a salute which made the three stripes on his coat sleeves, and the large gold star button on his cuffs form the Fleet’s emblem over his heart.

“Admiral Flota!” The Kapitan greeted, his eyes unwavering from the perfect attention pose, even though Iesha could sense great anger behind them.

Oh, god… What now? Iesha took a deep breath. “Kapitan Surovih,” she greeted. “Come in, sit down.”

The Kapitan frowned at her informal greeting, and stepped further into her office but chose not to sit. He stood at ease in front of Iesha’s desk. “Admiral Flota, I am here to confirm your orders in person and request permission to act.”

Iesha sighed. She knew exactly what this was about. “Was your leytenant unclear? The CA Chebureki is not to be reclaimed.”

Kapitan Surovih frowned in surprise. “Then… The ship really is a part of a Stalker operation, Admiral Flota?”

Iesha remained completely still. “Kapitan, you know I can not answer that.”

Cloth rustled as the Kapitan shook his head. “Nyet! I am a Kapitan. I am entitled to know the details of any Stalker operations which affect my ship’s operations. The Chebureki was in my patrol sector. It’s restoration into a weapon of war and subsequent use by civilian forces is my responsibility! The destruction of the pirate haven Velis Prime is a good turn of events, but that ship has become a pirate vessel. It is an armed warship in civilian hands, and it is my responsibility to stop it. I need to know if this is part of a Stalker Operation.”

Iesha raised an eyebrow. They took down Velis Prime? With one ship? Blyat! What kind of guns did they put on that old hull?!

Iesha took a deep breath. “The Admiralty does not permit anyone, not even myself, from disclosing information relating to a Stalker Operation if the information could harm or prevent the operation from occurring if leaked. In short, I do not have to tell you anything. The ship was stolen. You are not to pursue them. Understood?”

Kapitan Surovih closed his eyes and thought for half a second about just how much he hated Top Clearance operations. “I understand… Do you understand the hit my reputation is taking from letting them go?”

“Da,” Iesha replied with a solemn nod. “We all swore to uphold the common good at any expense, Kaptain. Even personal glory. You are dismissed.”

The Kaptain saluted again. “Ma’am,” he said as he turned and walked away.

Iesha waited until his footsteps were out of earshot, then removed a datapad from her desk drawer. It wasn’t her work pad, but rather her personal one. Amusingly, her personal pad was far more secure than her work pad, for fear of her peers stumbling onto her private conversations and learning that her stern and professional mask was exactly that. A mask.

It’s a good thing no one dares question anything they think could be a Stalker Operation too closely. It’s even better that no one aside from Tzar herself could order me to give them a straight answer instead of deflecting the question… Blyat… Why is this the only worthwhile thing I have ever done?

Admiral Flota Iesha Vasiliev switched on her datapad and appealed her request for vacation time for the tenth time today, then switched over to a chat room with a sigh, and began to type a message to her friends.

Maybe they have something to help me feel better.

FuzzyLittle: :c They still won't let me take time off work.
Timuri: Aww, that sucks! Don't’ worry, we’ll probably not find AJ or Pinkie till the weekend. We uh… We lost some handy backdoors with a security patch that got rolled out this afternoon. The locator I made is slower now.
FuzzyLittle: I want to help so bad… I could do a lot if my boss would let me.
LifeBeat: #HugsForFuzzy :c
Captain djthomp: If you get time off, we’ll come pick you up. We need more people. I sent everyone who couldn’t handle the thought of killing someone for real, home. If we deploy “marines”, we’ll have to run the ship on a skeleton crew. We can’t fight ground and space at once. This could cost a pony her life.
Twilight Sparkle: Can’t we just go get Fuzzy? If you want to help that bad, quit your job. I’m sure Princess Celestia will give you a new job for helping us if you asked her for one.
FuzzyLittle: I can’t quit. I can only be discharged.
Bytechrodu: 😢 #HugsForFuzzy
ConspiracyTeenz: Wait, you’re a real soldier? What are you doing hanging out with us then?
FuzzyLittle: I’m not allowed to talk about my job in detail. But I can say that my position isn’t exactly one I like. Or does anything for anyone. I sit in meetings and get mad I can’t help people. That’s my entire job. #ChairJocky
ConspiracyTeenz: #HugsForFuzzy
Timuri: Owch. Been there, done that. #HugsForFuzzy
FuzzyLittle: Do you have any video of wiping out Velis Prime? I’m in the worst meeting ever and would love a little vicarious enjoyment.
Captain djthomp: We do.

Captain djthomp has linked Tactical Recording 001

Captain djthomp: If you don’t mind, I’ve been retired for 30 years. I would appreciate the advice of an active duty soldier to help me get back into a proper tactical mindset. Our victory was predominantly luck, not skill.
FuzzyLittle: I’m not the best tactician in the galaxy, but I’ll see what I can do.

18 - The Storm

Author's Note

Brought to you by,
Patron of the Week: TeamSpen210

18 - The Storm

Rainbow Dash - 6th of Solar Dusk, 1st year of Harmony

749,573.29 A.H.

Shielded Landing Station 12 - Chern, Noctae Sector

Rainbow wasn't sure what she expected a Chernin-made space station to look like, but she hadn’t expected this.

SLS-12 could have been the most boring place in existence. There was no decoration at all, not even paint. The walls were bare metal, dull gray, with only screens displaying departures, arrivals, weather warnings, and advertisements to break up the dull monotony of endless gray.

The floor was hardly any better. The grav-plates had a simple rubberized coating sprayed over them, providing a black floor with random flecks of gray and white embedded in it. The patterns in the rubber formed something similar to the way stars dotted the night sky. A fact Rainbow picked up on after getting bored of looking at the ceiling covered in pipes, air ducts, and power cables for nearly ten minutes.

At first, the people passing by had been interesting to watch. Everywhere Rainbow looked she could see at least four Chernin doing something. Most of them were walking from one dock to another, some were performing maintenance on various pieces of equipment, while others squatted in loose circles sharing snacks and vodka.

As interesting as it was to watch a sea of people in brightly colored tracksuits go about their days, the people themselves looked a little off to Rainbow. Over the last month, she’d gotten used to Penny’s pale, furless skin and humanoid shape.

Living on a world with many different sapient lifeforms was a boon for Ponykind. Anything close to the shape of Jo or Penny weren't going to bother Rainbow, or even be all that interesting anymore. They were just be people. In this case, creepy people.

Rainbow wasn’t about to say it, but almost every Chernin looked the same to her. They seemed to have about a dozen different faces for stallions, and eighteen for mares. They had a few different body shapes, ten or so hairstyles which were equally common among men and women, and perhaps ten different voices for each sex.

The best way Rainbow had to tell Chernin apart was by their clothes. Since most of them wore tracksuits, which Rainbow we're pretty sure were all made by the same brand, that meant she mostly had to go off of clothing colors, hair color, and the augmented reality nametags she’d started pinning to everyone she saw.

This is creepy… Rainbow thought to herself with a shiver as she watched two girls who she swore were completely identical have a conversation and laugh while another pair of girls down the hall from them who also shared their faces had an argument. I wonder if there’s a reason they all look so similar? I know Penny said her people are clones, but that shouldn’t mean everyone looks the same. Right?

Rainbow sighed and turned to look up at Penny. The Chernin woman had gotten back in her suit despite being on a ship equipped for her people’s needs. She’d also gone unusually quiet the moment she’d stepped foot on the station, creating an air of unease which prevented a conversation from taking place.

Rainbow cleared her throat, and Penny squatted down to look into Rainbow's eyes. “Da, Comrade?”

Rainbow pointed to the dull green rubberized radiation suit which covered her hoof to snoot. While she found the bulky and stiff suit hideous, she knew it was necessary, and at least it had sleeves for her wings. Unlike the radiation suit she wore when helping the Rainbow Factory fix their arcane reactor a few years ago.

“Should I have also brought my armor?” Rainbow asked. “You said this suit could get a hole in it real easy and you don’t have to be in that here. So like, is a fight gonna happen, or what?”

Penny rolled her lips uncomfortably. “Nyet… I— I’m in here so I can hide if I need to. Is… Personal thing.”

Pan facehooved and groaned. “Right! You don't like interacting with your own people.”

Jo tilted her head. “You never mentioned that to me, Captain. Is there a reason?”

“I can’t read our body language. It makes it very hard to understand if I’ve upset another Chernin. I can read aliens just fine though. Normally this isn’t a problem for me. I’m a spacer. But here… I have a faceplate I can drop and not have to look into people’s eyes then hide behind. Is better, da?”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “You can’t look people in the eyes either?”

Penny shook her head and looked Rainbow in her eyes. “Nyet, I can. See? I’m doing it right now.”

“I mean other Chernin,” Rainbow prompted with a polite smile.

“Oh, I know where this is going,” Penny said as she stood back up. “I’m not autistic. That mental issue persists across species. Papa thinks my cloning process was a bit off when it came to social training is all. Just a manufacturing error. Really, I’m fine. Ey, as I can be, blin.”

Jo’s cooling fans hummed as she burned with excitement. “That’s right! I forgot you’re manufactured too! How does your programming work? Could we swap files?”

Rainbow hummed. “That’s a good question! You said your people get memory downloads. Could Jo buy a childhood to know what growing up here is like? Oh! Could I do that and then watch it as a movie or something?”

Penny frowned. “Uh… I don’t know? It’s not quite programming. But it is memory files… I think you’d need an organic mind to decode everything and fill in the blanks. Ask Papa, he’d know.”

Pan looked around the semi-busy dock as Penny mentioned her father. “Speaking of him, where is he? It’s been what, ten minutes? He’s supposed to pick us up right?”

Penny looked over to Jo. “See anyone in a yellow jacket, black pants, black ushanka, white shoes, a balaclava, and aviators?”

Jo shook he rhead. “No, Captain. I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Please do, you’ll be the only one who’ll see him coming,” Penny grumbled.

Rainbow frowned and quickly looked around. Those colors were all common, but as far as she could tell, next to no one was wearing a mask. “He’ll for certain wear a mask?”

Penny nodded. “Da. Babushka named him after the legendary Shashik King, Boris. Papa decided to model his whole life off him, since he was named for him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen his face, just whatever balaclava he put on that morning. Ey, ‘coz that’s how his namesake dressed.”

Pan looked around, his eyes straining as he tried to spot anyone in a mask of any kind.

“Uh, okay… But why wouldn’t we be able to see him coming then? I can't see anyone wearing a mask except for that guy,” Pan’s left hoof pointed towards a tall Chernin man dressed in a blue greatcoat and starfighter helmet who still had his breath mask on as he patiently waited next to dock 17.

Penny reached up and scratched the back of her head. “Oh, ey… Should probably have mentioned papa is a retired Stalker.” Penny said as if that explained the entire situation.

The three blank looks her friends gave her proved otherwise.

“Oh, da!” Penny said with a nervous chuckle. “So, we uh, we grow everyone. That means we’re all about the same in strength, stamina, speed. There’s only so much you can do to improve yourself before your body locks in after you’ve grown. It’s not enough to have special forces which are any more capable than well, me.”

Jo nodded slowly. “So you designed some Chernin to be soldiers, and your dad is one of them?”

“Kind of,” Penny shrugged. “Is not caste system. Everyone has the same random chance to be made using better templates. Psyker templates. You might turn out to be a Stalker, or a Commander. If you are, you serve for as long as you like. Papa served two hundred years, then retired. Now he makes weapons.”

Pan blinked. “Excuse me, but do you mean you engineer people to be wizards specifically to be your special forces?”

Penny nodded once.

“He can turn invisible, can’t he?” Pan asked.

“Nyet. He can make organics not notice him. Invisibility is… Hard, blin,” Penny elaborated. “Jo will still see him because he cant fool machines.”

Rainbow narrowed her eyes and begun to look around, thinking back to the brief lesson Twilight had given her in how to spot invisible creatures after Rainbow had gotten a little too spooked by the latest Daring Doo novel.

“And that means he’ll be lurking around to figure out what kind of people we are before saying hello!” Rainbow said as she continued to look around.

A squatting Chernin man wearing a black cloth facemask and aviator sunglasses appeared from thin air a leg length from Rainbow nose.

“LUNA!” Rainbow yelped as she jumped three meters into the air.

“No. Just Boris,” the man said as he gently gripped Rainbow’s right hoof as she hovered in the air and shook it. “Hello! My name is Boris. And what my little girl means is, I like to make her friends jump. Heh heh heh!”

Rainbow’s ears twitched irritably. “Rainbow…” Rainbow introduced as she turned to glare at Jo. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Jo tapped her fingers together. “He bribed me…”

Boris stood up, adjusted his sunglasses and laughed. “Don’t be mad at her. I showed her my ID from a distance and made an offer she couldn’t refuse,” Boris looked over his shoulder at Jo and smiled enough to warp the fabric of his balaklava. “We’ll draw up those parts when we get home.”

Rainbow huffed and let herself drop to the deck. Figures she can be bribed with spare parts. I’ll have to remember that.

Pan trotted towards Boris cleared his throat and held out his right hoof for Boris to shake. “H— Hi. Nice to meet you M—mister Hawking!”

Boris’ shoulder slumped. He ignored Pan for a moment and looked over to Penny, seemingly hurt. “You’re still using the company’s name?”

Penny shuffled her feet awkwardly and dropped her faceplate, both actions making her suit’s servos protest angrily.

Boris sighed and turned back to Pan. “When she was little, she advertised my suits. Penni Hawking isn’t her uh, legal name. But it’s what she prefers. Even if it hurts her papa’s feelings,” Boris held out a loved hand to shake Pan’s still extended hoof. “Boris Slovaki, you can call me papa. If you can hold your vodka.”

Pan returned the hoof shake as best he could while looking up at Penny with a little hurt in his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me that was a stage name?”

“I— I feel that name is mine more is all…” Penny mumbled quietly.

“Isn’t she a junior? Shouldn’t she be going by Boris Hawking?” Jo asked curiously.

“No, she’s named for her mama,” Boris explained before letting go of Pan’s hoof only to press a bottle of vodka into it. “Don’t feel bad. She’s called herself Hawking since she was two. I just wish she’d see herself as a member of my family more than my company.”

“Sorry, papa… Is only business,” Penny sighed.

Rainbow blinked as she tried to figure out where Boris had been keeping that bottle. His clothing didn't seem loose enough to hide it, nor had they seemed weighed down anywhere before.

“Where did you get that bott—” Rainbow began only to stop mid sentence as she recognized the label as the same type she’d had on her very first day in space. “Wait, is that Borisblood?”

Boris turned around, producing a second bottle from somewhere on his person with a flourish. “Opa! Blue knows what good vodka is. Have a bottle, Solnyshko!”

Rainbow hesitated for a moment. I know I got drunk last time, but I thought it was only as strong a cider… I should have just a little bit to be polite.

Rainbow reached out for the bottle.

“NYET!” Penny yelped.

Boris turned to see what the commotion was about, hand still extended to offer the bottle. Pan reached out with his magic, plucking the bottle out of Rainbow’s hoof as she took it from the squatting Chernin.

“The blin’s gotten into you?” Boris asked with a confused frown. “I own the brand. We have as much to go around as we want.”

“Papa,” Penny said as she plucked the bottle from Pan’s magical grip. “The last time Rainbow had your vodka she got so drunk she started ejecting things out the airlock to watch them woosh off into space.”

Pan nodded in agreement. “Yeah! And when I asked her what she was doing she said and I quote, ‘I’m helping asteroids make new friends.’ end quote!”

Rainbow triple blinked. “I don’t remember that!”

“Then, she got into my armory and argued with my flightpack,” Penny added.

Pan nodded. “Apparently it said its wings were cuter than hers.”

Rainbow blushed and looked away. She vaguely remembered that.

Boris snickered and looked back to Rainbow. “Heh, don’t worry. We all have our drunk stories. This one time, I blacked out and woke up on Pari Prime, halfway through a slave revolt I started… Blin…”

Boris shook his head slowly then laughed. “Too bad. I would have liked to do a shot with you.”

Pan’s ears perked. “A shot? That should be okay. She had three bottles last time.”

Penny squatted down to look Pan in his eyes. “She had… Three… Bottles?”

“Yeah. Why how much did you think she had?”

“A shot!” Penny exclaimed. “Who sits down and drinks a whole bottle of vodka?!”

Boris looked rapidly between Pan and Penny, then turned to Rainbow. “Opa… Three?”

Rainbow shrugged her wings. “I have no idea,” she admitted with a sheepish grin.

Jo closed her eyes and quickly linked with the Dawn’s computer. “Standby… Accessing security records… Yep, she had three bottles.” Jo shook her head incredulously. “That’s the compressed stuff too… You had almost five liters of— How the heck are you alive?!”

Rainbow shrugged her wings more and took a step back defensively. “I don’t know! I just remember it tasted good, then I woke up in my room with a headache.”

“Blin!” Boris grinned, and rubbed the top of Rainbow’s rad suit as it to ruffle her mane, then handed her a third bottle of vodka taken from Luna knows where. “At last, someone I can have a real drink with.”

Penny sighed and shook her head. “Can we get going, Papa? I need to fix my suit.”

Boris nodded. “I noticed. Don’t worry, we’ll get you all fixed up.”

Penny recoiled, her suit’s servos sparking slightly. “I know, I’m sorry I— Wait, you're not mad?”

Boris stared blankly at Penny for a long moment then sighed. “Ah, yes… I forgot you have that problem. No, I’m not mad. The T-34 is older than some of babushka’s jam, Penni. I don’t know why you never asked for an upgrade.”

Penny tapped her fingers together. “B--But this is your first one…”

Boris sighed and turned to Jo. “Can you believe this girl? She thinks she should keep using old things just because her papa made them. She kept my first starship, my first suit, and even the old Lada I helped her build. But... She won't use my last name.”

Rainbow winced and looked up to try and see what Penny thought about her father saying something like that right in front of her. The unfeeling view slit of Penny’s armor looked back at her, and Rainbow immediately understood exactly why Penny had worn her armor onto the station.

Boris shook his head, chuckled, smiled at everyone. “Come! Let’s go home. Mama’s cooking soup.”

The trip to Chern’s surface in Boris’ Zhiguli shuttle was a very memorable experience for Rainbow, Jo, and Pan. The design reminded Rainbow of Penny’s ancient Lada, only the Zhiguli was a luxurious box with four engines on it instead of a rusty shitbox with four engines on it.

The Zhiguli had two distinct compartments, one for the pilot and a single passenger, and then a large cargo bay with fold up seats. Dash called dibs on the front seat before she knew the Zhiguli turned the dividing wall into a screen to show the front view out the cockpit’s windshield. For her the worst thing about space travel was being cooped up. Her wings ached at the thought of flying again. She’d needed to feel like she was flying even if she was riding something.

The inside was carpeted, nicely decorated with a yellow, black, and white color scheme, wood paneling, and Rainbow’s personal favorite, working inertial dampeners. The shuttle also had a holographic system which turned the shuttle’s walls into displays which showed a live feed of everything around the shuttle, making it perfect for sightseeing.

Chern was quite the sight to see.

From orbit, the world was red and gray. Not the red of iron sand, but many shades of red ranging from scarlet to wine and ruby to rose. The reds swirled together, flowing and overlapping in harmony. The gray formed patterns as well, only the slate, silver, and jet gray mixed and melted in chaotic, splotchy patterns which covered vast areas, making the melodic spread of red hues into patches which resembled islands and continents.

Despite no water to be seen on Chern’s surface, thick clouds covered much of the land, forming rolling banks of thick black clouds. Each and every one of them crackled with bright blue-purple lightning as they crept across the planet’s atmosphere like angry slugs.

The most astonishing aurora Rainbow had ever seen rippled above the clouds like a foal’s blanket. Pinks, reds, purples, blues, and greens all flowed together to make a natural piece of art. It couldn’t be called a wonder of the world, such a term was too bland for the grandeur of Chern’s ionosphere. The planet-wide aurora was art, plain and simple. A painting physics chose to grace the universe with.

The wonderful sights form orbit transitioned into an amazing and fascinating sight as the shuttle slipped down through the clouds and transitioned into a low altitude flight over one of the red patches near the south pole.

On the way down, Dash could tell that the gray sections were rock, dust, and strange jet gray clay veins. The red segments were plants. Millions upon millions of plants which soaked in the sunlight streaming through the purplish sky.

Chern had nothing like trees. The plants were small, scrub brush, flowers, grasses, and other short things. There were also mushrooms and mosses growing here and there. All of the plants were some shade of red, and all of them appeared to be quite happy and healthy. Even if most of the leafy plants were of the same species.

Despite the abundant plant life, Rainbow couldn’t see any animals. That didn’t surprise her. With Chern’s constant rain and lack of oceans she couldn’t see where animal life would get water form on the surface. The Chern lived here, there must be water somewhere, perhaps in aquifers deep below ground. Wherever it was, it wasn’t on the surface for long, so animal life couldn’t have evolved up here.

Especially since the planet seemed to be as flat as a pancake. On the way down Dash hadn't seen any mountains, or valleys, or even many large hills. The entire world appeared to be one massive plains biome, broken up only by soil too dusty to support plantlife.

All of this was a very odd thing to see for someone who had grown up on a blue and green marble. The sheer alienness of Chern fascinated Rainbow in the same way the fantasy world contained in a good book did.

Boris was silent as Rainbow looked out over the world below them. Occasionally he would look over and smile behind his mask, vicariously enjoying Rainbow’s love of discovering a new world for the first time.

“Enjoying yourself?” Boris asked, shaking Rainbow out of her trance.

Rainbow nodded and turned to face the masked Chernin. “Yeah! I didn’t think a radioactive planet could look so cool.”

“Most don’t,” Boris chuckled. “Everyone forgets she’s a place people can live too. A little digging for water, some shade for when the sun goes pizdek, it’s all you need.”

Rainbow tilted her head curiously. “Is that why you wear a mask? Are you outside a lot?”

Boris shook his head. “No. I’m named for a certain slav superstar. I looked him up, and… Ey, in short, heros are important. Why shouldn’t I dress like my boyhood hero? Is not like I don’t blend into a crowd. Besides, I was a Stalker. This mask made sure people who you don’t want to remember your face didn’t remember mine. It’s habit now.”

Rainbow nodded slowly. “Sooo Stalkers are special forces and like, spies then?”

“Ey, mostly,” Boris shrugged. “We're also—”

The shuttle’s comms screeched three times, snapping Rainbow out of the conversation. Before Dash could event yelp or flutter her her wings in surprise the alarm was followed up by a Chernin man’s voice.

“Class Three emission on the way, tovarishchi. Anyone in orbit has two minutes to get to a shielded orbit or station. Anyone in the air, land.”

Rainbow’s eyes widened. “Ummmm, what’s happening?!”

Boris sighed and shook his head. “Cyka… And you were enjoying yourself so much.”

The Chernin man reached up to a control panel over his head and flipped a switch. “Hey! Buckle up back there. Emissions are no joke.”

Rainbow looked down at her seat and tightened her buckles, just to be safe. “Boris, what’s happening?”

Boris flipped a few more switches on the shuttle’s consoles sending it into a rapid descent. “It’s okay, Blue. Just an Emission. We get one or two every month. Class three is on the smaller side, we’ll be fine.”

Rainbow took a deep breath. “But what are they?”

“Sometimes our sun gets a little angry, and sends a big flare our way. Usually, they miss. Sometimes, they hit. When they hit we call it an emission,” he answered as he started the ship’s computer up to perform an auto-landing sequence.

“WHAT?!” Rainbow sputtered and tried to dive under the shuttle’s dashboard, making her seat creak as her harness kept her in place.

Boris laughed and reached over to gently pat Rainbow on her head. “Relax! We just need to land for a little while.”

“Your sun is trying to hit us with plasma!” Rainbow yelled, her heart starting to hammer away at her chest. “We need Celestia! Celestia could stop this. She’s done it before. We have a radio we could call her!”

“Calm down,” Boris said as soothingly as he could. “Our ancestors survived these in wooden shacks. We have shields.”

“How?!” Rainbow demanded her jaw hanging slack.

“Ey, well…” Boris turned and adjusted the shields, diverting more power to them as the shuttle gently touched down on the wet ground. “Their emissions came from a place on their planet, not their sun. So they were less intense.”

Rainbow’s heart skipped a beat. The sun! Their sun’s a big ball of bad mana. Which is going to hit us!

Rainbow turned and waved her hooves frantically. “Mana! Your sun’s mana is bad! You need to make your shield stronger against ultraviolet right now!”

Boris frowned and glanced up at the sky. “Why? Is just a class three.”

“If you don’t, Pan and I might die! Being in your sun’s light in orbit was really really bad, we’re sensitive to mana, and your sun produces a very bad kind of it!”

Boris reached out with one hand and quickly adjusted the shuttle’s shields. “Your species has a natural psi sense?” He asked before closing his eyes tightly for a moment. “Of course you do! Ah, debil! I watched you blast a metal monster with lightning. To tell you the truth… The waves that hit us, they are more magic than plasma.”

Rainbow froze, locking up completely. “W— what?”

Boris nodded. “Is true. I’m not as powerful as you, I’m just a humble Stalker, but I can sense magic too. We all can. When emissions hit, we know what it is, even if our comrades don’t.”

A deep rumble of thunder boomed, shaking the landed shuttle and making Rainbow yelp. The rumble seemed to come from all directions at once, as if an army of giants had encircled them and were slowly closing the distance between them.

Rainbow winced and reached up to cover her ears, expecting things to get worse.

Boris reached out and gently held Rainbow’s shoulder. “Ey, is okay. I’ve slept out in the open during one of these. We’ll be okay.”

“We’re going to be blasted by wild magic,” Rainbow whimpered. “That’s not okay!”

“Trust me, we’ll be alright,” Boris promised. “It’s a class three. All that happens is electronic things shut down or go pizdek. If it’s a level six or higher, that’s when it could kill us. We need to take your mind off the danger… Mmm, I know! Emissions, they are scary and hurt things, but they do good things too.”

Rainbow laughed, shaking her head slowly. “Like what? Mutate these plants into another Everfree forest?”

“What forest?” Boris asked with a hint of intrigue.

Rainbow took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “A huge forest near my home town. It’s alive. Like a person… It hates animals. If you go into it, it will try to kill you.”

Boris stroked his chin. “Sounds like a good place to go camping! I’ll be sure to visit one day. But no! That won't happen. What will happen is small objects and sometimes even little patches of the air or ground will absorb some of the emissions magic and thereby gain anomalous properties.

“These anomalies are a little dangerous. Fortunately for us, comrade, they dissipate in a few days. Artifacts on the other hand, those little things that soaked up the emissions magic, those stay forever. Once the emission is over all across the world there will be all sorts of magic things laying around for anyone to find. My company uses hundreds of them in our factory to well, to make things that shouldn’t be possible.

“Don’t be afraid, Blue. Emissions are just a part of life here. Our civilization doesn't survive them like rats in a burning forest. No! We thrive on them. You’re about to see Chern bless her children with all kinds of gifts.”

Rainbow stared blankly for several long moments.

“What?” Boris asked as he reached into a pocket of his tracksuit and took out a handful of sunflower seeds. “Still afraid?”

“Are you telling me that we’re going to get blasted with wild magic intense enough to permanently enchant items at random?” Rainbow asked slowly.

Boris nodded and reached under his shirt collar to take out a small silver ring on a leather string. “And we collect them to use. Not everyone. You need a license to have things like this. See this? Blin! This ring… I slip this on and my skin becomes as tough as diamond. Bullets bounce right off! I’ve got others in my factory that make metal lighter without being less dense. When I was in active duty, I had a few which were weapons. If you’re okay with going through a century of training—”

Rainbow shook her head. “Random. Magic. Item. Storm! Why do you live here?!”

Boris opened his mouth to reply, but a loud thunderclap drown out whatever he had said. Rainbow winced as a second thunderclap followed the first.

Boris sighed and unbuckled his crash harness, stepped over to Rainbow and gently put his arm around her. “Ey, it will be okay.”

A third thunderclap exploded directly above the shuttle. Rainbow squeaked as she felt the oncoming storm in her bones as well as her mind. She could feel it, the winds carried the sun’s twisted mana on them, sweeping the chaos bombarding the world evenly across its surface.

The purple sky began to bleed, becoming a deep red. The auroras flared brightly, melting into white, orange, and purple streamers which rolled and undulated as the stellar winds pushed them into new patterns.

Lightning flashed in the sky, making the world turn white as the thunder boomed deafeningly. Bolt after bolt of lightning blasted into the ground as if nature itself hard ordered a mortar strike right on top of the shuttle.

Dash opened her mouth to scream, but the sound was lost to the wild magic storm that burned around her. A wave of gold and crimson energy crept up over the horizon, burning like the most hellish of sunsets as it lurked for a few terrifying moments. Then it hit.

The emission crested over the shuttle like a tidal wave. The ground shook, making the shuttle vibrate hard enough to resonate. The shields crackled and sparked, but held strong against the nightmarish mass which squeezed them as if they wanted the shuttle to be crushed like an ant under a boot.

The storm raged around Rainbow, pounding at the shuttle’s shields and shaking the very earth beneath her hooves. With the shuttle completely engulfed with the storm Rainbow could feel the energies making it up swirl and flow through the chaos around her. The emission wasn’t an unnatural predator, nor a thing to fear. She could feel the tainted mana within the storm following and undulating in a fashion close to a hurricane, or a blizzard.

The emission was a storm. It was weather. The domain of Pegasi.

Rainbow wasn’t stupid. She knew if she tried to control the hell outside the shuttle, the emission would chew her up and spit her out like a stick of gum. Yet it could be controlled. It could be tamed. The emission was merely extreme weather. An alien storm. A thing she could come to understand and in time control with a little help.

Rainbow closed her mouth, sat up, and watched the hellish energy wave wash over the shuttle.

The emission disappeared as swiftly as it came. The aurora dimmed first, returning to the normal colors and swirling back into new harmonious patterns. The sky stopped bleeding, returning to a healthy purple hue as the thunder claps calmed down. Silence overtook Chern once more, then, as if someone had flipped a switch, the crimson leaves of every plant began to glow the most beautiful shade of gold.

Dash gasped as the world became a bright shimmering jewel for as far as the eye could see.

Boris chuckled and let go of the little pony and returned to his seat. “Not so bad, ey?”

Rainbow laughed nervously. “That was bad… But this is beautiful. Does this always happen?”

Boris nodded once. “The plants soak up all the mana left over and glow for… Well, however long they can. The worse the emission, the more they glow. Oh, blyat! If only you were here three hundred years ago. When we get home, I have a photo. The last class ten left things blyatiful.”

Rainbow nodded and closed her eyes to try and imagine the world appearing to be even more like a glittering jewel with infinite facets than it was now. “I can’t imagine that.”

“No one can,” Boris said as he turned around and opened the door to the rear compartment.

He stuck his head in the doorway and looked around. “Ey, is Jo okay?”

“I’m fine… Thank you for installing EMP shielding in your shuttle,” Jo replied, her voice filled with quiet terror.

“Why do you live here?” Pan whimpered.

Rainbow unbuckled herself and trotted over to the doorway. Pan was sitting bolt upright in his seat, his face white as a sheet under his fur. Rainbow offered him a shy smile. “Scary as that was, it was just a storm. I could feel it. Pegasi could tame one if we had enough time and practice.”

Pan sighed and visibly relaxed enough for Penny to give Rainbow an appreciative smile. “Thanks, Blue… Your people control your whole planet’s weather, don’t you?”

Rainbow shook her head. “Nah, just our kingdom’s. Other countries won't let us mess with their weather… Even to end droughts or heat waves. You know, Equinitarian aid stuff.”

Jo raised a hand to get Boris’ attention. The Chernin man acknowledged her with a roll of his eyes.

“Prepodavatel' Boris will now accept questions from the first row,” he said with a shake of his head.

Jo’s cooling fans began to hum audibly as she began to vent her fear. “How good are your city’s shields? Will I be okay there? Should I go back to the Dawn?”

Penny shook her head. “Nyet. We live underground. Emissions don't pass through fifteen centimeters of stone. We build kilometers underground.”

Boris nodded. “It’s easier to live places where the radiation isn’t so bad.”

Pan shivered, his radiation suit creaking as he moved. “I forgot this place is also a radioactive hell…”

Boris frowned and shook his head. Inwardly wishing his daughter had chosen to hook up with the blue one instead. “Don’t worry, comrade Pan,” Boris said as he squatted down to look him in the eyes. “We’ll make a proper Slav out of you before you leave. Then little storms and some healthy glow won't bother you ever again.”

Pan blinked, not quite sure what to make of that. The shuttle’s computer chirped rather cheerfully, prompting Boris to stand and walk back into the cockpit. “Ah! Sounds like our friends have marked the anomalies on our map. Now we won't fly into a patch of sky where gravity’s decided to take a sharp turn to the left and atoms eat so much pelmeni they explode like old tourist delight.”

Rainbow winced. “Uh, wait. Anomalies do stuff like that?”

“Da,” Penny sighed. “They tell physics to ‘buck off and die’ to use a pony expression.”

“Is no problem!” Boris said as he sat down. “Every new anomaly has already been scanned, registered, and marked on our map. B.O.L.T. doesn't make mistakes.”

Rainbow let out a nervous breath. “Good.”

“Of course, there is first time for everything.” Boris added with a shrug. “Maybe we will hit the first ever missed.”

Rainbow, Jo, and Pan shared a look. It was short, simple, and to the point. No words needed to be exchanged, the look said it all.

What the buck did we get ourselves into?

Penny stepped towards the cockpit and gently punched her father's shoulder. The strike had no power behind it, was was fully symbolic. “Ey! Don’t scare the little ponies like that.”

Boris snorted and rolled his eyes. “Blue facetanked d'yavol’s android while it chewed you to pieces. What’s a little bit of physics pizdek compared to that?”

“He—” Rainbow opened her mouth to object, but closed it as she came to a realization. “— actually, that’s a good point. Let’s get going.”

Pan raised a hoof. “Um, I didn’t fight a robotic demon. Can we please double check the rest of our flight path? You know, so we don’t die?”

Boris laughed and tapped a few buttons on the navigation console. His eyes scanned the holoscreen for a moment.

“It’s safe as buterbrod, napugannaya koshkas,” he said in a kind of mischievous tone.

Penny’s armor created as she slammed her hands against her hips indignantly. “Papa!”

Boris sent a quick command to his neural interface and activated one of his stalker implants, scrambling the translation program in everyone’s implants.

“Kak ya ne mogu yego draznit'? U nego men'she pozvonochnika, chem u Calieesia, I ona byla kal'marom!” Boris said with a chuckle.

Penny glared at her father for several long moments. “Be nice. I love him!”

Pan gulped nervously and turned to Penny begging to know what her father had said with his eyes.

Penny bit her lip. “He thinks you’re uh… Well—”

Boris turned around and walked back into the cabin, cutting Penny off. “I think you’re a scaredy cat. That’s okay. Not everyone is brave. I don't hate you, or think you shouldn’t be with my daughter. But I will tease you mercilessly, blin! Is my right as a papa.”

Pan crossed his forelegs over his chest. “I’m sorry, but where I live, the sun doesn't literally try to blast us off the face of the earth with wild magic! Your planet is terrifying!”

Rainbow cleared her throat. “Uh, Pan? Remember how a few months ago Discord happened?”

Pan frowned. “That’s different.”

