My battery is low, and it’s getting dark

by Naughty_Ranko

Rating: everyone
Tags: Spike, Other, Starlight Glimmer, Science Fiction, Twilight Sparkle, Human, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Mystery
Length: 65256

The global dust storm of a century, the dying message of an indomitable robot, and a unicorn who just can’t let go of a mystery.

The global dust storm of a century, the dying message of an indomitable robot, and a unicorn who just can’t let go of a mystery.

(Now with a dramatic reading by Skijaramaz - Tone Shift.)
(Russian translation available at ponyfiction.org.)

Published 2019-02-25 20:40:01 UTC
Last updated 2024-03-15 15:07:53 UTC

Prologue

*** Mission Log: Sol 5111 ***

*** AOS – DSN ***

*** Message Received (Source: JPL): CMD Status Update ***

*** Attempting to read tau level: 10.8 ***

*** Message Sent: My battery is low, and it’s getting dark ***

*** Message Received (Source: JPL): CMD Perform Act… ***

*** PARSE ERROR: Command not recognized. ***

*** Retrying connection ***

*** Retrying connection ***

*** Retrying connection ***

*** DSN – LOS ***

*** Message Sent: My battery is low, and it’s getting dark ***

*** Failsafe mode engaged: Powering down non-essential systems ***

If any human eyes had beheld the scene, they would have likely described it with two words: beautiful and terrifying.

If there was such a thing as eternal night, then that’s what Perseverance Valley on the western rim of Endeavour Crater experienced that day as total darkness engulfed its lone occupant. Record winds tore at its metal, dust choked out the life-giving sun, denying it its one source of energy. Even lightning, rare as it was on the hostile planet, arced through the skies that rapidly turned from red to black.

It was impossible to tell for the small machine from where it was, but this was a global storm, the biggest its creators had ever witnessed through telescopes on their neighboring planet. In the midst of that violent maelstrom, on a distant, barren world, cut off from contact with its builders, stood MER-B, more commonly known as the Opportunity Rover.

And as it hunkered down in an attempt to survive yet another of the endless challenges the red planet had hurled at it for nearly fifteen years, it only knew one thing: My battery is low, and it’s getting dark.

*** Mission Log: Sol 5112 ***

*** Powering up for automated status update ***

*** Attempting to read tau level: 11.2 ***

*** Message Sent: My battery is low, and it’s getting dark ***

*** Failsafe mode engaged: Powering down non-essential systems ***

A universe away, a lone unicorn sat on a crystal rooftop and looked up at the stars. Even as she lifted the mug of tea to her lips in her magic and drank, her eyes never wandered, never turning away from the stars.

“Starlight?”

She barely acknowledged the young dragon’s voice, straining her ears to listen to something else, something that had somehow grabbed a hold of her and wouldn’t let go. And she knew full well that her ears weren’t actually the part of her picking it up.

“Another sleepless night?” the dragon asked, unoffended at being ignored and sitting down next to her.

Starlight Glimmer sighed. “Yes, Spike. It’s gone again, at least for tonight. But it’s keeping me up anyway.”

The young drake said nothing for a while. Then: “Twilight is starting to get worried about you … as am I.”

Starlight permitted herself a smile. “You both think I’m going nuts.”

“No! NO! … Well, maybe a little. You are the only one who says she can hear it. Twilight and even Starswirl have tried, and neither could pick up anything. But, I just want you to know, nutty unicorns are kind of my specialty. So, I’m not giving up on you,” Spike said, leaning against her shoulder and watching the stars alongside her.

“I suppose that’s a relief,” Starlight chuckled, “at least I know someone I trust will come by once a week to give me pudding after they’ve put me in a padded cell.”

*** Mission Log: Sol 5113 ***

*** Powering up for automated status update ***

*** Attempting to read tau level: 13.5 ***

*** Message Sent: My battery is low, and it’s getting dark ***

Opportunity waited, listened and heard nothing. It reached out to the Deep Space Network and heard nothing. It readjusted its transceiver for the secondary relay satellite and heard nothing. In a desperate attempt to make itself heard, to at least upload the final bits of data it had collected, it did a sweep of the Martian sky and heard … something!

*** AOS – undefined ***

*** Message Received (Source: null): Hello? Can you hear me? ***

*** PARSE ERROR: Command not recognized. ***

*** Message Sent: My battery is low, and it’s getting dark ***

*** Message Received (Source: null): My name is Starlight Glimmer. I’m hearing your calls. But it feels like they’re getting weaker. Are you alright? Who are you? ***

*** PARTIAL COMMAND RECOGNIZED: Name ***

*** Message Sent: MER-B, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent: My battery is low, and it’s getting dark ***

*** Message Received (Source: null): I’m trying to run a translation spell, but I can’t understand you. Please, what are you trying to tell me? Am I getting through? ***

*** PARTIAL COMMAND RECOGNIZED: Get ***

*** Message Sent: Ready for data upload ***

*** Message Sent: My battery is low, and it’s getting dark ***

*** Message Received (Source: null): You’re getting weaker! Are you hurt? Do you need help? ***

*** PARSE ERROR: Command not recognized. ***

*** Message Sent: My battery is low, and it’s getting dark ***

*** Message Received (Source: null): Where are you? ***

*** PARSE ERROR: Command not recognized. ***

*** Message Sent: My battery is low, and it’s getting dark ***

*** Message Received (Source: null): I don’t understand! Keep talking to me! The more you send along the telepathic link, the closer I can pinpoint your position. ***

*** PARTIAL COMMAND RECOGNIZED: Send / Position ***

*** Message Sent: 2.28°S 5.23°W, Endeavour Crater, Perseverance Valley ***

*** Message Received (Source: null): Hang on! I’m going to try something! Just hold on and wait! I’m going to help you! ***

*** PARTIAL COMMAND RECOGNIZED: Wait ***

*** Awaiting Recovery Command ***

*** undefined – LOS ***

The little rover waited. If it had been capable of feeling anything, it would have jumped for joy at making itself heard. Its creators, or at least someone, had heard it. It was dying, but at least it would upload its final data set, complete its mission.

In the jet-black sky of Mars another lightning bolt could be seen, a long arc of the purest azure energy imaginable. If the little rover could have detected it with its instruments, it would have likely thought itself doomed. If it had thought that, it wouldn’t have cared. Someone had heard it, its mission would continue once more.

And as the lightning bolt arced into its metal chassis, Endeavor Crater once again stood empty, like it had for thousands of years.

A universe away, a heavily panting unicorn with a sparking horn lay flat on her stomach atop the roof of her mentor’s castle. Her wide eyes took in the object she’d just brought before her with a teleport spell that likely not even one of the Princesses could have pulled off, and finally smiled.

“I got you,” she sighed, her eyes closing. Even the throbbing headache from her overstrained horn and fatigue from draining her magic reserves to the limit couldn’t keep the smile from forming on her muzzle. “It’s gonna be okay now.”

Starlight Glimmer drifted off into the first peaceful sleep she’d had in days.

Meanwhile, the little rover beside her waited a few minutes to see if there was another command forthcoming, then took a reading of the sky.

*** Attempting to read tau level: Starlight detected ***

*** Message Sent: My battery is low, and it’s getting … brighter ***

*** Failsafe mode engaged: Powering down non-essential systems ***

Author's Note

This story is dedicated to one tough, little robot: Mars Exploration Rover-B Opportunity.

Before anyone feels the need to point this out to me: Yes, I know Opportunity's last message to Earth weren't actually the words "My battery is low, and it’s getting dark." That wording is from the tweet of a science correspondent who was taking a bit of creative license in paraphrasing the rover's last data transmission before it was engulfed by the 2018 Mars Global Dust Storm.

I don't know what will happen with this story. It'll mostly be little vignettes around 1000 words, and I've got at least a couple of scenes planned out. But don't expect any grande story unfolding here.

This is mainly a tribute to Opportunity and the cast of MLP, not to mention me trying to get back into writing at least a little regularly.

2. Praise the Sun

*** Mission Log: Sol 5115 ***

*** AOS – undefined ***

*** Message Received (Source: null): Yes, I agree with Starlight. It’s definitely more than just magic feedback. The machine seems to respond in some manner, though I’m not detecting anything right now. ***

*** PARTIAL COMMAND RECOGNIZED: Detect ***

*** Attempting to run self-diagnostic followed by start-up sequence ***

“Told you,” Starlight Glimmer said, trying to suppress her smugness, which she was failing miserably at.

Twilight rolled her eyes, but gave her student a good-natured smile nonetheless before turning to her own mentor who had been brought in to consult. “So do you think it’s sentient, Princess Celestia? Is it really trying to communicate? Could it be dangerous?”

“Those are all good questions, Twilight,” the tall, white alicorn answered, “questions I don’t have the answers to, I’m afraid. I can only say that it doesn’t have a magical signature of its own, and that I don’t feel any evil intent. So I don’t think it represents any danger, not by design at least.”

“That’s amazing in its own right!” Starlight exclaimed. “No magic! It’s a lifeform purely based on mechanical and electrical components.”

“We don’t know that,” Twilight replied. In an attempt to rein in her student’s exuberance and tendency to jump to conclusions, she more often than not found herself playing devil’s advocate these days. Hence why she’d insisted on bringing in Princess Celestia first to check for any dangers. “For all we know, its reactions could be predetermined. They’re not necessarily a sign of intelligence.”

“It can feel, Twilight. It called out for help.”

Twilight knew better by now than to continue arguing along this line. Starlight had convinced herself that the initial contact was an emotional cry for help, and she seemed to believe it when she said that their visitor was feeling something during certain communications. But so far, she was the only one who ascribed emotions to it. Twilight believed that Starlight believed it, but that didn’t necessarily make it true. Feelings weren’t scientific evidence, a thought that Opportunity would have likely agreed with. “What do you think, Princess Celestia?”

“It’s probably too early to tell either way,” she replied non-committally.

Starlight rolled her eyes. “Way to break the stalemate, Princess. Politicians.”

“Starlight,” Twilight hissed, admonishing her student quietly. “Remember who you’re talking to.”

Time had made her more comfortable with the Princess of the Sun, a far cry from the childlike admiration she’d held for her teacher well into her adult life. But there was still a certain base etiquette she always kept up around her. Starlight had no such compunctions, not after once having switched Celestia and Luna’s cutie marks and realizing later that she had in fact not been banished and then imprisoned in the place she’d been banished to.

Celestia chuckled quietly at the antics of the younger alicorn and her unicorn friend. “There is one more thing I’d like to try.” She raised her head and lit up her horn in an unusually bright, golden glow. That golden glow slowly began to envelop the rover.

And the rover noticed. If it had had any eyes, they would have been wide as saucers.

*** Attempting to read tau level: 0.0 ***

*** Solar Panel Efficiency: 100% ***

*** Battery Level: Full ***

*** Direct Sunlight Detected: Engaging Solaire Protocol ***

A universe away, in a backroom of JPL in Pasadena, a programmer with a sense of humor laughed. “No, really. The subroutine is in there. Not that it will ever trigger, of course. Even on the clearest day, the thin Mars atmosphere will produce some occlusion. For Oppy to read a tau level of zero, it’d have to be in space and pointed directly at the sun.”

His colleague, who had listened politely over their Asian takeout lunch, shook his head. “I can’t believe nobody caught that during code review.”

The first man shrugged. “I embedded it in the start-up routines. It’s just an IF-Statement and a couple extra lines, anyway. Nobody would look twice at it.” He sighed. “I hope we hear back from her when this storm clears, even if it’s just the standard ping.”

“Yeah, well. Here’s hoping.”

Meanwhile, deep down in the server room, on a monitor that nobody ever looked at, a message popped up and just as quickly vanished.

*** AOS – MER-B Direct ***

*** Message Received (Source: MER-B): Praise the Sun! ***

*** Status update not recognized: disregarding message ***

*** MER-B Direct – LOS ***

If Opportunity had been imbued with a sense of humor, it would have loved to send the picture it took with its PanCam in that instant back home. Upon waking to the never before used subroutine, its camera eyes popped open and its robotic arm, usually stowed in a rest position but not fully retracted and bent back at the elbow joint, raised itself up to the whirring of its strained motor in a salute to where it believed the sun ought to be.

The picture it took in that moment, had it ever been sent back to its creators, would have made glorious, not to mention hilarious, history as the first picture of alien life humanity had ever seen. Starlight Glimmer, whose ear-splitting grin and puppy-dog eyes almost filled the frame by itself, came away from it with marginally more dignity than the two princesses, whose shocked expressions and flared wings in response to the sudden movement made them look more like startled chickens than royalty.

“It’s alive! It’s alive! It’s alive!” Starlight sang for joy as she hopped around the two gobsmacked alicorns like an excited filly in circles and figure eights.

*** Recovery Complete ***

*** All systems nominal ***

*** Message Sent: Power Status – Solar Groovy ***

*** Message Sent: My battery is full, and I’m eager to explore ***

Author's Note

Yes, “solar groovy” is an actual term being used by NASA mission control to describe light levels on the Martian surface which allow for continued science operations with solar panels, although Oppy wouldn’t send it as a message in clear text, much like with “My battery is low, and it’s getting dark” or “My battery is full, and I’m eager to explore” I’m taking a bit of creative license here.

In all likelihood, the entire transmission would probably boil down to two numbers. An integer value to indicate battery charge in percent, followed by either a 1 or 0 to indicate operational readiness. But that doesn’t exactly make for engaging reading.

And no, the Solaire Protocol is not actually part of Oppy’s programming. That’s something I made up. But I’m a programmer, and there’s two things I know for certain: Every programmer is a nerd to some degree and would totally do something like this if they think they can get away with it.

Also, don’t get used to this upload schedule. It’s been a slow week at work so far, but that’s not gonna last.

3. Rockstar

*** Mission Log: Sol 5116 ***

*** AOS – undefined ***

*** Message Received (Source: null): It’s not a rock. ***

*** PARTIAL COMMAND RECOGNIZED: Rock ***

*** Preparing to clear sample bin in preparation for fresh sample ***

*** Scanning … ***

“I know it’s not a rock, Maud,” Starlight sighed. “But what do you make of it?”

Maud Pie looked at her friend with that unblinking stare of hers. “I don’t know. What would one make out of a machine from another universe? I suppose with some work, you could turn it into an umbrella stand.”

Starlight’s jaw worked wordlessly for a while before she replied: “You know what I meant. I know you do. Maud? What are you looking at?”

Following her line of sight, Starlight watched Opportunity move its robotic arm towards its body, grabbing onto a small object that had been tucked away in its chassis and depositing said object slightly in front of it, almost as if to show it off to the two ponies and say: ‘Look what I found! Neat, huh?’

“Huh,” Maud offered in her monotone voice. “That … is a rock.”

“Then what do you make of that?” Starlight asked triumphantly.

Maud looked her in the eyes and held her gaze for a good long while. Finally she said: “I don’t know. A rock this size, there’s not a lot you could make out of it.” Pause. “Doorstop, maybe?” she finally suggested.

Starlight’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Maud! It wasn’t funny the first time.”

The earth pony once again held the eye contact without blinking. “Yes, it was.”

Starlight stared back and said nothing. The corner of her mouth twitched, as did her left eye. “Alright, yes, it was,” she conceded and broke into a fit of giggles. “Good one, Maud.”

“It’s all in the … timing,” she replied sagely. Then she lowered her head to examine the specimen more closely, sniffing at it curiously.

“It looks very … ordinary,” Starlight observed.

“Basalt, volcanic origin,” the expert stated. “Very ordinary in fact. More than 90% of volcanic rock is basalt.”

“Anything else?” Starlight asked, then suppressed a shudder and an ‘Ew!’ as she watched Maud lean in even closer and actually lick the stone, or more accurately the flecks of dirt still clinging to it.

“Hm, curious.” Maud dug out her pet rock from her pocket and placed him next to the sample. “Talk amongst yourselves for a while and play nice.”

Starlight gave her a look.

Maud shrugged. “Boulder wanted to say hello.”

*** PanCAM: Sample detected ***

*** IDD: Extending Instrument Deployment Device ***

*** MI: Beginning Microscopic Imaging ***

*** MI – ERROR: undefined ***

*** MI: Beginning Microscopic Imaging ***

*** MI – ERROR: undefined ***

*** MI: Beginning Microscopic Imaging ***

*** MI: Imaging underway ***

*** Spectrographic Analysis Queued ***

*** APXS – WARNING: Radioisotope source decaying, additional processing time required ***

*** MB – WARNING: Radioisotope source decayed, instrument offline due to command override ***

*** MTES – WARNING: Mirror obstruction detected, instrument offline due to command override***

Maud looked on as Opportunity became very excited, taking picture after picture and reading after reading from Boulder, happy to be exploring once again. Finally, she turned back to the patiently waiting Starlight. “The rock is ordinary, but the dirt is out of this world.”

“Duh, I brought it here from a different dimension. Of course it’s not from this world.”

Maud shook her head, ever so slowly. “No, that’s not what I meant. Salt.”

“Salt?” Starlight asked, confused.

“Salt,” Maud confirmed. “Perchlorate salt, to be exact. In an unusually high concentration. So high, in fact, that it couldn’t have come from an ecosystem anywhere close to the one here on Equus."

“Explain.”

“Perchlorate gets broken down by microbes over time. To find it in such a high concentration, it indicates a pretty much lifeless, barren biome.”

“Huh, so you mean to say its homeworld is much more arid and inhospitable than Equestria? Maybe it was stuck in a desert for some reason when I heard it call out? It was covered in a lot of red dust.”

“I’d like to take some of this dust for further study if you still have it,” Maud said in, what was for her, an incredibly excited voice that barely managed to rise above her usual monotone. “But that’s not what I’m getting at. I don’t think the place you found it in was anywhere near where it was originally built. I think your new friend here is literally an alien, sent to explore other worlds.”

Having finished its analysis, the rover turned its camera eyes towards the ponies and proudly relayed its preliminary conclusion.

*** Message Sent: It’s a rock! ***

*** Message Sent: Beginning Image Upload ***

And then it took a picture of a sight few ponies ever witness with its panoramic camera, the sight of Maudileena Daisy Pie’s face, smiling visibly.

Author's Note

No big insights and a fairly short chapter today. (Told ya work would reel me back in soon.)
But I found this. So let DJ Ranko play you out into the weekend with some smooth tunes and this musical tribute to our little rockstar.😎

4. That Human Connection

*** Mission Log: Sol 5117 ***

*** AOS – undefined ***

*** Message Received (Source: null): No, I can’t say that I’ve ever seen anything like it. ***

“Nothing like it at all?”

Sunset Shimmer, once more standing in her birth form in Starlight’s workshop and laden down with stacks upon stacks of books she’d brought from the human world at Starlight’s request in her saddlebags, thought about that for a moment. “Well, I mean, I’ve seen pictures of prototypes on the internet. And Micro Chips made a small toy robot for the science fair last year. But no, I’ve never seen anything matching our friend here even remotely in the human world.”

Starlight nodded, disappointment written all over her face. “Did you also check out the thing I asked you about?”

Sunset levitated a certain book in between them, slightly giggling. She couldn’t believe how good it felt to use a simple levitation spell.

When Starlight heard nothing for a while, simply observing Sunset bob the book up and down in her magic, she gave her an amused look: “Would you like to join Twilight and me for some magic practice later? Looks like you’ve been missing it.”

Sunset, letting out an embarrassed cough at having been caught daydreaming, nodded. “That sounds nice. Anyway, this book has info on every probe my world’s space programs have ever sent up. But there’s no mission that had a rover like this. Even the biggest one was only half the size for starters.”

“Rover?” Starlight asked, pausing from skimming through the book and looking up.

Sunset nodded. “That’s what they call an autonomous wheeled exploration vehicle.”

“A rover, huh? Makes sense, I suppose. I’ve been wondering what to call it. But that’s just a descriptor. It really needs a name.”

“Hm,” Sunset mused. “Well, the two small ones they used for our moon were unimaginatively called Luna 1 and Luna 2. Though a certain vice-principal approved and kept reminding us in every astronomy class she ever taught. The one they put on Duna was called Braveheart if I remember correctly. And then there is Aphrodite, which is still transmitting from the surface of Eve. But that’s just a lander, not an actual rover.”

She smiled, remembering that evening not too long ago. Human Twilight had talked her into staying over at her place and watching the live stream of the landing, turning it into a science / slumber party. Of course, tacking the word party onto anything inevitably had summoned Pinkie Pie as well as the rest of the girls.

Sunset hadn’t really cared all that much at the time, but Sci-Twi’s enthusiasm for the mission had been infectious. What had stuck with Sunset more than anything else was listening to mission control at the moment of touchdown. One poetically inclined operator, upon confirming the surface contact light at his console, had called out the phrase ‘Flight, EECOM. Aphrodite has kissed Eve.’ The quote ran wild all over social media for weeks afterwards, with fan art, music, web comics and everything. And she remembered Sci-Twi’s adorkable squeeing at that precise moment along with the general cheer that went up in mission control over the stream.

She placed her saddlebags on the nearby workbench and rolled her stiff shoulders. “Alright, books delivered. What’s next on your checklist?”

Starlight gave her an innocent look. “Checklist? What checklist?”

“You’re not fooling me, Starlight Glimmer,” she replied with wry amusement, “you’ve been pestering me over the journal for days until I could get away, and you’re the student of the Princess of Checklists. I’m sure you’ve got a plan for how to make the most out of my visit.”

“Well, since you’re offering your expertise.” Starlight smiled and hovered a clipboard in front of her. “I was hoping you could help me out with the markings on the outside. It’s definitely not Equestrian, so I was hoping it was maybe a human language you know?”

“Let’s have a look then.”

Over the next half hour or so, the two unicorns busied themselves, studying the various markings on the rover’s outer hull, speculating on their meaning and taking down notes. If Opportunity was embarrassed by the close scrutiny of two beautiful mares, it didn’t show it.

“Well, it doesn’t have any language on it I know,” Sunset eventually concluded.

Starlight’s ears drooped, but she was determined not to let this stop her. “Alright, what do you make of this?” She pointed at a rectangle imprinted on Opportunity’s instrument arm that showed red and white stripes as well as stars on a smaller, blue square.

“Yeah, I noticed that. No words on this one. National flag, maybe? Or it could be the mission patch. The white could signify tire tracks in the red sand you’ve found on it, and the stars mark it as a mission to another planet.”