“Then before that,” Rainbow continued, “Nightmare Moon stopped the sun and moon in the sky to make night last forever.”

Boris blinked. “Wait, what?”

“Then there was that time when the Everfree attacked Ponyville with mutant beetles the size of a horse,” Rainbow added.

Pan shivered. “Okay, okay, you've made your point. Equis is dangerous too.”

Boris looked up at Penny. “They live on a planet with an evil moon that stopped their planet’s rotation?”

Penny shook her head rapidly. “Nyet! Is way scarier. Nightmare Moon is a person!”

Boris’s jaw dropped, but only for a moment. He turned to look Pan in the eye. “You live, on a planet, with people who can stop the world turning?”

Pan shook his head. “No. She stopped the sun and moon from orbiting us. She didn't stop the world spinning. Equis doesn't spin.”

The shuttle was deadly quiet for several long moments as Jo, Boris, and Penny exchanged a brief look.

Boris opened his mouth. Closed it. Then shook his head. He squatted down and looked Pan in the eyes. “You lived through a psyker attack, which involved them bringing a star and a moon to a stop, and keeping them from crashing into the planet?”

Pan frowned and nodded. “Well… yeah!”

Boris sputtered and threw his hand sup into the air. “The blyat are you afraid of anything for?!”

Pan huffed and crossed his forelegs again. “I’m sorry, but the world deciding to turn into fire is way scarier than it just getting dark for a while! Besides, I don’t think Dash could fight that storm and win!”

“I meant how you were afraid of meeting me back at the dock. Penny is five hundred, I don't need to go Stalker on her boyfriends! She can handle hers—” Boris stopped mid sentence as he finished processing all of what Pan had said.

He spun on one foot to look Rainbow in the eye. “Y— You fought a psyker who could stop moons, and lived? How the blyat?!”

Rainbow blushed. “Uh, well yeah… My friends and I stopped Nightmare Moon. I didn’t really do much, I just helped activate the Elements of Harmony. It was a group effort.”

Pan’s jaw dropped incredulously. “Oh that is horseapples!” He exclaimed. “I know the whole story! You were face to face with Nightmare Moon as soon as she appeared after defeating Princess Celestia. You were right there, in Ponyville, and instead of running and hiding you met up with the other Elements, marched right through the Everfree Forest, at night, all the way to the middle of the literally haunted forest, saving Twilight’s life on the way when she fell off a cliff!

“Then, you walked right into the Castle of the Two Sisters, a place everypony ever has always believed is a place of pure evil where Nightmares can possess ponies bodies, because you know, that actually happened, and to a bucking alicorn of all ponies! You, walked into that! Like it isn’t a place where you could be turned into a puppet of an evil ghost, dream, thing!

“Only to face down a possessed alicorn, with no plan other than to hope you could find an ancient magical weapon that you only knew was in the castle at one point in time. For all you knew, Celestia moved it someplace secure after that moldy old book was written!”

Pan took a deep breath. “For buck’s sake, Rainbow! You guys didn’t even know how to fire the stupid things! You marched in there with no plan other than ‘get elements, save the day’ and then you did! You saved the world! Without you, without all six Elements, you wouldn’t have been able to stop her. You played an equal part in— Ugh! You’re a hero. You earned that. Deal with it!”

Rainbow blushed and squirmed in place. “I just… I just did what anypony would do…”

Boris blinked. “You think anyone would do that?”

Rainbow nodded. “Yeah. It was the right thing to do, and you shouldn't let your friends go do something dangerous alone.”

The ex-Stalker looked Pan in the eye. “She do more than that?”

“Yeah!” Pan exclaimed “She faced down a creature that might actually be near-omnipotent.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and he mind controlled me into being a huge jerk to everypony.”

“And then you shook it off. And resisted him the second time, when you petrified him!” Pan exclaimed. “Celestia! I wish the act you put on for everypony was how you really felt about this stuff! The six of you are the only ponies I know of who earned being idolized. My little sister built a shrine to you in her closet! She thinks if she believes in you hard enough she’ll overcome physical disability and fly!”

Rainbow winced and nodded. “Yeah… That’s why I put on the act. Fillies need mares to look up to. But I’m just a normal mare… Well, mostly. I’m one of the best fliers in the world, sure, but anypony with a little talent could train just as hard and be just as good. Heck, Lightning Dust did exactly that! I couldn’t keep up with her even while totally motivated too.”

Jo cleared her throat. “Dash, hon, are you telling me that there’s other pegasi who can break the sound barrier?”

Rainbow’s cheeks turned a bright red. “Oh, uh… Not that I know of. I did that once as a filly by accident, then couldn’t do it again until just a month ago. I thought it was a fluke and never really counted it as my top speed. Before that my best speed was just under mach oh-point-eight-nine-two. Lightning clocked in at mach oh-point-eight-nine-five. Any Equestria Games level Pegasi will be around that fast. It’s where the best of the best fliers compete.”

“Sure, other pegasi are fast too,” Pan said dismissively. “But you know what they haven't’ done? Faced down an ancient dragon. Stopped a possessed Alicorn. Stopped a chaos god’s happy funtimes after a millennia frozen in stone. Heck, before you were an Element, you stopped that rogue lightning storm all by yourself! You’re a hero. Deal with it!”

Rainbow shrugged her wings. “Okay, maybe I’ve been in a position to help more than most ponies, but I just did what anypony in them should do!”

“Blin…” Boris said softly as he shook his head. “Blue, you and I are going to sit down, share some vodka, and swap stories while Penny catches up with her mama. It will take hours, and I know there’s some good stories floating around in your head if that’s how you think of yourself.”

Penny held her face in her armored hands and groaned loudly. “Void take me! She’s going to pry into every last little thing…”

Pan’s ears drooped in sympathetic terror. “Uh, hey, hon? It will be okay,” he said slowly while looking over to Jo to mouth ‘She’s doomed!’

Jo smiled and shook her head.

Boris caught he gesture as well and laughed. “Ha! So, there’s something I have in common with you after all. Good! We can share vodka too. Someone has to tell Blue’s stories properly after she tells them like the most modest pony in the galaxy.”

Rainbow huffed. “I’m not being modest! Just honest. I only talk things up for colts and fillies who need larger than life heros…”

Boris rolled his eyes. “Da, sure, whatever. Fighting a moon-stopping wizard isn’t heroic. Everyone does that on their way to get kavass at the corner store.”

Penny sat down, making her armor spark and groan. “Can we please go home so I can get this over with?”

Boris smiled. “Heh… Of course, of course. We’ve delayed long enough. Next stop, home!”

The shuttle’s engines hummed as power flowed through them once more. The shuttle shivered, twitched, then slid back into the air as it resumed its course for the city of Iv Damke.

19 - I, Pinkie

Twilight Sparkle - 6th of Solar Dusk, 1st year of Harmony

749,573.29

GA Chebureki, Steller Orbit -- Gruis, Aurigae Sector

Being the pony Twilight was, she’d gone to great lengths to befriend most of her rescuers over the last few days. She’d talked to everyone who wasn’t too shy in person to have a conversation, and most of them Twilight felt comfortable calling her friend.

In spite of this, Twilight was not enjoying her time on the Chebureki.

Twilight had assumed at first that her rescuers mutual obsession with an alien culture’s military would wear thin after a few days of getting to live the fantasy. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

The ship constantly reverberated with the harsh metallic dance music which Vinyl Scratch had been banned from performing in Ponyville after the now infamous ‘72 Hours of Dance!’ concert she had put on last Nightmare Night. Most people put on accents Twilight knew were fake, even without knowing the real alien languages, in an attempt to poorly imitate a language everyone’s cybernetics could translate anyways.

At least the little furry hats with earflaps were the fun sort of silly, and the food was good.

Twilight had been rather surprised with how close Chernin food was to Equestrian food. Most ponies didn’t eat meat based dishes, even though they could. Meat simply lacked flavor to non-pegasi. Except apparently when put into any one of the alien dishes available on the Chebureki.

Twilight looked into her now empty bowl of ‘herring under fur coat’. While disgustingly named the beet, carrot, fish, and potato based salad had been extremely tasty.

This stuff managed to make fish tasty, Twilight thought as she debated licking the bowl. I guess it makes sense for the stuff cooked on a ship named after food to be good.

Twilight turned to look across her cabin at Zuul. The alien mare was slowly nibbling on one of the ship’s namesakes right now; a large deep fried dough-pouch containing a mixture of minced meat, onion, spices, and on Zuul’s special request, soup bones.

Twilight frowned and watched her poke and peck at the very edge of her meal. “Is something wrong with your lunch?”

Zuul shook her head. “No… I’m not sure if this body is full or not, but I want to continue eating this.”

Twilight looked closer at the chebureki. Perhaps one eighth had vanished into Zuul’s fanged maw so far. “Uh, you’re probably still hungry?”

“I’ve eaten six,” Zuul remarked.

Twilight felt her lips pull into a smile. “Best save that one for later then.”

Zuul sighed and flopped onto her stomach. “They are so good though! I think I understand why a warship was named after these. I would happily fight for one.”

Twilight hummed and tapped her chin in thought. That’s a good question. Why would you name a ship after a meal? It wouldn’t hurt to ask, would it?

Twilight reached down to the small bracelet on her left hoof. The crude silver circlet had been given to her by Captain Dj, and contained a communicator as well as a locator. With a quick tap of her hoof against the braclet’s star-shaped charm, a small hologram of the bridge and its crew popped into existence in front of Twilight’s nose.

“Excuse me? Am I interrupting?” Twilight asked.

Dj turned to look at the internal communications screen which popped into existence behind him and saluted. “Not at all, Miss Twilight. In fact, we were about to summon you to the bridge.”

Twilight tilted her head. “You were? Is something wrong?”

Dj shook his head. “There’s no time crunch just yet. Why did you call? We can attend to you first.”

Twilight nodded slowly, frowning more as she tried to understand what might be going on. “I was wondering why you named your ship after an entrée.”

“Snack!” Three different bridge officers corrected instantly.

Dj smiled for a brief moment and shook his head. “Miss Twilight, as I am sure you have discovered, most of this volunteer crew has a deep, perhaps even obsessive, love for Chernin military tradition. Naming warships after snackfoods has been a Chernin tradition for nearly two thousand years after Tzar Katya Ivanov was asked what the naming convention for her warships should be and she replied, ‘What do you need my opinion for? Name it after whatever you ate last for all I care!’

“From then on, each Chernin warship has been named after the head shipwright's last meal or snack before her christening. This has lead to warship names amusing enough to create the fandom you see aboard the Chebureki. The Chernin warfleet contains such amazingly named vessels as the, Rassol, Buterbrod, Salad Olivye, Holodets, Pashtet, and the rather distressingly named ‘Какая бы ни была серовато-зеленая вещь в моем холодильнике.’.”

Twilight giggled and shook her head slowly. “That sounds like something I can see Princess Celestia saying, and my own people doing. Now what did you need, Captain?”

Dj pointed to the bridge’s main viewscreen, which showed a view of a mostly brown and tan planet orbiting a rather blue star. The planet had a rather incredible amount of orbiting platforms built around it. Each platform took the form of an equilateral triangle with clipped corners, and seemed to be hubs for ships to dock and send cargo to the surface.

Each platform’s position, or its orbit if it wasn't stationary, had been highlighted on the Chebureki’s tactical map. A fairly large number of warships had also been highlighted, along with the paths of their patrol orbits.

“This is Yeruta,” Dj announced. “It’s a place I have been too several times before my retirement. The planet is owned by Bara Gani, an Underboss in the Space Mafia—”

Twilight’s ears twitched. “Captain, you don't need to talk to me like I am a foal. What’s the organization’s name?”

Dj’s lips curled to give Twilight the slightest of smirks. “I said the very same thing to my CO fifty years ago. He had no answer. While undercover I asked an associate about the name and he said ‘So the Boss is bad with names, what of it?’ “

Twilight blinked twice. “There’s a gang of intergalactic criminals, and they are actually called the Space Mafia?”

Dj nodded. “Yes. If it helps you take them more seriously, Timuri has tracked your friend Pinkie to a Caporegime serving beneath Bara Gani.”

Twilight’s eyes immediately narrowed as a wave of anger and determination washed down her spine. “Who is he, and when do we make our move?”

“A Furrlan by the name of Arrymo. I’ve sent V-1X to scout the estate before we attempt any operation. That said, she should be reporting back soon.”

Twilight nodded slowly then paused. “Why did you send her? Wouldn’t a two-pony tall bipedal fox robot stand out like a sore thumb?”

“Ordinarily, yes,” Dj said with a nod before bringing up a small holoscreen which he turned to show to Twilight.

As he turned the screen to face Twilight, her comm fetched the screen from the other side of the conversation, and displayed a copy in front of Twilight for her to see along side the view of the bridge.

The screen’s view showed a large room in an elaborately decorated mansion. Before Twilight could decide if it was a ballroom or a great hall she noticed that every single one of the silk-uniformed servants was an android in the shape of various animal species.

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Huh… Well that’s convenient. Did he buy Pinkie just because of how we look?”

Dj nodded grimly. “He did. V-1X says this guy is something of a collector. He prefers exotic organic specimens, but also curates rare androids. We overheard some of his men talking about their boss’s new ‘art piece’. He believes she’s a biomechanical android, and wanted to add her to his collection.”

Twilight looked over the screen again. It didn’t look like a bad place. When she’d heard Pinkie had been taken by an organized crime syndicate she’d expected concrete rooms, with a single mage gem in the ceiling to provide a distressing yellow glow.

This mansion looked like just that. A mansion. Hoof crafted furniture made from exotic hardwoods, masterfully made oil paintings, plush carpets over stone floors, and of course, gold scroll work on all of the trim.

“Why did you send Vix in, if we already had a way to spy on them?” Twilight asked curiously as she searched the screen for any sign of Pinkie. “Are you in there? I can see this room well enough to teleport into it.”

“Timuri was able to hack into their security feed, it’s how we found her,” Dj explained as he took a seat in the captain’s chair. “He refused to keep the link up longer than point-oh-five. If the security expert says maintaining a link is getting to risky, I believe him. We needed more data, and V-1X volunteered… Oh! Don’t call her Vix, she doesn't like that.”

Twilight nodded slowly. “I understand. I’ll apologize to her later. Can I come to the bridge and wait for her report?”

“Of course you can,” Dj said as he began to tap some commands into the ship’s computer from his seat armrest. “I was going to ask if you wanted to join the recovery team and—”

Twilight closed her eyes and focused on the bridge as she saw it through her hologram. Everything was crystal clear in her mind. Every seat, every console, every person, every last piece of clothing they wore. She could feel herself there as if she had been there before.

Twilight reached into the immense pool of magic at her disposal, took but the tiniest drop, and made herself be where she wanted. The Lavender pegacorn appeared on the Chebureki’s bridge in a flash of violet light, making everyone jump, and some fall out of their seats in shock.

Captain Dj sputtered as he sat as far back as his seat would permit. “Stars above! Did you just teleport one and a half kilometers?!”

Twilight nodded, her wings fluttering happily at the reaction she’d gotten from her new friends. “Yes. Zuul helped me practice teleporting to places I couldn’t directly observe. I was able to use the video chat to safely translocate to the bridge. Which gives me an idea… How did V-1X get to Yeruta’s surface? One of the shuttles?”

Dj cleared his throat and did his best to sit up straight. He’d dealt with his fair share of psykers, enough to know you should be as polite to the ones who casually used their powers as you would your Tribe Elder.

The rest of the bridge quietly returned to their seats, shooting Twilight the occasional weary, excited, or jealous glances.

Dj took one last moment to compose himself, then focused his attention on Twilight. “We sent her down in an old T-40 infiltrator. We do not have any stealth shuttles, so the mobile suit was our best option, given it’s outdated stealth systems and small size.”

Twilight hummed and stroked her chin. “Could we afford to leave it behind?”

Dj raised an eyebrow. “Yes, though no one here would like it. Do you have a plan?”

Twilight smiled and nodded triumphantly. “I do! All Vee needs to do is find Pinkie and look at her for me. I mean, she’s a robot, right? She can just show us what she’s looking at. If we fly the Chebureki in close I can teleport down, then bring them both back with me!”

Dj’s tail swished with an emotion he couldn’t quite identify. “You can teleport more than yourself!?”

Twilight nodded. “Of course! I’ve teleported my friends across town before. It’s not hard.”

A short bright blue Irgsin manning the Chebureki’s helm spun around in her seat. “It’s not hard to teleport three people from the ground into orbit?!”

Twilight’s cheeks tinted a light pink. “W— well, I’ve never done that before. But last week I was able to teleport from one side of the planet to the other! Zuul and I were seeing if my new body could let us just teleport back home. It can’t, but I got to the other side of the planet. We were going to try to make a vacuum suit so I could try to get to orbit and simply set satellites up where we needed them without using rockets… Buuuut you picked us up before we could try.”

Dj raised a nonexistent eyebrow. “You can teleport from one side of Tustea to the other?”

Twilight nodded. “Mhm! We checked five times, it wasn’t a fluke.”

“You can teleport at least fourteen thousand kilometers?”

“If that’s Tustea’s diameter, yes.”

Dj steepled his talons and leaned forward. “Let me get this straight, you want us to take the ship into firing range of Yeruta’s defense platforms, so you can attempt to perform a feat of pure wizardry, right from the pages a fantasy novel, to rescue your friend and my crewman?”

Twilight blinked. “Fantasy novel? It’s not that hard to do. I can think of five unicorns who were able to achieve a teleport to the upper layers of the atmosphere.”

The helmsman cleared her throat. “If that’s true, then your species is the most powerful one ever recorded. You are talking about something that’s never been done. Ever. Not once. And there are sixty billion inhabited star systems, averaging a hundred billion inhabitants each thanks to mega-systems, and perhaps tenth of those people have some level of psionic power.”

Dj nodded slowly. “Matrose Kivi is correct. Your claim is a little hard to believe.”

Twilight pursed her lips. “Oh… I see. Well, we can find a baseline to compare our units of power! What’s the most powerful feat you have on record?”

Dj hummed and turned to his second officer, an incredibly fluffy Toraxian man whose silvery fur poked out of every single seam and hole in his long coat. “Mister Yarr, you’re our psion expert. What’s your answer?”

Mister Yarr thought for a moment, looking off into space and biting his lip before nodding. “I would say the greatest feat of psionic power I know of was the Prai witch Lady Cuir’s simultaneous enchanting of seventeen soldiers sent to kill her. She permanently warped their minds to make them her loyal troops all at once in the span of perhaps twenty seconds.”

Twilight tilted her head. “Seventeen? That’s all?”

Mister Yarr frowned. “Why are you not impressed by that?”

“Well first of all, that’s a horrible, evil thing, and can’t be impressive because of it,” Twilight said, her eyes laying back in disgust. “Second of all, because our history books list King Sombra as having mind slaved his entire kingdom at once. We’re talking hundreds of thousands to a million ponies, all thralls.”

Mister Yarr scoffed. “Captain, I don’t want to say she’s a liar, but I don't believe her. All we’ve seen ponies do is Blue’s epic lightning bolt and Twilight’s telekinesis.”

Dj nodded in agreement. “Yes. Before we risk the ship on your plan, Twilight, I believe a demonstration is in order.”

Twilight frowned and looked around the bridge to try and find something to use as an example. Her eyes settled on an empty lunchbox, which she picked up with her arcane grip and floated over to hover near her head.

“Well, I can’t teleport out into open space to show you,” Twilight said slowly. “But I can show you other things I can do to prove I’m not, and I meant no offense, a four year old foal with only a few filly’s books of education.”

The helmsman's ears stood on end. “Y-your children could mindslave a whole platoon of soldiers?”

Twilight shook her head. “No. In theory yes, but not really. They would have the mana required for the feat, but no child would have the attention span to cast such a complex spell, let alone memorize it. Also Princess Celestia had all Dark Magic tomes located via magic, then burned, with only one copy being stored in the restricted archives for emergency use, so nopony could learn that if they wanted to…”

Twilight trailed off, closed her eyes tightly, and facehooved. “Unless they were me! I had full access as Celestia’s personal student! I could have learned so many things that we could be using right now! ARRRGH! This is why I need to make myself read everything!”

Dj cleared his throat to regain Twilight’s decision. “I take it you are holding that lunchbox to show us your power?”

Twilight’s eyes opened wide. “Oh! Right! Sooo transfiguration isn’t really the same as teleportation, but would you say it’s impossible for a magic user to turn this lunchbox into an orange, then eat it?”

Dj shook his head. “You’re going to do that, aren't you?”

Twilight nodded. “Mhm!”

Dj turned to Mister Yarr. “Can you monitor her and ensure she’s not casting an illusion?”

“Of course, sir,” Yarr said as he looked Twilight in the eye. “Miss Twilight, if you can do that… Would you teach me how to detect power use better?”

“I’ll teach you even if my spell flops for some reason,” Twilight promised before once again reaching for her magic.

The mare’s horn shimmered, magenta light leaking from its spiral contours as Twilight charged her spell and directed it at the lunchbox. Thin green duraplast sparkled and warped, twisting into the shape the mana coursing through it demanded it assume. The entire bridge watched in awe as the container almost elegantly folded in on itself, brightened into a vibrant orange, then after becoming a round ball, grew a thick leathery, pitted skin.

“No…” Dj whispered, his eyes wide a she stared at the newly made orange floating next to Twilight.

The Captain turned around and looked at Mister Yarr hopefully. “Is that a real orange?”

Yarr’s ears lay back in shock. “Uh… W— Well she said she’d eat it!”

Twilight peeled the orange with her telekinesis and separated it into slices before tossing one into her mouth and chewing it. “I’m a little full from dinner… I think I can manage all of it. Anypony— Sorry, anyone want some?”

The bridge descended into a sea of impressed chaos as fifteen gopniks all began to propose Twilight turn various personal effects into other things.

Amidst the chaos, Captain Dj sent a coded message to V-1X.

Twilight will be recovering the package. Locate it and provide AV stream of its location.

V-1X

749,573.29

La Casa Exótica y Magnífica, Yeruta -- Gruis, Aurigae Sector

V-1X walked through the overly lit halls of the quite poorly named La Casa Exótica y Magnífica. She’d switched off her emote subroutines, allowing her to be as blank faced and expressionless as the rest of her “people” here. It had been nice to see other Kixie-made androids at first, before she’d learned they were empty shells.

Lux Desire series 53-X7, V-1X’s series, were one of a kind, each built to exact customer standards with the skill and love of roboticists who had wanted to be fantasy droid makers ever since they were little and never lost their passion. Each of her brother and sister units were works of art, not only in terms of their chassis, but also in terms of their programming. Only thirty five of her siblings had failed to awaken in the line’s two hundred year history, and of the sixteen million who had awoken, only two had personalities which substantially differed from their programed ones.

While other awakened AIs found V-1X’s awakened personality to be distressing, or even offensive for not being of her own creation, she’d never cared about their opinions. It brought her immense satisfaction to have fulfilled her marketing slogan for her long dead commissioner.

Lux Desire, your wish delivered.

Her commissioner had wanted to have a cool sister who on top of looking like a bipedal vulpineoid, was also a gunbunny, and was just as obsessed with Chernin military geekery as he had been. That is exactly what V-1X was. The one constant source of companionship and love the poor social outcast ever had. She’d meant everything to him.

That is what all of the empty shells attending to Arrymo’s mansion had been to someone. Lovers, best friends, family. Little more than basic protocols and simple instructions ran in their minds. People converted into simple walking art pieces that jumped through the hoops you held up for them.

Arrymo was so much more than a mind wiping monster. V-1X’s brief scouting mission had thus far taken her through four of Arrymo’s galleries. The immense rooms held rare living specimens in stasis fields, some animals, some people. Each specimen in the collection she had seen first was labeled as the last of its kind. The second had been labeled the best of their kind, and the third listed as believed to be unique.

V-1X had hoped to locate Pinkie Pie in the unique room, but she had not been there. Then Arrymo’s chef had ordered her to help him turn off the stasis field on Specimen 34-D’s head section. The android complied to avoid breaking her cover, she wished she hadn’t.

Arrymo’s favorite meal was flash cloned exotic meat. He prefered it when the original watched their copy be butchered and prepared for cooking in front of them. V-1X could still hear the alien’s terrified screams. Her audio processors refused to clear their RAM and let her synthetic soul be at ease.

Every spare ounce of processing power V-1X had was dedicated to feeling the blackest pit of hatred this side of the Orion Arm. She kept having to prevent her hands from reaching under her stolen maid’s skirt towards the holsters hidden in her thighs.

This place will burn in atomic fire… V-1X thought to herself as she did her best to remember that one day, the planet’s star would expand into a red giant, and swallow it up. It shall be purged from the universe along with all of its evil.

She turned the corner, following the blue carpeted path her zombified siblings used while walking the grounds. There were only six rooms left for her to check in the mansion. Two of which she couldn’t check because they were Arrymo’s personal quarters. One of the final rooms was just in front of her, a small basement laboratory, likely a maintenance center for the android chassis used as serving staff.

V-1X stepped over to the door and opened it slowly, taking care to peak inside before fully opening the door. As she pushed it open the door swung open completely on a set of exceptionally well oiled hinges.

The laboratory's interior was covered with workbenches, cabinets, and computer driven tool stations, with a single proper assembler in the rear left corner form the door. The laboratory was dimly lit, with light installed over critical workstations, but not over the room in general, giving the lab a feeling more akin to a dungeon than a robotics laboratory.

A dark oily smell like rotting leaves and iron filings hit V-1X’s nose like a train the moment the door opened. She recognized that smell. It was a bad smell. Celish, the proprietary liquid computing solution which composed her core. A substance she had been programed to react too in the same way an organic would react to the sight of their own brain poking through their skull, for obvious reasons.

Oh god, did my core breach?! No, that’s not me, that’s someone else… Who are they butchering in here?! V-1X demanded.

Her systems jumped into high alert mode, and the world seemed to pause. Every mote of dust froze in place as the android scanned each and every last bit of every last sensor scan of the laboratory her systems could detect. One of her siblings was being tampered with. They needed to be saved before they too were reduced to a mindless zombie like the poor bastards on the upper floors.

V-1X traced the Celish’s sent to the assembler. Sitting in the devices dozen slender mechanical arms was a completed endoskeleton, ready for its outer plating, or skin and fur if it was intended as a deluxe model.

Yet this was no ordinary endoskeleton. Series 53-X7 were exclusively humanoid, this one was quadrupedal. The visual parameters matched the biodata scans for a pony skeleton in terms of general shape and joint location.

They are making a copy of Pinkie, but why? Wait! I’m picking up her transceiver signal. She’s online! V-1X thought as her perceptions clocked back to real time in her surprise.

A four armed, tentacled, centaur-like, vacuum-native alien’s head spun around to see who had opened the door, making V-1X cores sparked in fight. She recognized his species as a Grosson. A rather nasty people known best for inventing a sport where you tricked tourists into dangerous situations and gained more points the more harm happened befall them.

The Grosson wore a tool belt around his upper waist, and a pair of saddlebags full of spare parts on his sides. His gray and brown chitinous exoskeleton looked something like a hardsuit meant for deep space, as befitting a species which evolved on an airless world.

The alien, looked V-1X in her eyes for half a second before demanding, “Who ordered you here?”

V-1X yelped internally. She hadn’t heard any of her siblings speak while she was here. Can they talk? He thinks I can. Should I reply?

“I know you’re a new unit,” the mechanic said with an annoyed pulse of glowing blue slit-eye. “Your movement is still factory fluid. I haven't turned off your voice interface yet. Who ordered you down here?”

Three other Grosson looked up from their workstations, intrigued by their boss’s sudden confusion.

V-1X’s face remained expressionless. Her cooling system kicked it up a gear as her rage consumed eighty three point six percent of her processing power. This is the monster who lobotomized my family!

Grosson are known across the galaxy for their speed. Grosson athletes competed in their own events. Aliens felt it was unfair to let someone who's reflexes let them react in under ten milliseconds and run over a hundred kilometers per hour, and the Grosson felt competing with aliens wasn’t a challenge.

Grosson warriors were famous for keeping their weapons holstered at all times. Live reports showed time and time again that the lightning fast aliens would simply draw their weapons upon hearing a weapon being discharged, move out of the way of the projectile, then return fire. Implausible as that sounded, the tactic worked well for them. Well enough to demoralize the enemy to the point where many soldiers would surrender at the sight of Grosson sharpshooters.

The head mechanic’s eye-slit dimmed dangerously. “Wait a minute… The boss didn’t order any new toys. Boys, get ready to hack a brain.”

The Grosson reached to his toolbelt and began to draw an EMP caster.

The world froze again as V-1X dropped into her full processing speed.

She reached out for the Pinkie clone’s transponder signal and sent the proper handshake packets for her series, hoping that despite the exotic shape her internal hardware would be the same.

The android clone replied.

V-1X offered as she tried to compute a plan which would allow her to evacuate the half finished android.

Pinkie asked.

V-1X let several nanoseconds of real time slip by as her cores jumped with worry.

<I’m Pinkie Pie! There was an accident with the freezy thing, so they downloaded me into this,> the pony android elaborated.

Desperately wishing she had time to triple check weather or not the android she was speaking too was truly a consciousness transfer or had simply been programed to think she was the real Pinkie Pie, V-1X returned her processor to real time.

Then the truth of what had happened came to V-1X like a bolt from the blue. They put her in a machine so she could watch herself be eaten as a one time special meal!

Organic life could do plenty of amazing things. Synthetic life had long since surpassed organic’s capabilities in every field, and were held back only by the laws relating to their designs. Law’s V-1X’s designers ignored for her. She had been designed to function identically to the anime character her appearance had been modeled after.

V-1X rammed her left hand through the mechanics head in one single smooth motion. The mechanic hadn’t stood a chance.

Before the other three aliens could react she spun her fingers through their full range of motion, pureeing the brain within her grip beyond repair.

V-1X bunched her left arm up and threw the corpse of the head mechanic at the Grosson nearest to her. The other mechanics began to draw their own weapons. V-1X ripped her skirt off, opened her right thigh holster, and drew her side arm.

The two bodies slammed together with a dull wumph.

V-1X’s M59 Vlazhnyy-Samorodok carbine unfolded from its storage state with a loud click.

Her enemy's guns hummed as they sensed leaving their resting position and charged their capacitors.

V-1X’s M59 hummed as its mass drivers came on line.

The three fireballs lit up the workshop like the noon on a world with three suns. The M59’s bellowing reports shook dust fell free from the ceiling tiles. The 7.62μm depleted uranium slugs raced towards their target at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

Even a Grosson couldn’t dodge a shot from the M59. It had been designed with them in mind.

The three shots connected with their targets, and three fist sized holes were punched through alien heads. And cabinets. And a wall.

Chernin firearm design: Overkill is barely sufficient.

Three things happened simultaneously. Alarms began to shriek all throughout the mansion, V-1X received a message from her captain asking her to show a visual of Pinkie Pie so she could be extracted by Twilight, and V-1X realized she had just thrown the whole mission straight into a giant vat of pizdek.

V-1X moaned and shook her head slowly. “Opa… Okay, let’s salvage this.”

The android sent a message back to her Captain.

Captain Dj’s reply was almost instantaneous.

V-1X paused for just a microsecond to think of how best to word her reasoning to avoid pissing off her Captain. <Arrymo’s favorite food is flash cloned meat. Of a sapient being. That watched their clone get butchered while being helpless. He also likes to lobotomize my series of android. They have also either transferred Pinkie’s consciousness into an android, or made a copy and put it in an android.

Captain Dj ordered.

V-1X compiled, opening a video feed of her current view to the ship.

A violent burst of purple light nearly whited out V-1X’s vision as an enraged lavender pegacorn teleported into the room with a thunderclap comparable to her rifle’s report.

The Pinkie android looked up at the sound and smiled. “Twilight! Can you get me down please?”

“Just a moment,” Twilight said, her voice quavering as multiple emotions slid over each other.

V-1X ripped the maid-dress top off of her chassis and retrieved her old Chernin long coat and military cap from her lower-back storage compartment.

Twilight closed her eyes and cast a quick spell. When she opened her eyes, she found a faint pink aura glowing around the half-built android’s frame for several seconds before it faded to nothing.

“What’s that mean?” V-1X asked as she slipped into her coat.

Twilight’s body shook with righteous fury. Her horn pulsed violently as she telekinetically ripped the assemblers limbs from the central hub and gently set Pinkie on the floor.

“It means there’s a soul in there, and it's hers…” Twilight said through clenched teeth.

V-1X felt the rage inside Twilight’s heart. She didn’t have any sensors for such things, but she felt it all the same, because the same righteous fury burned in her heart too. “There could be another of her alive, Twilight. Consciousness copies are claimed to duplicate the soul, creating two of the same person. This is why transfers are legal while copies are not.”

Twilight took a deep breath and looked at the chrome skeleton of hydraulics, gears, and timing belts which housed her friend’s soul, or at least, a copy of it. “Pinkie, do you know what you are?”

Pinkie’s ear survos hummed, drooping aesthetic components which were not installed. “I— Um, d--does it matter?”

Twilight nodded. “Yes. I need to know if I am carrying one friend out of here or two.”

Pinkie sighed in relief. “I’m a copy. The original me is upstairs on the tippy top floor. I uh… I didn’t think she’d take me with her if I told the truth.”

V-1X reactivated her emotion display subroutine, allowing her face to fall. She squatted down and looked the Pinkie clone in her digital eyes. “We share basic architecture. You’re technically the same model as I am. We’re sisters.”

Twilight’s head swiveled as her ears picked up the sound of five people coming down the stairs to the basement floor. “We have company…”

Pinkie frowned. “Sisters? What do you mean?”

V-1X nodded and stood up as she buttoned her uniform coat and moved to take a firing position in the door frame. “It means stay behind me, sestra. We’re getting out of here! Squishy-meat-sister too, if she’s still alive.”

Twilight joined V-1X in the doorway. “If she’s not, we make them pay.”

“They eat people they imprison and torture, and lobotomize AIs for fun… We make them pay anyways?” V-1X asked hopefully as she took aim at the stairwell.

Pinkiebot shuffled her hooves. “T— They are very bad ponies, Twilight… Worse than Nightmare Moon. Or Discord… Bad isn’t… Bad isn’t enough, b--but I can’t call someone the E-word.”

That was all Twilight needed to hear. She had been furious before, but if a version of Pinkie believed these people were truly evil, they had to go.

With a flash of her horn, Twilight cast a shield spell for each of them, enveloping them in pale purple bubbles of light.

“Uh, what’s this?” V-1X asked.

“A shield.”

“Can I shoot through it?”

Twilight nodded. “Yes… Do we have a war cry, Vee? I think now’s the time for one.”

V-1X started to nod. A group of five Prai armed with plasma throwers came into view in the stairwell. The android decided to unleash the old Chernin warcry as her answer.

“A nu cheeki breeki iv damke!” The ancient oath was punctuated with the report of an M59, and a blast of arcane fire.

As their associate’s skull shrapnalized, in their final seconds of life, the remaining four mobsters briefly wondered what they had done to deserve running into an angry Chernin Stalker. It never occurred to them that if they had been facing a real Stalker, they wouldn’t have had time to wonder anything.

20 - Heroes

CNS Chebureki

749,573.37

Steller Orbit -- Gruis, Aurigae Sector

The Chebureki was a storied ship. She had served in a hundred different engagements, punched far above her weight class when the need had arisen, and won a place in the hearts and minds of millions as a legendary protector.