“Huh, could be,” Starlight conceded, a hoof thoughtfully at her chin. “I thought it might have been a hazard warning, since it’s on a moving part. What do you make of the two in the front? I would have thought those seemed more decorative.”

Sunset took another look at the two markings at the front lip of the solar panels that spelled JPL and NASA respectively. “I agree. I’d say they’re letters, but they’re clearly more stylized than the writing we’ve found on other parts which seemed more technical in nature. So I’m willing to bet they’re logos of some kind. This is just a hunch, but I think this one is the one for their spaceflight agency.” She pointed confidently at the NASA logo. “But the other one has me stumped. Not enough to go on.”

“Okay, let’s move on to the sun dial.”

*** PARTIAL COMMAND RECOGNIZED: Sun dial ***

*** PanCAM: Acquiring Calibration Target ***

*** PanCAM: Recalibrating … ***

“Yes, let’s! I think that’s by far the most interesting thing,” Sunset replied, visibly excited and making her way to the back, the rover seemingly following her with its camera eyes to look at the same object. She cleared her throat. “I think the center is an artistic representation of your friend’s home solar system which has two planets.”

Starlight blinked. “That’s … quite a conclusion to come to in such a short time.”

“It is. But look, you’ve got this big thing in the middle. It’s gold and there are some protrusions on the shaft that I think represent the rays of the sun. They don’t have any obvious function, even if the globe and shaft do.”

“Right, I guess I can see that,” Starlight said dubiously.

Sunset pointed at two circles around it. “I think the inner circle with the blue dot represents the rover’s homeworld. The red dot on the outer circle is the planet you found it on. You said it was covered in red dust. In the human world, those would roughly line up with the positions of Earth and Duna.”

Starlight jotted that down in her notes. “That’s incredible! I would have never thought of that, though we need another data point to confirm it.” She was glad to have brought Sunset Shimmer in. The fiery redhead’s artistic inclinations offered insights that Starlight’s more scientifically geared brain might never even have considered. “But what about the language?”

Sunset raised one hoof. “Languages! Plural.” She beckoned the other unicorn closer and indicated a prominent word, MARS, which was seemingly followed by a number. “I think all the markings on the edge are the same as that word, just in different languages.”

Starlight rechecked her notes on the sixteen smaller markings. “Are you sure? They vary widely in character count.”

“They do. But many human languages work differently when it comes to writing out phonetic sounds. In some cases you have a character for an entire syllable for example. And there are characters that match. So that word must be important. It could be the rover’s name, followed by a serial number.”

Starlight nodded. “Could be. It would be nice not to call it rover or the machine or it anymore, if we can figure out what it says.”

“There you are!” The two unicorns turned towards the voice at the door. “Should have figured you two had absconded to your mad scientist lab,” Spike said as he entered the room. Turning to the rover, he made a fist and lightly bumped it against the rover’s instrument arm. “Hey, Opi! You sure are popular with the mares.”

*** PanCAM: Recalibration finished ***

*** IDD: Impact detected ***

*** PanCAM: Reorienting to find source of tremor ***

As Opportunity’s main camera swiveled around, it honed in on Spike, giving the illusion of nodding in response to the fist bump as it centered and then zoomed in on the dragon’s face. Spike nodded back.

“Opi?” Starlight asked. “Why do you call it that?”

“I dunno,” Spike answered with a shrug, walking over to an empty workbench, pulling himself up onto the edge and settling down on it. “You said that it seemed kind of old, with all the dust and broken parts. Opi is a dragon word for an old-timer.”

“That seems kind of … mean,” Sunset observed.

“Hardly,” Spike replied. “Have you ever seen an ancient dragon? They even make Torch look like a baby. One could probably give Celestia a run for her bits in a fight. Trust me, in dragon society Opi is a term of the highest respect.”

Starlight hummed. “Well, it’s better than rover. Rover sounds like a diamond dog name. But Opi doesn’t quite ring true for some reason.”

Spike shrugged again. “If you say so. But that’s what I’m gonna call him.” Then he turned to Sunset Shimmer. “While we’re on the subject of incredibly powerful beings that dwell in dark caves. Care to tell me why one third of the Equestrian government has locked herself into her lab with that black box you gave her?”

“Oh, thanks for reminding me, Spike. I almost forgot!” Sunset rummaged around her saddlebags and pulled a black object out of it. With a small application of magic, she released a hook on it and made it unfold. “I come bearing gifts.”

“Is that?” Starlight asked with wide eyes.

“Yep,” Sunset grinned, “a computer.”

“Then the object you gave Twilight …”

Sunset nodded again. “I brought one for her as well. Already gave it to her. Thought it would help avoid conflict in the long run if you each had your own.”

“Ah, so that’s what that high-pitched squeal from the portal room earlier was. It’ll be nice to get her out of my mane for a week or so.” She moved in to hug the other unicorn. “Thank you sooo much!!! That’s incredible! But aren’t these really expensive?”

Sunset waved her off. “Nah! Sorry to burst your bubble, but I’m not that generous. I got these for free.”

“Free!?” Starlight gasped. “Who would give away an incredible piece of technology like that for free!?”

“The computer club,” Sunset dead-panned while rolling her eyes. “They finally got new equipment, so they gave these out to anyone who wanted one. Look, I know these things look like something out of a science-fiction novel to you, but these laptops are ten years old. That’s practically forever in terms of computer age. My cellphone has more processing power than one of those dinosaurs. But that kind of makes them perfect for a beginner.”

“How much power does it take? How many computations can it make in a second? Is it able to run several things at once?”

“Whoa, slow down,” Sunset cut in, already having endured the same set of rapid-fire questions from an excited alicorn earlier that day. “I’ll give you the crash course. But I’m really not a computer expert. I can deal with Metube, MyStable and streaming from my GameStation, but that’s about it. But once you’ve come to terms with the basics, journal me, and I’ll have our Twilight walk you through the more advanced stuff.”

“Okay, just the basics for now then,” Starlight replied, eager to get started but pushing the million questions she had to the back of her mind. But one came to the forefront. “Do you think with this I can communicate with, uhm, Opi?” Even with tweaking and Twilight’s help, the translation spell had remained vague. Perhaps the machine’s thought process was so alien that it would never fully work.

“That’s the idea. I think it’s not gonna be as easy as plug and play, though. I was keeping an eye out for any access ports while we were examining it, but I didn’t spot anything that might make for a direct link,” Sunset explained while she laid out a smaller black box with a cable that connected to the laptop on one side and a small metal antenna sticking out the other. “Now, do you know Tempus Tempestus?”

“Yeah, it’s a low level lightning spell,” Starlight confirmed. “Why?”

She pointed at the power adapter and its homemade aerial. “The Equestrian power grid isn’t really up to snuff to give them enough juice. I’m sure you or Twilight can cobble together a better solution over time. But for the moment, I’ve come up with this. Tempus Tempestus at 13 thaums for five seconds. That ought to give you a full charge that is good for a couple of hours. Don’t give it more than that, or you might fry the battery.”

As Sunset and Starlight got to work, Spike, figuring that all the nerdy unicorns and alicorns in the vicinity would be far too busy to ask questions due to their new toys, slipped quietly out the door and headed for the freezer with his favorite ice cream. Meanwhile Opportunity’s UHF antenna picked up a new signal.

*** AOS – PC-YRPH3C ***

*** Message Received (Source: PC-YRPH3C): DHCPDISCOVER – 008041:aefd7e ***

*** PARSE ERROR: Command not recognized. ***

*** Message Received (Source: PC-YRPH3C): DHCPDISCOVER – 008041:aefd7e ***

*** PARSE ERROR: Command not recognized. ***

*** Message Received (Source: PC-YRPH3C): DHCPDISCOVER – 008041:aefd7e ***

*** PARSE ERROR: Command not recognized. ***

*** PC-YRPH3C – LOS ***

Author's Note

I wanted to make it clear that Sunset’s solar system is different from ours, so I gave it one that’s more like, but not completely the same as, Kerbal Space Program.

Unfortunately, Opportunity is not a DHCP-Server. If her new computer had made a direct connection with Oppy as soon as it was turned on, Starlight would have probably had an orgasm on the spot.:derpytongue2:

Here’s a picture of the sun dial that has Sunset so excited:

Its actual purpose is to give Oppy a baseline for calibrating its cameras. But it’s probably the one thing that has some artistic touch to it. They deduce some things correctly and some things incorrectly from it. Unlike the plaque on the Voyager probe, Oppy wasn’t meant to carry a message for any aliens who might find it, after all.

Finally, shoutout to _Kenzu_ for offering up some of his time in helping me research all the markings visible on Opportunity’s outer hull.

5. Spike’s Home for Technologically Traumatized Thaumaturges and Trans-Dimensional Travelers

*** Mission Log: Sol 5118 ***

*** AOS – undefined ***

*** Message Received (Source: null): I’m sorry, Ocellus. You’ll have to come back tomorrow. ***

Opportunity watched Spike silently as the dragon talked to the young Changeling at the door. “No, I’m afraid Guidance Counselor Starlight isn’t available either. She seems to have come down with the same bug as Headmare Twilight … uh, bug isn’t offensive to you, is it?”

Ocellus rolled her eyes. “Heard it only about a million times since I enrolled. It doesn’t bug me anymore, Mr. Spike.”

“Heh, keep it up, kid. Between this and your shapeshifting abilities, you’ve got great potential as a dead-pan snarker. Anyway, I’d suggest trying Ms. Applejack. I’m sure she can figure something out until tomorrow.”

“Alright,” Ocellus nodded. “Give my best to Twilight and Starlight. Hope they feel better soon.”

“I will,” Spike said, waving goodbye to the student and closing the door behind her. “Alrighty then.” He picked up the tray he’d brought from the kitchen and had sat down nearby in order to answer the door.

*** PanCam: Subject 023/B detected ***

*** Hypothesis: Subject reacts to IDD movement ***

*** Experiment devised ***

*** Testing hypothesis ***

Opportunity’s robotic arm moved slightly forward as Spike walked in. The dragon, without even thinking about it, made a fist and bumped it against the robot while walking past and setting the tray on a workbench.

*** IDD: Impact detected ***

*** Logging test result ***

*** Conclusion: Insufficient data ***

*** Preparing to repeat experiment daily ***

Spike turned towards the sorry sight in the corner of the workshop which had Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer, two of the smartest and most powerful mages Equestria had ever seen, sitting in a fetal position and covered in blankets while their bloodshot eyes twitched in irregular motions. The objects of their scorn, two unassuming black boxes, lay in front of them.

“It’s taunting me, Starlight! What’s a DirectX? Is there an indirect X? And why would it need a specific letter to display a picture?” Twilight moaned.

“At least yours isn’t making those Tartarus-damned noises.” Both ponies jumped as Starlight’s computer made a high-pitched whining sound, indicating yet another failed recovery operation. “Ugh, it’s like it’s boring into my skull! I’ve turned off all sound. I even opened the thing up and disconnected the speakers! How can it make that sound!?”

“Not again!” Twilight almost cried when she lightly moved the mouse and was greeted by yet another blue screen. “What do you want from me? I’d be happy to restart in DOS mode, whatever that is, if you gave me any indication on how to do that.”

Spike sighed. “What a sad sight.” He poured a cup of chamomile tea for Twilight and black coffee for Starlight. Leaving them to cool for a minute, he fished a regular rock from a mixed bowl of stone and gems and laid it in front of the rover. “Eat up, Opi.”

Opportunity swiveled its PanCam to the rock in front of it, then watched as Spike picked himself a nice emerald out to snack on. Noticing the stare of the camera, the dragon paused. He moved the gem closer to his mouth. The camera eyes followed. He moved it slowly away. The camera eyes followed.

“Oh, come on!” he complained, clutching the treat protectively to his chest. “I shared my quartz cereal with you just this morning.”

Opportunity didn’t blink. The staring contest continued until a buzzing sound could be heard from the other end of the room.

“Oh, alright,” Spike grumbled and placed the gem next to the rock while moving over to pick up the glowing and vibrating journal. “Enjoy.”

*** PanCAM: Sample detected ***

*** IDD: Extending Instrument Deployment Device ***

*** RAT: Preparing for core sample ***

While Opportunity was happily grinding away at the emerald with its Rock Abrasion Tool to get at ‘the good bits,’ as Spike would have put it, the dragon read the new entry in the journal which he recognized as Sunset’s handwriting.

Hello Spike. Sorry I couldn’t get back to you earlier. Twilight (human Twilight, that is) was still at her club activities. But I’ve got her for you now.

Hello? Testing … This is Twilight Sparkle … Human Twilight.

Hello, Twilight. This is Spike. Appreciate the long-distance tech support call. Starlight and Twilight (pony Twilight, that is) have just completely shut down. I guess it has to do with those boxes Sunset gave them.

Oh, wow. This thing really works! This is so weird! I’m talking to an alternate universe version of my dog through a magical journal! How does it work? Is it quantum entanglement? Would it still work if you put three journals together? Does it have any features that …

Twilight! Focus!

Oh, sorry.

That was incredible! There’s usually no stopping her when she gets like this. How on Earth did you do that? (This is Sunset, btw.)

Practice, Sunset. You gotta pinpoint the hyperventilating pauses that pop up mid-rant. It’s hit and miss, though. Better to spot a Sparkle rant from a distance and cut it off before it happens. You’ll get the hang of it. Now, in regards to my problem?

Right, let’s get down to business. Sunset didn’t really give me a lot of info on the laptops she picked up for you. What kind of OS are we dealing with?

What’s an OS?

Okay. I’d like you to get on one of the laptops please.

I can do that. Starlight just hid under her blanket with a shriek, so I guess she’s not using hers.

Alright. I want you to press the button that looks like a little window. Keep it pressed and then push ‘R.’ In the prompt that opens, type in ‘winver’, hit Enter and tell me what it says.

I don’t see … oh, wait there it is … okay. It says Windows ME at the top. … Twilight? Still there?

… Oh, dear.

Opportunity retracted its instrument arm and looked around. It took in the sights that seemed to be becoming familiar now. Considering past mission days, something felt different. There hadn’t been any shortage of interesting things to look at, yet it hadn’t moved for days. This was highly unusual. It also logged certain subjects it had tagged in different locations. This was even more unusual. Opportunity had become accustomed to going out and finding new things, not have new things popping up out of the blue.

The machine watched Starlight rocking back and forth under her blanket. Unsure what to make of the sight, it did a panoramic sweep of its surroundings and noticed something, specifically two steaming cups, one that said ‘Best Princess’ and one that said ‘I hate Mondays’ on the side, standing forgotten on a workbench while Spike’s attention had been taken up by the journal.

It turned back to the two ponies. Opportunity, having already reached the conclusion that its mission parameters were changing, reached another conclusion. Things that were supposed to be together were apart. It had observed these subjects in specific constellations before. And the ponies always seemed calmer while being in close proximity to their respective mugs. Was there anything in its programming that could rectify this? Anything to help them feel better, as they had done for the rover in cleaning it, charging it and giving it commands?

*** Experiment devised ***

*** NavCam: Calculating path ***

*** IDD: Calculating vectors ***

*** Message Received (Source: null): What do you mean, I need to update the drivers? This thing doesn’t even have wheels! ***

*** PARTIAL COMMAND RECOGNIZED: Drive / Wheels ***

*** Powering up electrical motors ***

*** Drive mode engaged ***

*** Testing hypothesis ***

The whirring of electrical motors startled everyone in the room, making the two ponies stand up and take notice, even though the sight remained just a little comical with the blankets draped over their heads.

“What’s it doing?” Twilight asked with her jaw taking off towards the floor as Opportunity jerkily moved forward slightly.

The rover rocked slowly back and forth, testing the ground after being stationary for so long. It reoriented itself towards the workbench with the tray and took off at its blistering top speed of one centimeter per second.

“I think he’s getting your drinks,” Spike said after hastily scribbling a ‘Call you back’ into the journal.

Every ten seconds, Opportunity paused to get its bearings until it finally arrived at the workbench. In a series of intricate and precise maneuvers, it lifted the tray with its instrument arm and turned, without spilling anything, around to the ponies and dragon.

They stood transfixed while Opportunity closed in, stopped and offered the tray to the ponies. “Thank you,” Starlight managed to utter while picking up her coffee in her magic, her eyes never seeing the cup and remaining on Opportunity instead. Twilight simply took a long drink.

Opportunity set down the tray, turned to look at Spike and moved its arm to retrieve his emerald from the sample bin. Having finished with it and having logged the data for later upload, it pushed the gem back towards Spike for him to enjoy. Spike gobbled it up in one crunch, then gave the rover another fist-bump. “Thanks, Opi. If you only take a nibble, I suppose it’s fine if we share.”

Then Opportunity reviewed what it had learned and made sure to commit it to memory.

*** Experiment concluded: Status nominal ***

*** Logging test result ***

*** Conclusion: Starlight – likes coffee – hates Mondays ***

*** Conclusion: Twilight – likes tea – Best Princess ***

*** Conclusion: Spike – likes gems – shares samples ***

Author's Note

Achievement unlocked: Audacious Administrator of Awesome Alliterations!

* Publish a chapter with a title that has at least five words beginning with the same letter.

Interlude - Mars Ascending

“Heads up! Coming through!” Tibia’s wings rattled like little buzz saws as she sped through the Hive just under the ceiling. In tight places the clearance was still not very high, and startled changelings jumped out of her way with yelps of surprise.

“Sorry,” she’d shout over her shoulder without looking back. “Important message for King Thorax.”

The young changeling had always been seen as a bit of a daredevil, and she was one of the fastest fliers in the Hive. That had gotten her in trouble more than once since the Reformation, as well as gotten her a permanent flight ban while indoors. But where others had seen a safety hazard, Pharynx had seen the makings of a fine scout.

The distance a regular patrol could cover in three days, she could cover in one. That alone made her an asset to Hive Security if Pharynx had ever seen one.

“Halt!” Two guards, crossing their spears, denied her access to the throne room. “King Thorax is in a meeting. No interruptions.”

“Come on, guys,” Tibia said, pushing one forehoof against the weapons barring her way. “This is vitally important!”

“Like last week, when you were convinced that we were being invaded by griffons, and it turned out to be just a funny shaped cloud formation?”

Tibia stomped her hoof. “I’m not joking around here!”

“What’s with all the shouting?”

The two guards snapped to attention, as did Tibia upon recognizing the voice. “Leader of Patrols Pharynx!”

Pharynx nodded at the two guards, indicating for them to stand at ease, then looked at his young protegee. “Tibia. I’ve been told you were seen violating your no flight rule.”

“Yes, I’m sorry about that, but …”

“Now, I understand what it’s like to be young and wanting to test limits,” Pharynx began, reciting a speech he’d carefully prepared for exactly such an occasion and privately detested. But he’d promised to take responsibility for the young troublemaker when he’d taken her under his wing, so now it was time to be the responsible adult.

“Look, Captain. I’ll apologize, but speed was really …”

“But as protectors of the Hive it is our responsibility to be considerate of those around us,” he droned on relentlessly, trying to speed through the lecture as quickly as he could. He had elsewhere to be, after all. “We must set an example of …”

“CAPTAIN!” Tibia yelled, hovering off the ground to be on eye level with her superior. “I’ve seen the Red Shade!”

Pharynx abruptly stopped in his lecture, suddenly all infractions forgiven and forgotten. “Where?” he asked, summoning a map with his magic

Tibia pointed confidently to several spots on the map.

“Three separate locations?”

She nodded in confirmation.

“Come with me,” he said curtly as he stepped right into the throne room.

Tibia followed as the guards made way, and she couldn’t help but smirk at them as if to say: ‘That’s right. I’m with him.’

“Ember, I give you my word, it’s not a changeling,” Thorax was saying to the Dragon Lord who was pacing up and down the room.

“Well, it’s not a dragon! A changeling, though, can look like anything.” She snorted a small cloud of ash. “This being that came out of nowhere has been brazenly violating our borders for the past two weeks.”

“As well as ours,” Thorax pointed out. “Do you really think I’d be lying to your face about this?” he asked, the hurt in his voice evident.

“No,” she replied after a pause, passing a weary claw over her face. “But my dragons are getting antsy. They think this could be a prelude to invasion. There’s talk of hunting it down.”

“Now, hold on. I agree that some kind of unknown being stalking the border between our two nations and refusing to identify itself to patrols is a cause for concern. But aside from a few scares and broken trees, there haven’t been any serious incidents. We can’t assume they’re hostile.”

“Brother!” Pharynx called, not bothering with any formalities.

Before Thorax could answer, Ember narrowed her eyes at him. “This is a closed session. This had better be important.”

“The Shade was spotted at the Griffonian border.”

Ember turned and let loose a particularly vile curse in ancient dragon. “Where?”

“Hook Beak Pass.”

Thorax drew in his breath sharply.

“That’s not good, I take it?” Ember observed.

“Not only is it right on the border,” Pharynx explained in place of his rapidly paling brother, “it’s got significance. It was the site of our final battle with the griffons when Chrysalis was still in charge and they still had a king. We utterly annihilated them back in the day. It’s partly why Griffonstone is the garbage heap it is today.”

“Wonderful,” Ember grumbled, addressing Thorax again. “This situation was already annoying, but not unmanageable. At least Changelings and Dragons are on somewhat friendly terms. But with the Griffons involved, it’s gonna be a mess. They have no love for either of us, and they’ll think one or both of us are up to something.”

Thorax tapped his hooves together, a nervous habit Pharynx had observed in him even all the way back in their childhood. “Do we know anything else?” he finally brought himself to ask.

Pharynx nodded. “Tibia has spotted it three times.”

“You’ve seen the Red Shade?” Ember blurted.

Pharynx pushed her forward. “Go on. Tell them what you told me.”

Before Tibia could even take a breath, Ember was almost in her face. “Where was it? What does it look like? What’s it doing?”

“Uhm, I,” Tibia began, suddenly feeling very self-conscious in the face of a foreign leader. “I didn’t really get a good look at it.”

Ember growled, but Thorax laid a steadying hoof on her shoulder. “That’s alright, Tibia. Just take it slow, and tell us everything you can.”

Tibia nodded, grateful to be addressing her own, somewhat less intense, ruler instead. “I spotted the Red Shade in three different locations: Darmok Hills, Serenity Valley and Hook Beak Pass.”

“All sites of recent or ancient battles,” Pharynx added as his own observation, though if that held any significance was anybody’s guess at this point.