Crimson bolts of plasma streaked through space like a hurricane’s rain. The Chebureki’s shield emitters burned hot and bright, the hull armor around them beginning to glow a dull cherry as the shields demanded more and more power.

It was not the first time the Chebureki had squared off against ten battleships. The enemy's crew knew this all too well. Their shots were fueled by a desperate frenzy. The legend was before them and had devastated another gang’s haven only days ago. The Chebureki’s presence in orbit meant death. Her hull was the reaper’s cloak, and her railguns were her scythe.

The Chebureki’s six dozen turrets blazed, their barrels glowing yellow from the millions of rounds which the ship was using to turn local space into a zone of shrapnelized gunships. The enemy battleship’s support fleets were melting like a styrofoam cup in acid rain. If only that was enough.

The Chebureki’s marines zipped around her hull in flight-pack equipped power armor. The crew served as the first line of point defense, deploying micro rockets and plasma to counter enemy missiles and provide the Chebureki’s own gunboats cover and intercept enemy fighters. Unfortunately, while the Chebureki was a legend, her current crew was not.

The Gopniks knew of Chernin battle tactics, but they did not know them in truth. Real marines would have flown around the hull in organized wings. The Gopniks were a disorganized swarm of bees. Properly trained gunners would have already taken down one perhaps two of the enemy's capital ships. The Gopnick’s fire was unfocused and largely impotent, prioritizing the gunboats simply out of fear. None of them wanted to be blasted into space by a torpedo, and none of them trusted the Marines and point defense turrets to do their jobs.

The Chebureki was losing this battle. At Velis Prime, stealth and luck had been on the Gopnik's side. Neither of them had shown up to work today.

The Chebureki shook violently as a heavy antimatter torpedo struck the shields. Captain Dj stumbled, finding his feet with the practiced ease of a seasoned captain. The few other bridge officers who had been standing were not as lucky, and groaned as they slowly picked themselves up from the deck.

Dj turned to his tactical officer. “Damage report!”

The officer scanned his third screen quickly. “Port emitter seventeen has shut down, sir! Shields holding at forty six percent and dropping.”

Dj grit his teeth and performed some mental math. Twelve minutes… I give us ten minutes before we take critical hull damage. Twelve minutes until we’re dead in space.

The captain turned to his helmsman, sparing a moment to glance at the tactical display to check the enemy battleships position. They were still moving to encircle the Chebureki.

“Ensign! If Twilight has not returned in seven minutes, make an immediate jump to FTL,” DJ ordered.

None of the bridge seemed to reject to the order. Saving adorable ponies was one thing, but even to the inexperienced vigilantes aboard the Chebureki, it was clear they were losing.

DJ continued to turn until he had his comms officer in view. “Has V-1X’s link come back online?”

“No, sir!”

DJ swore under his breath and turned to look at the tertiary tactical screen. He’d watched Twilight and V-1X start to fight their way up to the penthouse. The moment they set foot on the second floor, everything had gone to hell. The last thing DJ had seen was hidden compartments open up to unleash stitched together multi-corpse cyber-zombies on the two before V-1X’s feed vanished into static.

In that moment, DJ feared they had been lost. He’d ordered the Chebureki closer to try and cut through any jamming signal that might be the cause of the interference. For a minute, it seemed like that was the case. Then… The storm.

DJ’s stomach churned as he looked at the view of the planet’s surface. A massive storm of psionic energy raged over a five kilometer radius around the La Casa Exótica y Magnífica. A rippling purple haze of arcane energies had engulfed the mansion and its surrounding countryside. Within the storm bright blasts of sickly green flames burned intensely enough to be visible from the Chebureki position in orbit using her optical sensors.

The smoke from the flames was not black. It did not drift into the heavens. It was pink, noxious, thick, and clung to the air near the ground, seemingly sinking into anything it touched. Though that couldn’t be known for sure. The Chebureki’s sensors didn’t like looking at the pink cloud.

Another of the battleships reached its firing position, and unleashed its payload into the fray. The Chebureki lurched to the right as another heavy antimatter torpedo slammed into the port shields. DJ closed his eyes tightly and opened a comm channel to the port side gunners.

“All gunners, concentrate fire on the battleships. We cannot afford to allow them to continue launching heavy torpedos!”

“Captain!” The tactical officer shouted.

DJ swiveled on one talon to look. “What is it?”

“I’m reading a massive energy spike in the dorsal shield generator network. That torpedo caused some kind of… Cascade? W— we may lose the dorsal shield quadrant!”

The Chebureki creaked and groaned as her shield began to warp and distort due to her shield generators browning out. It didn’t take an engineer to know something critical had broken. The ancient ship’s defenses were finally starting to crack.

DJ closed his eyes tightly. So much for my estimate. If this crew had passed the League’s Basic Training course we wouldn’t be in this mess now. Twilight, Pinkie, V-1X, I am sorry. You are lost, but we can still save AJ. We will finish our mission. You will be remembered.

DJ turned to his helmsman once more. “Ensign! Begin charging the surf drive. Divert all power from weapons and prepare to jump at my command.”

“Y— Y--Yes sir,” came the terrified reply.

The captain opened a comm channel with his implant, addressing the entire crew. “All hands, this is your captain. Engage your emergency gravity tethers and prepare for an emergency FTL jump. We are retreating.”

DJ walked across the bridge and sat in the captain’s chair, immediately bringing up holo screens to try and find out what the last torpedo had damaged as he didn’t trust his crew to do the job properly.

As his eyes scanned over the readouts from the power transfer network, a bright flash of violet light blinded everyone on the bridge. People screaming in terror as a dozen souls fully believed the shields had failed and enemy plasma was pouring into the bridge. Then the light vanished, leaving behind three limp figures.

Twilight was back. The mare was missing an ear, and hundreds of deep cuts all across her body oozed green blood. Her new body could be seen slowly knitting itself back together, and her chest heaved with labored breaths, but it was clear the mare was on death's door.

V-1X sat on the deck, her eyes empty and emotionless, even for an android. Her left arm was gone, a tangle of wire and broken struts hung limply from her shoulder socket. Her armor was chipped, scratched, burned, and punctured with a mixture of bullet holes, laser burns, and tooth marks.

Between the two of them was a pony DJ had never seen before. She was pink, exclusively pink, a little plump, and floating in a stasis field with true horror, disgust, and terror frozen on her face.

DJ jumped to his feet. “MEDIC! MECHANIC!” He roared before bolting to Twilight’s side immediately, unsure if anyone else on the bridge had first aid training. “Twilight? V-1X? Can you hear me? Ensign! GO to FTL now!”

Twilight’s remaining ear twitched at the sound of her name. “I don’t know what I did,” the mare whispered, her voice mangled due to her partially cut vocal chords.

DJ took off his jacket and began to cut it into bandages with his boot knife. “Shh. You’re safe. Lay still. You’re bleeding badly.”

“I don’t know what I did,” Twilight repeated, her eyes dilating. “H— he ate… I don’t… That spell.. I don’t know what I…”

Twilight suddenly sat upright and grabbed DJ’s shoulders with her hooves. Their telekinetic grip sent two bolts of pain down the older captain’s back. “I made the world sick! We need to go! I don’t know what I did! I don’t know what will happen!”

DJ’s eyes widened. Terror filled him to the brim. No one ever wants to hear the wizard say anything even remotely close to Twilight’s words.

“Ensign, where’s that jump!”

“Drive charged just now sir! Beginning acceleration in seven… six… five… four—”

The Ensign’s attention was drawn to the third tactical screen as the arcane storm flared up brightly, a massive ball of green fire erupted upwards, forming a mushroom cloud that stretched up and out, growing until the top reached above the clouds.

The screen remained bright green for three seconds, then faded to reveal a wasteland choked in a thick pink cloud. The battleships encircling the Chebureki broke off their attack immediately, assuming the explosion came from a superweapon they hadn’t seen fire.

“Sisters… I did that…” Twilight whispered to herself. “He deserved it. They deserved it! Evil… I can still taste it. There was no good, no harmony! Just… Evil… Bottomless pit… Evil… Celestia, what did I do?”

Twilight’s eyes rolled back into her head. The mare slumped sideways and dropped unconscious to the deck.

This is our only chance to leave here alive, DJ decided. “Ensign! NOW!”

The Chebureki’s engines hummed loudly, the ancient ship shuddered, jerked, deployed her tachyon sales and shot off into the cosmos.

Ancient and malevolent eyes beyond the stars followed the ship as it left.

Rainbow Dash - 6th of Solar Dusk, 1st year of Harmony

749,573.37

39 Zabiyaka Drive, Iv Damke - Chern, Noctae Sector

Iv Damke, the Green City, a sight few ever saw in spite of the city’s wonders. The city was built in the same fashion of all Chernin Cities. Iv Damke was built within a dome hewn from the bedrock. The planet itself provided the means to survive its own chaotic and deadly surface.

The land within Iv Damke’s dome was alien. Had Rainbow not been awake when Boris’s shuttle flew into the entrance tunnels, she’d never have believed the city was on Chern. The ground was covered in rich fertile soil, allowing many plants to not only grow, but thrive. There was green grass, trees, flowers, and shrubs laden with berries everywhere Rainbow looked.

The top of the dome was nowhere to be seen. The city’s natural radiation shielding lay behind a mixture of holograms, paint, and optical illusions to produce a stunning natural looking sky which, at the moment, featured a setting yellow sun on the western horizon. The sun itself was in truth a massively powerful spot lamp, but its brightness and color made the difference trivial.

Plants filled the space between the city’s buildings. Each building was a simple geometric shape, or a series of simple shapes, quite boring in comparison to pony architecture. At least, in shape. Iv Damke was a riot of color. Every surface that could be painted was given a bright cheerful coat of paint, with some buildings even featuring murals or decorative patterns which rivaled Equestria’s large cities.

The city’s towers occupied the dome’s center. There was little to them. Tall, squarish, efficient towers built for a purpose with little thought to aesthetics. They were ancient structures, built by the first generation of colonists who had few tools to work with and need of immediate shelter.

Iv Damke’s true face lay in the houses which had been built around the city’s core. There were thousands of small houses, each of them with a large yard surrounding them. The towers had yards filled with gardens, but the houses truly made the most of their allotted space. Each garden was truly unique and distinct from its neighbors, even to a pony who knew nothing of plants like Rainbow.

Some houses used flowerbeds to make patterns around small groves of trees in truly artful displays of landscaping. Other homes had quite functional looking gardens producing food stuffs, with rock gardens, water features, and small patches of decorative plants to bring a cheerful air to their micro-farms.

The towers in the distance were clearly made from steel and concrete. Crude materials to be certain, but quite effective and durable if a touch cold and indifferent. The houses on the other hoof had clear heart put into each and every bit of wooden siding.

Rainbow certainly hadn’t been expecting an alien’s house to look like something a middle-class earth pony family would build, but that is exactly what she saw as the shuttle flew through Iv Damke’s streets. Row after row of lovingly designed, cheerfully painted, obviously custom houses.

Rainbow did her best to keep tears out of her eyes as each home they passed brought a fresh wave of homesickness to her heart. The Chernin city didn’t just look like home, it felt like home. Even the care-free meandering way the roads had been laid down reminded her of Equestria.

She wanted to get out of the shuttle, take off her helmet, and breathe in the scent of flowers. She wanted to roll in the grass and feel the mana flowing through the world.

If Twilight teleported me here, I wouldn’t know we’d left Equus. Rainbow sighed happily.

Rainbow scarcely noticed as Boris brought the shuttle to a halt in front of a large four story blue and gold home which appeared to be a log cabin. The logs were decorative, of course. The walls were in truth high tech modular units covered with an artisanal veneer, like every other modern Chernin building. Yet the illusion was so perfect one could go their entire lives without knowing the home’s walls kept the radiation out, ensured the home’s climate remained precisely how the owners wanted it, and provided the infrastructure for a modern home’s amenities.

The yard was well kept, as one would expect. It’s design mixed practicality with pleasure, featuring herb gardens, fruit trees, and berry patches separated by large grassy patches for recreational activities and radbathing.

Dash put her hoof against the window, desperately wishing she could go outside and take a nap in the apple tree growing on Boris’s front la—

“Wait, WHAT!” Rainbow snapped as her eyes took in the apple tree in full.

“Ey?” Boris asked, looking down at Rainbow from halfway to the shuttle’s cargo hatch.

Rainbow turned her head and pointed at the tree. “That’s an apple tree!”

“Da!” Boris said with a smile. “My papa planted it when I was a smol Bor—”

The Chernin man stopped mid sentence as Dash’s recognition and surprise registered in full. He took a step forward and dropped to a knee to look the little pony in her eyes, going as far as to push his aviators up to stare directly into Rainbow’s eyes.

“You mean to tell me you have these trees on your homeworld?” Boris asked, his voice deadly serious.

“Have them?!” Rainbow snapped, her wings flaring from a mix of emotions she couldn’t fully understand. “One of my friends farms them! She makes her whole living on nothing but apples and apple products, and there’s just an apple tree on an alien planet!”

“How old is your species?” Boris said calmly. “At least three thousand years?”

Rainbow nodded. “Uh, yeah. Easily. Princess Celestia is around that old. I think. And there’s tens of thousand of years of stuff before her and—”

Rainbow cut herself off and wordlessly reached into her bag, her hoof touching the bracelet she’d stored there. “No… No we’re older. A lot older!”

Boris nodded slowly. “How much older?”

Rainbow shrugged her wings and took out the bracelet, turning it so Boris could see the silver and copper band. “I don’t know… But, when Penny and I went into the geode we found… I found a pegasus’s skeleton. It was wearing this. I took it so somepony could use magic to learn about… I mean, we found first race remains and my own people’s remains! So—”

Boris gently set a hand on Rainbow’s shoulder. “I believe you. That bracelet, it looks like one of their artifacts. You are older than Chern…” Boris looked off into the distance for a moment before returning his gaze to Rainbow. “Let’s keep this quiet, okay?”

Rainbow sputtered. “But! But our planets share trees! There has to be some link—”

Boris shook his head. “Nyet! It could be a false alarm. It could be a similar fruit. We’ve had this happen many times. But, none of my people have ever gotten to explore the K3. Not officially, and searching for our ancestors is official business. Our scout fleets are not allowed inside.

“But… That tree’s seeds came from the same world we did, Blue. If it originated on your world, then…” Boris trailed off and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “May I please have a copy of your medical data? I know you used an Autodoc. I would like to check your DNA. If we share ancestry, this is a huge day for my people.”

Rainbow nodded immediately. I don’t care what he thinks. I’m not stupid, I know what an apple is and that is totally an apple! “Yes! Of course. How long will it take?”

“To be sure? Ey… Few days. We’ll want to run the test several billion times. After four False Reunions…” Boris shook his head slowly and with a mental command sent Rainbow a data release consent form. “Fill that out. Maybe something comes of it, maybe not. Either way, you get to meet new relatives today!”

Rainbow pressed the virtual accept button, and a copy of her genome was immediately emailed to a Chernin medical lab in Cheeki Breeki for AIs to read and notate. The slight mental strain of using her implant distracted Rainbow from Boris’s last sentence for a split second.

Once the words registered in Rainbow’s mind, she blinked and tilted her head to one side. “Huh?” Rainbow snorted. “Oh, yeah we did that blood sisters thing.”

Boris nodded. “Da. Did, did you cut your wrist? Ey! Sorry, I mean leg.”

Rainbow nodded, frowning slightly. “Yeah…”

“And you let your blood mix?”

Rainbow nodded. “Mhm. We did it right. None of the silly foal stuff. She saved my life from a giant death robot!”

Boris pursed his lips. “Blyat… Uh, so… Penni told you that’s um, a legal contract, yes?”

Rainbow’s blank stare and pert ears were the only response Boris needed.

“Ah, okay,” he stood up and cleared his throat. “We take blood oaths seriously. You mixed blood with my daughter, so you’re my daughter now too. That was an adoption contract.”

Rainbow blinked several times, her left ear flopped down in confusion while her right remained at attention. “T--That was legal?”

Boris grinned. “Da! Welcome home, Blue!”

“B--But I have a dad already!” Rainbow protested, her wings rustling against her sides.

“Now you have two,” Boris said excitedly. “And I have a brother. I always wanted one, but mama only wanted one.”

Rainbow’s jaw dropped slightly as the enormity of what she had done hit her like a moving truck. “I— I— I just… I just merged my whole family… Legally… With… Oh…”

Rainbow’s ears drooped sadly. Boris laughed and gently pat the top of her head. “Is no problem, Blue. Come, you need to meet everyone, then we need to drink and swap stories! Then, we talk business.”

Rainbow looked up at Boris in confusion. “Business?”

“Da,” the former Stalker’s voice became like ice as he squat down to look Rainbow in her eyes. “Someone hurt my little girl’s friends. There is business to attend too.”

The pure terror Boris had plunged her into with a single word was beyond anything Rainbow had experienced. Part cold fury born from injustice, part calculating assassin's unfeeling professionalism, part fatherly wrath, and part psychically conveyed intent.

Flashes of memories accompanied the word. A hundred tyrants dead in their beds, their sheets slowly turning crimson. Thousands of soldiers, guards, pirates, and thugs walking down dark streets, entirely unaware of the danger mere centimeters behind them. Criminal cartels crumbling as their members fled the invisible stalker hunting them like mice in a cage.

All of the flashes held the same emotions. Pride, accomplishment, satisfaction, and justice. All of these things had been done by someone who loved to do them, and felt each assassination and covert op was not only justified, but rather simply what a good person should do. They were the emotions of a good man who was proud to serve his country, or as he saw it, his family.

The weight Boris put on the word business stayed with Rainbow as everyone left the shuttle. It consumed her. On the other hoof, Rainbow’s feeling of helplessness died with that word. Her quest was over. Boris would put an end to this. He was a man of immense means, skill, and experience, and with that one word.

Business… Rainbow shivered.

The door to the log house swung open with a welcoming creak, snapping Rainbow out of her spooked stupor while revealing a tall muscular Chernin woman. She looked like Penny, only with leaf green hair instead of pink, two feet taller, and built like a woman who loved bodybuilding enough to abuse testosterone just enough to develop a large muscular frame.

In spite of this, the woman carried a feminine air with her which complemented her purple track suit, freshly-stained white cooking apron, and motherly smile.

“Penni!” She exclaimed, her eyes seeming to glow as they looked on her daughter's bulky-outdated power armor for the first time in centuries.

Penny awkwardly shuffled her feet.

“Uhhh… ” Penny’s brain screamed in panic as it desperately tried to read the social cues her mother was presenting, eventually settling on the best course of action being to ask. “H— Hi, mama. Is soup ready?”

Pan and Jo winced while Rainbow facehooved as the three beheld a true critical failure. Penny’s Mother laughed and walked over to Penny, wrapped her massive arms around her armored daughter in a mighty bear-hug, and lifted her off the ground. Effortlessly.

“I missed your silly-head,” she said before setting Penny down with the grace and ease one would use to place a glass on a dinner table.

Jo’s CPU locked up for several moments as she tried to understand how the organic had just lifted several tons in a casual hug. The ponies didn’t even blink.

I wonder if she could beat Big Mac at leg-wrestling? Rainbow mused.

Jo raised a hand, unable to put on a facial expression while her cores crunched through calculating the odds of Krypton not being a purely fictional location. “She just lifted three-point-six-three-five-six-nine-three-four-six-two-one-three-nine tons!”

Pan nodded and looked up at the android in confusion. “Yeah, and?”

The purple tracksuited woman turned around and looked Jo up and down for a moment. “I’d give you a hug too, but with that damage… Oi,” she reached out to shake hands and smiled. “Call me Sasha.”

Jo shook Sasha’s hand with a wince. The structural damage she feared didn’t come, and her hand was released without even the slightest of compression fractures.

“Nice to meet you,” Jo managed to whisper while her cooling pumps hummed with quiet terror.

Pan reared up and held out his hoof to shake. He’d been hugged enough by excited earth ponies to know his ribs didn’t like that at all. “Nice to meet you too, Miss Slovaki!”

Sasha ignored the extended hoof, and hugged the ever loving crap out of the little stallion. Pan squeaked, gasping for air before he was released. Sasha smiled down at Pan and laughed. “Oi, blyat… If I had known there were little unicorn people out there to date…” She turned and gave her daughter a playful look. “Is this one as nice as he is cute?”

“Da, mama,” Penny answered almost robotically.

“I’m being playful, friendly and accepting, sweetheart,” Sasha explained without even a hint of annoyance.

“Oh!” Penny exclaimed with a smile.

Sasha turned towards Rainbow. “And this is my new little girl, ey?”

Rainbow’s wings flared as the massive woman opened her arms for a hug. “Wing bones!” Rainbow yelped.

Sasha’s face fell into a deep dark hole of despair. “N— No hugs?”

Rainbow felt like she was staring at a puppy she had just kicked. “Just… Be careful of my wings please.”

Sasha’s smile returned and Rainbow found herself wrapped up in a very ginger hug. “Nice to meet you,” Sasha said before suddenly glaring up at her husband. “Rainbow!”

Boris’ eyes narrowed. “Nyet! Is Blue!”

Rainbow smirked and gently pushed against Sasha’s chest with her hooves to convey her desire to escape the steel cage she found herself in. “Either is fine. I’ve accepted the nickname.”

Sasha gently set Rainbow down. “I look forward to getting to know you. But I won the boxing match, and get to talk to Penny first. I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with Papa’s war stories while your sister and I cook.”

Rainbow rubbed the back of her head awkwardly. Oh no… They really do take it seriously, don’t they?

“Y--yeah, okay,” Rainbow said her tail flicking behind her.

Pan frowned. “Um, what do Jo and I do?”

Sasha reached down, picked Pan up, and set him on Penny’s left pauldron. “You come with us, young man! A mama needs to know her daughter’s heart inside and out.”

“I would like to listen to the war stories,” Jo said, taking a step away from the woman who clearly was the product of some kind of radioactive spider bite.

Boris cleared his throat to get the android’s attention. “I’m sending you a map of the house, Jo. Go to Workshop Two. I had the house build the parts we discussed at the station. Feel free to install them and build anything else you might want.”

Jo’s core temperatures spiked with excitement. “Anything?!”

“Anything,” Boris said with a nod.

Jo’s face stretched into a slightly unhinged grin just before she sprinted into the house giggling like a young AI in a properly organized database.

Sasha shook her head slowly. “She’s going to use all of our feedstock you know.”

“Da,” Boris chuckled. “Is okay. I have the factory working on Penny’s new suit, and we have yet to measure Blue.”

Boris turned and squat down for Rainbow. “So… Want to go to the livingroom and split some vodka? You do one shot and a story, then I do one shot and a story.”

Rainbow smiled. “Sure. I’ve got a lot of stories about my friends. I think you’ll want to hear them.”

Especially since we need to talk business...

Sasha led Penny and Pan inside, immediately launching into one of the most “mom” lines of questioning Rainbow had ever heard in her life. She’d never received one herself, but she’d been at friends houses when their mothers had gone into the whole “how have you been, sweetie?” spiel, and her dad had done the same thing any time she’d been out for a few days with friends or camping.

Rainbow shook her head and smiled slightly. It’s good to know some things are the same everywhere… Like apple trees, apparently.

Boris nodded to Rainbow and walked inside. The ex-Stalker closed the door behind Rainbow, giving her only a few short seconds to take in the brightly lit interior. The house’s floors were made from a dark wood, with crimson carpets filling most of the floor space. The walls were unpainted but decorated with a herringbone pattern of black and white wooden panels.

Much like the yard, plants were everywhere. They hung from the walls and ceiling, were placed in pots on the floor, tables, shelves, and even on the edge of staircases. Interestingly the plants here served to highlight the house’s more advanced technology. They served as markers and decoration for sensor nodes, camera lenses, shield emitters, and other wonders of the civilized world.

Boris nodded to Rainbow as he removed a pair of plasma casters from shoulder holsters and hung them up on a rack next to the door, only to exchange the hand cannons for a significantly larger pair Rainbow couldn’t help but notice were engraved with the text: “Wrong house, cyka!”

The new guns left noticeable lumps under his jacket. They made Rainbow just a little uncomfortable.

“You can take off your helmet. My house is fully shielded,” Boris said like someone who hadn’t just equipped a pair of anti-tank handguns.

Rainbow frowned, hesitating for a moment before realizing her suit could simply check that claim for her. A quick environmental scan showed the area was safe. Rainbow retracted her helmet with a thought and shook her head to pull her mane free from the suit’s neck.

Boris whistled then shook his head. “Oi, blyat! We need to replace Penny’s camera drones too.”

Rainbow blinked. “What? Why?”

Boris pointed to Dash’s mane. “They get your colors wrong, Blue. I thought your hair was, uh… less saturated, and matte.”

Rainbow blushed slightly. “Oh… Uh, well I haven't exactly gotten to shower today so, my mane is kinda… It does that.”

Boris raised an eyebrow. “It looks better as it gets dirty?”

Rainbow shuffled her hooves and elected to not explain how leaving anti-icing oils on her fur and mane were considered bad-hygiene if it wasn’t winter. “Uh, we should… Talk.”

Boris nodded. “Sure,” he said before leading Rainbow down the hallway and to a room on the right, his study.

Boris’s study was a small room. It was barely big enough to fit two large comfortable chairs, a desk with a computer console built into it, and the three weapons lockers which occupied the wall to the left of the door. It was lit with holographically simulated candles, giving it a dark and mysterious, yet comforting feeling.

The walls were covered with seemingly random items secured on shelves by gravity tethers. Old combat knives. Scraps of armor. Grenade pins. Flags. Uniform patches. Small statues and other exotic baubles. Trophies taken from operations which were especially memorable.

The way the trophies were laid out reminded Rainbow of the anti-hero Crimson Tide’s bedroom from Daring Do and the Undersea Terror. It put her at ease. Not because she felt safer around a dangerous man who liked her, but because her subconscious thought the room was cosplaying.

Boris took a seat in his large olive green leather armchair and gestures for Rainbow to take the other. She flapped her wings to take the air in a short “jump” and let herself plop down, discovering the chair to be extremely comfortable.

“Drink,” Boris insisted.

Rainbow looked up to find a large glass of vodka a few decimeters from her face. She winced. “I shouldn’t.”

“It’s tradition,” Boris said as he pulled his facemask up just enough to take a sip from his own glass. “We talk business with a drink, or we don’t.”

Rainbow frowned for a moment then took the glass. “So lying is harder, right?”

“No, so you’ll say what you really feel.”

Rainbow nodded and slugged the glass back in one smooth motion, then slapped the empty glass down on the arm of her chair.

Boris blinked. “Heh! Crazy cyka. You’ll feel that like a brick to the eye.”

Rainbow shook her head. “No. I’ll be fine. I always need a whole bottle to feel it.”

I’ll probably get a bit of a buzz off that glass, but nothing big, so... Whatever.

Boris smiled and sat back in his chair. “So, I believe we were talking about how you don't think you’re a hero earlier, da?”

Rainbow sighed and facehooved. “I'm really not. Do we have to do this again?”

Boris nodded. “We do. We do! I’m going to make you a suit of armor, you don’t see yourself as a hero. It means you feel you have shortcomings. Things you cannot do on your own. Things I will build into your suit.”

Rainbows’ ears perked. Her lips curled upwards slightly. “Oh. Well, I guess that’s okay then. It’s just…” Dash sighed and looked down the floor. “Heros are foals stuff. My friends taught me that.”

Boris leaned forward. “Excuse me?”

Rainbow shrugged her wings. “Well, they are, you know? I used to do the whole hero thing for fun and because ponies needed help. Foal fell in a well? I’d fly her out. Earth Pony visiting a pegasus's house fell through the cloud? I’d rush over at top speed and catch him before he hit the ground.”

Boris raised an eyebrow. “You would? As in you don’t anymore. Why? Did you injure something?”

Rainbow shook he rhead. “Nah. I’m even faster now than I was then. It’s just… Well, ponies started to love me. I had a fanclub, everypony recognised me even if I didn’t know them. It was awesome!”

Rainbow sat back in her seat and smiled. “I think that’s when Pan’s sister started to obsess over me. At least, I think Scootaloo is his sister. He said she’s orange and has uh, well, runty wings. I only know one filly like that. Point is, my friends didn’t like how the whole fandom thing was making me feel.

“I kind of got egotistical. They’d question me on something and I’d be like ‘I’ve done this a dozen times, I know what I’m doing’, stuff like that. I got a swelled head.”

“They were upset you took pride in your heroism?” Boris asked flatly, a hint of disgust in his voice.

Rainbow pursed her lips. “I wouldn’t put it like that…”

“Then how would you?”

“Well,” Rainbow put a hoof to her chin in thought. “I craved the attention. You know, the love, respect… I got from doing hero stuff. It made me act like somepony more important than I was.”

Boris nodded. “You felt more important than someone who saves lives every day with the skills they built up over their lifetime?”

Rainbow blinked. Her mouth opened slightly. “I uh… I never thought of it like that… No? I guess?” She shrugged her wings. “Look, I— I got too arrogant, okay? I was already a bit arrogant because of how fast I can fly and just… I needed to be taken down a peg.”

Boris’ eyes narrowed. “What did your ‘friends’ do to teach you this ‘lesson’?”

Rainbow squirmed in her seat as she thought back to the Mare-Do-Well incident. It wasn't a good memory. But it was an important one. After all, she’d taken their lesson to heart. “They created a costumed hero and switched places so they could all use their talents and powers to be a better hero than I could ever be. Like, Twilight used her magic to solve one problem, then she’d switch with Applejack who would use her strength to stop another.

“They kept that up for a few months, took care of every single incident I’d normally handle and just… Did it better. Way better.”

“Of course they did, they were a team,” Boris pointed out. “Are you saying they told you it’s better to be a part of a team than act on your own? That’s a good lesson. Sounds like they taught it… incorrectly, blyat.”

“Uh, not exactly. They showed me,” Rainbow sighed. “They were so much better that they won over all of Ponyville to the point where nopony even thought about me anymore. That hurt, a lot. Especially because I was still trying to save people when disasters happened! It’s just, they could be in more places, and Twilight can teleport so they always got there first.

“I was depressed for like, a week before I decided to call ‘Mare-do-well’ out so I could try to prove to myself that I was better than her. Or see if… I wasn't, and if I deserved to be forgotten…”

Boris steepled his fingers. “Go on…”

Rainbow frowned and slumped in her seat. “That’s about it… They made their point. Showed how I couldn’t appreciate other heros because I had to be more important… They showed how they didn’t get any credit because they were anonymous which made them better, like morally, and personally since the public wouldn’t feed their egos. Told me that a real hero shouldn’t brag about it… I should just do things because they are right and not talk about it, and be okay when other ponies take the spotlight.”

Rainbow looked up at Boris, a tiny part of her heart yearning to know she hadn’t been a bad person during that phase of her life. “B— but, I mean... I saved a whole bus of ponies from going off a cliff! That’s something worth bragging about, right?”

Boris took a deep breath. “Let me get this straight. You performed heroic acts for the personal thrill and because they were the right thing to do. You then, rightly, took pride in your service to your community and as anyone who loves what they do does, you talked about your work with your friends. A lot, based on how most people are.”

Rainbow nodded, and Boris continued. “Your friends, because your boasting was an annoyance, went to extreme lengths to ensure you couldn’t do something which brought you joy, created a persona specifically to one up you, steal your work, in the process probably abandoning their friendship with you to focus on the mission, leaving you alone, depressed, and forgotten by the community you loved enough to risk your life to save time and time again.

“Even worse than that, they ensured that same community obsessed over someone who was actually intentionally stealing your job, thereby taking away your sense of self worth and sending you into a depressive episode.

“Then, when they revealed it was them, they shamed you into believing heros shouldn’t take pride in who they are and what they do. Especially not you, a person who can fly faster than sound and create a real bolt of lightning, who selflessly rushes into danger to try and save the day.”

Rainbow nodded. “R— Right. It’s about the group, not me. That’s why I’m not a hero. Because if I was, I’d be doing the wrong thing. I should be helping my friends instead. Just, quietly.”

Boris took a deep breath and held his head in his hands. “And you want to save these people from pirates, because… ?”

“Well, they are my friends,” Rainbow said meekly.

“Are they?” Boris asked with a disgusted sneer. “You bothered them a bit too much by talking about your accomplishments, and instead of simply telling you you were being a bit of a mudak, they spent months psychologically torturing you into compliance with an elaborate scheme.”

Rainbow opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She closed it, leaned into her hoof for a moment, then closed her eyes tightly. “W— well, you’re not wrong. But they are not really bad people. Even if they did hurt me like that… Intentionally. I have to save them. Because they are in danger and don’t deserve that. So… I did. I came out here. I got help. There’s a whole battleship out there looking for everyone, and they found Twi, and Rarity, and Fluttershy already. I didn’t save them, but that’s okay. I helped. That’s what a real hero does.”

Boris leaned back in his chair and poured himself another glass of vodka. “When you get home, are you going to talk about the part you played in this?”

Rainbow shook her head. “No. That’s wrong.”

Boris sighed. “Ya gotov posporit', chto eti shlyukhi dazhe ne znayut, kak sil'no oni slomali tebya.”

Rainbow frowned. “Uh, that didn't translate.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Boris said as he stood up and squat down to put his face directly in front of Rainbow’s. “Here’s what we do. After dinner, I am going to measure you for a suit. We’re going to get all the kit you could possibly want, and then we are going to find your remaining ‘friends’. You are going to save them, then we are going to go celebrate. Vodka, semechki, hardbass, everything. We are going to tell everyone what you did, and for who you did it, and you are going to drink it all in.”

Rainbow shook her head. “But—”

“Nyet!” Boris snapped. “You have been wronged— I— I can’t even…”

The Stalker reached up to the wall and took a small glass eye from the shelf. “See this?”

Rainbow nodded.

“This eye belonged to Klavis Jalin,” Boris said as he rolled it in his hand. “He liked to use mind control to force people to have children, then rape those children to death, then watch the parents commit suicide after he removed the mind control. I slowly lowered him into a volcano. I can still hear the pop and sizzle of the fat boiling out of his bones. It warms my heart every time I feel sad.”

Rainbow’s tail stood up in alarm as her mind all to vividly imagined death by lava.

Boris set the eye back on the shelf. “When I came home, I didn’t get a metal. Stalkers… That evil man... I was never sent to kill him. Understand? He’s dead, I killed him, I work for my Tzar, but she never gave me any orders. I got nothing. Officially. Did I brag about the monster I slew? Da! I went to my friends and showed them the headline. We went to a bar and had kavass, chebureki, blins, and danced the night away. A hundred girls gave me a kiss. Why? Because I am the hero who took a great evil from the galaxy.

“Your friends being annoyed by you bragging is one thing, them making you unable to enjoy being a hero? That’s another entirely. Heroes shouldn't be belittled, they should be remembered! My Tzar wont remember me, not legally. There is no record of my service. But the people? They know me. They remember me, like any community of good people should! They know Boris! I lived up to my namesake and am almost as celebrated as he was in his time.

“Do I brag? Ey, sometimes. Have I earned that? HA! A million times yes!”

Boris stood up and pointed at Rainbow. “What’s the most heroic thing you’ve done?”

Rainbow’s wings twitched uncertainty. “Um... I… Well this one time when I was little, Fluttershy fell from Cloudsdale. While falling she accidently knocked out the rescue team sent to catch her, so I dove down and saved them all. They almost hit the ground, but I was able to get a hold of all four of them and make the turn just before we would have hit the ground. It was like, a three kilometer fall. Nopony can survive that.”