“And all heavily forested,” Tibia went on. “But I’d seen some broken trees earlier when I was sent to investigate other reports of sightings, so I followed those when I spotted similar patterns. They must have something to do with it. Because the trail led me to the Red Shade without fail each time. I could spot it from above. But every time I came through the tree tops, it vanished.”

“Magic?” Ember asked.

“Could be a dread maulwurf,” Thorax offered. “It could have burrowed when it saw you coming.”

Tibia shook her head. “No, it definitely wasn’t a maulwurf. I’m sure of that at least. It was big, though. Like, really big. Probably even bigger than a dread maulwurf. And it’s strong. It snapped those tree trunks like twigs.”

“Have there been any reports of attacks?”

“Not that I’m aware of. I’ve spoken to some lings from the outlying hives who spotted the Shade, but noling was hurt. They said it definitely saw them, but moved on with heavy footsteps after only the briefest of moments each time. None of the encounters lasted long enough to get a good description, and it was always obscured by some kind of foliage. Some say they saw its eyes glowing red between the trees, though. I can’t confirm that, but everyling who saw it was almost scared out of their chitin. From my own observations, I can say this: It’s huge. It has shiny things like metal on its body and the red seems to be a cloak of some kind.”

“The question is, what is it doing? And when it’s done with the forests, will it start cutting swaths of destruction through hives?” Pharynx pointed out.

The room was quiet for a moment as that sunk in. Then Tibia spoke again. “I think … I think the Red Shade is looking for something … or someone.”

Author's Note

Looks like something else followed Oppy through the interdimensional void. But is it friend or is it foe?

6. Second Contact

*** Mission Log: Sol 5132 ***

*** AOS – undefined ***

*** Message Received (Source: null): Candygram! ***

*** PARSE ERROR: Command not recognized. ***

“What?” Starlight looked up, along with Opportunity which had been watching over her shoulder as she had clacked away at the now, barely, functioning laptop.

Pinkie Pie bounced into the room, hoofing over a pie to Starlight. “Heard you were having computer trouble, so I brought this!”

“Uhm, thanks?”

“It’s a raspberry pie,” Pinkie informed her, wiggling her eyebrows. “Get it?”

“Nooo, not really,” Starlight replied after a moment’s thought.

“Huh. Don’t worry, neither do I. But the readers will. Well, some readers will. The rest will get the joke explained to them in the comments by the computer nerds who do get it.”

“Okay then. Thanks for the pie, I guess … What are you doing, Pinkie?”

The baker giggled. She had begun bouncing around Opportunity in a circle. The rover, finding the bouncing ball of pink fluff extremely interesting, was following her movements with its panoramic camera. “This is fun! We have a new friend, and he’s up and about now. Why won’t you let me throw him a party at Sugarcube Corner?”

“Because it would take him, it,” Starlight corrected herself, “the better part of a week to get to Sugarcube Corner at top speed. And it’s still not clear just how extensive the damage is. So Twilight and I don’t want to put extra stress on it by moving it around too much.”

“Oh, come on! He was clearly built to roam, Starlight. Oppy wants to be free!”

“Oppy?” Starlight asked, turning around and finishing up some key strokes at the laptop.

“Yeah, it sounds much better than what Spike calls him, don’t you think? Opi makes him sound so old. Oppy’s got more pep!”

“Well, I’m not calling it anything until I’ve found out its real name. That just seems wrong.”

“But we gotta call him something until we find out.”

“Well, with any luck, that moment is now,” Starlight said and flicked a switch on a device connected to the computer. Opportunity suddenly stopped all movement and looked up.

*** AOS – BSN ***

*** Message Received (Source: Glimmy-PC-XP): NETSTAT ***

*** Message Sent: MER-B ***

*** Message Received (Source: Glimmy-PC-XP): PING ***

*** Message Sent: ECHO ***

*** Message Received (Source: Glimmy-PC-XP): PING ***

*** Message Sent: ECHO ***

*** Message Received (Source: Glimmy-PC-XP): PING ***

*** Message Sent: ECHO ***

*** Message Received (Source: Glimmy-PC-XP): PING ***

*** Message Sent: ECHO ***

“It worked! It worked! It worked!” Starlight jubilated, having wrapped Pinkie in a bear hug and spinning her around in circles with a huge grin on her face.

“Yay!” Pinkie replied, not bothered in the least that she was being spun around like a top, then added: “Wheee!!! What are we celebrating, by the way? I need to know what to write on the cupcakes later.”

“That!” Starlight stopped her impromptu victory dance and pointed at one of the final lines that had popped up in the console which informed the user that in response to the ping four data packages had been received, each one with a response time of 23 to 26 milliseconds. “It answered!” She wheezed, feeling a little nauseous. Perhaps she’d overdone it on the spinning, or it was just the excitement.

Pinkie didn’t seem to suffer from the same problem. “That’s great! But I thought Oppy was already answering you before.”

“It was,” Starlight replied, entering some more commands and making sure the connection remained stable. “But I couldn’t get the translation spell to work. But when Twilight’s counterpart from the human world gave us an overview on how computers work, we had a breakthrough.”

“Is it because computers communicate with ones and zeroes rather than words?” Pinkie ventured.

“It’s because computers comm … “ Starlight blinked. “Yes, that’s exactly why. How did you know?”

Pinkie laughed nervously. “Heh, heh. Pinkie sense? It’s definitely not because my human counterpart and I regularly switch places through the portal without letting anypony know. Noperoony! Please, go on.”

“Okay,” Starlight continued with a raised eyebrow. “Anyway, translation spells are used to translate from one language to another, but the problem was that it had to go through two layers. So while Twilight was camped out in the human world for the last few days, the Sparkle siblings came up with this.” She pointed at the apparatus connected to the laptop. Magic sparks were intermittently arcing between two aerials protruding from it.

“Shiny.”

“Thank you,” Starlight replied modestly. “Sunset and I actually worked out the practical and engineering part of the setup. It’s based on her ingenious design of converting magic into electrical current to charge the laptops. I realized that I could use the same principle to make magical spikes turn an electric circuit on or off which the computer can then read as ones and zeroes. We’re calling it the Sunset Glimmer Transceiver, the SGT.

It connects to Equestria’s ambient magic field and creates a more localized field that works like a computer network. Our Twilight came up with the spell matrix and human Twilight wrote the network protocols based on ones from Earth. They have dubbed it the Binary Sparkle Network, or BSN for short. The rover can connect to that and send its binary message to the computer.”

“Okay, but that still only gets you ones and zeroes, right?”

“It does. But this computer also reads ones and zeroes and interprets that data internally, then turns it into text. By teaching the translation spell matrix to the computer, it can then translate the binary code into Equestrian!”

Pinkie gasped. “You taught a computer magic?”

“In a manner of speaking. That’s what the two Twilights have been working on for the last few days, writing a parser that can take the input from the SGT and the BSN and translate it into something readable for us.”

“And does it work?”

For the first time since she’d flipped the switch, Starlight’s smile faded. “I … don’t know.”

“Then why don’t we find out?”

Starlight swallowed, casting a furtive glance at the machine. “It’s just that … everything works now. I know it can hear me when I talk directly. But whether or not we can get an answer … it’s all down to the translation spell matrix I wrote in the first place.”

“And?”

“And … what if it doesn’t work?” Or worse, Starlight added silently with a sinking feeling, what if it does work and it’s upset with me? Bringing it here without asking. I thought I was helping, but can I really be sure of that? Everypony else thought I was crazy when I said that it was a call for help. What if I was wrong? What if I brought it here against its will? What if it’s mad at me.

“Oh, come on! Nopony likes a gloomy Glimmy,” Pinkie stated and pushed Starlight towards the laptop. “What have you got to lose? The way I see it, making a friend begins with saying hello.”

Starlight looked at Pinkie, then the rover. It almost seemed as if Opportunity was straining its ears, if it had had any, to listen for any follow-up signal on the BSN.

She took a deep breath, thinking for a moment, before settling on a question she thought she’d gotten an answer to way back when they’d first made contact. Standing up straight, she looked at Opportunity and said: “Hello. My name is Starlight Glimmer. What is your name?”

The rover’s camera eyes swiveled to meet hers, seemingly indicating that it had heard her and even recognized the source of the message.

“Look!” Pinkie shouted, pointing a hoof at the monitor and Starlight turned around to read the lines appearing in the console output.

*** Message Received: Source - MER-B ***

*** Parsing ***

*** Parsing ***

*** Designation: Mars Exploration Rover B – Opportunity ***

The two mares looked at each other, then back to the screen. More came in, Opportunity’s eyes still fixed on the unicorn. She was about to ask another question when, maybe in response to Starlight’s own worry that had been carried along with her message, more lines appeared.

*** Message Received: Source - MER-B ***

*** Parsing ***

*** Parsing ***

*** Parsing ***

*** Sol 5111: My battery is low, and it’s getting dark ***

*** Sol 5132: My battery is full, and it’s warm ***

*** Parsing ***

*** Parsing ***

*** Starlight – save ***

*** Starlight – fix ***

*** Parsing ***

*** Starlight – friend ***

“Look! Look!” Pinkie called out happily, bouncing up and down. “Isn’t that great, Starlight? You can talk to your friend now. Starlight?”

But the unicorn wasn’t listening. She was looking back at the rover and not even trying to hold back the tears.

Pinkie put a hoof on Starlight’s shoulder. “Are you alright? Aren’t you happy?”

“Yes,” Starlight sniffed. “I’m very happy.” She lightly wrapped her hooves around Opportunity’s mast, and for the next few minutes, the only sound in the room was the sobbing of a unicorn crying tears of happiness.

Author's Note

Hooray! Starlight has upgraded to XP! Also, Equestria has built-in WiFi. Who knew?

7. Wheels of Misfortune

*** Mission Log: Sol 5134 ***

*** AOS – BSN ***

*** Message Received (Source: Starlight): That’s it, you’re doing great! Just a little further. I promise, it’ll be fun. ***

Opportunity followed along. The morning had been spent observing Starlight Glimmer working on some kind of device. The machine had tried to figure out what kind of experiment she was conducting, but was unable to match either the tools or the process to anything in its own memory.

Resisting the temptation of analyzing the ruby Spike had provided, the rover had instead plotted a course that took it around the far more interesting subject of Starlight Glimmer in a slow circle, trying to get a better view of the experiment in progress with the panoramic cameras.

Starlight had giggled at several points as a rather puzzled Opportunity circled around her. “Just a little more patience. Trust me.” When she’d declared the mysterious project finished, she’d asked it to come along and follow her through the corridors of the castle.

Now Opportunity stood before a doorway, and it seemed as if the rover was shaking its head as it kept looking left and right, searching for a way forward.

*** NavCam: Calculating path ***

*** NavCam: Obstruction detected ***

*** NavCam: Calculating path ***

*** NavCam: Obstruction detected ***

*** NavCam: Calculating path ***

*** NavCam: Obstruction detected ***

“I think he’s afraid that he’s gonna get stuck,” Spike pointed out from where he stood behind the rover.

Starlight nodded. While roughly the same length and height as a pony, Opportunity was quite a bit wider. When Rainbow Dash had pointed that out and made a remark about ‘junk in the trunk’ during Pinkie’s obligatory party to celebrate the breakthrough in communications the day before, she’d gotten herself a swat over the head from Rarity who had taken offense on behalf of the rover. Not that Opportunity itself had any insecurities about its weight.

“It is a little tight, isn’t it?” Starlight agreed. “When I originally brought him from the roof to the workshop, I just teleported him. Hang on.” The unicorn concentrated and teleported Opportunity the few steps outside and onto the roof terrace. “There.”

“That could have saved us about an hour’s worth of inching through the corridors,” Spike groused, stepping through the door into the afternoon sun himself and setting down the laptop which, with the SGT attached, wasn’t exactly light to carry around.

Opportunity, finding itself suddenly in a completely different place, seemed appropriately confused. If a rover could blink rapidly, Opportunity would have done so right then and there.

*** NavCam – Error: Checksum failure of latest navigational photos ***

*** Reacquiring position ***

Once again, Opportunity’s panoramic camera spun in a full 360 degree arc. It even extended its instrument arm, taking a picture with its microscopic imager to confirm that the door was in fact now behind it. A few frantic lines appeared on the laptop monitor.

*** Message Received: Source - MER-B ***

*** Parsing ***

*** Navigation Error ***

“No, no, no, it’s fine,” Starlight reassured the freaked out rover. “I just teleported you the rest of the way. Trust me, you’re fine. A small hop like that shouldn’t do any harm.”

With its immediate surroundings once again photographed, Opportunity seemed to shake off its confusion and moved slightly forward, making sure all was well. It once again focused in on Starlight’s face who gave a smile.

“Come on,” the pony said, carrying something along with her towards the center of the roof.

Meanwhile, Spike placed the laptop in close enough proximity for Starlight to read any messages, rolled his shoulders to get the stiffness out of them, yawned and lazily flopped himself down on one of the lounge chairs Twilight had installed for chillaxing purposes on the roof terrace at the behest of Rainbow Dash.

For a moment, Opportunity seemed torn between the two people. Noticing the rover’s indecision, Spike said: “Go ahead. You two have fun. I’ll be here.”

Nonetheless, Opportunity first drove towards the dragon and extended its robotic arm. Spike rolled his eyes, but bumped a fist against Opi. “Yeah, of course we’re still good. Now go on. Starlight has been looking forward to this all day,” Spike said, then fished out a Power Ponies comic from underneath the chair and began to read.

In the time it had taken the rover to drive over to Starlight, the unicorn had finished setting up and was grinning widely as Opportunity pulled up at her side. “What do you think?” Catching the movement, Opportunity’s eyes followed Starlight’s outstretched hoof, further along the string it held and up to the bright, red kite in the sky.

Starlight watched the laptop for a response.

*** experiment – purpose ***

Starlight mulled the meaning over in her mind for a moment. The translation spell was still not perfect, especially with punctuation. Though if it was due to the way Opportunity itself communicated or the spell not fully being able to cope under the restraints of the laptop it ran on, was unclear to Starlight.

“It’s not an experiment. I just thought with all we’ve done for the last few days, we’d take it easy today.” She wrangled the kite back on track after an unexpected gust of wind. “You know, have some fun.”

*** mission goal – fun ***

“Sure, if you wanna put it that way. When I need to relax, I just like to take up a kite and watch it rise up into the sky. For miles and miles and miles.” Starlight giggled. “Well, maybe not for miles exactly. But sometimes that’s what it feels like.”

Twilight had all but collapsed into her bed after the successful conclusion of their experiment and the subsequent party, and Spike was fully expecting her to sleep through most of today.

Starlight herself had been nursing a mild headache after all the all-nighters spent working on the SGT. But she figured it would abate once her sleep schedule was back to normal.

They sat in a companionable silence for a while, simply watching the kite dance lazily in the sky. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’ve got, like, a million questions for you. Where did you come from? Who built you? What were you doing in that storm?”

*** Error – Query no recognized ***

“Right, right. Sorry. Getting too excited.” Too much input at once still seemed to confuse the rover. She thought for a moment. “You said something about mission goals earlier. What was your mission goal when I found you?”

*** Science Goal 1: Determine whether life ever arose on Mars ***

*** Status: Incomplete, evidence of water found ***

*** Science Goal 2: Characterize the climate of Mars ***

*** Status: Incomplete, 2018a GDE defied expectations ***

*** Science Goal 3: Characterize the geology of Mars ***

*** Status: Incomplete, always more samples ***

*** Science Goal 4: Prepare for #### exploration ***

*** Status: Incomplete, no #### presence on Mars ***

“So you are an explorer! And a rocktologist, too! Maud was totally on the money. She’s gonna be so happy to hear that!” Meanwhile Starlight had pulled up the debugging options on the laptop, trying to puzzle out that missing word in the final two lines. She figured that it might be Opportunity’s name for its builders. However, without a frame of reference, the translation matrix had come up empty. But there was another word that stood out. “Mars. Is that where I found you?”

*** Sol 5111 – Position: 2.28°S 5.23°W, Endeavour Crater, Perseverance Valley, Mars ***

“Hang on. Hold this for me, will ya?” Starlight wrapped the string of her kite around Opportunity’s instrument arm. The rover looked down, then up at the kite, giving it a few curious tugs and watching the kite respond.

*** experiment – fun ***

“Mars,” Starlight said, having moved around the rover’s back and pointing at the most prominent word on Opportunity’s sun dial. Having learned the rover’s name now, she’d concluded that the word was too short to be Opportunity’s name. So the next logical conclusion would be its mission goal. “Is this the word?”

Opportunity’s camera eyes turned on their mast while it kept its NavCams and HazCams firmly on the kite.

*** Mars – fourth planet from the sun, distance 1.524 AU ***

“Fourth?” Starlight asked in surprise. It looked as though Sunset had been off in her conclusions from the sun dial. But she wasn’t willing to give up on that train of thought entirely just yet. She pointed at the small red dot that seemed to depict an orbit around the sun. “Mars?” she repeated, this time making it more of a question.

*** Mars – fourth planet from the sun, distance 1.524 AU ***

The rover confirmed via chatlog. Then Starlight pointed at the smaller blue dot. “What about this one? This is a planet too, right? Is this your home?”

Opportunity’s scratched camera lenses whirred as they focused in on the pale blue dot.

*** Earth – third planet from the sun, distance 1.000 AU ***

*** Parsing ***

*** Home ***

*** Fault Condition: Up-loss ***

*** Attempting to contact DSN ***

*** Connection Not Found ***

*** Attempting to contact MRO-Direct ***

*** Connection Not Found ***

*** Attempting to contact Earth-Direct ***

*** Connection Not Found ***

*** Reattempting contact during next fault communication window ***

The only line of communication Opportunity could find presently was the BSN. For Starlight’s benefit, it summed up its conundrum in one line.

*** Home – no can talk ***

“Oh,” Starlight said, her earlier excitement severely diminished as she watched the rover become completely silent. “I … I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to … ugh … stupid!” She pressed a hoof against her forehead, realizing that she’d just ruined a perfectly pleasant afternoon by reminding Opportunity that it was cut off from all contact with its creators.

The unicorn sat down on her haunches, eyes on the floor and too embarrassed to look her robotic friend in the ‘eye.’ The silence that now hovered between them was of the awkward kind.

A gust of wind picked up, and Opportunity felt a sudden tug at its arm before the string of the kite came loose. Its PanCam swung around and saw it float away. And then the rover moved, straining the electrical motors in its wheels more than it had ever done before.

“Opportunity!” Starlight called after it.

*** Starlight – sad ***

*** mission goal – fun ***

*** must save Starlight’s experiment ***

Opportunity’s instrument arm reached out, trying to grab the rapidly disappearing string. Its navigational subroutines kicked in, shouting at the rover to stop and take a look around before proceeding.

*** drive ***

And yet the rover kept going beyond the point where its programming should have automatically stopped it. “Opportunity! Leave it! I can just make a new one.”

But Opportunity wouldn’t have it. It had watched Starlight tinker with the wood and cloth toy for the better part of the day, seen her smile when it had taken flight. Then she had entrusted it to the machine, and Opportunity would not fail her.

*** more power ***

Being closer to Celestia’s sun on Equus yielded much more energy than the solar panels ever produced from its own sun on Mars. And right now, Opportunity put every spare Watt into chasing down the runaway kite, in the process far exceeding the measly top speed its tiny wheels had been rated for. The string firmly in its sights with all three cameras, Opportunity reached out to grab it. Almost there.

And then it paid the price for the mad dash when its right front wheel collided with an unseen edge that separated the rest of the roof from the pool area. The sound of shearing aluminum filled the air as the rover caught the edge and was spun around hard forty five degrees, the five remaining wheels scraping across the tiled floor and more broken bits coming off them.

“Opportunity!” Starlight screamed and ran up to the rover’s side.

Oppy watched as the kite wonkily flew out of reach and came down in an uncontrolled dive somewhere past the ledge of the roof. Then it centered its cameras on its own broken wheel, or what was left of it. The spokes had sheared clear off from the hub, the entire rim bouncing away and coming to rest a few feet away.

“What happened?” Spike asked in alarm, having come over in response to the commotion.

Starlight was nearly in tears, unable to give a coherent description of the accident.

*** Error – wheel number 2 inoperable ***

The electric motors strained to move as the rover struggled to get moving again, but produced no more than a small skid with a severe drag towards the right. Opportunity tried to move backwards. The result was no better.

*** help ***

Author's Note

You would not believe how hard it is to get a tow truck out to Mars! Opportunity’s sister Spirit can attest to that. Drive safely, kids! This concludes today’s Public Safety Announcement.

8. Solitaire Confinement

*** Mission Log: Sol 5137 ***

*** AOS – BSN ***

*** Message Received (Source: Starlight): Is that alright? Comfortable enough? ***

If Opportunity had the ability, it would have rolled its eyes at the unicorn, who was fussing with the large cushion the rover currently sat on. The electrical motors whirred, but with one wheel missing and the others damaged from the accident, not to mention the wear and tear nearly fifteen years on the dusty Martian surface had inflicted, Opportunity wasn’t going anywhere.

“Stop it,” Starlight chided the rover. “You need to take it easy until we’ve got all the replacement parts ready.”

Trixie, who had been watching her friend anxiously hover around the rover, actually did roll her eyes at that. “Starlight,” she complained. “The Great and Powerful Trixie made time in her busy schedule to come to Ponyville and hang out with her best friend. Not to watch you obsess over a busted hunk of metal.”

“I’m sorry, Trixie, it’s just … I feel responsible for what happened,” Starlight replied, her ears flattening against the sides of her head. “Thanks for agreeing to watch him for me. I appreciate it.”

“Yes, despite being blown off repeatedly for dinner, the Great and Magnanimous Trixie is happy to watch your pet robot for the afternoon,” Trixie harrumphed.

“He’s not a pet, Trixie,” Starlight stated firmly while getting together several technical documents strewn about the workshop and stuffing them in her saddlebag with her magic. “Just make sure he stays where he is. Until we’ve figured everything out, we don’t want him to put any more stress on his wheels.” She turned back to the rover and looked at him nervously. “Are you sure you’re okay? Do you need anything else?”

*** Status – nominal ***

There was probably some exasperation in the simple line of text the rover had displayed on the screen for the umpteenth time that day in response to Starlight’s fussing.

“Okay, then,” Starlight replied dubiously, heading towards the door. Then she stopped, and looked at Trixie, repeating the very same question: “Are you sure you’re okay? Do you need anything else?”