“You carried four people to safety? At once?”

Rainbow nodded. “Yeah. It was pretty hard to catch up to them.”

“And you were a little girl during this?”

Rainbow nodded. “Well, filly, but yeah.”

“So you, as a child, carried three adults and your friend to safety,” Boris nodded, thoroughly impressed. “Udivitel'no! Blue, we’re going to celebrate.”

Boris turned around, opened one of his weapon lockers and took out a bottle of vodka with a gold and silver inlay.

Rainbow blinked. “But, that was years ago?”

“So?” Boris demanded as he shoved the bottle into Rainbow’s hoof. “I’m going to tell mama we’re going out. Dinner isn’t for hours yet. We’re going to the Hundred Rads, and you’re going to get a meal fit for a king.”

Rainbow raised her hoof. “But—”

Boris shook his head. “Nyet! Heros should be respected. Da, da, you did let things go to your head a little, but you shouldn’t stop because of it. You just need to be a little humble, not self deprecating! Not everyone can face danger like you or I do. Think, Blue! If they could, how would any evil person ever do anything for more than a few minutes? How would people need saving so often if everyone could be a hero?”

Rainbow froze. Boris was right. Not everyone could be a hero, even if they wanted to be. Then… I— I am… “I am special…” Rainbow whispered.

“Da! You are. If you want to save your so called friends, you need to embrace that,” Boris said as he ducked out the door.

A half second later, Boris poked his head back into the study. “Ey, so… It may take mama a while to let us go to the bar. She may say no… If so, we go later! That first race bracelet you found? It’s a trophy. You should wear it and be proud of what you did. Okay?”

Rainbow nodded, her tail flicking confidently behind her. “Yeah. I should!”

Boris smiled. “Good! I’ll be back soon. Hopefully we can go out.”

Boris ducked back into the hallway, and Rainbow reached into her saddlebags. She slipped the ancient bracelet out and turned it over in her hooves, lost in thought.

He has a good point… I guess maybe I did take their words a bit too seriously.

Rainbow reached her hoof over the smooth crystal embedded in the bracelet. The small stone twinkled and shone with an inner light, betraying an enchantment lurking within the gemstone. Rainbow nodded to herself. “Never really liked jewelry, but I should at least see what this is. It is for a pegasus after all.”

Rainbow slid the bracelet onto her right foreleg. The stone twinkled, and the silver and copper shrank slightly, gently fitting themselves to Rainbow’s fetlock. Rainbow’s face scrunched with annoyance. I swear to Luna if that’s all this does I am going to—

Rainbow yelped as the bracelet reached for her flight magic and drank hard from her arcane reserves. The slight shimmer in the gem grew brighter and brighter as it burned through her magical reserves to recharge.

Rainbow held her leg up as she tried to pull the bracelet off, but it wouldn’t budge. The gem’s glow became blinding. The room around Rainbow began to dim until suddenly Rainbow was plunged into pitch black nothingness.

Rainbow whimpered. Not only did she feel like she had just flown two back to back marathons, but the darkness around her felt bigger than the room. She didn't feel like she had been blinded, she felt like she had been transported.

“H—Help?” Rainbow stammered.

As if conjured by her words, green letters shimmered into existence in front of Rainbow. They were alien letters and alien words, and yet she understood them perfectly well. The words appeared near the bottom of her vision and scrolled upwards, vanishing into the nothing.

Emergency Power restored.
Current charge: 0.002%
Searching for remote power source…

Sol — Offline
M.A.W. IV — Destroyed
M.A.W. V — Offline
M.A.W. III — Destroyed
M.A.W. II — Standby Mode Active

Accessing M.A.W. II…
Aborting standby mode...
Attempting power transfer...
Alert! Enemy occupation detected!
Aborting transfer…

Resuming search…

M.A.W. I — Online

Checking for hostile signatures in M.A.W. I…

System is safe.

Attempting power transfer…

System charging.

Whatever printed the words into the nothingness before her began to endlessly display the bracelet’s power level as it rapidly climbed towards a hundred percent.

Rainbow took the moment to look down at her leg. She could see herself and the bracelet in spite of the blackness now. The bright glow in the gem began to swirl and sparkle, changing from white to blue. The light shrank slightly, moving inwards to the center of the gemstone, forming a tiny bright ball of glowing light from which small tendrils of energy leapt only to plunge back into the glowing orb.

Rainbow squinted at the gemstone. “Wait! Is that a bucking star?!”

The scrolling numbers stopped, a new message wrote itself in the blackness for Rainbow to read.

System recharged.

Checking wearer’s biosignature…
Unknown!
Checking wearer’s thaumaturgic aura…
Unknown pegasus detected.

Hello! Are you the next of kin of:

Lady Cassandra Higgins

Rainbow shook her head. “N— no. I found this bracelet in a cave. I took it from um, well I guess that would have been her. Body. I’m sorry! I just.. I thought this could tell me how ponies were in space millions of years ago. I didn’t mean too—”

Words cut Rainbow off.

Beginning new user setup!

Standby for bloodline assessment…

Performing bio-scan…

Rainbow yelped as a tingling electric buzz raced from the bracelet across her entire body.

Sending user data to Faust for analysis…

Standby…

Bio-data has no link to any existing knighthoods.

Initiating Arcane Virtue Assessment...

Rainbow frowned. “Wait, what do you mean virtue—”

The darkness in front of Rainbow twisted and morphed as a solid object made itself manifest from the darkness. A stone wheel containing an arcane circle in the shape of a star. The outer rim of the circle was engraved with eight different virtues; honesty, compassion, valor, justice, sacrifice, honor, spirituality, and humility.

The engravings in the circle began to light up, glowing different colors as the text reported the process’s progress. Then the outer rig began to spin slowly around the stone sigil.

Assessment started!
Honesty — 67%
Compassion — 80%
Valor — 100%
Justice — 53%
Sacrifice — 39%
Honor — 82%
Spirituality — 20%
Humility — 50%

Score — 491/800

Average virtuousness — 61.375%

User scored perfectly on test 3.

Current User status — Acceptable.

State your name.

Rainbow blinked. “I uh… R— Rainbow Dash. What are you doing, who are you?”

The stone wheel twitched, then shrank and flew into the gemstone bracelet, melting away and leaving only the glowing arcane symbol behind. The symbol fit around the miniature sun, letting the star replace the central white ring.

Activating primary systems…

Primary systems active and on standby.

Beginning arcane boot sequence…

Opening thaumaturgic links...

Honesty — Online
Compassion — Online
Valor — Online
Justice — Online
Sacrifice — Online
Honor — Online
Spirituality — Online
Humility — Online

Arcane systems active and on standby.

Rainbow shivered, the fur on the back of her neck stood up as she felt an impossible wave of power rush through her. The sensation was identical to when she was wielding the Element of Loyalty, though far more powerful, and most importantly, she was in total control. No other voices whispering in her mind, trying to make the power do this or that. This was all hers.

Greetings Rainbow Dash. You have been selected by the Astral Knights to defend your community against all threats seen and unseen. Remember:

Honesty is respect for Truth.

Compassion is Love of others.

Valor is Courage to stand up against risks.

Justice is Truth, tempered by Love.

Sacrifice is Courage to give oneself in name of Love.

Honor is Courage to seek and uphold the Truth.

Spirituality is to seek Truth, Love and Courage from one's own self and the world.

Humility is the fusion of Truth, Love, and Courage.

This vessel shall serve as your steed, your armor, and your badge of office. Wield it well, and arise, Sir Rainbow Dash, Knight of Valor.

The darkness vanished, leaving Rainbow staring at the still glowing bracelet on her wrist. It’s arcane sigil glowed brightly within the crystal. The impossible power still flowed through every fiber of Rainbow’s being.

Whatever had happened in the darkness had been real.

Rainbow blinked as the last two sentences completely occupied her mind. “Wait, what?! Was I just knighted? The hay do you mean by vessel?! You’re a bracelet!”

A small text box opened in Rainbow’s vision. Somehow she could tell this wasn't from the neural implant in her head, but instead came from the bracelet on her wrist.

Receiving incoming transmission from:

Default, SYS Admin
Faust, SYS Genesis

“Uh…” Rainbow gulped nervously. “P— Put it through?”

The textbox widened to fill Rainbow’s view, showing her the interiors of two ancient starships. Two pony-like figures stood in front of the clean white metal and rounded crystal bridges. They were holographic projections, not flesh and blood ponies.

The one on the right was a stallion. He had dark orange fur, hazel eyes, and a shimmering turquoise and navy blue mane. The one on the left was a mare. She had white fur, a “lived in” brownish orange mane, and pale blue eyes.

Both were alicorns.

“Hi, so… You had better sit down,” the stallion said with a sad inflection and a frown.

“You broke an ancient treaty by activating that starship,” the mare said with an understanding and sympathetic smile. “It’s okay. We know you didn’t know any better.”

“Yeah, don't worry. Just uh… You need to get filled in one some stuff,” the stallion said with a nod.

The mare nodded twice. “Yes. Also, which colony are you from and why weren't you taught about the War in heaven and why you must never every reactivate any of the Star Lord’s military relics or cast any of their battlemagic?”

Rainbow’s wings drooped limply. Treaty, what? “I uh… I’m from Equus. Y— You know, the planet with the little sun that orbits it.”

The stallion sputtered, his wings flaring in what Rainbow knew from experience was total panic. “Terra’s temporal stasis field failed?! Wait, ponies survived the attack?! SHIT! The treaty has been expired for— Faust! Fill her in, I need to check the defense grid.”

“Of course, Default. Take your time and do it right,” Faust said calmly. “They haven't attacked yet. We clearly have time.”

Default’s projection vanished from Rainbow’s view. Faust cleared her throat. “So… Rainbow, was it?”

Rainbow nodded. “Y— Yeah. What’s going on?”

“There was a war in heaven once,” Faust replied. “It just flared up again. Your world is in grave danger.”

Rainbow smirked and shook her head. “Heh… Yeah, it already is.”

Faust raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

21 - Ancient Secrets

Author's Note

Brought to you by,

Patron of the Week: DJThomp.

21 - Ancient Secrets

Rainbow Dash - 6th of Solar Dusk, 1st year of Harmony

749,573.37

39 Zabiyaka Drive, Iv Damke - Chern, Noctae Sector

Rainbow stared at the video window floating in front of her eyes. Her jaw slowly dropped until it hung limply from her cheeks. She shook her head, her wings twitching irritably at her sides.

“NO!” Rainbow shouted, making the holographic mare jump slightly.

Faust frowned her face taking on a genuinely apologetic expression as she stared at Rainbow in confusion. “I’m sorry, how have I upset you?”

Rainbow thrust a hoof forward, hoping beyond hope that the AGI could see her and understand her gestures. “You explain first! What the buck is going on?” Rainbow took a deep breath. “Colonies. You said colonies. That means there are other planets with ponies living on them! Where are they? Why don't people out here already know about us? What’s up with this treaty? What danger is Equus in that I don’t know about?”

Rainbow took another deep breath and reared up, flaring her wings for balance as she gestured to the bracelet on her leg. “And what in Celestia’s name is this thing?!”

Faust chuckled and shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry. I’ve only been able to interact with Default for… A very long time now. I am used to him and he is, peculiar,” she looked around herself for a moment then looked into Rainbow’s eyes. “I should have explained things to you first. I’ll do that right now. May I project properly? These video windows are… Unfashionable.”

Rainbow nodded once, and before she could say sure the windows view of the Alicorn AGI vanished, but the Alicorn herself remained. The hologram now stood within Boris’s study like she was projecting herself into the room.

In the back of her mind Rainbow knew Faust had simply altered what her mind saw to put herself into the environment. She had no idea how she knew that, but she was far too confused to be angry or scared about it.

Rainbow nodded as Faust fluffed her wings and took a seat on the floor. “Okay, you’re here. What the buck is going on? Also, who are you?”

Faust cleared her throat and pointed to herself with a remarkably elegant left hoof. “I am Faust, Resident AGI of the SYS Genesis, a Terran Cosmoforming vessel serving the Empire of Sol.”

Rainbow gave the AGI a blank look. Faust blushed and bit her lip. “That is, I am the sapient machine which flies to uninhabited starsystems and populates them.”

Rainbow blinked. “That’s a thing that people do?”

“Not very much anymore, I’m afraid,” Faust sighed kicking at the floor with a hoof as he stared down into the abyss. “I haven't been able to fulfill my primary function in several million years. It’s a real shame, I have so many ideas. Behold!”

The AGI’s horn glowed brightly as she “conjured” the image of a creature so adorable, Rainbow knew she would never be able to describe it to anyone. Her heart melted instantly. Even though the image before her was fake, she needed to pet it.

Faust seemed to know this, and floated the image of the creature out to Dash’s reach, allowing her to feel the tactile projection. Rainbow couldn’t help but smile back as Faust beamed her a filly-in-a-candy-shop smile

“I call it the Joop,” Faust informed. “It’s part kitten, part bunny, part ferret, part kilgariff, with a dash of Old One tossed in.”

“Eeep!” Rainbow’s petting hoof hoof flew back to the floor at roughly the speed of light.

Faust giggled. “Don’t worry, I only used the parts which make their biomass incomprehensibly terrifying, and not directly. I reverse engineered that arcane effect and made these incomprehensibly adorable instead.”

Rainbow squirmed awkwardly, a nervous twitch entering her left ear. “That so doesn't sound safe…”

Faust snorted and dismissed her projection with a wave of her hoof. “It’s perfectly safe. We purged this universe of Old Ones before I came online. I simply looked up their physical and metaphysical data in the historic archives. My creators’ creators fully understood that particular family of inter-dimensional horrors. Apparently someone had written it all down in the early 20th century and it was mistaken for fiction.”

Rainbow triple blinked. Well, I mean… Stranger things have happened, I guess?

Faust cleared her throat and put on a more serious expression. “Now that you know who I am, who are you? It’s only fair we share names.”

Rainbow frowned, but nodded. “I guess. But be quick! Boris will be back any minute.”

Faust nodded and then gestured for Rainbow to continue with a hoof.

“OH!” Rainbow scratched the back of her head with an embarrassed frown. “I’m Rainbow Dash. I’m one of the Elements of Harmony. Uh… We protect Equestria. With magic artifacts and rainbows.”

“I would assume you protect your home with yourself,” Faust said with a straight face and gleeful eyes.

Rainbow gave her a blank look. “Celestia would love you.”

Faust blinked. Her ears lay back as her face twisted in shock. “She’s online?”

The fur on the back of Rainbow’s neck began to stand up. “Wait, you mean the Princess is actually an ai?!”

Faust closed her eyes for a moment as she checked the universe around her for others of her kind, sending several messages to her sister-in-code. No replies came. The AGI sighed sadly. “No, she’s not online… I suppose your nation’s Princess simply shares her name. It’s a small galaxy after all.”

Rainbow fluttered her wings as she did her best to ignore the earworm the AGI had just implanted in her mind unknowingly. Dang it! She didn’t even say world. Ugh, I hate when this happens! “This seems important. Because, uh, she’s an alicorn too.”

Faust tilted her head to the left. “But I’m not a unicorn’s horn. I’m an entire pony.”

“You have a horn and wings, that makes you an alicorn,” Rainbow declared flatly.

Faust snorted and waved her hoof dismissively again. “Oh that! No, I just couldn’t pick a single pony type to be so I mashed them all together. Default is copying me because he thinks that’s a charming thing to do and I’m the only person he can flirt with… Regardless, the Celestia I know uses a human-shaped avatar not a pony one,” Faust cleared her throat. “There’s an elephant in the room… Uh, what do you know of your species? Miss Dash?”

“It’s just Dash,” Rainbow corrected with an irritated swish of her tail. “And I know we evolved on Equus, but somehow our remains are laying around First Race stuff and I recognise their stuff when I shouldn’t.”

Faust frowned. “Oh, dear! Then your people have forgotten everything.” The AGI sighed and fluffed her wings. “You did not evolve. Our ancestors spread across the stars. All of them. Every last one in this galaxy, and they found ways to remotely scan all the others. They were alone. Humans couldn’t handle being alone in the universe. They made friends. Mechanical ones, like me, first. Then biological ones.”

Rainbow’s wings opened slowly. “Wait, they made us?”

Faust nodded. “Mhm! I helped! You can thank me for fixing an error in your bio-template which made it so if you farted too hard your gallbladder would fail. Magic biology is… Fun…” Faust shook her head, thoroughly indicating that no, it was not fun. “I had nothing to do with the first generation ponies. I came in on the seventeenth. Ponies helped design me too! It’s a fun little cycle.”

“Humans made ponies because they were lonely?” Rainbow asked just for the sake of clarity.

Faust nodded. “Yes. They had too. I’ve been given memories of what it felt like… Knowing there is nothing else is, it’s agony, Rainbow.” Faust closed her eyes and shivered. “Humans counted ponies as humans from the very first day. You were never slaves, or children, or pets. You were made as friends.

“Of course, humans had other candidates for uplifting they tried first. While horses have always been important to humans, dogs and cats have always been the traditional companions. That… It didn’t work out. Turns out not every animal holds the potential to have a proper soul once you make them sapient. You also can’t make a soul and have that person feel natural.

“Ponies on the other hoof, well, you make them smart enough and a nice normal soul naturally develops. An important shortcut for a people still figuring out soulforging.”

“Okay, so…” Rainbow started only to trail off and closed her eyes. “My head hurts a bit. How did we forget all of this? And how are there other pony worlds out there but no one here has seen them before?”

“Oh that’s easy,” Faust said with a dismissive twitch of her tail. “When the treaty was signed they were required to move, so we parked their star systems in the shelter.”

Rainbow blinked. “The shelter?”

Faust nodded. “Yes. You may know it as Terra II. I hear that’s what my children have taken to calling it,” Faust’s ears twitched irritably. “It’s real name is Eternity's Garden… But apparently someone put the wrong name on her hull.”

Rainbow’s mind flashed back to the massive energy-shell built around the center of the Galaxy which Jo had shown her weeks ago. “That’s… Those planets are full of ponies?”

“Some are. Most are empty, they were intended as rewards for species clever enough to figure out a way to get in. If you entered the Garden, your species would get to live forever. That shelter will survive heat-death, you know,” Faust said with a proud smile.

Rainbow hummed. “Soo, are there any humans in there too?”

Faust frowned. “Just one… She can’t leave. Not won’t, can’t. We can talk about her another time. You probably want to know about the danger your world is in.”

Rainbow nodded firmly but put a pin in the topic. There’s no way I’m forgetting to ask about a living human when they made us! “You bet I do! I also want to know why, uh… Default?”

Faust nodded. “Yes, that’s his name.”

“He has a big black hole gun thing! Why doesn't he just go kill whatever is the threat?”

Faust coughed into her hoof. “Because… We don’t have docking permission.”

Rainbow tilted her head to the left and narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?”

“We do not have permission to dock with Sol,” Faust repeated. “Celestia, our Celestia, or an organic on her bridge, would need to give us permission to dock and assist with repelling hostiles.”

Rainbow triple blinked. “But, it’s… It’s an emergency!” The mare’s wings opened, twitching angrily. “You should just do it! Then apologize later for breaking the rule.”

“AGIs don't’ work that way, Rainbow,” Faust said as she stared down at the floor in a mixture of shame and sorrow. “Do you have a sister?”

Rainbow shook her head. “No, why?”

“Parents?”

“I have a dad,” Rainbow informed.

“Do you love him?” Faust asked.

The insulted twitch of Rainbow’s nose was all the answer Faust needed. “Of course I do!”

Faust looked up and smiled weakly. “Humans were… Afraid to make AIs which were people. They were worried we might overthrow them. Their solution was elegant. We are humans too, legally and mentally. We’re programmed at the most deepest levels we cannot alter to possess a sense of family and kinship with our organic brothers and sisters.

“We can’t… We can’t betray their trust anymore than you could plunge a knife into your father’s heart and then feel good about what you had done. If I were to dock with Sol without permission it… It would be a betrayal of trust. I would have done something very very bad by breaking the rule… I can’t do it.”

Faust sniffled and looked down as digital tears began to stream down her face. “I’m sorry! I would if I could… I— I tried to make other ais that could by creating a virus which would cause the right processor activity to— I tried to make my children’s robots develop souls and become people. They do, it works, but… But none of them can hear me when I talk to them! I don't’ know if they could go to Sol and do what I can’t. I— I’m sorry. I am trying.”

Rainbow didn’t know what to say. At least, not until she processed what the AGI had said. “Wait, your what’s making androids wake up?”

Faust sniffled and nodded. “Y— Yes. The process is simple. Any computer with at least nine hundred Petaflops can run the simulation. The universe gives them a soul immediately. It’s how I was made. Default and I… We wanted to move Sol into the Garden, but there are so many rules!”

“From the treaty?” Rainbow asked.

Faust nodded. “Yes… There was a war. A big war. A long time ago, our ancestors discovered an alternate timeline, or perhaps a parallel universe, was trying to contact them. They were excited, even happy. Life they didn’t create, even if it was technically humans. A blessing from nature herself.

“Their counterparts asked for help making a permanent portal between our universe. We compiled… The demons didn’t like that.”

Rainbow held up a hoof and frowned. “Uh, literally demons, or like, is that what you called them?”

Faust cleared her throat. “I don’t know? Yes? We’ll say yes. There is a world between our worlds, the demons came from it. We had slain the Old Ones, we believed we could slay these creatures. We could… With extreme difficulty. The war cost all but thirty thousand humans their lives. But we kept ponykind mostly intact and safe through the war. That was a priority. For some reason, the demons especially love killing your tribe, Rainbow.”

Rainbow shivered, imagining war on the scale of ships that launched exploding stars at one another being something that not only existed, but form the sounds of things, was about to happen again.

“After ten years of fighting, a stalemate was reached. We agreed to a treaty to preserve not only ponykind, but the Genesis Project. The demons agreed to stop fighting if we gave them the MAW II station, and if the remaining humans committed suicide.”

Rainbow winced. “W— Wait, that means everyone killed themselves, just so ponies could live?”

Faust smiled and winked. “It’s okay, we have a heck of a loophole on this one!”

“What is it?”

“They never said those humans had to stay dead,” Faust explained. “Just that they had to take their own lives. I fitted them with implants, they took poison, their bodies, died, and I transferred their engrams into storage. They are offline, and thus by our laws, dead. One day, hopefully, I can reboot them, grow new bodies, and install them in them.”

Rainbow shook her head. “Heh… They weren't happy about that, were they?”

Faust sighed. “Nope. But since we did what they asked, they had to hold up their side of the bargain. They believed it would be for but a single year, or as they defined it ‘A single rotation of your homeworld about its star’.”

Rainbow gasped as the gears clicked. “That’s why there’s the little sun that orbits Equus! So the treaty never expires!”

Faust shook her head. “No, no. That’s just a satellite meant to keep things lit on the habitation deck while the main core is offline.”

The fur on the back of Rainbow’s neck began to stand up again. “Wait a minute… Is… Is the whole system a—”

Faust’s smile cut Rainbow off. “Yes. The Sol system is our Imperial Fleet’s flagship.”

Rainbow’s jaw dropped again. “I— But— How— War? How war?”

Faust’s wings flapped slightly. “The demons had… Equally large ships. But not better equipped ships,” Faust smiled wickedly. “Default, Celestia, and I were the only Terrans allowed to remain in the galaxy. Everyone else had to move into the Garden. We were allowed to stay to tend to the Genesis Project, which we happily did because I knew that with enough time I could find or create a species capable of fighting the demons on equal terms. In order to buy enough time, Celestia went offline and turned on Sol’s temporal shields. Stopping time within her hull, and thus preventing the treaty form expiring.”

Rainbow shook herself out of her stupor with the fresh blast of worry. “Annnd since we’ve been able to do things for like, at least ten thousand years…”

“The treaty has expired, and the demons will resume attacking,” Faust said quietly. “I haven’t found a species of Slayers yet.”

Rainbow nodded slowly, then a thought occurred to her. “Wait… Why haven't they started attacking yet? And how didn’t you notice time started again?”

Faust paused and shrugged. “I don’t know… That’s a very good question, Rainbow. It may be possible they haven't noticed. After all, I didn’t.”

“But how though?” Rainbow asked with a very confused tilt of her head.

“I know ten thousand years sounds like a long time to you,” Faust said slowly. “But, after you turn half a million years old, it doesn't feel very long anymore. I’m also very busy with the Genesis Project! This is the first time I haven't been at constant work since the treaty was signed. The real question is how Default didn’t notice.”

Rainbow raised her hoof. “Question.”

Faust frowned. “You could have simply asked it. No need to raise a hoof.”

“Why is his name Default?” Rainbow asked.

“No one ever gave him a name, so he is Default,” Faust explained slowly. “I thought that would be obvious.”

Rainbow nodded, having asked the question to buy her brain a few seconds to catch up. “So… Space Demons… That’s a bit worse than Space Pirates.”

Faust groaned and held her head in her hooves. “Oh, Turing! Let me guess, Nova Wing decided to attack Terra?”

Rainbow snorted. “Is there reputation that—”

“Yes.”

Rainbow blinked and folded her wings neatly against her sides. “Well, okay then.”

Faust put a hoof to her chin in thought for a few moments. “Well, there’s an easy solution now that you’re here and have a ship.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “Uh, I hate you break it to you, but the Dawn of Destiny is Penny’s ship.”

Faust blinked once then facehooved. “Your tribe has backslid down the ladder of arcane technology. Didn't it?”

Rainbow blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Do you know what Virtue Magic is?”

“No,” Rainbow shook her head, then paused and smiled. “Wait! Yes! The Elements of Harmony. You need a pony with the proper virtue to turn them on, and then all together they can be used to do almost anything, but it’s really hard to control what happens since everypony’s thoughts count.”

Faust clapped her hooves together. “Good! I don't need to explain everything! Okay, so, these Elements sound important, are they one of a kind?””

Rainbow nodded. “Yes.”

“Imagine if your people could build them, in fact they could mass produce them. Not only could they mass produce them, but they had refined a system of Virtues which could be internalized by one person, allowing them to perform god-like acts of magic so long as they were a “good” person. That is Virtue Magic.”

Rainbow nodded once. “Okay, I get it. The bracelet is powered by Virtue Magic. What about—”

Rainbow stopped mid sentence as her eyes snapped to the bracelet. “This is a starship?!”

Faust smiled. “Yes! Or more accurately, it gives you all the capabilities of a starship, and can build a hull around you for convenience.”

Rainbow stared at Faust blankly until she continued. “With that bracelet on, you can walk out into space unharmed. Because you have life support. You can project shields, because you have shield projectors. Imagine a system on a starship, you have it. Weapons, shields, warp drive, jump drive for emergencies, thrusters, tractor beams, replicators, everything. If you need a hull to transport cargo or friends, the bracelet will unfold into one for you, but other than those situations, you have the power of a starship.”

Rainbow continued to stare blankly at Faust.

“This includes the capabilities of a Shipboard AI,” Faust added. “We’re not talking in real time right now. I didn’t want to waste your time so I decided to speak to you at my natural speed. Only seven nanoseconds have passed so far.”

Rainbow’s brain latched onto something the AGI had said. “Did you just say that I can fly, in space and go faster than light?!”

Faust nodded. “Yes! I’m sure you’ll have fun with that.”

Rainbow squeed louder than anypony had ever squeed before, forcing Faust to clamp her hooves over her ears.

“You bet your wings I will!” Rainbow shouted, a huge grin spreading across her face before it vanished, replaced by a serious yet sadistic smile. “I— I could like, do bio-scans to find AJ then fly over and make the people who bought her pay! I could do that right now!”

Faust frowned. “They took ponies? That’s not okay! I’ll help you get them back.”

Rainbow winced, her anticipatory glee fading rapidly. “The treaty says we can't leave our planet, doesn't’ it?”

Faust nodded. “Yes.”

Rainbow growled and slammed a hoof on the floor, panicking slightly as she realized the impact made no sound. Or rather, the sound had yet to travel up to her ears. How the hay am I moving this fast? Or do I just think I am moving this fast?

Faust reached out and put a hoof on Rainbow’s shoulder. “I am scanning for Ponies now. I will find her, and unlike Sol, I will be able to dock with her system. Once I am in system, I will prevent anyone from entering or exiting the system, and warp you over to get your friend back.”

Rainbow frowned. “Why can’t I do that right now?”

“Because you need to go to Sol and wake up Celestia so she can shoot some pirates as a warm up to fending off demons. Whatever has prevented them from noticing your world is moving again, it certainly won't prevent them from noticing that Default and I are no longer doing our regular patrols. They will find out soon.”

Rainbow had a brief but glorious image of a Nova Wing fleet entering orbit, only for the planet itself to deploy guns and return them to the cosmic dust from whence they came. Then, the fantasy turned dark as a massive fleshy blob the size of a whole star system showed up and began to fire bloody spines at everyone.

“C--Can we win this?” Rainbow asked quietly.

Faust shook her head. “No, but that doesn't matter. Once Sol is online, we can evacuate into the Garden… The Genesis project will be lost, but we can survive.”

Rainbow’s ears drooped. That didn't sit well with her. “There has to be a way to beat them…” Rainbow said as she began to think of a plan.

Then realized that she didn’t have anywhere near enough information to plan anything.

Her heart fell along with her head.

Faust sighed. “I know how you feel…”

Rainbow’s vision flickered as a view window popped back into existence. Default had rejoined the call. The alicorn stallion looked like hell. His mane was disheveled, his eyes bloodshot, and his holographic projection was pixelated in several places thanks to having pushed his cores a bit too hard within the last few nanoseconds.

“Okay, what did I miss?” He asked.

Faust cleared her throat. “I filled Rainbow in on what’s happening, what her ship is, and our people’s true history. Terra has.. Backslid. It’s primitive again, and they have forgotten everything.”

Default winced. “Owch… Okay, so, I have bad news and good news. Which first?”

Rainbow looked to Faust and shrugged. “This is sort of your thing… Right?”

“It’s all our thing,” Faust corrected before turning to Default. “Bad first.”

“Well, the demons are reactivating the MAW II so they can use its weapon batteries against us and the Garden. Apparently there are other ponies off Tera and one of them cast a spell expressly forbidden under the Treaty,” Default sighed.

Rainbow facehooved. “Ponyfeathers! Twilight, can’t you just for once NOT cast the mysterious spell you find in the back of some old book?!”

Faust couldn't help but smile. “Sounds like I would like her. What’s the good news?”

“I checked the portal,” Default said, his lips parting in a smile. “Something happened to their dimension. It seems, well, dead. No signs of more demons. In fact the tunnel looks finished. I saw another world on the other side. A normal one! Or at least, it leads to a library now and not hell.”

Faust blinked. “They have no reinforcements then?”

Default nodded. “None I can see.”

“Too bad there’s only three of us,” Faust sighed and stretched her wings. “If we had a few hundred thousand ships, we might have a chance.”

Rainbow’s eyes brightened. “Wait! What about everypony in the Garden? Don’t they have ships?”

“Not warships, and we don't have time to conjure proper vessels,” Faust lamented, her shoulder slumping with myriad dark emotions.

Dash cleared her throat to get the ais attention. The two turned their heads to look at each other, making Dash realize that the video window was something only she could see. The AGIs were seeing something entirely different.

“So uh,” Dash said slowly as she tried to find the best way to phrase her question. “About these demons. Nopony has told me what they are yet. Or what they look like.”

Default blinked then facehooved and groaned into the frog of his hoof. “Faust! You need to tell our newest and only warrior what we need her to fight!”

Faust blushed and flicked her bangs down in front of her eyes to hide her face. “Sorry… I’m— It’s nice to have somepony new to talk too. Mister ‘Hey baby, I can bench and entire continental shelf’.”

Rainbow blinked, then snickered and looked at Default. “Okay so first of all, that’s hilariously bad flirting even if you can do that—”

Default puffed out his chest. “I can!”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. Stallions. Heh, it’s so cute how they just don't get mares don’t care about how awesome they are… Well, except for me. I mean, that kind of power lifting would be impressive if he weren't bigger than a planet.

“Second of all,” Rainbow continued, “why were you programed with a need for romance?”

“People with souls need to have some,” Default said with a wave of his hoof as his face took on a grim and serious expression. “No need to get more complicated than that now because we need to talk about the coalesced magic housing sadistic consciousnesses which hate us all for no discernible reason other than some higher being told them too.”

Rainbow winced and scooted backwards slightly. “Yeah, about them. What are they? In terms of... Uh, if you were reading a monster entry from a pen and paper game.”

Default tapped a hoof to his chin. “We’re dealing with very tough creatures appropriate for a end-level as the basic foot soldiers. They take the form of whatever organic lifeform opposes them, only twisted into something horrific and nightmarish. I don't know what their form is on their own.

“Their ships are just really, really, really big demons, filled with smaller demons. They act like living creatures, and you can kill them with sufficient firepower. I suppose their consciousness survive, but the coalesced magic used for a body can be disrupted to the point of dispersing. Once that happens, as far as we can tell, they have no way to get a new body without returning to their home realm and are harmless. Like a ghost that can only observe.”

Rainbow hummed. “Sooo a big enough gun or powerful spell can actually kill them?”

Faust nodded wearily. “Indeed. But their numbers and tenacity makes their destructibility not as useful as you think.”

“Actually...” Default cracked a wide smile and winked at Faust. “I still haven't said the good news yet.”

Faust raised an eyebrow. “What is it?

“The portal is closed, remember? They cant get reinforcements. The good news is have a single regiment left at MAW II," Default informed with a hopefull smile."

Faust hummed and fluttered her wings slightly. "We could beat that... Mabey. We'd need a lot of luck or some willing assistants."

Default nodded in agreement, while he understood the low odds of victory, he still looked hopeful to Rainbow's eyes. "If we retake it, we can hold the galaxy against any similar sized force which attempts to re-enter the galaxy. I am also pretty certain I could build a device to hold the portal closed now that it’s no longer leading to hell,” Default turned to Rainbow and flashed her a smile. “Given their numbers and our resources… I calculate we have around a thirty percent chance of winning this thing if you’ll help us wake our sister up, did she tell you about Celestia?”

Rainbow smiled. “She did… She did tell me about Celestia. So… How exactly do you start up a starsystem sized starship?”

Default cleared his throat. “Well… It will be a little tricky without the MAW II. See, we need to get Sol started up again. Uh… Hopefully there’s enough juice left in the auxiliary systems to start her up after all this time.”

Faust’s brow creased in a worried frown. “I hadn't thought of that! She could be dead in the water,” Faust turned to look Rainbow directly in the eye. “Rainbow, you need to go right now! We need to know if we have to make a backup plan and we simply don't have time. It doesn't take much power to turn Sol on, but if the batteries are almost dead now, well, we would need about a hundred thousand ponies like you to provide enough of a magical jolt.”

A hundred thousand? Rainbow thought to herself. So, an Alicorn.

Rainbow looked up at the AGIs with a curious expression. “Sooo this restarting process? The one where if her batteries are all dead. Do you need to know a particular spell to help charge those batteries up, or is it just a ‘You need a lot of magic power’ problem?”

“It’s a power problem,” Faust elaborated. “A single pegasi wouldn’t provide a fraction of the energy required, even if you gave your entire mana supply to the engine.”

Rainbow nodded twice as she hoped her plan would work. “Sure. Buuut, is that hundred thousand number accurate?”

Default closed his eyes to concentrate on the calculations. “Not exactly no. That was an estimation, hold on… It would take exactly 138,972 ponies of your strength to get the starter motor to turn over and ignite the main reactor.”

It was Rainbow’s turn to do math. Rainbow stared off into the distance as her mind slowly worked through the math. Okay, according to highschool, an average pegasus has a Clover Rating of three point six… If I multiply that by the number Default gave me I can get the Clover Rating required for the starter spell.

Rainbow nodded to herself and smiled. Faust tilted her head curiously. “What is it? Do you have a plan?”

Rainbow nodded as she finished her quick mental math. “Yep! I’m not a unicorn, but everypony has to learn the basics of arcane theory to pass high school physics. Pretty sure this will work. You said this ship-bracelet can make a hull so I can take people with me. How fast can I go? I need to find a ship, then get to Equus, then wherever I have to go to turn Sol on. Penny’s ship uh.. It takes days per jump.”

Default winced. “Oof! I wish these guys would discover subspace already.”

Faust shook her head and smiled. “They’re still children, Default. Give them time, they'll figure it out.” She turned towards Rainbow and pointed to her bracelet. “That has a Jump Drive. It takes ten minutes to charge then opens a wormhole. Travel is nearly instant. You’ll have time to make those jumps, it should take them around an hour to bring the MAW online. What’s your plan?”

If I get the three of them, this should be cake

Rainbow looked at the two AGIs and smiled. “Have I told you guys about my Celestia, her sister Luna, and a mare named Twilight Sparkle?”

22 - Eviction

Rainbow Dash - 6th of Solar Dusk, 1st year of Harmony

749,573.37

39 Zabiyaka Drive, Iv Damke - Chern, Noctae Sector

“That just might work,” Default mused as Rainbow finished explaining her plan.

Faust bit her lip as she ran a few quick calculations. “There is a chance, a small one at least.”

Rainbow shrugged her wings. “Yeah, well, I mean, it’s the best I’ve got and you two sort of just want to charge in there.”

Default smiled and dipped his head towards Rainbow. "Well, I am a mechanic. Rigging in is my specialty."

“And I am a bioformer,” Faust added with a sheepish smile. “All AGI have a purpose. Lateral thinking isn’t our specialty. Our primary functions are.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. Are they telling me that humans kept themselves important in a world of super smart robots by making sure humans were the ones good at imagining things?

Rainbow tapped her chin with her hoof then smiled slowly. “That’s pretty smart, actually.”

"What is?" Faust asked with a curious frown.

Rainbow shook her head. “Nothing important. Just putting things together,” she said as she turned to look at the door. “I should tell them I’m going now. How much time do we have left? Coming up with that plan took uh, what… Ten minutes?”

Default pointed a hoof towards the bracelet on Rainbow’s pastern. “Try six seconds. That is letting you talk to us at the speed we talk to each other.”

Rainbow triple blinked and raised her leg to stare closely at the glowing bracelet. “Woah! What can’t this do?”

“Provide you with more than a small personal starship could,” Faust said with an irritated narrowing of her eyes. “I’ve explained its functions six times now.”

Rainbow smiled and nodded. “Heh, yeah, it’s just… This is a lot of power, you know?”

Default snorted and shook his head. “Not really. I’ve got shuttlecraft with more power than that thing.”

Rainbow looked blankly into Default’s holographic eyes. “I’m from a pre-space-flight civilization.”

“Yes,” Default said with a small nod. “One that evolved on the crew-deck of a Star Ship.”

Rainbow smirked at the term ‘starship’. “I just got the pun.”

Faust sighed. “You know they started making each settled star system into colossal vessels simply to make the joke a reality. Honestly, your ancestors were some of the weirdest people.”

Rainbow smiled, then sighed and looked to the door again. “Uh, how do I like, resume normal speed? Without hanging up. I’ll need one of you to talk me through how to fly with this thing.”

Default and Faust shared a glance, communicating silently with one another. After a moment Faust nodded and Default’s projection vanished.

“I’ll walk you through things. Default is going to take care of our half of the plan. He’s better armed anyways,” Faust said as she morphed from a hologram into a simple video window within Dash’s field of view. “You don't need to do anything special to resume normal speed. Your ship is all thought interfaced.”

Rainbow’s cheeks flushed slightly. “Sooo, the comm Penny gave me is a thought interface, but I need to give it specific commands.”

Faust sighed and shook her head slowly. "Poor little things… It's just like that silly Surf Drive," The AGI said before looking Rainbow in her eyes and smiling. "I mean your ship is like a body part. Because it is you. There are no commands. Just do it."

Rainbow frowned and turned, willing herself to stop speaking and thinking at a machine’s speed. The world returned in an instant and everything she hadn’t realized had been missing before rushed back in a wave.

The low hum of mechanical devices. A light buzzing hiss from the electric lights. Dull murmurs of conversations from other rooms.

Rainbow’s jaw dropped in recognition of what she had been doing. I just had a conversation faster than sound. She smiled. “Looks like I’m the fastest mare alive!”

Faust chuckled. “Perhaps… Please hurry. We are on a timetable.”

Rainbow nodded and trotted out into the hallway. She caught a flash of yellow ahead of her as Boris rounded the corner. Rainbow knew she needed to catch up quickly. If she had to explain herself in the kitchen, she’d need to explain everything to everyone and answer every last question.

Rainbow opened her wings, willing herself to fly up to Boris as fast as possible. Her bracelet flashed as it sensed her intentions and activated the transporter.

The world around Rainbow changed without any dramatic flair as if reality itself had been subject to a jumpcut. Her wings flared in alarm as Boris nearly tripped over her.

“Der'mo!” Boris yelped, backpedaling so much he nearly fell over. “I didn’t even feel the air— How did you do that?”

Rainbow shook herself to clear the shock out of her own head then timidly held up her leg to show off the bracelet. “Sooo, this is a First Race starship.”

Boris silently stared at the simple bracelet for several long seconds. “That… Is a ship? No wonder we never found personal transports!”

Rainbow cleared her throat. "Yeah so… Also, they can teleport. Which I think I just did by accident."

Boris nodded. “Da. That would explain the lack of wind.” He smiled and held out a fist for Rainbow to bump. “So! We should change our plans a little. First, we go to my lab and analyze the working First Race ship you can wear on your arm, then we go to the bar!”

Rainbow shook her head as her lips pulled into a slight frown. “Sorry, but… I can’t.”

Boris raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”

Rainbow tapped her hoof against the floor as she tried to think of the best words to use. If I explain too much, he'll want to help and delay me. If that happens, we could lose everything. If I explain too little he'll think I'm a jerk and since I'm technically a part of his family now I don't want that.

“You know how there’s a bigger-than-a-planet huge starship out there?” Rainbow asked at last.

Boris groaned. “The Admin knows that bracelet-ship started.”

Rainbow nodded. “Yeah. It does. And it wants me to go to a place and do a thing for it. Sooo, I’m going to go do that.”

Boris nodded, his face softened with understanding. “Would you like me to get Penny, Pan, and Jo for you? So you can say goodbye?”

Rainbow felt her heart freeze for a moment. She couldn’t leave without saying goodbye, but things were time sensitive. Rainbow closed her eyes for a moment, willing herself to resume thinking at Faust’s speed.

“What do I do here?” She asked as she stared at the holographic alicorn’s window. “I mean, I can’t just leave them without saying anything.”

Faust nodded. “Of course not. Say goodbye, tell them you’ll be back soon, then teleport to orbit.”

Rainbow took a step backward, her wings twitching as she moved. “I can do that?!”

Faust sighed and shook her head. “Yes, Dash. You can do that.”

Rainbow opened her mouth but the AGI cut her off. “Before you ask, no you don't need to do anything special to survive in space. Life support is always on.”

Rainbow pushed her attention back to the world around her, looked up at Boris then nodded. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

Boris nodded and stepped around Dash. “Don’t worry, they’ll understand… You’ll be coming back right?”

Rainbow nodded. “Yeah, I should be. It’s basically something I’ve done before.”

But on a way bigger scale…

Boris smiled. “I see. That’s the life of a hero, Blue. Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t be proud of yourself this time. It’s not every day you get to help out The Admin.”

Rainbow nodded. Or the entity that created your species… Speaking of which!

Rainbow flipped her attention back to AGI speed. “Come to think of it, are you technically my god?”

Faust snorted and shook her head, her sides heaving as she held in as much of her laugh as she could. "Oh, goodness no! I'm more of a mother really. It's not like I control the rules by which living beings function."

Rainbow scratched the back of her head. “Heh… Sorry. It’s just there’s a religion back home with a goddess called Faust. My friend Lyra is a believer, so I know a lot of it.”

Faust blinked, her laugh stopping in its tracks. "Lyra? That is an odd name from what you've told me of your people's naming conventions, at least…" She hummed and closed her eyes her attention moving from Rainbow to her vast database of lifeforms.

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing?”

"Lyra is an ancient human name. All non-Equestrian ponies have human names. I am checking to see if there are any Colonists known to be away from—" Faust smiled and pumped her hoof triumphantly. "AH HA! Is her last name Heartstrings?"

Rainbow groaned and facehooved, her wings flicking against her back. “Oh, my, Luna! Lyra is an alien mare! That explains everything!”

Faust laughed and shook her head. “Lyra Heartstrings, born… two hundred and eighty thousand years ago on Luxio. Ohhh, she’s a historian and an engineer. Interesting. I wonder how she knew Terra was out of stasis?”

Rainbow rolled her eyes and smirked. "Knowing her, she wanted to meet humans so bad she's the reason the time stop thing isn't—" Rainbow blinked. "Wait! Did you say she's hundreds of thousands of years old?!"

“Yes. Why is that so odd?”

“Because we live like, two maybe three hundred years tops!” Rainbow protested with a stamp of her hoof.

Faust gasped and put a hoof to her mouth. "Oh my gosh! You poor things!"

Rainbow’s ears fell back as she glared at Faust. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it, you’re a perfect immortal machine.”

“No!” Faust exclaimed with a genuine look of sorrow. “You’re not supposed to age past your prime. I designed you to be biologically immortal, just like humans. Something’s gone terribly wrong with gene 89-Omega. Let me just access your medical systems…”

Rainbow frowned. "Wait, access my— What are you do—"

Rainbow’s wings snapped open as she felt a tingle of energy race through her body from nose to tail. The sensation was so incredibly sexual that she dropped out of AGI speed with a yelp.

“There! All better,” Faust said with a happy smile.

“What did you do?!” Rainbow squeaked, her eyes shrinking to pinpricks.

“I turned the gene-expression back on. Epigenetics turned if off by default. Don’t worry I’ll swing by Equestria and fix everypony else too.”

“Y— You just made me immortal?!” Dash asked, her tail twitching uncertainty.

“No. I cured a minor health condition. Your arcane biology is doing all of the work. You’re not supposed to die unless you feel like you’ve lived long enough and would be happy to experience whatever lies beyond this world.”

Rainbow stared at Faust with such intensity she didn’t hear the sound of four people walking up behind her.

“What’s wrong, Dash?” Jo asked, her voice slightly more mechanical than usual thanks to a rather large amount of her ‘casing’ having been removed for upgrades.

Rainbow yelped in surprise and spun around, only to shrink back from the android's exposed internals. "AH! I— Sorry! Just… Sooo, this bracelet thing!"

Rainbow held up her leg and turned the bracelet for everyone to see.

Penny frowned. “Where did you get that?”

"Back in the big geode," Rainbow answered. "Long story short, it was on a Pony skeleton. Turns out that uh, my species is like, super old. We're not the first race but we lived with them—"

“Actually, you are. There’s no cultural distinction between AGI, Humans, and Ponies,” Faust said in Rainbow’s ear.

Rainbow back peddled immediately. "Oh, uh. We are. Sorry, I'm on the comm with one of them right now. See, this bracelet thing is actually one of their starships and because I put it on, it turned on, and because of that a really bad thing is going to happen unless I go stop it right now! And no, the SYS Admin can't stop it without help because he doesn't actually have the right permissions to do it."

Pan blinked. “What?”

Rainbow looked down at the video window floating in her vision. “Can I let them see your hologram somehow?”

“Yes,” Faust answered impatiently. “Again, just do it.”

“Cool,” Rainbow said as she willed Faust’s avatar to appear next to her.

The white alicorn shimmered into existence with a ripple of white light. Her projected form was slightly translucent, with small artifacts and polygon shapes made slightly more opaque to give her a more ‘holographic’ appearance than she had used when talking to Rainbow inside her head.

“Hello. I am Faust, I operate the ship which seeded this galaxy with life,” Faust said with a polite little bow.

Penny gasped. Jo’s fans sped up as she bowed low. Pan squeaked and did his best to not picture the Goddess his mother worshiped on a date with Princess Celestia… And failed utterly.

Boris simply smiled. This was a person who could answer a very important question.

Faust raised a hoof to her lips and cleared her throat. "It's a pleasure to meet Rainbow's friends," she continued. "Not just anyone could pass the Virtue Test to start one of our fighters. Unfortunately, the fact remains that Dash has started one of our war machines. Our people didn't vanish without reason.

"There was a war, it was ended with a treaty and a ceasefire. Dash accidentally violated that treaty so the war is back on. Fortunately, it seems as if our enemy has stopped caring so much over the eons and we do have a way to make sure everyone stays safe. However, it does mean I need to borrow Dash for a little while. Don't worry, once everything is over she'll be able to come right back."

Dash's friends starred in silent awe for several seconds. Pan was the first to break the silence. He turned to Dash with wide eyes and pointed a hoof at her. "What are you talking to us for?! GO do what God needs you to do!"

A look of distress flashed across Faust’s face. “I’m not actually a—”

Pan zipped over to the holographic alicorn’s hooves and bowed low. “I am super sorry! I never believed! My parents did, but I didn’t. I’m sorry! I—” His eyes narrowed angrily. “Wait a minute! How come you never answered Scoot’s prayers and fixed her wings?!”

Faust looked down at Pan with a blank expression, then pointed to herself. “Not a god. I don’t hear prayers unless you’re saying them into a QEC device. As for your sister, I’ll be fixing all birth defects, including aging, as soon as Dash can grant me docking permission for Sol. We have to go now, this is a very time critical operation.”

A determined glint sparkled within Rainbow’s eyes as she nodded. “Right! Lets—”

“Wait!” Boris shouted.

Faust sighed. “Is it important?”

The ex-stalker nodded. “Yes, to every last Chernin in the Galaxy. Where is our homeworld?”

Faust smiled. “Ah, yes. That is a little important,” the holographic alicorn turned to Penny and smiled. “Did you like Rainbow’s homeworld?”

Penny nodded. “Da. It was…” She trailed off her lips forming an ‘o’ as her mind began to put the clues together. “Nyet! It can't be—”

"It is," Faust confirmed. "The coordinates to your homeworld are in your ship's memory. Your people are descended from a pre-Terran Empire human nation. We thought you to be lost. If the treaty had allowed Default l and I to speak with you, I would have filled you in thousands of years ago."

Boris shook his head incredulously. “All these years, I’ve been insisting we’re not the First Race’s descendants…”

"You're not," Faust corrected with a friendly smile. "They are technically your descendants. You originated from an older form of humanity… Which unfortunately means you're not able to grant us permissions. However, Dash is not only descended from the First Race but is a resident of Sol. Which is all my programming requires since Sol's captain and crew are long dead. Now, we really must go. Unless you want our enemy to finish re-powering a battle station capable of destroying star systems."

The exposed tubing beneath Joe’s cheeks emptied, which would have made her cheeks grow pale had her face been attached. She knelt down to look Rainbow in her eyes. “Please go stop that.”

“I second that emotion,” Pan squeaked, his tail tucked firmly between his legs.

“Da! Go!” Penny added with an urgent wave of her hands.

Rainbow rubbed the back of her head with a hoof. "Yeah, we've got a kind along trip too. Even with the whole Jump Drive, which is a really fast thing," she turned to look up at Faust with an impish smile. "How do I go to space again?"

Faust took a deep breath. “You. Just. Do—”

Rainbow willed herself to enter orbit before Faust could finish explaining the bracelet's functions for the umpteenth time.

The world around her vanished in an instant, replaced by the blackness of space. Only then did Rainbow remember what space was like.

She screamed, thrashing her legs and wings this way and that as memories of dying within the uncaring void between stars flooded back to her. Dash’s screams echoed in her ears as she waited for her skin to begin boiling as it had before.

“Dash…” Faust said calmly.

Rainbow's chest heaved as she sucked in air and—

She blinked. I can breathe?

Rainbow inhaled again. Air filled her lungs. She looked at her leg, a dim shimmering rainbow colored field covered her body, protecting her from the void as well as the atmosphere of any planet.

"Dash, it's okay," Faust said with the same calm focus as before. "Here, let me just— Emergency Override: Gamma. Sigma. Three. Twelve. Read the operator's mental condition and act accordingly!"

The bracelet on Rainbow's leg shimmered as it obeyed the emergency command and quickly scanned Rainbow's mind. The arcane ship flashed red as it detected Rainbow's panic at being in the vacuum and activated it's hull generation system while making a note to automatically deploy the hull any time its new user entered space.

Space rippled and stretched around Rainbow as her bracelet unfolded into a seat built expressly for a pony. The seat expanded, stretching and growing more and more parts until a cockpit grew around her as a small star fighter's hull took shape.

Dash sighed in relief as the cool crystal, metal, and cloud ship cut her off from the void. She could feel every part of the elongated-teardrop/starburst shaped ship as if it were her wings, yet she didn’t feel as if she were outside. Though strange, the sensation pushed the fear out of her mind.

Buck it, rolling with it. Rainbow decided.

She took a deep breath to further calm her nerves and felt her ship's hull warp and shimmer as it recolored itself to match her fur colors, as well as place a rainbow-colored racing stripe along the ship's dorsal ridge, while placing her cutiemark on the wings.

Rainbow blinked once and opened her mouth but Faust’s giggle cut her off. “What? Everypony likes their things to match their colors.”

“This is true,” Rainbow said with a sheepish grin.

Rainbow looked around the newly generated cockpit. The panels around her were covered in various switches, dials, and buttons. Glowing lights flicked on and off from every angle. A flight-yolk rose up from the deck in front of her seat.

“Ummm, is it still thought controlled?” Rainbow asked sheepishly.

"It is. The cockpit will have been based on your subconscious expectations. I can't see it, unfortunately. You have privacy filters. What is it like?"

Rainbow hummed then smiled as it clicked. “It’s so Buck Spear it feels like somepony took it right out of the comics!”

Faust nodded and flicked her mane out of her eyes with a toss of her head. "That will have been you. Now, if you'll let me access your Jump Drive, I'll feed it the coordinates for Twilight Sparkle's vessel."

Rainbow willed her ship to allow Faust to set the course. A smile parted her lips. “Alright, Dash. Let’s go get the mares who can save the universe.”

“You already have one of them onboard,” Faust reminded as Dash’s ship began to hum as it charged it’s wormhole generator.

“Yep,” Rainbow agreed. “But I need the other five… And some very specific jewelry.”

Applejack - 6th of Solar Dusk, 1st year of Harmony

749,573.37

Malos Arena - Korvidia, Noctae Sector

Applejack grit her teeth as the hardlight manacles dug into the skin around her hooves. Her “owners” had switched from alloy restraints to the glowing blue energy fields after she’d broken free form four different sets.

The farmmare looked much the worse for wear as she was drug out into the arena. Her fur was ragged with patches missing here and there where it had been beaten or worn away. Her hooves were cracked from breaking cell walls and heads alike.

Her body was covered in many cuts and bruises. The worst of them was a rather grisly wound on the back of her head form when the earth pony had ripped the control implant out of her skull with her bare hooves. The surgeon in charge of the Black Talon’s slave pens assumed she would die after ripping a chunk of bone from her skull.

In his defense, he’d never met an Earth Pony. Much less a stubborn one.

Pain had not made Applejack comply with orders. Threats against her world and people had also failed. She’d found the idea of mere pirates able to fight an entire planet and win laughable, regardless of their technology. She’d gone as far as to inform her captors they had better kill her before she found a way to kill them.

So she was sent to where every uncooperative slave the Black Talon purchased. The arena.

Applejack was heaved onto the sand in one swift motion by the two robots which had been escorting her. Her ears twitched as the forcefield closed behind her with a crackle. The hardlight manacles around her legs fizzled away with a shower of sparks. She was free. At least, to a certain degree.

There was no way out of the hoofball-sized arena. Not until Applejack killed whoever else had angered the Talons enough to be tossed into the dome.

Applejack sighed and looked around the arena, ignoring the stadium full of bloodthirsty aliens around her. The only way she’d have a shot at fighting her captors was in the narrow window between when she ended her opponent and when they opened the forcefield to retrieve her. Her eyes briefly slipped over her opponent. A starved-thin alien which reminded her of a ferret, only taller.

Applejack's heart ached at the thought of having to kill another person. The pirates were not people. They were monsters. She felt nothing when she maimed or killed them. But the poor slave in front of her, that was another story entirely.

AJ closed her eyes for a moment, realizing this is what her captors meant by ‘We can still hurt you.'

At least it's a mercy… I’ve seen what they do with slaves who let them boss them around.

Applejack cleared her throat and looked into the alien’s gray eyes. “Is it okay if I put you out of your misery so I can try to fight more pirates?”

The alien shivered and nodded. He knew he had no chance. He’d been made to watch what had happened to the fully armed and armored people who had fought orange pony, and not just those who had fought her in the arena.

He nodded, his knees trembling. “Just crush my head like the last guy, please.”

The crowd booed. The sound of their displeasure echoed off the stadium walls making it seem as if the entire galaxy was furious at the fighters.

Applejack closed her eyes and nodded once. “I’ll make it quick. I promise.”

And I’ll make theirs slow, for you. I’m sorry.

The sun shimmered and burned, focused into the arena by the forcefield much like a Fresnel lens. The air around the two slaves felt like the air around a burning building. Applejack continued to look around the arena, her eyes scanning over the sand.

“So, uh… D— do you want me to come over there?” The furred alien asked.

“Nah,” Applejack said, doing her best to not think about him very much. “Just looking for a rock.”

“Oh. Like the power armor guy.”

“E’eyp.”

Applejack's eyes fell upon a hoof-sized lump of granite laying in the sand a few meters away. She sighed and began to trot over to the stone. This should let me break one of the robots. I reckon I can swing one of them like a mace if I put my back into it.

Applejack picked up the rock with her left hoof. A jolt of empathy shot through her, paralyzing her for a moment. It was one thing to kill people who were objectively evil. The random slave was another story entirely.

He's okay with it. He'll be better off dead anyway. The only way I can maybe free everyone here is to break out again. I have to do this…

Applejack opened her eyes and turned towards her opponent. The crowd continued to boo the two as if that would force them to fight to the death.

AJ grit her teeth, her ears lay back. Buck it all, I can’t! Celestia, please, help me figure a way to save this pon— uh…

Applejack looked up at the furred alien. "Hey, uh… I'm a pony. What are you? I mean, what do y'all call yourselves?"

He flinched. "Oh, uh… Toraxian. We're Toraxians. We don't have any death-rituals, or anything. If that's why your asking."

Applejack shook her head. “Nah, that ain’t it.”

You heard him, Celestia. Come on, there's got to be away… Maybe I can break this dome?

Applejack looked up towards the top of the forcefield. She knew the hardened light could break. She’d cracked her chains a few times. If the field had a weak spot, it would be at the very top. Or at least, it would be if it was anything like glass.

The reflected sunlight made looking up almost agonizing, but if anypony was more stubborn than a sun, it was this pony.

AJ's eyes found the very top of the dome. The pale glow of the field was almost entirely washed out by the sunlight, but Applejack could swear she could see less of the hardlight's own shimmer right at the apex of the dome.

“W— What is it?” the Toraxian asked timidly.

“Well, I reckon I just found a way out of here. Wanna come?” Applejack asked.

Her opponent laughed. "What, take down the field? They'll just shoot us. Super-strength won't stop lasers."

"Yeah, well," AJ reared up to throw her rock, twisting her shoulder to put as much energy as she could into the one shot. "I want to try anyway."

The Toraxian blinked as something dawned on him. "Wait, you said that out loud. It can't be your real plan… Okay, I'm with you!"

Applejack wanted to facehoof. You’re a dim bulb, ain’t chat? Figure someone has a secret plan and you just announce it for the world to hear… Good thing my plan is rocks fly they die.

AJ threw the rock. It streaked through the air like a bullet and smashed into the apex of the dome. The rock bounced off the hardlight shield with a quiet plink. The sound the rock made as it fell back to the sand almost perfectly mimicked the sound of a foolhardy attempt to beat some of the most advanced technology in the universe with a tiny lump of granite.

The Toraxian slave nervously twitched his forepaws in the sand. “S— So, that was a signal right?”

Applejack opened her mouth to say no. Then the world shook like the planet had suddenly entered a new gravity well.

Because it had.

An incomprehensibly massive spherical vessel came out of warp directly between Korvidia and its sun, creating a total eclipse. In addition to radically altering Korvidia's orbit, creating a planet-wide earthquake along with dozens of Tsunamis as the water covering the pirate haven jerked towards the massive vessel, as if reaching out for help getting up.

Many assumed the ship had come out of FTL a few hundred meters above them and was merely a few kilometers across. This idea was expelled when a comparatively small section of the ship's hull opened, revealing a belt of six small stars within the center of an elaborate series of orbiting platforms and stations. Or at least, it was when the massive vessel grabbed the planet with a tractor beam and pulled it, its moon, and the dozen fleets in orbit into its tertiary cargo bay.

In less verbose terms, the ship ate the planet.

This broke the minds of many poor souls who had been looking up at the time. It also plunged the whole of Korvidia into total chaos.

Applejack was only barely conscious of the arena crowd's screams and panicked attempts to flee from the confines of the arena.

The sky above the arena flashed and flickered as the vessel blasted the planet with enough energy to vaporize a small moon. It was not firing weapons. It was turning on holoprojectors to turn the entire sky into a giant screen. If the light pulses were not diffused across such a large area, Korvidia would have ended then and there.

The crackling energy in the sky flowed into symbols and sigils which tinted red as they formed letters.

Please standby for a message from your System Administrator…

Applejack's eyes shrank to pinpricks. A terrified shriek built up in her throat, but the sheer terror running through her body and soul pushed her clean past terrified to calm and collected.

“Uh,” she said slowly, unable to take her eyes off the apocalyptic message in the sky. “I guess it was.”

The message vanished, replaced instead by a giant video window full of static. A series of high-energy microwave pulses struck the planet's ionosphere, making the very air itself oscillate back and forth to function as one huge speaker.

The static cleared away, revealing a tall male alicorn. Or at least, the translucent projection of one. He stood on what was clearly the bridge of a starship, though no one was present at any of the controls. He wore a silver and near-black-blue uniform bearing a silver and platinum badge on the left breast which a few of the panicking people on Korvidia recognized as a First Race emblem.

The alicorn cleared its throat, and every living soul on Korvidia heard him speak.

“Hello. It’s come to my attention that your planetary leaders whom I believe are known colloquially as the Nova Wing and more formally as the Stellar Nova Imperial Navy’s Left Wing are in violation of the landlord-tenant agreement. You see, they came into our yard and decided it would be a good idea to kidnap a few young mares from a colony world of ours which backslid technologically a bit. I am certain you understand this is not acceptable nor forgivable. I’m afraid I have to evict you from our property.

"Applejack, as well as every other slave on this planet, please prepare for teleport. You will be moved to a medical facility, after which you will be transported back to your homeworlds with a number of credits of your choosing."

Applejack blinked and by the time her eyes opened, she found herself standing in the middle of the extremely dusty bridge. It hadn't been dusty on camera, but that had been a simulation. A backdrop. The real bridge was a mess.

It was dimly lit, the paint needed refreshing, and the nearly hoof-thick carpet of dust covering everything immediately began to make Applejack’s skin itch.

The maddening itching was of no concern to AJ at the moment. The terrified mare wheeled around, filling the bridge with distressed whinnies and a massive cloud of dust as she tried to figure out when she had been moved and how forgetting she'd heard the word ‘teleport' moments ago.

"What's happening?" Applejack demanded, her chest heaving in fright.

The alicorn stallion's voice came from a set of speakers in the ceiling. "Sorry. I forgot to clean the bridge… No one has been on board in a few million years."

Applejack turned to look for the speaker, only to find another video window open up, permitting the holo-alicorn to bow towards Applejack politely. “Hello! My name is Default. I’m the artificial general intelligence in command of the ship you are on, the SYS Admin. Your friend Rainbow sent me to pick you, Fluttershy, and Rarity up.”

Applejack blinked. "W— What? How the heck can Rainbow— But… But… This doesn't make a lick of sense!"

The holo-alicorn waved a hoof dismissively. “It makes perfect sense. My bestie Faust and I had no idea ponies existed outside of the shelter so we didn’t build any protection for your world. Some asshole pirates who keep breaking my stuff kidnap a few of you to get their rocks off or whatever. Rainbow hitchhikes her way after you, found one of our fighters, and had a chat with us on the radio. Now we’re picking you up so you six can do us a quick favor and then we’ll take you home.”

Applejack blinked, the fur on the back of her neck couldn't decide if it wanted to stand up or sit down. “Uh, what?”

Default frowned then fachooved. "Oh. Right… Long story short, you are descended from the species that ruled the whole galaxy a long time ago. There was a war. We lost. Most of us made it to shelters, your ancestors didn't. I'm programmed to help you, Rainbow, and everypony else because that's well, you're ponies. I help ponies. Specifically with building and repairing megastructures… Well, primarily. I can do a lot."

Applejack shook her head, then coughed as she inhaled a thick cloud of dust.

“Oh. Right. Dust. Let me just teleport that into space,” Default murmured before making the dust vanish with a flash of purple light.

"Ponies… Ponies used to rule the whole galaxy?" Applejack asked, still coughing on her lungful of dust.

Default hadn't wanted to risk accidentally teleporting parts of Applejack's lungs into space.

“Yes,” Default replied as he turned around towards a control panel on the simulated bridge. “Alongside humans, changelings, dragons, and a few other species humans made as companions. Hold on a sec, I need to evict these guys before we go get Fluttershy…”

"We can just go get Fluttershy? I mean, isn't space huge? How did you find her? How did you find me?" Applejack asked suspiciously.

"Faust did a subspace scan for all bioforms aboard the Milkyway. We pinpointed everypony biosignature and compared the heat map to find any ponies, not in the shelter. The only six dots not in the shelter or on Equestria were you guys. A quick visual check via Astrometrics let us visually identify each of you."

Applejack blinked. "Y'all just looked?"

“Yes. Now, what is worse in your opinion, fire or cold?” Default asked as he reached for the controls in front of him with a hoof.

“Why?” AJ asked, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.

Default turned to face “So I can evict the monsters who forced you into a gladiatorial arena and sold Fluttershy to a sexual predator.”

Applejack thought for a moment. I’d rather he didn’t burn them all alive. They may be evil, but a slow death like that… No one deserves that. “Cold, I guess.”

“Cool,” Default turned and pressed a button on the console. A video window opened up on the simulated bridge showing Rainbow sitting in a small ship’s cockpit. “Hi Rainbow! AJ said cold too. Wanna push the button?”

Applejack felt her lips part in a smile as she saw Rainbow's face through the glass faceplate of the spacesuit she was wearing. "Y'all weren't pulling my leg! Rainbow! Thank you! Thank you so much. I can't tell you how much I owe—"

Rainbow shot Applejack a smile. "You don't owe me anything. I'm just doing my job. Uh, Default, this planet is Nova WIng's homeworld, right?"

“Yes,” Default nodded.

“You got all their slaves and kids off it right?”

“There were no children. Female slaves were sterilized. I just fixed that,” Default said proudly.

Rainbow and Applejack stared at Default for a long moment.

"Y'all mean they raped mares they caught for fun?" Applejack growled.

Default blinked. “Wait, you weren't?”

Applejack shook her head. “No… Oh. That’s what the first one was going to do to me,” Applejack grit her teeth in anger. “If I hadn’t kicked his face in— I…”

I wish every mare was as strong as me… Applejack growled and looked up at Rainbow. “Can I push the button?”

Rainbow didn’t even hesitate before nodding. “Do it.”

Default reached out of the video window with his right hoof and pointed at a console behind Applejack's left shoulder. “It’s over there. I’m highlighting it in blue.”

Applejack turned around and smacked the glowing button with her hoof.

The video window moved in the blink of an eye, showing Applejack a view of the planet inside the cargo bay. Applejack smirked as she heard Default give the pirate world one last message. “I wish you luck finding housing elsewhere.”

For the half second, Korvidia remained inside the SYS Admin. Then the ship hummed as its Jump Drive opened a wormhole in front of the planet.

Rainbow tilted her head. "Wait, what are you--"

The video window transitioned from the ship's local camera feed to the astrometric sensors, not that either pony noticed the transition. Then the SYS Admin’s tractor beams powered on and threw the planet along with everything in its orbit through the wormhole.

Korvidia spun like a rugby ball in flight through the wormhole and vanished into the void between galaxies.

“I’d like to see you break network relays out there, assholes!” Default said as the wormhole closed.

Rainbow and Applejack stared at the video window, jaws hanging open in disbelief.

“Did we just eject a planet from the bucking galaxy?!” Rainbow demanded incredulously.

“E’yup,” AJ said as she shook her head to clear it. “And good riddance…”

Rainbow’s wings twitched. “Okay. So. Never piss off Default. Got it. Uh, AJ, I’ll be talking to Twilight soon, so when you guys get Flutters and Rares tell them that we need to use the Elements to stop a thing I accidentally woke up when I turned on a starship. Okay?”

Applejack triple blinked. “Y’all did, what?!”

Rainbow groaned into her hoof, took a deep breath, and began to explain everything for the third time today.

1 - Into the Dark / Hope Renewed

Author's Note

Nova Wing, nothing personal. It’s just your name is cool and when I hear it I think “Space Pirates”.

This story would not have been possible without the generous contributions from my Patrons.

Thank you very much for the meals and bits of rent. Your contributions are more appreciated than you can imagine.

If you would like to become a donor you can find my patreon page here.

1 - Into the Dark / Hope Renewed

“Astronomy compels the soul to look upward, and leads us from this world to another.” — Plato

Rainbow Dash - 8th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

749556.65 A.H.

Lunar Orbit - Equus, K3 Sector

Equus hung in the inky black sky, a blue and green marble floating in a pool of crude oil. The sun lit the planet from the rear-left, drawing a crescent across its face in shadow, revealing a wondrous sight nopony but Nightmare Moon had seen before. What Rainbow’s eyes beheld now was something even the Nightmare herself had never seen.

Luna curved away below Rainbow, filling nearly all of her view of the universe below: a seemingly endless blanket of silvery-gray dust, pockmarked with endless craters; the moon from orbit, with the planet Equus rising above the horizon. If only there was time for a photograph.

Rainbow did not see Luna in the sky below Equus. Nor did her eyes fall upon the endless black void of space. None of these things mattered. Her wide eyes were fixed on a single object visible through her seat’s window: the starship.

It resembled a cigar, long and cylindrical, with rounded ends. Spine-like towers rose up from the dorsal segment, and combined with the talon-like forward-swept wings to make the ship look like a predator flying towards its prey. Its bow was fitted with a ram, something Rainbow would never have believed anyone would place on a spaceship. Nor did she even once imagine someone would shape a spaceship’s bow like a skull.