“Trixie thinks she can watch a hunk of metal for an afternoon,” she replied acidly. “I don’t know what to do with it, but I’ll figure it out. Now, off you go.”

Starlight pondered that for a while. “Talk to him. He loves to listen. And you can always give him a rock to study … No, wait, don’t do that! His arm is damaged too, he probably shouldn’t use it until we can fix it. And don’t … You know what, maybe I shouldn’t go.”

“Starlight!” Trixie cut her off unceremoniously. “You’ve been holed up in here for days. The reason I agreed to this in the first place was so that perhaps you wouldn’t forget what the sun looks like! Now go, go outside and get some fresh air already!”

The unicorn looked uncertainly back at the rover, and once again the line on the monitor appeared to carry along a silent groan.

*** Status – nominal ***

As much as Opportunity appreciated all that Starlight had done for it, her constant attention since the accident had been as much an annoyance as a comfort.

“Okay, I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she replied as Trixie began to physically nudge her through the door.

Opportunity raised its instrument arm to wave goodbye, and silence filled the workshop except for the muttering of a certain blue magician. “Honestly, you’d think this box of bolts was the most important thing in her life nowadays.” She went over to the rover and swatted its side with a hoof. “You shouldn’t do that to her.”

Opportunity focused Trixie with its cameras.

*** Starlight – friend ***

*** Starlight – no fault ***

*** Opportunity say – many times ***

“Yeah, well,” Trixie acknowledged, sitting down next to Opportunity. “She does that. Wallows in her guilt, I mean. Even if she’s got nothing to be sorry for.”

Silence hovered over them. Trixie glanced around in search of a distraction. After thoroughly inspecting every corner of the room, she picked up a discarded piece of parchment and amused herself by turning it into a teacup and back several times.

Opportunity watched the display with curiosity. The magician raised an eyebrow, and smiled. “You like that? Want to see some more? Very well, hunk of metal, you will be Trixie’s adoring audience for this performance. Behold!”

Trixie grabbed a few more pieces of trash, turned them into teacups and began juggling them in the air with her magic. She giggled as the rover tried to keep up with the display by swiveling its cameras this way and that.

*** mineral composition – changing ***

*** process not recognized ***

Trixie read the message. “It’s magic, silly. It’s really a minor trick in any magician’s arsenal,” Trixie said expansively, despite not having picked up transmutation until well into adulthood.

*** magic – explain ***

Trixie considered that for a moment, wondering if she should just give the magic kindergarten definition. Her own attitude towards her craft had changed somewhat over the last couple of years. “Well, to me it’s just what I do. It’s my calling. My destiny! My way to make a mark on the world and spread the name of the Great and Powerful Trixie!!!” She reared up on her hind legs and sent some small fireworks, which had been cleverly hidden in some pockets of her cape, into the air.

*** magic – fun ***

“Yes, exactly!” Trixie shouted, pointing at the rover. “Magic should be fun! Ponies like Twilight Sparkle and even Starlight take it way too seriously sometimes. But it’s also there to amaze and entertain!” She grinned and sat back down. “So, what do you do for fun all day?”

*** experiment – fun ***

Trixie sighed. “And here I thought we were getting along. Now you sound like Twilight Sparkle.”

Opportunity sent a command via the BSN to the laptop to bring up a program it had found during its extended time of immobility. A new window opened, displaying several stacks of playing cards against a green background.

The magician watched with interest as the cards began moving around at the rover’s unspoken command. “What’s this? A card trick?”

The rover considered that for a moment.

*** experiment – make cards dance – fun ***

“When did you have time to find this?”

*** night – ponies sleep – Opportunity awake ***

*** Opportunity look – experiment – try new things ***

“Don’t you need sleep, too?”

*** used to – warm here – no extra heating required – keep running instead ***

*** power status – solar groovy ***

Trixie continued to watch as the last card was placed in the top row, and then the screen lit up with the entire deck spraying across the screen. Opportunity looked at her.

*** Trixie – try ***

“Alright,” Trixie said. Noting the score on the screen, she smirked. “Hah! I can beat that. Watch a professional do it.” She moved the mouse, attempting to place a card after starting a new game, only for it to snap back to where it was. “Eh, how do you play this?”

*** watch ***

Trixie grimaced as the console from Opportunity’s speech parser automatically popped into the foreground and blocked out the view of the game. “Hm, we’re gonna have to do something about that.”

“I’m back,” Starlight announced as she opened the door to the workshop.

“Quiet!” Trixie hissed. “You are breaking Trixie’s concentration.”

Starlight blinked, taking the time to actually see the scene before her. The first thing she noticed was that Opportunity was wearing a purple bowtie around its mast. She shrugged this one off as one of Trixie’s impulses, but then she noticed Trixie staring in concentration at a laptop while Oppy was focused on different one. “Trixie, where did you get that computer?”

“Trixie borrowed it from Twilight Sparkle,” the magician announced, not looking up and clicking the mouse a few times with her magic.

“And by ‘borrow’ you mean …”

Trixie rolled her eyes. “I broke into her lab and took it.”

“Trixie!!”

“I’ll give it back. But I needed a second one to teach the Bolt Bucket here a lesson!”

“Done,” a mechanical sounding, male voice suddenly said out of nowhere.

Trixie looked over at Opportunity’s screen which showed the cards cascading across the victory screen. “Ugh!” She threw up her hooves. “Okay, best out of 35! Ready, set, go!”

All the replacement parts Starlight had been holding in her magic came crashing to the ground as she stared wide-eyed and slack-jawed at Opportunity. “Did you just … ?”

Oppy’s PanCam turned towards Starlight, and, upon recognizing her, the voice said haltingly: “Hello, Starlight. Would you like to play a game?”

Starlight continued to stare.

“Starlight?” The rover turned to Trixie. “Starlight broken?”

The blue unicorn looked up from her game, noticing her friend’s blank stare. “Oh, don’t worry. She’ll come around.” She gave Starlight a self-satisfied smirk that all but said: ‘Ask me how I did it!’

“How?” Starlight managed to get out.

“A magician never reveals her secrets!” Her grin grew even wider as she left it there for a few seconds. Building suspense, building suspense, now! “But she will make an exception for her wonderful assistant and best friend. Ta-da!” Trixie said, pointing at the purple bowtie and then taking a grandiose bow. “It’s a prop my dad invented for his shows in Las Pegasus. It lets you change and amplify your voice. Works great for ventriloquist acts, too. I hooked it up to your computer network … thingy.”

“Trixie, show Starlight our trick,” Opportunity suggested.

“Oh, yes!” Trixie clapped her hooves excitedly and flicked a switch on the bowtie with her magic. “You’re gonna love this this! We came up with it when we were taking a break from the game.” Clearing her throat and taking on a serious expression, she said: “Oppy-chan, engage moe mode!”

The rover turned to look at Starlight, and what appeared to be the voice of a cute, young filly said: “Konichiwa! Watashi wa Opportunity desu.”

“Eh? Isn’t that great?” Trixie asked, switching the bowtie back to normal and grinning broadly.

“You … you hooked it up to … and you taught him … Neighponese … ” Hoof met face.

“Huh,” Trixie mumbled, “I would have expected a little more gratitude.”

“Thank you, Trixie,” Opportunity said simply.

“You’re very welcome,” Trixie replied, beaming at the rover.

Starlight felt like her brain was churning along even worse than Oppy’s wheels as she tried to take that all in. “You …” She took a deep breath, trying to get her thoughts in order. “Trixie, it took weeks, TWO Twilight Sparkles and two magic-obsessed formerly villainous unicorns to come up with this system. And you just … intuited a major improvement for it over the course of an afternoon! And it seems to be even more accurate than the text output. Do you even understand how the Binary Sparkle Network works?”

Trixie huffed. “Well, first of all, Trixie is a magic-obsessed formerly villainous unicorn too, thank you very much! So she’s rather insulted that you didn’t bring her in to consult sooner. Secondly, what’s there to understand? The antenna thingy sends and receives magic waves. So Trixie thought, instead of running everything through the nerd box, why not just send the translation spell matrix out to the network itself and let the magic do the heavy lifting? From there, the enchantment on the bowtie can pick it up and just do what it was designed to do in the first place. I really get the feeling that the two purple brainiacs were trying to reinvent the wheel here.”

“Done,” Opportunity announced, and Trixie’s head snapped around to see the victory screen going off once again.

“Hey, no fair! That’s cheating!” Trixie sat back down at her own laptop and restarted her game. “Do-Over! Also, Trixie demands a rematch as soon as your arm is better. Let’s see how quick you are when you can’t just think the commands at the game.”

“Trixie just slow,” Opportunity replied calmly.

“Why, you! I bet you rigged the game with your ones and zeroes,” she shot back, though there was clearly no malice in her voice.

“Only zero Opportunity see is Trixie number of wins.”

As she watched two of her best friends bicker back and forth good-naturedly as if they’d known each other for a lifetime rather than just an afternoon, something rose in Starlight’s throat. First she snorted once, twice, then she began to giggle, and before long she’d flopped onto the floor in a full belly laugh, three days of worrying and guilt lifting from her shoulders in an instant.

Opportunity and Trixie watched Starlight. Opportunity couldn’t, but Trixie smiled for both of them. She held out her hoof, and the rover’s instrument arm bumped against it.

Author's Note

Alternate Chapter Tittle: How Trixie invented Magical Cloud Computing!

Special thanks to Daedalus Aegle for pre-reading, editing and co-writing on this chapter.

9. Miles and Miles and Miles

*** Mission Log: Sol 5140 ***

*** AOS – BSN ***

*** Message Received (Source: Applejack): Alright, y’all. Let’s get this show on the road, so to speak. Rarity, what in the hay is that for? ***

“What, this?” Rarity asked innocently, holding the swatch of purple sequin fabric protectively out of Applejack’s reach with her magic. “I just thought we might take the opportunity to give, er, Opportunity a little more style is all.”

“Rarity,” the farmpony said, as if talking to a small child, “Starlight asked us to fix them wheels, nothing more.”

“Oh, pish posh. That little bowtie Trixie gave him is adorable. I’m just looking to tie up the ensemble. I bet Starlight is going to love it.”

“I know who else is gonna love it,” Rainbow Dash said, eyeing the fabric critically. “The wind. It’ll drag him down and make him even slower than he was before. We wanna go faster!”

“Faster is what broke his wheel in the first place,” Applejack maintained. “Slooowwww is what we need here.”

Meanwhile, as she watched her friends and fought down flashbacks to the catastrophe that was the previous year’s Applewood Derby, Starlight stood next to Opportunity and laughed uncomfortably. “It’s fine. It’s going to be fine. They know what they’re doing … I hope.”

Opportunity, for its part, was enjoying the fresh air. That is to say, after Starlight had carefully levitated the rover down into the castle’s backyard, there were plenty of new things to photograph and catalogue.

After a panoramic image, Opportunity had taken detailed pictures of the various materials strewn across the grass, some procured by Starlight with the help of Sunset Shimmer from the human world, others scavenged from the depths of various attics and barns at Sweet Apple Acres and more than a few donated by Ponyville residents looking to help out a new friend.

“Why are you taking pictures of that?” Starlight asked. She’d tuned out the inevitable argument between her friends and looked on as Opportunity moved its instrument arm to its own broken off wheel which lay beside it, taking microscopic images.