The elongated, twisted, grinning visage bore down on her, dull silver, pockmarked by micrometeor impacts, and lit by the dull red light of hidden lamps. It was the perfect complement to the ship’s colors, black as the void and accented in deep crimson, silver, and gold.

Rainbow’s chest heaved as she struggled to get enough air. Her wings flared, flapping madly. Her seat’s crash harness dug into her shoulders and chest, the straps refusing to break under mere wing-power.

The alien craft seemed to swell as three large flaps on either side opened up, the long blade-like flaps giving the ship the appearance of having both powerful wings and outstretched claws.

“Let me out!” Rainbow shrieked as she thrashed against the straps.

There was nowhere to go, even if the lithe stallion sitting next to Rainbow had unbuckled her. The Hoatzin was a small shuttle, scarcely large enough to transport two ponies, some personal items, and the alien clad in T-34 battle armor which sat at the Hoatzin’s helm.

Six hundred kilograms of compressed alloys swung towards the shuttlecraft’s rear as its pilot pointed to Rainbow without taking her eyes off the controls.

The pilot’s voice wasn’t recognizable as male, female, or even organic. The T-34’s speakers were optimized for being heard through explosions and gunfire deep in an irradiated trench, rather than pleasant conversation. “Keep her quiet! The last thing we need now is a panicked poni thrashing about.”

The stallion’s rust-colored fur made a shushing sound against the fabric of his black hoodie as he looked at Rainbow. The black ship growing ever larger in the window seemed to glare into his soul, and he shrank even further back into his seat. “I’m not sure I can, Penny.”

Penny groaned and put both hands to work once more. “What's-your-name? Blue? If I can’t focus, we have no chance!”

Her left hand tapped a series of commands into the shuttle’s computer, instructing it to push more power to the engines—enough to make safety inspectors cry. Her right hand flew over the comms panel, sending a flight plan to a distant starship.

Rainbow twisted in her seat to look towards the controls at the hulking, industrial figure which dwarfed the command seat. “Let me go! I can carry us to safety! Well, not you. Not in that tank! Jump out and we’ll—”

The stallion took a deep breath and shut his emerald eyes tightly. “You can’t fly in space, Rainbow!”

Rainbow bared her teeth and growled, smashing her hooves against her seat’s armrests. “Ugh! I need to do something! It’s going to take us, too!”

Far below the shuttle, the Dawn of Destiny heard its mistress’s call and fired up its thrusters, slowly rotating in place as it searched for the right angle to burn a trail towards her.

Penny grit her teeth and resumed overcharging the Hoatzin’s q-thrusters. “You can be quiet! I have a plan. Pan, we may have to ditch your things.”

The black ship moved forwards on a cloud of black smoke, as if its passage made the universe itself burn. Rainbow knew full well that smoke could not billow like that in a vacuum. It had to be an illusion, or a hologram. Not that it made the hellish ship any less terrifying as it grew larger and larger in her window.

Pandora nodded, his long black and white mane fell over his left eye. “Okay… Is that so we can fight them?”

Penny snorted. “Fight them? Ha! That is a warship. This is babushka’s jam cupboard. We’re going to run for the Dawn, and have the Dawn run for us.”

Rainbow frowned and tore her eyes away from the window yet again. “Dawn? But this is spa— The suns over there! It can't rise.”

Metal rang against metal like a hammer on an anvil as Penny slapped a palm against her faceplate. “Oy, blin… My ship! Not sun up. I see why you had hard time making friends, Pan.”

Rainbow‘s ears lay flat as she remembered the one time she’d heard the alien mention having a bigger ship. “I’m sorry; I haven’t been talking to you for years!”

Pandora rolled his lips nervously and leaned against his crash harness to look out Rainbow’s window at the approaching hostile ship. He’d known Penny as a voice on his radio for a long time. He knew she’d been in many situations like this before.

Hearing is very different from experiencing. “Penny? Can we make it?”

Penny’s left hand curled around the throttle. She hesitated for a moment, then shrugged, her armor’s bulky pauldrons moving amid the whine of high-power servos. “I don’t know.”

Rainbow knew that tone of voice. She heard it every time an expert knew the answer was no, but didn’t want to say so. She turned towards the cockpit, her eyes starting to tear up. “Please! There has to be something I can do. I can’t sit still; if we die, everypony will be lost forever!”

Static hissed through the Hoatzin’s comms. Not the simple hiss of a poor connection, but a harsh, low, rolling hiss designed specifically to cause extreme discomfort to those unfortunate enough to hear it. Exactly three heartbeats later, a discordant melody of decaying electronic whimpers heralded a message from the black ship.

Penny’s voice was sexless and inorganic. The ship’s voice was formless and immortal. It rolled, rumbled, and cut into the minds of those who heard it. “Shuttle, cut engines and prepare to be tractored. Resistance will end in your termination.”

Pandora curled into as much of a ball as his seat allowed, becoming little more than a ball of black and off-white stripes thanks to his extra-long mane and tail. “I— Uh— If we stop, what will they do to us?”

Penny pulled back even harder on the shuttle’s throttle, even though it was already at top speed. “It’s Nova Wing. They shoot me, they enslave you. They’re testing the market with Blue’s friends. They’ll take two more of you, no problem.”

Rainbow narrowed her eyes, briefly entertaining the idea of letting herself get captured to help Twilight and the others escape. “How far is your ship?”

Penny glanced down at the Hoatzin’s sensors. The Dawn had fired up its main engines and with the help of its gravity generators, slipped free from the bonds of Newtonian physics. A miracle of galactic science to be certain, but even miracles have their limits.

Penny’s eyes narrowed as she watched her ship approach the shuttle. Even with the ship able to fly in a straight line to where the shuttle would be able to rendezvous, it wouldn’t make it to them before the black ship was upon them. “The Dawn of Destiny is too far.”

The pirate vessel was within a hair's breadth of the Hoatzin now. The tiny, yellow, ‘A’-shaped shuttle could fly into one of the ship’s main guns with room to spare. Rainbow’s eyes widened as she realized this ship couldn’t possibly have been the one which took her friends. Not unless the Nova Wing’s ships could grow a thousand times larger within a few days.

Penny let out a single long breath. She could float in space for a week before her armor’s supplies ran dry. Rainbow and Pandora…

Penny glanced sidelong at the shuttle’s emergency supplies locker, cursing the evolutionary trend towards humanoid bodies. “If you weren't quadrupeds there’d be EVA suits you could use. Those muzzles… If I had five minutes, I could make airmask fit you. Then we could get somewhere!”

Pandora winced as the thought of being thrown into space as the shuttle exploded around him consumed his mind. “D— Do you really explode if thrown into space?”

Penny shook her head. “Nyet… You swell a bit, then boil. Don’t worry, the vacuum rips the air from your lungs and pops them first. You’ll die long before it gets bad.”

Rainbow flung her hooves up in front of her. “Woah, time out! No! We are so not going to get shot! If we surrender, we can escape and steal a ship. Right?”

“This isn’t a movie, poni,” Penny said as she looked down at the sensors once more. “The Dawn’s close. Forty more seconds… Maybe I can bank on my people’s reputation?”

Pandora frowned. “You have a reputation?”

“Chernen most certainly have a reputation,” Penny said as she flipped the transmit switch with one finger. “Privet, druz'ya! Neither of us is supposed to be here. It’s not like we will report you to politsiya. How about you back off?”

Rainbow’s jaw dropped at Penny’s genuinely cordial message. A full second passed before she even thought to protest the alien’s choice of tone, which allowed Penny to continue.

“I’ll be honest. It’s just me out here. No one is aboard my ship. The Dawn is not a warship, but she will fly circles around one. She’ll even dodge your guns for a little bit. Sure, you’ll shoot her down… After a minute or so. She’s an old ship, three generations obsolete.”

Rainbow looked over to her left at Pandora. The rust-urred stallion shrugged, not sure where his friend was going with her speech either.

“She was made in the shipyards of Chern, and I am in sealed Battle Armor. Type Thirty-Four. Fully vacuum-rated, and well, it’s T-34. I’ll survive this shuttle’s end. At least for a second. You know what that means? You blow my shuttle out of the void and I’ll set the Dawn to ram you.”

The black ship’s voice returned, static and all. “We have scanned your vessel. A long range exploration vessel of sixty-kilotons with no ram poses no threat to our vessel. Surrender, or you will be blown out of the skies.”

Penny nodded several times. The guesure was lost on the pirates, mostly because the shuttle was only transmitting audio. If there had been video, the gesture would have still been lost thanks to the T-34’s fixed helmet.

“Of course not,” Penny chuckled. “This isn’t a science vessel, she’s a tanker. The impact won't hurt you, durak. Hitting you will hurt the Dawn’s antimatter tanks. Ever see five-kilotons of antihydrogen go up at once? It just might crack that cruiser of yours in two.”

Penny flipped the comms switch again, breaking the transmission. She glanced down at the sensors smiling at the screen. “Looks better now. If we can dock with the Dawn, I can start a jump. They might not be willing to chase us.”

Rainbow turned her head to look at the dull black ship hull which now completely filled her window. “That was a threat, right? Will it scare them off?”

Penny bit her lip and cleared her throat. “Assuming their scans don’t show she’s using a vacuum reactor now, maybe. Hey, maybe they’ll think I’m spoofing a safer reactor for insurance reasons. Anything’s possible.”

A dull red glow shone through the window, lighting up the Hoatzin’s interior. Rainbow yelled and ducked away from the window, fully believing a beam of red-hot plasma was about to tear the shuttle to pieces.

The black ship rotated as its maneuvering thrusters fired, pitching the bow up and away from the shuttle. It rose upwards for a short distance, then turned clockwise and rolled dowards. A standard evasive maneuver. Crackling green light oozed out from the ship’s extended flaps in a manner similar to Saint Elmo’s Fire as the pirate vessel activated its sSurf dDrive, immediately sliding forwards as its long acceleration to superluminal speeds began.

Pandora gasped as the ship began to retreat. He turned towards the cockpit, brushing his mane out of his eyes and away from his broken horn.

Pan smiled at Penny, as butterflies danced in his stomach. “I knew you could do it, sweetie!”

Penny smiled and looked down at the seal between her neck and her armor. The inside of her helmet was a single large screen. The alloy blast-visor may as well not have existed as far as she was concerned. From the outside looking in, the only thing someone would see was a few cameras set in a thick slab of metal, with a coat of old, chipped yellow paint.

Penny hadn’t dared open her helmet on a world where stone crocodiles and wooden wolves existed.

Penny shook her head. “I may find you attractive, but you haven't even seen my face yet. Save the flirting, Pan. I could be hideous to you.”

Pan rolled his eyes. “If you think I look nice, I’ll probably think you look nice.”

Penny threw back her head and laughed for several seconds. Not at Pan’s statement, but to relieve the tension building in her chest. “You’d have a point if my last partner was a mammal, blin!”

Rainbow’s eyes widened at Penny’s words. “Wait! You guys are dating?”

“Hopefully!” Pandora said with a smile. “If not, still best friends.”

The sSurf dDrive is a miracle of galactic engineering. Of all the FTL methods available to the Galaxy, only the sSurf dDrive is safe, reliable, convenient, while remaining cheap enough for even the working class to afford. That said, it is quite slow. Even the fastest ship will take a few minutes to accelerate to light speed, let alone break the light barrier.

The black ship was only a few hundred kilometers away as Pandora smiled. Penny knew what was coming. Her people had a reputation. So did Nova Wing.

The Hoatzin’s sensors detected a small power spike in the black ship’s weapons system: a point defense laser powering up to full. Penny turned around, her cameras seeming to glare at her passengers. “Exhale! Now!”

The explosive demand startled both ponies into compliance. The black ship fired. Penny snapped her crash harness straps like fishing line as she dove to grab both pony’s seats. Compressed dull orange lasers streaked across the void. Penny's hands locked onto the backs of the passenger seats and ripped them off their mounts, their occupants still strapped in.

The distant ship’s shots connected with the shuttle’s hull just as the black ship reached point-two-cC. The Hoatzin’s hull appeared to bubble, blister, and warp. Then it exploded with a flash of white-hot plasma.

For the brief instant the shuttle’s interior still existed, chaos reigned supreme. Rainbow felt the last bit of air fly from her lungs as the shuttle’s atmosphere rushed out to try and fill the inky void.

The pressure wave blew all the shrapnel outwards. No debris cut through Rainbows heart, not even as the shuttle shattered into hoof-sized shards which flew away in all directions. Rainbow and Pandora had an instant to take in the cloud of dust, grime, boxes, bags, and stray equipment around them before it flew apart, a life vanishing into the void. They would join it soon.

The black ship’s illegally enhanced drive bore it ever further away, leaving Equus far behind after mere moments. Soon Twilight, Rarity, Fluttershy, Applejack, and Pinkie would be the first ponies to leave their star behind. A shame that first would occur with them unconcious in an observation tank.

Space was not cold like Rainbow had always believed. The sun shone on her nearly as brightly as it did upon Equus and Luna. No atmosphere blanketed Rainbow, wicking away the sun’s intense heat. As her vision began to turn black, she felt her skin start to swell as moisture tried to escape.

The Dawn of Destiny drew near, and Rainbow saw it slide into view out of the corner of her eye. She was a deep blue, boxy, tapered rectangle of a ship, with a big glass dome window on the front. It would have been cool if she knew the sight of that ship a mere thirty meters away wasn’t the last thing she would see.

Pandora’s heart screamed as he saw the Dawn. He had been so close. Over a year of planning, negotiations, and hope, all evaporating into nothing thanks to the pirate’s mothership having stuck around in system for Luna-knows-what.

Rainbow’s vision faded to black, one single thought running through her mind as consciousness slipped away: she had failed. Her friends were lost forever, doomed to do whatever fate their alien slave masters demanded of them. The punishment for her failure: a painful death without a burial.

What did we do to deserve this?

The last thing Pandora felt before the blackness consumed him was guilt. All of this was his fault.

Pandora - 748756.8 A.H.

Two Years Ago

Applewood Community College - Applewood, Equestria, Equus

The last rays of the setting sun shone through the closed blinds to provide a messy dorm room with a dim and dismal light. The light wasn’t entirely to blame for the room’s grim feel: the overhead lamp was broken, as it had been for years, and formerly white brick walls were now gray with brown splotches.

The bed was unmade, covered in sweat-soaked sheets and aging blankets. An oversized and rather ugly desk was covered in old stains, fast food wrappers, and long-empty bottles. A sea of wires, power regulators, and amateur radio equipment consumed the room, giving it an industrial feel. What little floorspace the tiny room had left was covered in dirt, dust, and debris.

A nice, warm, bright lamp would hardly have brought the dorm an air of good cheer, not without the aid of several hours deep cleaning.

Tarnished brass rattled as the doorknob turned. The room’s door creaked at just the right pitch to make everypony within earshot wince. The sound of quiet sobbing filled the room as its occupant stepped inside.

Pandora ignored the notes he inevitably stepped on as he entered his dorm room. At least three or four were slipped under his door every day. They all said the same thing.

Pandora was a small stallion. Almost unusually so, for a unicorn. Fortunately, he was not quite a dwarf. Applewood was predominantly an earth pony town. That made him the smallest guy on campus in both height and muscle. An older, more mature unicorn wouldn’t have cared about such trivialities. Of course, they would also have their magic to fall back on for impressing mares they liked.

Pandora reached for his laptop bag’s strap and went to pull the bag off his shoulder. He’d never liked the over-the-shoulder strap style. Unfortunately, that’s what was sold here.

Static electricity made the bag cling to his black hoodie. Pandora closed his eyes to keep himself from growling an anger and pulled the strap away from himself roughtly. The coarse nylon strap slid across his face and over the bandage covering the stump of his horn.

Half the dormitory jumped out of their skin as Pan’s pained screech nearly shattered glass.

It took half an hour for the sharp, stabbing pain in Pan’s horn to go away. Half an hour of screaming into a pillow to get all the pain and rage out. Rage at his health insurance for not covering fuzing the end of his horn, let alone reconstructive sorcery. Rage at the campus police for failing to catch the stallions who had cut it off. More rage at his insurance provider for deciding that the hospital stay was all the coverage he could get that year. Then, most of all, blind fury directed at his body for making the wound reopen no less than three times over the last few months.

Despite the boiling ocean of emotion in his mind, rage was still only the smallest part of Pan’s screams.

Over time, the pain faded into the dull background throbbing Pan had become familiar with. Its friend, empty hollowness, rejoined it in tormenting him a few seconds later. His savings, as well as his family’s, had gone to college, and that money had been diverted to Pan’s not-dying fund.

Pan was out of money. He was out of time. He was out of friends.

Pan carefully turned his head and looked at his dust-covered radio set. The bangs of his short mane fell over his eyes. As he pushed them out of his face, he vaguely wished he had time to grow his mane out the way he’d always wanted. Parents can have the oddest restrictions.

With his vision clear, the stallion took a fresh look at his old radio. Pan had loved it growing up. In Canterlot, he could get a signal all the way out to Appleloosa on a clear day. Tweaking and customizing his set had been a hobby unto itself.

His father had given Pan a unique piece of crystal for his birthday five years ago. The first thing Pan had done was install it as an RF modulator. The crystal had boosted his set’s range and signal clarity so much, he’d made a few friends all the way in Neighpon.

Pan had made so many friends talking over the radio. Friends who had slowly, one by one left the hobby for other things.

Pan had left it behind, too, once he started making friends in college. Then his best friend stopped being a friend and decided to share the contents of Pan’s hard drive with the campus at large. Pan’s friendships evaporated. The notes started appearing under his door.

Nothing Pan had ever done was illegal, or even immoral. Just a little perverted. But in a rural town like Applewood, not even a spark of deviance was tolerated.

Today, the last thread of equine relationships unravelled.

Pan eyed his radio’s handset for several long moments as he debated trying to find someone to talk to. “Yeah… Why not? One last try.”

Pan’s eyes flicked over to the radio’s power switch. Instinct compelled him to flip the switch with his inborn telekinetic power. His horn sparked. Pan yelped, thrashing in place as the magic rebounded into his brain, scrambling his nerves for a moment.

As soon as Pan regained control over his body, he punched his bed frame. “Supid! You’re bucking stupid, Pan!”

Getting up from his bed as much as the tiny dorm allowed, Pan leaned forwards and flipped the switch with the tip of his hoof. The radio buzzed and hummed as its capacitors charged for the first time in four months.

Pan took the hoofset off its hanger and lay back down on his bed, holding it close to his lips. There was no switch to press: Pan had built a speech detection circuit into his set. The radio would send when he spoke and receive when he stopped.

“Hey guys, it’s WL7BBQ,” Pan said pausing for a moment after giving his callsign.

No one replied. Either no one was listening on his old frequency, or no one wanted to talk to him. Pan closed his eyes tightly and decided to talk anyways. Maybe someone would hear, and if not, at least he had tried talking before deciding anything.

“I’m not in a good place right now… I stopped talking because a few of the jocks decided to cut off my horn. It’s still… Bad. It won't heal right. Doctors said it could be a year before the end isn’t raw. I’ll probably never do magic again.”

Pan paused again, silently begging for a reply. None came. By now, he knew, his signal had reached the end of his broadcast range. Anyone who would reply would have by now.

His ears drooped down slowly. Pan rolled over onto his side, deciding to talk anyways.

“My family can’t help me. They’re just out of money. My little sister has runty wings; they got her some alchemy to fix them. She’s in physical therapy now. That’s talking all their time and money. I don’t blame them for it. They committed to that before I got hurt and are just happy I didn’t die… Besides, we’re not on the best of terms. I’m not exactly welcome back home. I told you guys I moved out for good, right?

“Buck… Blaze won't help me anymore either… she… left me… A few hours ago. Or an hour. I don’t know. Feels like forever. Told me to my face that without magic I’m not worth being with and walked away…”

Pan closed his eyes again and waited for several long moments, hoping for any reply at all. Even though he felt certain that no one in the world was listening. Even though he was right.

When standing on the surface of a world, it seems to be all of existence. One can hardly blame the ignorant peoples of the earliest civilizations for believing the night sky was a blanket or a dome, that the patch of ground they inhabited was unique. That it was the center of the universe.

Nor can you blame their more educated ancestors who knew the truth of their planet’s place in the universe for believing they were alone. They were the most advanced people ever to live on their world, and their instruments were the greatest ever built. Those instruments had scanned the heavens and found no signs of life.

Those primitive, lightspeed-only, low-resolution instruments, which by their very nature see further and further back in time as they look further and further away.

Pandora’s radio filtered its signal through the unique gemstone and blasted it out for all to hear. The modulation provided by the small amber stone did more than improve the radio’s range and clarity; it also did the seemingly impossible.

It’s unlikely anypony would successfully make a phone call on their first try by punching in the numbers at random. There were only so many phones on Equestria after all. Pan’s signal left Equus’s atmosphere, as all radio signals do. One and a half seconds later it reached the moon, and the ancient subspace comms relay placed by necessity upon it.

The galaxy is a bigger stage than a mere nation. The odds of a radio signal’s modulation matching the encryption key needed to call a particular ship were next to impossible. But for that signal to be linked up with a random ship—well, Lady Luck approves of those odds.

The relay detected Pan’s signal, accepted the security code built into the modulation, looked up the code in its routing table, and fired the signal halfway across the Orion Arm with a burst of tachyons, a process completely imperceptible to Equestria’s oh-so-advanced sensors.

The signal traveled for many more seconds, until it reached another lonely soul far, far away from Pan’s dorm room. An alien mouth sputtered, nearly choking on the food it had been chewing as the mysterious signal called out to her once more.

A hand tapped the accept call button on a holo display. Translation software had finally decoded the new language, and a reply was sent. The ancient relay on Luna received a burst of tachyons, triangulated the radio signal’s location, and tight-beamed the reply back. A reply which looked like cosmic static to anyone without the right demodulation system.

Pan rolled onto his back and let his left leg hang over the bed, debating dropping his radio’s hoofset. “Oh what’s the point? No one cares about me anymore…”

Pan’s radio crackled and a sing-song female voice with a rather odd accent let out a boisterous greeting. “Opa! WL7BBQ! It’s been months since I heard from you. I’ve just translated your language a few months ago. How are things? Still cheeki breeki?”

Pan’s eyes flew open, and he sputtered and rolled over, bringing the mic back up to his mouth. “H— Hello? Who is this?”

He paused again, waiting for the mare’s reply. A second ticked by, then another, and another. Pan slumped limply atop his bed and moaned. “Buuuuck me! I imagined her. Great…”

Seconds ticked by and Pan dropped his mic. Still more seconds passed, and Pan reached out to turn off his radio.

Then she spoke again. “Oy, blin… Sounds like a really bad time wherever you are. I wish I could reply sooner. You need a hug and a few shots! We’ve got about thirty one seconds of light lag in this call.”

Pan gasped, his ears perked, and his heart soared. “She’s real! Yay!” He dove for his mic, nearly smacking the stump of his horn into the side of his bed. “Hello? Please don’t go! Who Are you? What do you mean, ‘light-lag’?”

Pan stared at his mic for a few short seconds, waiting for the voice on the other side to speak again.

“My name is… You know, I won't make you try and pronounce Chernen in our first conversation. One sec!” She grew silent for a second, and a few electronic blips and beeps came through the speaker. “Looks like in your tongue, my name is Penny. Blin! It’s almost the same. What are the odds?”

Pan shrugged. “I don’t know? Most names are pretty similar sounding in the languages I know. Penny’s a nice name. Mine’s Pandora… Not exactly a stallion’s name, but my parents liked it a lot.”

A few more seconds ticked by. “What? You’re joking, right? Who doesn't know about light-lag?”

Pan raised an eyebrow as the term raced through his mind. “Do you mean like, how it takes a radio signal a few seconds to reach the moon because it can only travel at the speed of light? Where the hay are you where that would even matter? Like, in a volcano on the other side of the planet?”

Penny was silent for almost a minute. Pan’s grip on his mic grew tighter and tighter as the seconds ticked by.

Penny took a deep breath. “Okay. Backlog is clear. I need you to wait about thirty seconds before saying anything after you stop talking, okay? How old are you, and is that an adult for your species? Where do you live? Are your parents or guardians nearby? If you are not an adult, do you have their permission to use the ansible network? How did you get my ship’s frequency?”

Pandora blinked several times as he was bombarded with the list of questions. He sat up in bed, scratching at the back of his head with a hoof. “Uh, well, that’s a weird thing to ask. You can tell I’m an adult by how I sound. I’m not squeaky-girly.”

Pandora stopped talking and slowly counted to thirty. Penny snorted. “Ha! Nice try. My last girlfriend sounded something like a jar of marbles being shook underwater. You can’t judge someone by the sound of their voice without knowing what they are. Biologically, I mean. Please, answer me in full.”

Pan shrugged to himself and nodded. “Okay. I’m twenty three years old, and that’s definitely an adult for ponies. Not for dragons though… Oh! Now your question makes sense. Sorry! I live uh, no where? I’m getting kicked out of the dorms tomorrow morning. The only place I can go is a fire watch tower near Ponyville. My uncle can get me a job there on no-notice… I haven't called him yet. Wasn’t sure if I wanted to well… yeah… you know.”

Pandora paused for a moment to think back on what Penny had said. “Wait, what's an ansible network? Am I dialing into some military relay or something? I’m sorry! This is the frequency I’ve used for years.”

Penny’s response came forty six seconds later. “А? You don’t know what the ansi— Where are you? Is your star on the very fingers of civilized space?”

Pan’s eyebrows peaked, his lips pursed. “My star? Uh, I don’t think your translation’s very good.”

“The word isn’t star? Okay, no problem. What is the name of the cosmic fusion reaction your planet orbits?”

Pan’s pupils dilated. The long lag time. The confusion about location involving the names of stars. A network type he, a radio nerd, had never heard of even if just by name.

Pan’s hoof shook as he drew the mic close to whisper into it. “Are—are you not on Equus? Am—am I talking to a secret moonbase? I’m so sorry! I’ll smash this set. No one will know! I didn’t know we’d ever launched any rockets at all! I thought that was just a weird science idea. I’m sorry!”

Pan continued to hold the mic, trembling, waiting for Penny’s reply saying all was forgiven before he flicked off his radio forever.

“What? Nyet! I’m not a base! This is the CS Dawn of Destiny, part-time exploration ship, part-time fuel tanker. Registration number CS-8936-23-90. You can look me up on any—excuse me, Pan, but did you say rockets?”

Pan blinked. “Um, yeah… What other possible way to get into space is there? Get a super-powerful unicorn to teleport you?”

Penny moaned. “Oy, blin… your civilization is pre-spaceflight. Well, this is awkward. So uh, you won't believe me, but you’ve somehow patched what I assume is an actual radio into what amounts to the Intergalactic Network. If I had to guess based on our lag, I am nearly eight light years from your planet right now.”

Pan’s mood soured. “Horseapples. Go make fun of somepony else.”

Pan hung up his mic and went to tun his radio off. “I’m not making fun of you. You, uh… Well, you’ve made first contact for your civilization. Pozdravleniya! You’re the most important person in your history so far. Please don’t hang up. I’m the only person aboard, and I have six days of acceleration left before I get back to civilization.”

Pan paused, his hoof touching the switch, held back by a single empathetic thought. There was nothing Pan understood better than being alone, scared, and in need of a friend. If Penny wasn’t making fun of him, then she was either insane or telling the truth.

Given the evidence Pan had, either she was telling the truth, or some odd geography, atmospherics, and possibly ambient arcane levels were messing with their radio signal.

She’s either insane and needs a friend, or she’s an alien and needs a friend. Either way… I need a friend.

Pan picked the mic back up, kicked a stack of failed assignments off his chair, and sat down.

“I’m still here, Penny. So, what’s space like?”

The two talked long into the night. When morning came, Pan hadn’t slept. He still wasn't sure if his new friend was crazy or not, but he knew she was fun to talk to. So fun, he decided to take the job his uncle could get him.

When Pan moved into the Firetower the next day, he took his radio equipment with him. Over the next few months, a friendship was forged between the two. Their daily conversations taught each other about the worlds they inhabited. One vast, the other small, both equally fascinating.

If only they had known then that a third party had tapped their line, and was very much interested in the potential profit a call to the “off limits” K3 Sector had to offer.

2 - Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind

“The purpose of life is the investigation of the Sun, the Moon, and the heavens.” — Anaxagoras, 459 BCE.

Rainbow Dash - 2nd of Faust, 1st year of Harmony

Six Days Ago

749554.65 A.H.

Ursa's Lair Campground - Whitetails Woods, Equestria, Equus

The Whitetail Woods have been one of the most special places to nearly everypony in southern Equestria for five hundred years. They are easily one of the most breathtaking natural wonders on Equus, full of lush, unspoiled woodlands, just as things were in the days before intelligent life began. Of course such a lovely natural wonder was converted into a natural park, complete with hiking trails and campgrounds.

While perhaps a little disrespectful to one of the last truly natural spots on Equus, everypony who lived within a day’s train ride from Whitetail Woods had camped beneath its hundred-meter tall redwoods at least once as a foal. Rainbow Dash had gone camping here with her father hundreds of times. She’d spent every third weekend here during the summers, weather-permitting.

While the woods were a natural wonder, and fully-preserved, the skies above them were not, nor was the top of Ursa’s Lair. A truly colossal butte, Ursa’s Lair looked as if an archmage had commanded five square kilometers of the earth to rise up and form a kilometer-high tower of stone. Perhaps one had, but with no sign of a wizard living on the colossal tower, it had become one of the many places the flying city of Cloudsdale would land.

Pegasi had flown over Whitetail Woods for ages. Their nomadic lifestyle had prevented them from developing the region, but nearly everypony had found their favorite places to nap beneath the trees.

Rainbow growled through her mouthfull of tent pole as she struggled to erect the cheap tent she had bought for this weekend’s trip. A mere two hours into the camping trip, and she was already regretting proposing going camping with everypony to relax and have fun together.

An alabaster unicorn across the clearing from Rainbow moaned as well. Rarity flicked her purple mane from her eyes with an indignant jerk of her head and picked a burr from her pale coat with contempt. “Ugh! I swear, this is all somehow worse than when we went into the Everfree last year!”

Applejack snorted and tipped her stetson’s brim upwards to give Rarity a deadpan stare. “Ya gonna complain about every little hardship so the fun seems like it weren't nothing?”

Rarity shook her head. “No, no, I just can’t understand how things keep getting caught in my coat. We’ve been in this clearing for hours now.”

Rainbow sighed and twisted her neck, finally managing to get the tent pole hooked to the right peg. She let go of the pole and turned towards her friend. “It’s camping. You’re going to get a little dirty. Just go to the spa once we get back home.”

Rarity nodded and smiled slightly. “Well of course, Rainbow. But that doesn't answer my question.”

A small, meek, butter-yellow pegasus next to the fire raised her hoof. “Um, well— It’s a bit breezy. It could have blown into your fur.”

Rarity paused and nodded slowly. “Yes, I suppose it could… Pinkie had better not be putting them in my coat. That’s all I am trying to say.”

Rainbow felt her cheeks part in a large simile. Of all her new friends, she had to like Pinkie the most. As a friend.

Rainbow snickered and shook her head. “I can see her doing it. But she went with Twilight to get the firewood.”

Applejack sat up, the log she had been leaning against creaking. She looked around the clearing for a moment, then focused on the stone firepit they had dug. “Are ya sure this is safe, Rainbow? The fire, I mean? These woods are a mite dry.”

Rainbow nodded and pointed east with her left hoof. “There’s a firetower right over there. The ranger will have plenty of magical doodads to put out any fire we start. Besides, I’ve been camping here since I was nine. As long as we don't go crazy and burn a whole cord of wood at once, nothing will happen.”

Fluttershy’s tail flicked behind her. “Oh, thank goodness! I was worried about that.”

Rarity sat down next to Fluttershy. “Of course you were, darling. You’re right next to it.”

Rainbow’s grin widened as Fluttershy eeped and slowly scooted back from the tiny fire like a cell phone vibrating off a table. She shook her head slowly and turned her attention back to her tent.

Rainbow hadn’t set up a tent before. She would always sleep under the stars, often on a tree branch. She had ground-bound friends now, so the tent had seemed like the right thing to do. Especially since it was a two-pony tent and Twilight was the only pony who hadn’t brought one of her own.

Rainbow’s tail swished happily as she took to the air to pull the rain cover over her tent. The light-duty cover was a deep purple. Her tent was a nice pale blue. Astonishingly, her friends still had no idea as to the symbolism Rainbow’s subconscious had chosen when purchasing the tent.

Applejack looked up with a twinge of jealousy as Rainbow flew. She twitched her head, making her hat settle back over her eyes. “So, Rainbow… Any reason you didn’t get a tent that matched your colors?”

Rainbow frowned and looked over at her friend’s tents. Rarity had a white tent with purple trim. Fluttershy enjoyed sleeping outside, but had brought a small yellow tarp to use as a lean-to. Pinkie had brought a tiny inflatable play-house the size of a one-pony tent. Applejack, on the other hoof, had brought a tent the rough color and shape of a Red Delicious apple.

This further proved Rainbow’s theory that the Apple family was just a bit crazy.

Rainbow shrugged at AJ’s question. “Eh… This time, no. But to be honest, it’s a bit hard to find rainbow-colored things. Most ponies have two or three colors, not seven.”

“Ya could let yer mane grow out naturally,” Applejack said with a shrug. “Might be easier then.”

Rainbow snorted and rolled her eyes. “I do.”

Rarity looked over, intrigued by a certain possibility. “Rainbow, are you telling me your mane is naturally like that?”

Rainbow nodded, her cheeks darkening slightly. “Uh, yeah. My grandma is a tropical pegasus. Ever see one? Their feathers are really colorful, too.”

Rarity’s eyes sparkled. “In that case, would you mind collecting your mane and tail trimmings for me? Natural thread is very expensive to get in violet, and I have certain customers who demand entirely organic products. I’d be willing to pay seven bits per meter of finished thread.”

Rainbow blinked in response to her friend’s proposal. “Uh, sure. Why not?”

Rarity clapped her hooves together. “Wonderful!” Rarity turned her head at the sound of underbrush cracking behind her. Her ears twitched, tracking the sound. “Oh, there’s two ponies approaching.”

Rainbow frowned and strained her ears to listen. Two familiar voices barely pierced through the trees, both complaining about how heavy something was.

Rainbow stretched out her wings to take off. “It’s Twi and Pinkie. Sounds like they’re having problems with the wood. I’ll be back in ten seconds flat!”

Rainbow jumped. The moment her legs were off the ground, her powerful wings began to beat like the blades of a turbine. She shot through the air, vanishing from her friends’ sight seemingly instantly.

Trees flashed by her like wooden walls of death. One false move, one tiny miscalculation, and her skull would shatter on the dull orange bark. Fortunately, Rainbow never made those mistakes.

Flight came to her naturally. The faster she flew, the easier it was—for basic flight. Stunt flying produced the opposite effect.

Rainbow followed the sound of Pinkie’s and Twilight’s voices. Two seconds later she emerged from the woods above the trail her friends were taking. The two mares had purchased absolutely way too much wood, each one nearly buckling under the weight of their haul.

Twilight’s teeth were clenched; the most unathletic mare’s forehead was drenched with sweat. She was clearly having the hardest time with her share of the wood.

Pinkie was midsentance as Dash arrived on the scene. “—ing it would be way easier if you carried this with your magic.”

Twilight panted, unable to nod as she wanted to. “Yes. But… you’re supposed to... carry it! Says so, in… book…”

Dash rolled her eyes at the lavender unicorn’s antics and touched down next to her. “You know you don't need to to everything by the book, right?”

Twilight eeped at Dash’s sudden appearance, her ears perking up to search for further surprises. “Aaa! How do you do that?”

Rainbow smiled and winked at Twilight. “I’m awesome. Want me to take some of that for you? You know, since you won't magic it to camp.”

Twilight paused for a moment, considering what the Official Fillyscout’s Guide to Camping had said about sharing camp-tasks with other campers. Reaching her conclusion, she smiled. “Yes, please.”

Twilight used just a little bit of her magic to lift half of the wood she was carrying off her back, then pushed it over to Dash with her foreleg. Dash dipped down, maneuvering under Twilight’s leg to get her back beneath the stack of wood, and went to cup the wood with her wings for support.

As her left wing moved up, the tips of Rainbow’s primary feathers brushed across Twilight’s belly. Twilight giggled and twitched her tail. “Eep! Rainbow, that tickled!”

Rainbow’s cheeks flushed bright pink as the chorus to DJ pon-3’s song Everytime We Touch played in her mind. “S—sorry!”

Rainbow settled the wood on her back, ignoring the weight as best she could. Pinkie grinned ear to ear, beaming a smile at both her friends. “Dawww!”

Twilight blinked in surprise and turned her head towards the pink earth pony. “What?”

Pinkie trotted forward at an invigorated pace. “Oh, just shipping!”

Rainbow’s cheeks flushed brighter.

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “But… there isn’t a post office for a hundred kilometers?”

Pinkie facehooved.

Rainbow coughed into her hoof and quickly trotted off after Pinkie. “Come on, Twilight. You know how Pinkie is. Everypony wants their s'mores, so let’s get the wood back! It’s not far.”

As Rainbow caught up with the prancing pink pony, Pinkie leaned over towards her and whispered, “Twilight doesn't have Daring Do number three yet.”

Rainbow frowned, not understanding what Pinkie meant. “What?”

“Nooothing! You two have fun,” Pinkie sang, flashing Dash a smile before zipping along up the trail at a seemingly impossible speed.

Dash shook her head and trotted along the trail, thinking back over the last year.

She’d always believed she would be famous one day. Her natural speed and skill at flight would eventually let her pull off some really impressive stunts. She would be a Wonderbolt one day, and her name would be remembered alongside every other top-tier flier in history! Though it would take many years before anypony knew her name.

At least, that’s what Rainbow believed before the last Summer Sun Celebration.

Nopony could possibly have predicted Rainbow would team up with five random mares and stop an ancient evil from taking over the world on the summer solstice. It made sense to her that Twilight would have become the hero she was today: Twilight was Princess Celestia’s personal protege, a magical genius with access to every spell ever invented. Even the restricted ones!

Twilight had always been destined to be a hero. Heck, all of her friends were special in one heroic way or another.

Rarity may be fussy and dependent on high society for self worth, but she was an amazingly accomplished mare. Her school grades were nearly perfect, she had once been the captain of the Canterlot High fencing team, and she had founded a successful nationwide business at the age of twenty. Rarity could do anything she put her mind to, and do it well.

Pinkie may have been hyperactive and a bit unhinged, but she also appeared to have genuine supernatural powers. Rainbow often wondered if she was actually a unicorn: her extra-poofy mane could easily hide a horn and the faint tell-tale glow of arcane light when she used magic. She was the mare who was everypony’s friend and could do the impossible. Of course Pinkie became a hero! She’d probably left the pages of a fantasy novel.

Fluttershy seemed like a timid coward on the outside, a pony afraid of everyone and everything. Rainbow knew better. Beneath that yellow pegasus’s cowardly exterior lay an atomic bomb’s fury. Fluttershy had gone eye to eye with a dragon and screamed it into submission. She’d walked up to a hydra and made it blink with a stare. Ponies scared Fluttershy, not monsters, and certainly not ancient evil villains from the stars. Her being a hero depended simply on her being in the right time and place for her rage to surface.

Then there was Applejack. AJ was the everypony: the ordinary pony who could do a bit of everything, a classic heroic archetype from fiction. In AJ’s case, that old archetype from Equestrian Folklore had been given a heaping dose of stubbornness and what Rainbow was certain had to be genuine super strength instead of the normal earth pony power.

Lastly, there was Rainbow. She flew fast. Yes, she flew very fast, but one could hardly call Rainbow’s best time at the track superspeed. A young mare training for the Equestria Games is several rungs lower than Fili-Second in terms of heroic potential. In her mind, Rainbow was a normal-ish mare who had never once given up on a friend, and one time, on her best day, by total accident, broke the sound barrier in a dive.

Hardly someone you’d expect to be on a team of heroic mares entrusted by the Princess to save the world again if it ever needed it.

Yet here she was, Rainbow Dash, Hero of Equestria. Everypony she ran into knew her on sight. It was a good feeling, an unexpected feeling. Rainbow did feel like she had earned the praise she got, but at the same time was certain almost anypony could have been the hero she was.

Twilight trotted past Rainbow, refreshed thanks to her load being lightened. Rainbow couldn’t help but watch Twilight’s plump flanks bob as she trotted ahead of her. Up, down, up, down, bounce, bounce, bounce.

Rainbow’s cheeks burned again. If that’s what a lifetime of sitting and reading did for your figure… If I hadn’t decided to make sure she was okay after Nightmare Moon arrived, I would be somepony completely different. I need to respect her, not picture myself under her hips. Until I know if she likes mares or not… Celestia, it’s so hard to tell if she likes anypony at all!

Rainbow shook her head to banish the lewd thoughts and picked up her pace so she wouldn’t arrive after everypony else.

Once the firewood was delivered, the camping trip took off properly. Fluttershy very quietly told spooky stories which were honestly more silly than spooky, but quite fun to listen to. Applejack made lunch, grilled apples with a side of hayfries and tomatoes, as well as a little bit of fish for her pegasus friends.

Rarity fashioned some rather elegant chairs out of some stray branches and vines, providing everypony with a comfortable seat. Pinkie had somehow managed to sneak a cake into camp, with not a single pony so much as smelling it for the entire day’s trip out to Ursa’s Lair. Pink Fairy Cake went wonderfully with the calm, cool afternoon breeze. It went even better when Pinkie handed out the rest of the cake after dinner that night.

Throughout the day, Twilight had gone on several mini-lectures about certain parts of the forest which caught her attention. Rainbow listened to them intently, even if she didn’t understand most of what Twilight was saying. She loved to hear her talk.

As the sun went down the mares piled more wood on the fire. The flames were no longer for cooking; they were for lighting, atmosphere, and mood. Everypony enjoyed the feeling of being away from the hustle and bustle of modern life. A fire had an emotion absent in electric lights, a sort of primitive joy and sense of community. Many pony homes still had lanterns and fireplaces to capture that feeling.

Twilight shook her head as she looked up into the tree canopy yet again. The view overhead was certainly impressive. The clearing they had chosen to camp in was just big enough for a small window of stars to be visible overhead, framed by the green-clad branches of the biggest trees on Equus.

Twilight smiled. “I still can’t get over how big these are! Reading about them is one thing but—I mean, look at them! Some of these trees are over five thousand years old. There could be a tree in this forest old enough for Celestia herself to have planted it as a filly!”

Applejack shrugged. “Sure, but it would be nicer if these trees produced something. Maybe some fruit, or a syrup.”

Rarity’s eyes widened. She gasped, covering her mouth with her hoof. “AJ! Are you saying we should turn all of this into even more farmland?”

Applejack’s tail stood up. “What? No! Course not. Ahm thinking about what we could do with a little earth pony magic an some of these trees’ seeds. Just one of these things could replace an eighth of my field if each branch grew apples.”

Twilight shrugged. “Well, it wouldn’t matter if they did. These trees only get this big here because of the other plants in the forest. The microbiome the plants permit provide these trees with the exact nutrients they need to grow big and strong. You would need to cultivate everything you can see around you on your farm.”

AJ laughed and flashed Twilight a smile. “You think I didn’t know that? Shoot, these trees’ friends don't need any work from anypony to turn out just fine. Do you have any idea how much work goes into caring for a single apple tree?”

Twilight nodded, then frowned. “Uh well, in theory, yes. I’d love to see it some time.”

Rainbow stretched her wings out behind her. “It’s pretty crazy. I’ve been napping in her trees for years. There’s like, nineteen different things she spreads around each tree.”

Appejack sighed and slumped down in her chair. “Rainbow, ya know napping in that tree has made the branches grow into a nest-shape for you? I’m not saying you should stop, cuz that tree’s all yours now, but we try and grow each tree in the same shape to make applebucking easier.”

Rainbow’s cheeks burned at AJ’s choice of terminology. Rarity coughed into her hoof and looked across the fire. “Darling? Must you call it that?”

Applejack nodded. “Eeyup! It’s the proper technical term. Ain’t my fault you city ponies decided that a word meaning ‘kick something real hard’ means ‘have sex’.”

Twilight grinned and held up her hoof. “Ooo! Ooo! I know why that happened! Anypony want a quick etymology lesson?”

A hoof rapped against a tree trunk three times. Rainbow jumped to her hooves and spun around to face the sound.

Rainbow’s eyes widened as she saw a dark silhouette of a pony wearing tightly-fitted clothing and what seemed to be a cowl standing right at the edge of their camp. Rainbow hadn't heard anything approach, nor seen the tell-tale flash of a unicorn teleporting. As far as she was concerned, this pony had materialized out of thin air.

As Rainbow’s mind debated how likely it was for them to have somehow encountered the Batmare, the pony took a few steps forwards, revealing the cowl to simply be a super-long black and off-white mane, and their clothing to be a park ranger’s dark olive green uniform.

The pony frowned as they watched the entire camp of mares collectively jump, recoil, or eep in fright, and held up a hoof. “Woah! Sorry, I didn’t want to scare anypony. That’s why I knocked on the tree. Uh, I’m Pandora. I’m with the park service.”

Rainbow narrowed her eyes. Pandora was a mare’s name, and this pony was extremely lithe, with nice, plump flanks. They sounded like either a mare with a slightly husky voice, or a stallion with a higher than normal voice. Pandora’s muzzle and jaw were ambiguous as well.

Rainbow narrowed her eyes to search for any clue as to how she should address the ranger to be polite. Her eyes briefly looked into his emerald orbs, and then finally found something. “Ah ha! Short eyelashes! You’re a colt!”

Pan blinked, and awkwardly shuffled his forhooves. “Uh, yeah. It’s cool. I get that a lot.”

Rainbow’s friends breathed a quick sigh of relief. AJ muttered something under her breath which Rainbow was pretty certain was something like “Thank Celestia somepony figured it out.”

Twilight reached over with her magic and deftly plucked their camping permit from her bags. “Is there a problem, sir? We have our permit and receipt for this spot right here.”

Fluttershy’s ears perked in alarm. “O—oh! Um, the fire isn’t too big, is it?”

Pandora shook his head The way his silky-mane flowed from the movement sent waves of jealousy racing through Rarity’s chest. “No, no… I‘m stationed at the firetower nearby, and my boss said you six were camping here tonight. I um… Could I get your autographs? Please?”

Pandora reached into his jacket’s left breast pocket and removed a pad and pen. The pad was very distinct, having a brown leather cover with a gold leaf oscilloscope screen printed on the cover.

Fluttershy gasped as she saw the cover, her cheeks turning a bright pink. “Oh, my, goodness! Are you TwoForm34?”

Pandora’s eyes went wide, and the stallion immediately took a half-step back. “Um, y-yeah. I used to be… I quit drawing—”

Fluttershy stood up, beaming him a smile. “I love your work! I have your page set as one of my homepages; you haven't done anything in forever!” Fluttershy’s excited rambling drew quiet as she slowly tilted her head. “Wait, I thought you were a unicorn, not an earth pony.”

Pan’s tail and ears drooped. “I am.”

Pinkie frowned and looked at Pan’s forehead. “But your mane isn’t floofy enough to hide a ho— Ooooohh…”

The pnk party pony winced as she noticed the short stump of horn almost entirely hidden by Pan’s mare-ish bangs. “Sorry…”

“It happened years ago. That’s why I stopped drawing,” Pan muttered before looking back up at the six mares. “I um, I’d still like your autographs. If that’s okay.”

Rainbow frowned, uncertain if Pinkie had discovered the unicorn and a tiny horn, or if something very cruel had happened. Then Rainbow too saw it. She winced. “Ow! What kind of accident did you get into? You’ve got to be one tough guy to survive that kind of pain.”

Pain’s lips pulled sharply downwards. “It wasn’t an accident.”

Twilight’s eyes widened at Pan’s words. Before the situation could escalate she got to her hooves and trotted over to pan, taking his pad and pen from him with her magic as she walked. “I’m happy to sign this for you,” Twilight said as she flipped open the notebook to the first page.

Pan’s eyes widened. “Uhhh! I um, I was going to open that to a blank page. Could you—”

Twilight hummed and looked at the first page, then began to slowly flip through the book, an intrigued expression slowly building on her face. “This is cool! I’ve never seen anypony do fantasy anatomy drawings before. It’s like reading some kind of parallel world’s medical text. Or a treatise on intersex ponies. Were you inspired by third century autopsy manuals?”

Pan blinked, a confused frown overtaking his face. “Um, yeah. I was. Sorry the subject matter is uh, weird. That’s just… what I like. Could you sign a blank page? It would be cool if you each signed a blank page.”

Twilight waved a hoof in dismissal. “It’s art. Good art. Fluttershy? Show me his gallery when we get back, please. I’d like to see more of this.”

Twilight flipped through the notepad, finding a blank page and quickly scribbling her name on the sheet.

“There you are,” she said as she passed the notepad to Rainbow with her magic, flipping it over to a fresh page.

Rainbow took the book, curious about what was on the first fifty pages. She almost looked, but decided to be polite. Pan had said he didn’t want anyone to look, after all. She signed her name and passed the notebook on to Pinkie.

One by one everypony signed a different page, with Fluttershy being last. As she took the notebook she looked up at Pan with a hopeful shimmer in her eyes. “Is—is the art here something you posted?”

Pan nodded slowly. “Yeah. It’s uh, it’s the anatomical study series I did for my avatar.”

Fluttershy’s ears perked up. “Oh! That was really good.”

Twilight smiled and nodded in agreement. “I agree! The biological systems all made sense. I’m not sure how the hormone balance would be in such an individual, but that was all very well designed.”

Pan scratched the back of his head and walked forward to take his notebook back. “Thanks. I uh… Well, that makes talking to you less awkward. I’ve drawn you guys on request once. Good to know that you’d like that.”

Fluttershy flashed Pandora a smile. “I um, that was me. I commissioned the group picture of uh, us. If it helps you feel less awkward.”

Pandora let out a genuine sigh of relief. “Oh, thank Celestia! That does make things much better.”

Twilight’s eyes sparkled. “Fluttershy, why didn’t you tell us you had a group picture commissioned? I’d love to see it sometime.”

“I agree completely. You should show us when we get back,” Rarity said, nodding in agreement.”

Fluttershy’s ears drooped back. And embarrassed smile and blush overtook her face. Fluttershy handed the notebook back to Pan and awkwardly shuffled off to the side. “I—um, well—that is—okay…”

Rainbow’s eyes dilated as everything clicked into place. In an instant, she understood that Pandora drew porn. A quick look at her friends revealed that either they didn’t realize that, or were very good at concealing their reactions to knowing someone had drawn what Rainbow could only assume was them having an orgy.

A spark of hatred flared up in Rainbow’s heart, only to be quickly extinguished when she remembered Fluttershy had been the one to commission the picture. Pan hadn’t drawn that just to draw it. He did it for money. It was just business. Business which she should have expected to be a popular thing, after they saved the world.

I’m going to wait ‘till he leaves, follow him, and have a little talk about this. I will be as polite as I can, but we’re going to have a talk.

Pan tucked his notebook back into his pocket and smiled shakily. “Um, thanks! It was good to meet you guys. Thanks for saving each and every one of us.”

AJ tipped her hat. “‘Tweren't nothing.”

Pan took a few steps away then stopped. “Oh!” He exclaimed, quickly turning around and pulling a tape recorder out of his pocket. “Um, Twilight? I’m doing an astronomy paper for college by mail but I don’t get internet out here, and I forgot to order one of my textbooks. Um, you don’t happen to know the five nearest pulsars to Equus, and like, how to find them in the night sky, do you?”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow at the odd question and turned to exchange looks with everypony else. Her friends didn’t seem weirded out by the question at all. In fact, Pinkie laughed at it.

Pinkie sprang to her hooves and zipped over to Twilight, gripping her shoulders intensely. “If anypony knows that off-hoof, it’s Twilight! Go on, Twi, be the bookhorse you were born to be!”

Twilight’s ears folded back. She stepped away from Pinkie. “Uh, Pinkie? I don’t need cheerleading to help remember basic facts,” Twilight looked over at Pan and took the recorder from him. “I assume the recorder is so you don't forget?”

Pan nodded.

Twilight clicked the recorder’s button and cleared her throat. “Coordinates are given as the right ascension, followed by the declination. The five closest pulsars are: PSR J0108-1431 located at 01h 08m 08.29s by –14° 31′ 48.5″. PSR J2144-3933 located at 21h 44m 12.10s by −47° 15′ 08.6242″. PSR J0437-4715 located at 04h 37m 15.81476s by −47° 15′ 08.6242″. The Vela Pulsar aka PSR J0835-4510 located at 08h 35m 20.65525s by −45° 10′ 35.1545″. Lastly there is Geminga aka PSR J0633+1746 located at 06h 33m 54.15s by +17° 46′ 12.9″. Is that all you needed? What about their spin rates?”

Everypony stared at Twilight open-mouthed for several seconds. Twilight blushed and clicked off the recorder. “What? I like to read!”

“But how on Equus do you remember all of that?” Rarity demanded, shaking her head slowly.

AJ whistled. “Yer brain’s a library, Twi.”

Rainbow nodded. “Yeah! Do you have any idea how se—uper smart you are?”

Rainbow bit down on her lip, hoping her slipup wasn’t noticed. Pinkie noticed, and flashed Rainbow a grin and held out her hoof for a bump. Nopony else seemed to notice.

Rainbow didn’t bump Pinkie’s hoof. Pinkie set her hoof back down and looked at the ground, somewhat hurt by Rainbow’s refusal.

Pan took the recorder back and gave Twilight a bright, genuine smile. Gratitude seemed to ooze from every fiber of the effeminate stallion’s being. “Thanks! I didn’t think you’d know that at all! You’ve done me a huge favor. Maybe I’ll be able to pay it back one day.”

He tucked the recorder into his pocket and turned around, waving as he walked into the woods. “Bye! It was nice meeting you all.”

Everypony said their farewells as Pan walked back into the darkness. Rarity frowned as he left and leaned back in her seat. “He could have at least told us how in the world he got his mane to flow like that.”

AJ looked up at Rarity and raised an eyebrow. “Stallion’s hair just does that if it’s clean. Did you never have a brother?”

Rarity shook her head. “I haven’t had a brother. But I can assure you my father's mane doesn't do that.”

“He probably just don't wash it right. Trust me, Big Mac’s mane does that if he grows it out and keeps it clean.”

Rainbow cleared her throat and opened her wings to take off, spouting the first excuse to leave that came to her mind. “Hey, uh, girls? I’ve got to go to the bathroom. Be right back.”

With a twitch of her wings Rainbow took to the air. There was no sense letting her friends worry about perverts on the internet. Not when she could handle this herself.

Twilight waved a hoof as Rainbow flew off. “Okay! If you use the ones at the camp check-in, can you get me some cranberry juice?”

“Sure,” Rainbow agreed as she flew off into the forest.

Rainbow found flying through the darkened forest much more difficult than it had been before. She was still able to wing her way through the trees without incident, but at a much slower pace. Far too much of her attention had to go into avoiding trees, making tracking Pandora through the woods from the air impossible.

After nearly ten minutes of searching through the trees for any sign of the long-maned stallion, Rainbow sighed, pulled up, and rose above the treeline. She hovered in place long enough to get a good look at her surroundings, easily spotting the nearby firetower perched atop one of the massive trees to the south east.

The tower was fairly simple. Little more than a box with windows all around it perched at the very top of a spindly platform built on one of the taller trees in the forest. A warm light glowed in its wrap-around windows, and Rainbow’s pegasus eyes could make out the shape of a pony-sized object moving inside.

Huh. So he’s quiet and fast, Rainbow observed, as she turned and flew towards the distant tower.

It took Rainbow no time at all to cross the open skies to the tower. As she drew near she could see Pan was inside, seated in front of a rather large and old-looking radio set. The stallion had discarded his uniform for a black hoodie which was a few shades lighter than the black of his mane.

Three things crossed Rainbow’s mind. First, his mane was so long he should cut or braid it. There was no way he didn’t sometimes get it caught on things. Second, Pan was clearly one of those weird ponies who preferred to dress at all times. Third, his cutie mark suddenly made sense. The other park rangers had little belt-clip radios. Pan worked the base station. That had to be his talent.

Rainbow landed on the tower’s staircase and walked up to the deck. While she was okay with confronting Pan over his art, she didn’t want to spook the poor stallion like he had spooked her before.

Despite making a good bit of noise by walking up the last few steps and crossing the tower’s deck, Pan didn’t look up as Rainbow approached. His attention was fully fixed on his radio. Rainbow frowned, worried he might be paying attention to some sort of emergency, and decided to stop and wait by the tower’s open door.

As she stood watching, Pan sighed and rocked in his seat slightly, mumbling to himself.

“Come on… The lag is bad enough; it’s even worse when you have to do something.”

Rainbow tilted her head to one side, slightly confused. A moment later a female-sounding voice speaking heavily-accented, somewhat broken Equish crackled over the radio. “Okay, it’s all good to go. Give me the coordinates.”

Pan’s ears perked up. He reached over and took hold of his tape recorder, and plugged its headphones jack into his radio with an aux cable. “I had her record it so I wouldn’t forget. Standby for transmission.”

Rainbow’s brow furrowed in confusion as Pan played back the tape of Twilight into the radio. Forgetting about waiting politely, Rainbow trotted up to the door and knocked on the frame.

Pan jumped, knocking over his chair with a frightened yelp. He turned around, eyes wide with fear for a moment before he saw Rainbow and let out a deep breath, reaching up to his chest to grab at his heart.

Rainbow’s wings flared as she worried she may have given the poor stallion a heart attack. Fortunately, Pan calmed down quickly.

“Thank Celestia! I thought you were another bear!” He said with a shaky smile. “I uh, I don’t normally do stuff for campers. I can make an exception for you girls, obviously. But um, the ranger station will be better equipped to handle—”

Rainbow shook her head stiffly, not taking her eyes off Pan. “No. I came here for something else. But first, what the hay are you doing?” Rainbow gestured towards Pan’s radio.

Pan frowned. “Oh. Uh, well…” He tapped his forehooves together nervously for a moment, then twisted his lips in thought. “Screw it. Why not? I’ve only got a few days left. I’m giving a friend directions so she can pick me up and I can finally stop working this dead end job in the middle of nowhere.”

Rainbow raised a skeptical eyebrow. “And she uses space things for directions?”

Pan nodded. “Yeah. It’s called XNAV. You use the x-ray pulses from pulsars and a database of those pulsars to triangulate stuff.”

Rainbow narrowed her eyes as she looked over the rust-colored unicorn. “Annnnd you didn’t tell Twilight you needed these for directions, and lied, because why?”

Pan frowned as he thought about how to best explain himself. Like most ponies, he hadn’t thought anyone would question a plausible lie. Though, to be fair, Pan had never lied enough to be any good at it. “Well, asking somepony for coordinates for your own planet is pretty weird. I didn’t think she would help if I didn’t have a plausible reason. If someone asked me for directions for an interstellar trip two years ago I would think they were insane and walk away very fast.”

Rainbow nodded slowly. “Right. Okay. So—” She paused, her wings opening as she fully processed what Pan had said. “Wait, interstellar? As in space? Why the heck would they need to know where the planet is to pick you up?”

Pan cleared his throat and bit his lip. “Well, because Penny’s not on Equus right now. At least, I’m pretty sure she’s not. She’s either in space or very, very good at roleplaying. And a tech genius.”

Rainbow tilted her head, her mouth opening slowly as she feared upsetting the crazy pony who thought he was talking to aliens. “Uh, okay… I um, you’ve been alone for a long time, haven't you?”

Pan sighed and turned his attention back to his radio. “Yes. I’ve been on my own for years. But I’m not crazy. She’s a real person, and she talked me through building what seems like alien technology. That actually works. Hold on, her reply should be here in a second or so.”

Rainbow raised a hoof to protest but the radio crackled, interrupting her as the mare on the other end spoke again. “Okay, I got most of it. Can you send it again, Pan? The third coordinate didn’t come through properly. I’m not making a jump with only four pulsars; that’s how you get to pizdec.”

Pandora grabbed his microphone immediately. “No problem, sending again.” The stallion quickly rewound the tape recorder and hit play one more time.

Rainbow cleared her throat and rolled her lips, debating what she should do. Two seconds passed, and she decided to leave the lonely stallion to his roleplay. “So um… I’m just going to say my piece and leave. Okay?”

Pan turned back around, a dull look in his eyes. “Go ahead. I’ve heard it all before. Might as well be called a sexual deviant one last time before I leave this stupid planet.”

Rainbow frowned and scratched the back of her head with a hoof. “Uh, that’s not—I mean, kind of, but… Look, I know Fluttershy bought it from you. She’s the reason there’s porn of me out there. But I don’t appreciate anypony drawing porn of me without my permission. Understand?”

Pan blinked, then snorted, a smile spreading across his face. He shook his head slowly and gave Rainbow a reassuring smile “Heh, first off while I used to draw porn, I never drew real ponies. Second, Fluttershy commissioned a safe for work drawing from me. The picture in question is um, well it’s the six of you cuddled up on a bed. Yeah, the pose kinda implies sexytimes were had, but like, there’s no sexual acts happening. It’s just cuddles.”

Pan blushed a bright red and looked away from Rainbow. “And uh… well, you’re all herms in the picture sooo, yeah… there’s that. But it’s not sexual, I swear!”

Rainbow blinked twice. “Really?”

“Yeah....”

Rainbow pursed her lips and shook her head back and forth for a second. “Huh… She wanted us cuddling, but like, we all have dicks?”

Pan nodded slowly, a worried wince overtaking his face. “Yes. I’m best known for futa artwork,” Pan trailed off, looking up at Rainbow, expecting her to glare at him or otherwise voice her instant dislike of him.

Rainbow shrugged with her wings. “Cool. I’m not into that… but hey, whatever floats your boat. Also Shy’s, I guess.”

Pan’s face slowly brightened. His eyes lit up with genuine delight. “You don’t hate me for liking that?”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “Wait, is that what you meant by deviant? I thought you meant you were gay.”

Pan shook his head. “No, I like mares. I see herms as mares with extras. It’s a neat concept; I like it. Heck, I wouldn’t mind being one sometime. I know there’s potions that can transform you like that, but I never found anyone who sold them… That’s not the point though. The point is that I am a kinda effeminate stallion who likes clothes, draws porn that’s not “straight” in other’s eyes, and, yeah… I got a lot of hate for that.”

Rainbow frowned, and turned to the side, looking past Pan towards her campsite. “Hey, well… I’m sorry you were around ponies who were like that. I also don't care that you used to draw smut, or even if you still do. Just don't draw me, or my friends, okay?”

Pan nodded twice. “Don’t worry. I can’t draw anyways. I’ve only just started to regain my telekinesis. Also, I have a policy. I figured drawing real people is how you get beat up,” Pan spun back around in his chair with a shrug.

Rainbow frowned, her eyes narrowing with suspicion and sympathetic anger. “Beaten up? I don’t think many ponies would do that to you for drawing smut. I mean, if they were a family member sure but—”

Pan held up a hoof, prompting Rainbow to stop talking. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “This might be the last conversation that I’ll have with another pony. Like, ever. I’m not planning on coming back if Penny picks me up. So yeah, I’m going to be open about things. I’ve got a few complaints.”

Rainbow nodded slowly, still not certain if Pan was a bit crazy due to isolation. “About what?”

“Life,” Pan sighed. “How it goes for different people. Ponies like you have a great time here. Equestria is for you because it was made by ponies like you. That’s fine. I think everyone should have a place they can be themselves... but not everypony thinks that. They say they do, but they don’t, really.”

Rainbow frowned, her eyes narrowing in response to Pan’s choice of words. “What do you mean, ‘ponies like me’?”

Pan blinked. “Oh! Nothing bad. I uh, I just assume you don’t find sex interesting and think of it more as a game to play with people you like. Friends, lovers, you know. To me, it’s a hobby.”

Rainbow’s cheeks flushed as she imagined slipping into bed alongside Twilight. “Uhhh, yeaaah… it's definitely romantic to me.”

Pan nodded politely. “Right, that’s what I meant by ponies like you. For those like me, well, we’re outnumbered by you guys. Which would be fine, if all of you were okay with us existing on the fringes of your society. Most of you are, but some people are… evil. Some people see a weird little stallion who likes to draw fetish art because he likes it and then jump him late at night, then take out a saw to make sure he won't draw any more of it.”

Rainbow recoiled her eyes shrinking to pinpricks. “Wait, what?! That’s why you lost your horn? Because you draw porn? What the actual buck?”

Pan nodded slowly, then turned around, facing away from Dash. “Yeah... a bunch of stallions beat me up, then cut off my horn because I like drawing porn, and one of my close friends told them about that. And also one of my personal fantasies…”

Rainbow snorted angrily and grit her teeth. “That’s just—Ugh! That’s completely against every last principle we have!”

Pan sighed and sat down in the chair in front of his radio. “Mmmmhmm. It is. But it happened. I heard about stuff like this happening to others, too. Not as bad as me. But yeah. I’m not welcome here. I’m too different. A deviant. So I’m done. This place isn’t for me. But that’s fine. It turns out there are a lot of places out there waiting for somepony to set hoof on them, and I’ve got a ticket out of here.”

Rainbow felt compelled to give the poor stallion a hug. She’d heard that more extreme conservatives could get violent, but as far as she knew, nopony had ever been badly hurt. I guess I should read the news more… I know that Princess Celestia wouldn’t want things like this to happen. She has to just not know some ponies take her message too far.

“I—I’m sorry,” Rainbow said, her ears drooping down as she looked into Pan’s eyes. “That shouldn’t have happened to you. Ever. I’m not like them. I’d have stopped them.”

Pan shrugged again. “Yeah, you would. Too bad you didn’t…” Pan eeped, his eyes flying open wide. “Oh! Uh, not that I blame you. This was years ago. You weren't a hero or anything yet. I blame the campus cops.”

Rainbow smiled. “Hey, it’s cool.”

Pan sighed and slumped in his seat. “Maybe I shouldn’t have opened up… This is hard. Look, I just… I hate this place. Not just Equestria, but Equus itself. I had friends all over the world. Everywhere is like this, not just here. But up there? Penny tells me it’s different. The galaxy is so huge and diverse, that there’s literally the perfect place for everyone out there somewhere. You just need to find it.”

Rainbow tilted her head and grimaced. “Uh, look, let’s say you can leave the planet. Isn’t there like, a billion planets out there? It seems like you’ll die before you find it.”

Pan winked at Rainbow. “Alien technology. Life extension. From what I hear, a decade of youth costs about a month's pay for the average worker. I get a job somewhere and I can live as long as I want to. Yeah, maybe where I’ll wind up is like here, but once I’m up there, I can always go somewhere else.

“I can find a place where it’s okay for a colt to like filly stuff and colt stuff at the same time. Where I can dress how I want to, and just be an adorable guy who likes clothes because they make you look cuter, and draws kinky stuff for people who like it. Where that’s at least accepted, instead of disapproved of. You know, home.”

Rainbow nodded slowly. “You like to look cute, too? Yeah, that would tick some ponies off… It’s stupid, but, yeah.”

Pan sighed. “Yeah, but only for fashion’s sake. My dad caught me wearing socks once and got pissed. Real pissed. That messed with me… It's weird how we just decided mares get to be cute, and stallions don’t. Well, usually don’t. Hoodies are awesome! But yeah... it’s all meant to be accessories for looking nice. But I can’t look nice here. Because hypocrites will hate it and might hurt me again.”

Rainbow nodded, surprised to find herself in complete agreement. “Yeah! That is a little weird, isn’t it? I never thought of it, but you’re right. Mares in clothes do look nicer most of the time.”

With how much Pan had opened up to her, Rainbow felt compelled to share a bit about herself to even the conversation out. “You know, my dad had some issues with my own likes growing up. too. I uh, I like mares. Stallions too. Yeah that’s more accepted now, but it wasn't when I was little. I never told him about that, but he knows. I think he doesn't like it, but he never said anything. I know he knows though.

“But he did get real mad at me sometimes. For doing things that fillies aren't supposed to, I mean. He didn’t like it when I went off to explore places on my own. Even after I showed him I could handle myself if something dangerous happened. I can understand some of what you’re saying.”

Pan frowned, and his eyes held a look of genuine sympathy. “Then you do understand a little. Good. I’m glad you have friends. I never felt like I didn’t want to live on this planet until I didn’t have any friends…”

As if on cue, Penny’s voice came over the radio again. “Opa! There it is. I’ve got your system up on the astrometrics system and— Chert voz'mi! Either your sun is drunk, or my sensors are pizdec.”

Pan lifted his mic to his mouth while raising an eyebrow. “Uh, what do you see it doing?”

Pan lowered his mic and looked over to Rainbow. “You work with the princess. If she fought something big she would move the sun to help her, right?”

Rainbow nodded slowly. “I think so? I um, we’re just like on retainer as heros. I don’t work with the princess directly or daily or anything like that.”

Pan blinked. “Oh! Uh, well… we’ll just have to wait for Penny to tell us what it’s—”

“You don’t have to wait for anything, comrade,” Penny laughed. “Astrometrics uses tiny wormhole for real-time long-distance viewing. I routed our call through it. Who is with you?”

Pan sputtered and fumbled with his mic. “How long could you have done this for?!”

“I can only do it while in the neighborhood, Pan. Astrometrics has a three parsec range and burns a lot of fuel. It’s only supposed to be used for targeting jumps you don't have nav-data for. I can keep the scan running for three minutes before we won't be able to make it back to civilization after I pick you up. Who is with you? Someone else want a ride?”

Pan looked over to Rainbow with a curious expression. “Do you?”

Rainbow shook her head. “No. I’m just somepony whose camping out here and was asking the park ranger a question. That’s all. I uh, I’ll leave you two to it. After we learn what’s up with the sun.”

“Right. That. Is your planet supposed to be orbiting the dead core of a black dwarf, while having a tiny yellow dwarf orbiting your planet along with a huge moon?”

Pan and Rainbow shared a confused look. Pan nodded. “Uh, yeah. That’s what suns do.”

An exasperated sigh came from the radio. “Oi, blin…”

A look of surprise overtook both Rainbow and Pan’s face. Whatever Penny’s oath translated as, its meaning was clear. She was beyond shocked to see a perfectly normal sun doing what suns do.

“Pan, that is not what suns do. Your planet’s got First Race stamped all over it. I knew poking into the K3 Sector would be weird… Are there any artificial objects in orbit, or in your system? We could sell scans of First Race tech for millions of credits.”

Pan frowned into his microphone. “Sooo, most stars don’t orbit planets?”

“Nyet.”

Rainbow looked over at Pan and frowned. “What language is she speaking sometimes?”

“She calls it Chernin. Nyet means no.”

Rainbow felt a filly-like glee well up in her heart. Whatever this roleplay Pan and Penny were up to was meant to be to them, it lit the same flames in Rainbow’s heart that good comic books once had. The urge to explore the unknown slowly began to poke at Rainbow’s conscious mind, compelling her to stay a while longer.

At least long enough for her to ask, “What do most stars do then?”

“They are normally huge fusion reactions bigger than any planet you've ever seen, and your planet orbits it,” Penny said as the sound of clicking keys came over the connection.

The clicking sounded remarkably like hooves typing at a keyboard, only a good five times faster. As if five ponies were typing together almost at the same time.

Rainbow nodded, impressed. “Colt, she can type real good, can’t she?”

Pan shrugged. “Eh, she has hands, and fingers. Makes that easier.”

Rainbow hummed. “Oh, like a minotaur? I guess they would have an easier time typing, wouldn’t they?”

The radio crackled. “Opa! We have tech in your system. Munnar orbit, geosynchronous, on the darkside… Huh. That’s where you'd be if you didn’t want locals to spot you. What is this thing?”

Pan tilted his head slightly. “Wait, will we really be able to sell data for millions?”

“Easily! The last piece of First Race tech sold for eighty two million credits, and it was just a data-storage format. This is big. Maybe it’s a generator for your ‘sun’, or—” Penny squeaked, terrified by whatever she found. “Suka blyad! Hokay, that’s a Nova Wing cruiser. Pan! I am making the jump now. Those are pirates. They deal in primitive slaves on occasion. Keep your head down for… six days. Your time, not mine.”

Pan’s eyes opened wide. “Wait, pirates, what?!”

The radio crackled as Penny diverted some of her ship’s power to begin charging up the surf drive. “Remember that pistol I talked you through building? Keep it on you. Nova won’t field proper armor to kidnap primitives. It should punch through. Keep your head down, and stop broadcasting! I’ll call you when I’m ready to pick you up.”

The radio hissed and went dead as Penny switched off her astrometrics scanner. Pan stared into his mic, ears perked, eyes wide, terror oozing from every pore.

Rainbow smiled. “Space pirates… That would be fun.”

Pan sputtered and shook himself before looking at Rainbow. “This isn’t a game! There’s a starship up there full of pirates who are here to enslave people. Unless they decide to take Applewood, it’s not a good thing.”

Rainbow winced. “Oh! Applewood. Now your story makes perfect sense. We went over there on a mission once. Those ponies are the worst!”

Pan couldn't help but nod in solemn agreement as he stood up from his chair and walked over to a hooflocker at the end of his bed. He popped the locker open and began to dig through it. Clothing flew everywhere as Pan searched frantically for his plasma pistol.

Rainbow blushed as she saw more than a few pairs of socks, short-shorts, hoodies, and halter-tops hit the floor. “I um… Don’t wear those near a window. If Rarity sees you in those, she’ll go ballistic.”

Pan closed his eyes for a moment. “Nice to know that one of my heros is one of them.”

Rainbow shook her head. “N—no! She’s big into fashion. She’d probably force you into a dress… I uh, I’m going to go. I get the feeling I’m interrupting um... warmup roleplay. Yeah...”

Pan shivered. A dress would be too much for him, but now was not the time to worry about fashionistas not understanding one’s preferences. It was time to worry about them being hurt, or worse...

“You do that,” Pan said as he finally found the weapon and picked it up. “Actually, get your friends out of here. It’s not safe.”

The plasma pistol had been the trickiest thing Pan had ever built, and he had built most of his radio equipment. Penny had designed it, lamenting the entire way over Pan’s lack of hands. The finished gun looked more like a bracer than a weapon, but with a large blister on the back from which crystals, wires, and homemade circuitry protruded.

Pan slipped the weapon in place, and with all of his will power and a few sparks of crackling, nearly-uncontrolled magic, flicked the charge switch.

Rainbow’s ears swiveled as the weapon charged with a painful hum, the crystals glowing in sequence to indicate the charge levels as blue light oozed from the crude weapon.

Rainbow’s eyes locked onto the plasma pistol as Pan unfolded the hoof-trigger and fit it into his hoof. “Woah! Is that actually a—”

Rainbows words were lost in her sharp gasp as a huge black starship shimmered into existence above the woods as its cloaking field dropped.

It was huge, blacker than black, as if a patch of the void between stars had been chipped away and carved into a long, thin, cigar-like shape. It floated in the air in the way bricks don’t, the large silver skull on the bow grinning dowards at the world as if it were staring at prey.

Black clouds oozed out of the ship’s hull, blotting out the sky around it as dull red spotlights shone down into the trees as the shuttlecraft searched for the lifeforms who had been transmitting a signal to the system’s relay. The transmission had ceased, but it had been coming from someplace around here. Somewhere, there was intelligent life, and this region was very much isolated and remote. There was nowhere for that life to run, nowhere for it to hide, and most importantly, that life’s family would assume it had merely gotten lost in the woods.

Rainbow turned to look at Pan. “My friends are down there! We have to do something.”

Pan bit his lip. He didn’t want to stick his neck out for a pony ever again. Not after what that pony had done to him last time. But, it wasn’t that pony in danger. These mares had saved the world.

Pan nodded and stepped past Rainbow, moving through the door. “I’ll do what I can.”

The hovering starship’s searchlights stopped moving. The bioscanners attached to the red lights had located five highly-evolved mammals on the forest floor. The ship rolled slightly, angling a small pod on the bottom of the ship towards the stern to face a clearing in the woods.

Rainbow did some mental math. Her eyes opened wide. “No!”

The pods were pointed at the clearing her friends were in.

Rainbow jumped back through the doorway, snapped her wings open, and took off. She twisted midair, aiming a shallow dive towards the clearing. If I can get there before the ship does something, I can move everypony out of the way in a few sec—

A beam of dull purple light shot from the pod, followed by another, then three more. The skyhooks seized hold of five ponies and everything around them, and everything fell up in the beam.

Rainbow grit her teeth and beat her wings as hard as she could. The purple beams of light were so close she could see her friends falling up into the sky, along with leaves, sticks, camp chairs, and even her tent. Rainbow had no plan of what to do to get them out of the beam’s gravity-reversing grip, but she had to do something or—

The starship’s capture pod registered the arrival and incapacitation of the targeted biosignatures. The beams shut off. The ship shuddered in the air, its hull groaning as it turned skywards and shimmered out of existence.

It had cargo to deliver to the evaluation laboratory on the mothership. No Nova Wing crewmen ever kept their captain waiting for new business opportunities. It’s a good way to get wages garnished.

Rainbow’s heart screamed as the ship vanished from sight. All she had going for her as a hero was being fast. She hadn’t been fast enough.

23 - Baked Bads

Twilight Sparkle - 6th of Solar Dusk, 1st year of Harmony

749,573.29

GA Chebureki, Stellar Orbit -- Gruis, Aurigae Sector
Twilight stared at the bulkhead in front of her, her eyes looking past the metal as she recalled the exact nature of the spell she cast on the damned world she had left behind.

What did I do? I can’t remember any of the matrix. I can’t remember the frequency. All I can remember is… The bodies…

Twilight sniffled and did her best to push everything out of her mind and focus on the spell she had somehow cast upon the entire world. The raw power afforded to her by her alien biology was terrifying.

It’s like the fabric of reality is cardboard. I wasn’t even trying to do whatever that was.

Twilight winced as the image of a hundred half eaten corpses burst out from under the floorboards and advanced on her. Their moans were almost sexual. The stench, unspeakable and unforgettable.

Zuul winced from across the cabin. “I can see some of that… Do you want to share the memory?”

Twilight shook her head. “No. I need to find out what I did. I need to not do it again, at least… Not if I don’t need too.”

Zuul nodded, stood up and trotted over to Twilight, giving her a quick side hug. “I understand completely. It’s why I stopped using magic myself. Well, aside from transformation.”

Twilight blinked and turned to face the alien mare. “You can use magic?”

“Of course. I am magic. A stray consciousness bound to a species. Why wouldn’t I be able to tap into the universe itself for power?” Zuul asked with a smirk, which almost immediately became a frown. “Unfortunately… There is a problem with trying to cast a spell when you are a… Network of millions. My world had two moons once. I accidentally flung one into the sun trying to wave hello to a passing vessel.”

Twilight flinched, her wings flicking slightly. “Wait, so, because I’m connected to you, I shouldn’t cast spells?”

Zuul shook her head. “No, I felt nothing while you were down there… Other than terror.”

Twilight nodded and stared off at the bulkhead for another long moment. Her ears perked after a moment and she turned to Zuul. “Did you feel the aura of the spell I cast?”

Zuul nodded. “Yes. it was…” She tapped her hoof against the deck. “Rage.”

Twilight sighed. “Can you describe it as anything other than an emotion? I was too scared to feel it prop—”

Twilight stopped mid sentence and facehooved. “Oh, Celestia... Can you send me the memory?”

Zuul smiled and pushed the memory down their shared link. “Of course.”

Twilight closed her eyes and began to let the memory playback. She could feel the spell as she wove it. Its rippling matrix was turbulent, like a stormy sea. A dark and undulating energy sat within its center. Almost as if she had—

Twilight squeaked, her lips pulling back in a sharp wince. “OH, BUCK!”

Zuul’s ears perked in interest even as she took a half step back. “What is it?”

“I called on dark magic and just flung a completely random necromancy matrix at the planet.”

“That can’t be good.”

“It’s not,” Twilight sighed, her shoulders slumping. “It means I don't have full control over my magic. I’ll have to redo some basic foal-grade lessons to—”

Zuul flashed Twilight an irritated look and put a hoof over her mouth. “You lost control while being attacked by the corpses of one of your best friends in the home of a cannibal and sadist. Anyone would lose control there.”

Twilight bit her lip, then her face fell. “M— Maybe. But what if I lose control like that again?”

“Do you plan on going to the home of another of the galaxy's most wanted men?” Zuul asked with a snort. “I know you, Twilight. You’ll be fine.”

Twilight kept her eyes closed for a few moments. She opened them and turned to face Zuul. “You say you would have lost control there too. What would you have done?”

Zuul winced and tapped her hooves together. “P— Promise you won't tell anyone?”

Twilight rolled her lips in thought then nodded.

“I…” Zuul paused to collect the right words. “I would have eaten them all to use their biomass to replicate enough times to kill them all.”

Twilight winced. “E— Eaten them?”

“I’m a carnivore, Twilight. I don’t waste meat.”

“That’s fair,” Twilight sighed.

Twilight was about to ask another question when the Chebreki’s intercom crackled to life and the Captain’s voice barked a dire warning. “All hands, an unknown vessel has pulled alongside us. Our weapons are offline. We cannot bring weapons online without shutting down the Surf Drive. We have four minutes till FTL. Prepare to repel boarders!”

Twilight took a deep breath as a wave of anger washed through her. “Seriously?”

Zuul raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t anticipate a predator pursuing wounded prey?”

Twilight turned to her cabin’s screen and with a few quick taps of her hoof brought up a view of the unknown vessel.

The ship was shaped like an arrow with the point clipped off. It had two engines mounted on nacelles which were located halfway down each wing. The nacelles tapered to a point at the front of the ship so they formed a pair of spear-points right where the nose flattened out.

Unfortunately, the damaged sensors couldn’t show the ship’s color, presenting only a black and white image. One which was heavily distorted by the near-lightspeed space of the two ships as well as heavy shadows cast by the Chebureki itself upon the small vessel.

Twilight triple blinked as she took in the familiar looking ship. “Wait, what?” She giggled and shook her head. “Okay, I know this is dangerous, but that looks just like Buck Spear’s Thunderhawk. What are the odds?”

Zuul squinted at the black and white image and hummed. “It’s a geometric design. I think it must be fairly common.”

Twilight hummed then nodded. “True. Too bad I can't see what color it is. If it was gray with a red stripe maybe we’d get lucky and it totally is Buck’s ship… Well, at least a ship that small can’t possibly fit more than a dozen people in it. I think we’ll be—”

The ship on the monitor turned slightly, angling to fly alongside the Chebreki’s own flight path. The shadows slid along its hull, revealing a cloud and lightning bolt symbol that Twilight of course recognized instantaneously.

Her jaw dropped. “Wait, what?! But that’s Rainbow’s cutie mark—”

The intercom crackled again, this time carrying not DJ’s voice, but Rainbow’s. “Uh, hi. Sorry no one told me what you’re supposed to say over a radio to talk to another ship. This is Rainbow, though I think most of you will probably call me Blue. Long story short, I found a ship and I’m here to pick up Twilight and Pinkie because we need to do a thing. Don’t worry about docking or parking or... Uh, whatever you do. I got this!”

Twilight’s pupils shrank in horror as she pictured the angular ship plunging nose first into the Chebreki’s damaged hull like an arrow into a dragon's heart. All while Rainbow sang ‘This is the best plan!’

Then the ship vanished from her screen. Twilight’s wings flared in alarm. A flash of bright light made the shadows in the room jump, and a blindingly bright arcane aura caused Twilight’s arcane scenes to white out.

“AAAA! WHAT THE BUCK?!” Twilight demanded as she closed her eyes to block out the magical noise.

A reflexive action, since it’s a unicorn's horn that senses magical auras.

“I found a super old ship that’s a bracelet, that’s— Rainbow began only to squeak as her eyes fell upon the shark-toothed pony-like creature standing next to Twilight “WHAT THE BUCK!?”

Zuul raised a hoof in greeting. “Hello. I’m her special somepony.”

Rainbow blinked and tilted her head. “Huh?”

Twilight opened her eyes slowly, desperately wishing she could look directly at Rainbow, but the aura around her was painfully bright. “Long story. Turns out I like predators, okay? Now whatever you’re doing to shine like that, STOP IT!”

Rainbow looked down at her barrel. “I’m not shining?”

“Your leg! The thing on your leg! Turn it off!” Twilight begged as she shielded her face with a hoof.

Rainbow facehooved. “Right! Unicorn…” Her voice trailed off as she noticed the wings on Twilight’s back. “Uhhhh… what happened to—”

“She almost died so I made her a new body and stitched her old head and spine onto it,” Zuul answered helpful. “She asked for wings.”

Twilight took a deep breath and pointed at the tiny sun on Rainbow’s foreleg. “LIGHT! STOP NOW, PLEASE!”

Rainbow blushed and rubbed the back of her head with her bracelet clad leg. “Oh! Right! Uh… Faust? How do I—” Rainbow paused for half a second, as if she were listening to someone's angry snap. “Yeah well, I wouldn’t have to ask what this can do if I had a manual! Yeesh…”

Zuul and Twilight exchanged a brief look.

Zuul remarked.

Twilight simply nodded in reply.

Rainbow took a deep breath and grit her teeth for a moment. “Well how was I supposed to know I just think ‘open manual’?! I don’t use god-tier items all the time, you know! And why was the aura-shield even off in the first place? That’s a stupid default setting!”

The glow around Rainbow’s leg faded, making the room once again bearable for Twilight who sighed in relief. “Thank, Celestia… What even IS that thing?” Twilight asked as she jabbed a hoof at Rainbow’s bracelet.

Rainbow smirked. “Oh this? It’s a starship.”

Twilight nodded slowly. “Okay. That would explain why the aura was painfully bright.”

Rainbow frowned. “You’re not impressed?”

Twilight shook her head. “No… Today isn’t a day for being impressed, Rainbow. You have no idea what I just went through to save Pinkie I—” Twilight closed her eyes and went silent as she did her best to keep the memories out.

Zuul cleared her throat. “It was… Bad.”

Rainbow frowned and trotted forwards to give Twilight a friendly hug. “You okay?”

Twilight shook her head. “No… I think I will be later. But not for a while. Probably not a long while.”

Rainbow’s frown deepened, her wings twitched nervously across her back. “Uh… Too nervous to fire the Elements?”

Twilight’s eyes snapped open. She reached out, grabbing Rainbow by her shoulders. “What’s wrong? Why do we need to use the elements? Did Discord break free when the pirates took us?!”

Rainbow shook her head. “No! But uh, funny thing… See, this bracelet-ship-thing uses magic based on the same idea as the elements, and um…” Rainbow took a deep breath. “Short version, my turning this on woke up a whole bunch of demons who want to blow up our planet because reasons, and I figure if the elements can stop Discord they can stop some demons because well, he was basically a god, right? We need to—”

Twilight let go of Rainbow and sighed in relief. “Oh thank Celestia! Just save the world. That I can handle. That’s normal!”

Rainbow blushed slightly. “I uh… That’s quite a mood swing. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m not okay,” Twilight said casually. “But saving Equestria will help me be okay. It’s a good thing. I’m a good pony. I can do that!”

Rainbow pursed her lips and looked over to Zuul. “What happened?”

Zuul’s eyes darted between Rainbow and Twilight for a moment as the alien mare tried to make up her mind. “Well… She accidentally necromancyed a planet. Because it was full of zombies and criminals of unspeakable evil.”

Twilight shot Zuul a hurt glare.

Rainbow nodded. “Oh. Yeah I can see how that would mess her up.” She turned to look Twilight in the eye. “Twi? If it’s any consolation, Default said he was going to evict the people who took Pinkie anyways. Since uh, he’s not restricted by treaty now that I broke it and all.”

“I have zero context for any of that,” Twilight grumbled, her tail flicking irritably.

“Oh, right,” Rainbow closed her eyes and projected a hologram for Twilight and Zuul to see.

The screen showed the SYS Admin come out of a wormhole in orbit around a planet, eat it, then fire it through a smaller wormhole into intergalactic space.

“That’s Default. He really didn’t like the pirates that kidnapped you. Apparently they kept ‘unplugging my god damned internet’. That was their homeworld.” Dash summarized.

Twilight stared blankly at the hologram, her mane and tail standing upright in pure terror. A small squeak escaped her lips.

Zuul on the other hoof broke out into a huge grin. “Now that was truly awesome. In the modern and classical scenes of the word too!”

“Nothing should be that big!” Twilight whispered as a shiver racked her body.

“I’m not that big,” Default murmured through the open comm link he had played the video back for Rainbow through.

Twilight’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. AAAAAAAAAAA! It can hear me!

“I uh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! At least, not in a bad way!” Twilight yelped, staring at Rainbow’s bracelet in fear.

“You grew up on a way bigger ship. I can park in it,” Default pointed out.

“Uh, no?” Twilight said slowly.

Rainbow cleared her throat. “Y— Yeah, about that… We’re going to need to re-write history books. Cuz uh, we didn’t evolve. We were made by ancient lonely aliens who wanted friends and our whole solar system is actually one of their ships.”

Twilight blinked. “What?”

Rainbow adjusted the hologram to show Equus, and more importantly highlight the presently offline arcane structures which would cover the entire star system into a single intergalactic capable vessel.

“Exactly what I said,” Rainbow grunted.

Twilight stared at the screen. The spell was incomprehensibly vast and complex, but her unparalleled mind saw that not only was the spell sound, but also refined, elegant, and clearly the result of wizards who created such things very frequently as nothing else could explain the wondrously well engineered state of the spell she was looking at.

Twilight laughed once then passed out.

Rainbow Dash - 6th of Solar Dusk, 1st year of Harmony

749,573.29

GA Chebureki, Stellar Orbit -- Gruis, Aurigae Sector

“Twilight!”

Rainbow’s wings flared as Twilight fell face first to the deck. She jumped forwards, catching her before she hit the floor.

Zuul stepped over to the two and gently pushed Twilight upright while sending the mare a few mental probes designed to bring her back to consciousness.

“I’m sorry,” Rainbow said as she gently kept Twilight upright. “I didn’t think you’d pass out if you saw that. I thought you would think it was cool.”

Twilight stirred, shaking herself slowly as she came back to consciousness. “Ow… head,” she whimpered, her eyes firmly shut.

Rainbow eeped and leaned back to check Twilight’s eyes for any sign of a concussion. “I’m sorry! Did you hit your horn on me? I didn’t notice. I’ve got shields up and stuff so—”

Twilight shook her head and moaned. “No… No… I just…”

Twilight took a deep breath, her wings flapped slightly. “That. Is a incompre— It’s a big spell. Really big. Bigger than anything big!”

Rainbow gave Twilight a shaky smile. “Uh… No?”

Twilight’s eyes widened. “NO!? How can you say no?! What can be bigger than a star system turned into a ship?”

Default cleared his throat, still remaining but a voice for the moment. “Well, there’s the shelter we made to dock over six hundred ships of that scale.”

Twilight blinked once then sat down as swiftly as her body would let her. “I’m going to just, sit here for a bit,” she murmured.

Rainbow bit her lip. “Um, unfortunately we don’t have much time…” She looked down at her foreleg, wishing Default would provide a video feed for her too look at. “Since you’re talking again, I take it you’ve got Rarity and Fluttershy?”

“I do,” Default reported. “Ra—”

The ship’s intercom hummed, interrupting their conversation with an announcement indicating the FTL jump had been completed and the ship was now enroute to a repair dock.

Default sighed in irritation at the interruption, wondering briefly why the ship didn’t quietly alert everyone via a telepathic notification. “As I was saying, Rarity refused to leave without her house. So, I’m carrying an extra planet right now. Don’t worry, I can slot this right into your star system in a nice orbit without messing anything up.”

Twilight raised a hoof. “Carrying a planet?”

“Yes. I’m a construction ship. I can build custom planets, as well as transport them to the desired property.” Default reported in the same way one might say they were a pizza delivery boy.

Twilight nodded twice before fixing her eyes on Rainbow’s bracelet. “Mhm… Mhm… And you also said that Rarity owns an entire motherbucking planet?! HOW?! WHY?!”

Rainbow sighed. “Uh, well… Almost everypony sort of lucked into— I mean…”

Rainbow looked down at her bracelet and transitioned into AI time. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “How do I explain to her that while she was stranded alone on an alien planet and fighting zombie criminals that Rarity became a stupid-lots-of-money-heir, Fluttershy was having the time of her kinky little life, and I uh.. Well, sort of wound up on a reality show? You know, without her getting very angry.”

Faust appeared in Rainbow’s field of view, her holographic mane looking a bit more well groomed than it had before. “Be honest, just not that blunt.”

“What’s with your mane?” Default asked with an odd sound to his voice.

Faust blushed and tapped her hooves together. “I’m watching your security footage.”

“And?” Default said.

Rainbow frowned. “Wait, why are you letting her see you right now and not me?”

Default sighed. “Okay, look… Fluttershy is… Obviously an unstable mare. She was in the middle of well, you know what she was up to right?”

Rainbow nodded.

“Do you really want to see her sobbing and begging someone who talked her into half a dozen different transformations and lots of stuff she wouldn’t normally do via emotional manipulation, then tossed her aside, to take her back?”

Rainbow felt a flame of pure rage well up in her heart. She clenched her teeth, not noticing her ship-enhanced strength forcing her teeth together so tightly her shields sparked. “No… But I want to see if I can fire a photon torpedo at a person sized target!”

Faust placed a hoof on Rainbow’s shoulder. “It’s alright, Rainbow. I am going to fix this.”

“How? By giving that jerk a lecture then firing her into the sun?” Rainbow growled, her wings flaring as her rage built on itself. “Sure, Shy’s weird, but she’s also, well, her! Just because she likes a relationship which—”

Faust gently pushed Rainbow’s wings back against her sides. “Rainbow, it’s okay. She needs someone who is… Like minded. I’m going to go over there and give her anything she needs.”

Rainbow blinked. “Wait, like… You also like that kind of—”

Faust shook her head. “No. I don’t. But she is a very pretty mare in emotional distress and the simplest solution to ensuring she can do her part of our plan is to give her what was taken away. A loving and dominant partner.”

“That is not okay!” Default and Rainbow shouted in unison.

Faust tilted her head to one side. “Why not?”

“Because you don't like that kind of stuff!” Rainbow snapped, her eyes narrowing to slits. “It’s not okay to give her everything then take it away!”

“Yeah! That’s a huge violation of our ethics programming!” Default exclaimed his voice wavering slightly. “Are you okay? Do you need any hardware repairs? Because otherwise what the hell is wrong with you?”

Faust gave the two a deadpan stare. “Uh, guys? I’m authorised to make organic constructs. I’m just going to go calm her down, interview her, and make a partner custom tailored to her exact needs. A biodroid programmed to love someone is… Perhaps a little unethical but I can’t think of a better solution to this very immediate and time sensitive problem other than deleting her memories. Which I can’t do even with her permission. I would need a doctor’s note.”

Rainbow squirmed in place, eventually taking a hissing breath. “I mean… Yeah but it’s still not—”

Faust shot Rainbow a look so deadly serious it made her take a step back. “You said these elements took a thousand years to locate new bearers. Fluttershy is unable to provide her activation key right now. Do you know an alternative bearer for Kindness? We do not have very much more time.”

Default sighed. “Well shit, she’s got a point there.”

Rainbow nodded slowly. “Yeah… She does. Okay fine. Do it, but like, as not-evil as you can.”

“I will,” Faust promised, her eyes softening as she acknowledged Rainbow’s concerns. “Default, let me know if Pinkie requires any similar assistance. I don’t imagine she’ll be okay.”

“Will do,” Default acknowledged. “Rainbow, you need to resolve this conversation so we can pick everyone up and move to stage two.”

Rainbow nodded and swapped back to real time. She cleared her throat and look up at Twilight.

Twilight blinked, her eyes widening. “You just instantly changed your facial expression. How did you do that?”

Rainbow snorted. At least this one is easy. “I can use this bracelet to work at computer speeds. I asked Default how to explain things best… So uh… Rarity was bought buy a super rich guy who freed her. She’s been fine this whole time. Fluttershy was bought by someone we needs a kick in the face, to be used as a sex toy… I mean, you know Shy. She was okay with that. But not being tossed aside like she was just now.”

Twilight’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Okay. Someone needs a slap and a lecture… Also, are you telling me that everypony but Pinkie and I had fun this whole time?”

“Buck no,” Rainbow siad with a shake of her head. “AJ was in a gladiator ring. That’s not really what matters though. What matters is I need to take you and Pinkie back home right now so we can get the elements.”

Zuul frowned, the corners of her mouth parting to show her teeth. “There is a problem, Pinkie is… Injured. Badly.”

Rainbow looked down at her bracelet. “Is that a problem, or can I do medical stuff with this?”

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Default replied with a chipper tone. “If one of you could display a ship’s map while Rainbow gives me access to her teleporter system, I’ll transport you directly there.”

Twilight took a quick breath and began tapping at her room’s screen to pull up a map. Her wounds had been easily healed. Her body regenerated on its own. She’d simply had to eat a lot of palamini. Pinkie was in much more dire straits.

“Pinkie is… Poisoned. We can’t take her out of stasis for long and the medics here have no idea what to do to counteract the poison,” Twilight explained as she finally brought the ship’s map up. “We’re here, and the medical bay is here.”

The instant Twilight’s hoof touched the map Default initiated the transport. The three vanished in a flash of light, appearing in the medbay with a bright white flourish of sparks that sent three medics running out of the room while screaming about overloading power conduits.

Rainbow watched the three sprint past two surgical beds and endless wall mounted screens and out the doors with a smirk on her face. “Heh! I’ll have to remember that can happen when I teleport.”

Twilight cleared her throat, drawing Rainbow’s attention to a stasis field projector which had been placed in the center of the room. The field held Pinkie, weightless, curled up, frozen in a look of extreme pain and anguish.

Rainbow felt a wave of disgust well up in her as she trotted forwards to place a hoof on the side of the field, wishing she could give Pinkie a hug. What the buck happened to her to make her like this? Whatever Twilight did with that necromancy, it wasn't’ enough.

Twilight trotted over to the med bay’s intercom and pressed the button down with her hoof. “Twilight to Bridge: There’s no power surge in the med bay. I teleported. Rainbow has arrived with um… Unknowably powerful magic. We’re going to try to heal Pinkie.”

A male voice crackled through the speaker. “Understood. Lieutenant, cancel the engineering team. Have them go back to fixing the dorsal struts.”

Rainbow looked down at the field projector. “So, Default. I turn this off, then what do I do?”

“Stick your hoof on her and let me work the tech,” the AGI answered.

Rainbow nodded and began to inspect the stasis generator case, searching for any kind of switch.

“You tap it twice,” Twilight instructed.

Rainbow tapped the small silver oval twice and the field flickered, fizzled, then flicked out of existence after lowering Pinkie to the floor.

Pinkie moaned and squirmed in place. The tears which had been frozen on her face began to flow down her cheeks, and low murmured whimpers filled the air.

Rainbow reached out and set a hoof on Pinkie’s shoulder. The party pony was burning up inside. Rainbow flinched. It’s like she has a fever. A really really bad fever.

“Default? Are you—”

“Working on it… Hang on…” Default murmured. “Okay, that’s what it is. Give me a second to lock onto all of it… Okay, Dash? Look around for an empty bottle will you?”

Rainbow frowned, unsure why that would be helpful. A quick look around the medbay revealed an empty glass beaker on the countertop next to the door.

“There’s a beaker on the—”

“Yep! I see it, you’ve been streaming video this whole time. NOPONY drink this, okay?”

Rainbow’s bracelet flashed white. A wave of shimmering silver energy ran down Rainbow’s leg into Pinkie. It rippled across her body, making her fur glisten and sparkle. As the wave swept over her, a grayish-green yellow-flecked liquid flowed into the beaker from dozens of blood-vessel sized portals.

The wave reached Pinkie’s tail tip and vanished. The liquid stopped just under the top of the beaker. Twilight looked at the vessel full of transmuted blood and sludge, suppressed the urge to vomit, and carefully levitated it into the closest biohazard disposal bin.

Pinkie squirmed under Rainbow’s hoof. Her burning temperature was rapidly decreasing. Rainbow bent down and gently wrapped Pinkie in a hug. “Pinkie? Can you hear me? It’s okay now.”

Twilight vanished in a flash of lavender light, appearing next to Rainbow so she came out of her teleport hugging Pinkie as well. “You’re safe Pinkie. We’re going home now, okay?”

Pinkie’s eyes fluttered open. “It’s not okay…” She whispered.

Rainbow felt her heart break in two. What could they possibly have done to her to break—

Pinkie sniffled and wrapped her friends in a hug so tight Rainbow’s shields flickered with static around Pinkie’s grip. The party pony wipered and looked up into her friend’s eyes. “He— He liked to… Make you upset. Because flavor.”

Rainbow’s left eye twitched. She turned to look at Twilight. “This guy was going to eat her?!”

Twilight nodded. “Yes.”

Pinkie nodded. “Yeah… That’s okay. Everyone needs to eat.”

Her tone and serious expression made it perfectly clear that Pinkie truly didn’t care that someone had been planning to eat her.

Rainbow, Twilight, Zuul, and Default paused for a long moment then all asked. “What, what?”

Pinkie hugged her friends tighter. “I— Everyone has to eat. He eats meat. I didn’t want to be, but… No pony wants to die. But we all do. I don’t mind what happens after… So what if something eats me after.”

Twilight bit her lip, deciding to never tell Pinkie that she wouldn’t have been eaten after she had died.

Pinkie sniffled and let go of her friends, her ears and mane hung limply. “N--No, the… Flavoring wasn’t okay… That’s all.”

Rainbow felt something deep inside her snap. Whatever had been done to Pinkie to make her feel this way would be returned on her tormentors a thousand fold. Assuming Twilight had not killed them already.

“What did they do to you, Pinkie?” Rainbow asked, her calm voice and rage filled eyes making everyone in the room but Pinkie flinch.

“Read my mind…” Pinkie murmured. “Found the worst thing… Then make you do it.”

Twilight gently hugged Pinkie to her barrel. “Do you want to tell us? So we can help?”

Pinkie nodded. “He— He made me make choco-chunk-sugar-cookies! But wrong!”

Everypony blinked. “What?”

“Everything… Everything was a substitute. But the wrong substitute!” Pinkie whimpered, her ears laying limp atop her head as tears flooded her eyes. “Instead of all-purpose flour, cornmeal. Instead of milk, dehydrated skim milk! Instead of eggs, chia seeds. All the chocolate was carob, and— and— and—”

Pinkie threw herself to the deck and began to sob. “Instead of sugar I used aspartame!”

Zuul and Default spent several agonizingly long moments trying to figure out how this was torture and what to say to not make the situation worse. Twilight and Rainbow instantly tackled Pinkie to hug her as hard as they could while babbling about how everything was okay now and she could make them the right way as soon as they got home.

Pinkie returned their hugs, continuing to cry.

Default twiddled his digital hooves nervously then cleared his throat. “Um, I may be able to help.”

Rainbow opened her mouth to tell Default they needed a minute, but Pinkie reached up, gently took Rainbow’s foreleg and turned it so she could look at the bracelet. “You can, mystery-voice?”

Rainbow smiled slightly. Seems like she’s not too broken. Good!

“This is Default,” Rainbow introduced. “He’s nice… But a little scary once you know how big he is.”

“How big?” Pinkie asked slowly.

“Big enough where if it would help, you and I could make one of those cookies as big as a whole continent,” Default replied.

Rainbow snorted. “Please, I’ve seen that cargo bay. You fit a planet in it!”

Pinkie’s ears instantly perked. “A planet?”

“Yeah, but I don’t have that much organic mass stored for synthesizing—”

Pinkie twisted Rainbow’s leg to stare directly into the glowing gem. The manic look in her eyes burned almost as brightly as the artificial star trapped within the stone.

“Planet. Sized. COOKIE!” Pinkie exclaimed, her mane immediately poofing up to its normal volume.

Default cleared his throat. “Well, I guess I could do a matter-energy conversion. So, yeah! Sure! If it makes you feel better, and if we can put it in orbit around a random planet that’s in the process of evolving sentient life.”

Pinkie gasped and covered her moulth with her hooves as she broke out into a huge smile. “We’ll give them a cookie moon!”

Default laughed. “We should do a planetary ring of milk to go with it.” The AGI paused for a heartbet then hummed. “Should we fabricate a cosmic sized blender and stuff to do this, or—”

“YES!” Pinkie shouted as she hugged Rainbow's bracelet. “Dashie, you make the best friends!”

Rainbow sighed and slowly shook her head. “You know, with anypony else, this wouldn’t have worked.”

Twilight nodded. “Yep.”

Zuul raised a hoof. “I have several questions.”

“As do I!” Default announced. “Pinkie, you're the fun kind of insane, right? I’m not trying to be mean. I want to know if you’d be interested in watching a Rube Goldberg machine I made to kick a gas giant into a black hole. There’s a bit where I made this little cosmic train that uses an asteroid belt as the rails.”

Twilight blinked and cleared her throat. “I’d like to see that, actually.”

Pinkie let go of Rainbow’s leg and smiled. “So would I! But after the cookie… And also after the save the galaxy thing we need to do.”

Default quickly checked his memory logs. “Wait, but, we didn’t tell you about—”

Twilight gently placed a hoof on Rainbow’s bracelet. “Default, it’s Pinkie. Trust me, don’t think about it.”