“Damage. Engineers will want to see,” the rover replied.

Starlight cringed at that. Wasn’t this kind of like documenting your own limb after it had fallen off? It seemed more than a little macabre to her. “How can you be sure? Have you heard from your creators?”

Opportunity raised its camera eyes to the sky and went quiet. Starlight knew that it was trying to establish a connection to its home as it had tried daily for the past couple of days. “Home, no can talk,” Opportunity finally said.

“I’m sorry,” Starlight simply said with feeling, resting a hoof on the rover’s chassis. There was little else she could do. More than anything, she wanted to help. But without an anchor point, Starlight had been utterly unable to tune her magic back into the universe that was her friend’s home for the time being. She’d promised herself to start looking for a solution as soon as the more immediate problems were resolved.

“Home no send commands,” Opportunity said, calling Starlight back from her thoughts. “Opportunity make own commands now. Continue mission.”

Starlight watched as the rover was evidently satisfied with its pictures and moved on to document the damage to one of its other wheels, some holes visible in the shiny metal from years of wear and tear as well as some by design. “How do you know this is what they’d want you to do?”

“Sol 333 – heat shield damage inspection.”

“So you’re going by past experiences, huh? I guess that makes sense.”

“Alright, y’all,” Applejack called out as the trio of ponies trotted up to them, “we think we’ve got a plan here. Ya ready?”

Starlight nodded. Firing up her horn, she enveloped Opportunity in the azure glow of her magic, setting it down on a wooden box that had been especially prepared to be sturdy enough to hold the rover’s weight as well as allow its wheels to remain free in the air for repairs.

As had been the case earlier, Opportunity didn’t say much as it was levitated through the air, but Starlight could hear its camera shutters clicking every so often. Whether the rover found the experience fascinating and was simply too awed to speak or was gritting its metaphorical teeth in terror, she didn’t know. So she was extra careful. Of course, if she’d simply thought to ask, Opportunity would have been happy to tell her that it was no stranger to zero gravity, having spent the first six months of its life in transit to Mars.

“Okay,” Starlight said after she’d made sure that Opportunity was secure, “my friends are here to fix your wheels. Is that okay with you?”

Opportunity looked as she gestured to the three ponies. It had met them before, but the data was very limited, so the rover turned back to Starlight. “Opportunity trust Starlight.”

Opportunity tried, and failed, to move its PanCam the full 360 degrees as the mast was now restricted by a heavy metal bandolier. The shadow from the red brush of a broom that had been glued atop the mast like a mohawk fell across one of the cameras and made it look like Oppy was wearing an eyepatch.

“Aw, yeah,” Rainbow Dash said proudly, rearing up on her hind legs and crossing her front hooves. “Now that looks radical!”

Having been lowered down to the grass, Opportunity strained its electric motors, but was unable to produce enough power to move the new wheels that were now encased in heavy tracks.

Opportunity glanced over at Starlight, the camera moving so slowly that one might call it a dead pan. “Opportunity trust Starlight. Opportunity no trust the rainbow one.”

Applejack had been the next to try her hoof while Rainbow was pouting some distance away at having her awesome upgrades be undone by the farmpony.

Opportunity now stood on four comically large wooden wheels. Even if Applejack hadn’t countered the argument that four were two less than the original six with the simple statement that four wheels were more traditional, there simply wouldn’t have been enough space on the chassis.

The rover had moved a whopping five centimeters during its half hour test drive, before being brought to a grinding halt by a small pebble in its path.

While Applejack laughed nervously, Opportunity once again looked to Starlight. “Opportunity no trust the orange one either.”

“Rarity, what even is this?” Starlight groaned.

“Why, it’s seasonal, darling,” Rarity declared with a flip of her mane, “he’ll be the star of the slopes come winter.”

The wheels had been entirely replaced by a set of skis, which of course did nothing to move the rover forward as the electric motors moved them backwards and forwards uselessly. A white and purple scarf had been draped around the mast and a woolen cap of the same color scheme coquettishly placed at an angle atop the PanCam.

Opportunity looked around at the bright summer day and the skis upon the grass, then once again at Starlight. “Do Opportunity even have to say?”

“I’m sorry,” Starlight said dejectedly as the sorry group of ponies sat around the rover in their defeat with their heads hanging low.

Opportunity was once again resting on the box with all its wheels removed. “It alright,” it said, glancing at its own base and slowly coming to terms with the thought that it might never again move under its own power. “Opportunity appreciate try.”

“Hey, what’s this?” Rainbow asked, pointing a hoof into the distance where four fillies were drawing a wooden cart.

Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo and, curiously enough, Diamond Tiara were slowly approaching with their project in tow.

“Hey y’all!” Apple Bloom greeted cheerfully. “Ah hope yer not already done. We came to help.”

Starlight walked up to them and peered into the cart. Her eyes went wide. “Girls, you made this?”

“Yeah, we convinced Miss Cheerilee to let us do this instead of our physics project,” Scootaloo declared proudly. “I did the rims and the steering.”

“And Ah made the suspension and the gearbox,” Apple Bloom added.

“Sweetie Belle made the power converter that changes electrical power into magic energy for the six-wheel-drive,” Diamond Tiara pointed out, having unhitched herself from the cart.

Sweetie blushed and rubbed her hooves together. “It was nothing. The drive itself is store bought. I just had to make an adapter so it could take electric energy instead of a magic battery.”

“So that’s why you wanted to know how the SGT works,” Starlight said with a huge grin. Then she turned to Diamond Tiara. “What did you do?”

“Me?” the pink filly asked. “Oh, I really didn’t do anything.”

“Are you kidding?” Apple Bloom gasped, then gave her a hug and looked to Starlight. “She did more than the rest of us put together! She came up with the idea, for starters.”

“And she got us all the tools and parts we needed from her father’s store,” Sweetie added with an excited squee.

Scootaloo bumped Diamond Tiara’s shoulder with her hoof. “Not to mention she kept us in line by shooting down any dumb ideas and made sure it would actually work all together when the individual parts were done.”

Diamond Tiara blushed furiously at all the praise, but looked genuinely happy.

Opportunity had watched the exchange with interest, but had been unable to see what the girls had come up with from its vantage point. So it had remained silent.

Starlight gave the rover a grin over her shoulder. “Do you still trust me, Oppy?”

Opportunity looked at the smiles of the four fillies. “Opportunity trust Starlight,” it reiterated, the PanCam moving up and down in a nod.

“Then what do you say we give this one more try?”

As the sun was setting and tinting the field in soft hues of orange and red, the excited giggles and whoops of four fillies could be heard as they ran across the grass alongside one rover rising from the ashes like a phoenix.

Opportunity proceeded at a rate that would be roughly equivalent to a brisk trot for a grown pony, but which was infinitely faster than what it had been capable of during its time roving on Mars.

Now equipped with actual tires that were about fifty percent larger than the originals, Opportunity’s restored six wheel base carriage and new suspension gave it marvelous control over even rough terrain.

The rover noticed a large boulder directly in its path. Putting the drive for its right front wheel in reverse, it gunned the single electric engine separately, spinning itself around the rock and leaving a skid mark in the grass. Then it switched to the secondary HazCams at the back of the chassis, put the rest of the wheels in reverse and kept on going backwards while hardly slowing down.

“Whoo, that was awesome!” Scootaloo whooped next to Opportunity. “Do it again!”

And Opportunity did. As it played with the fillies, it ran through every set of movements imaginable. It went ahead at top speed, did circles and figure eights, crossed small and big inclines as well as minor obstacles. It also did some fine and deliberate movements, finding its motor control for bringing instruments into position just as capable as before.

When the four fillies went in to hug Opportunity, the rover lightly wrapped its arm around them to return the embrace while Starlight watched the scene with moist eyes.

Meanwhile, three ponies stood in the shade of a tree some distance away, looking over the scene with complacent smiles. “Do you suppose our way of imparting life lessons to our little sisters by pretending to be utterly oblivious and irresponsible adults can get a little too roundabout sometimes?” Rarity mused.

Applejack let out a low chuckle. “Perhaps, ah think Starlight plum wanted to have ya committed when ya presented yer design.” She pulled her hat deeper over her face to hide the tears in the corners of her eyes as she watched the fillies glow with their accomplishment, Diamond Tiara included. “But look at ‘em and how happy they are. Ah wouldn’t trade this moment for anything in the world.”

“They’re gonna grow up and see through our antics eventually,” Rainbow Dash pointed out calmly, hovering lazily in the air next to her friends and remembering an incident not so long ago that involved scooters, rockets and ropes.

“All the more reason to enjoy it while it lasts,” Rarity sighed, and the trio sat in a companionable silence as they continued watching over their younger siblings and the strange visitor from another world that seemed to have this uncanny ability to bring ponies together.

Author's Note

Interesting fact: Spirit and Opportunity actually did a lot of their exploring on Mars while driving in reverse.

In Spirit's case, one of the front wheels had completely failed, so it was better to drive in reverse and drag the bum wheel rather than pushing it. As a result, however, the stuck wheel dug a trench behind the rover which uncovered some interesting stuff underneath the topsoil.

As for Opportunity, there had been an electrical fault in the wiring of the instrument arm from early on. At some point, the team decided not to fully retract the arm during transits and rather keep it partially extended in what they called a hover stow. They were afraid that, if they fully retracted it, they might never be able to deploy it again as had almost happened on Sol 654.

Since the arm couldn't be completely stowed away in a safe position for long drives, Opportunity also tended to drive backwards when covering longer distances, in order to keep the sensitive instruments safe.

Interlude - Whispers in the Dark

“King Thorax, you must realize what you’re asking would be above and beyond anything that could be called in good faith,” the elderly griffon said. He’d made a point of not looking at Thorax throughout the entire proceedings, instead staring at a spot just above his head as if to say that the changeling was somehow beneath him.

“You must see that our proposal is in our mutual interest,” Thorax pressed.

Pharynx, watching from a dark corner of the room had to admit to himself, he was a little proud of his brother. He’d been afraid that Thorax would fold like an origami crane when confronted with an assortment of shrewd Griffonian diplomats. But he’d held up surprisingly well so far. He’d remained firm yet polite, not rising to any of the insinuated insults. Pharynx secretly suspected who he had to thank for the gradual change in his brother. And he made a surprisingly good tag team with that certain someone, in a good cop, bad cop sort of way at least.

“Do you feather-brains not see what’s at stake here?” A black cloud of ash hovered in front of Ember’s face as she leaned onto the conference table, metaphorically invading her opponents’ space. “We’ve been hunting this thing for weeks. And every time we get close, it slips across the border and our patrols have to turn back.”

“Sounds like you’re making up fairy tales as an excuse to conduct illegal military operations in Griffon territory to me,” a fierce-looking griffon with an eyepatch countered coldly.

“Why you, if I was conducting military operations in your territory, you wouldn’t be sitting here unless it was as a side dish of roasted chick…”

Thorax quickly held a hoof in front of Ember before she could finish that thought. “With all due respect to your reasonable security concerns, General Blackwing, we’re not asking for full military access. Merely the permission for our patrols to be allowed to continue their investigations if the trail of the Shade leads across the border, under the supervision of Griffonian Border Patrol if need be.”

“Ah, the ominous Red Shade,” a lanky griffon with leopard spots and a beak that seemed to be locked into a continuous sneer said while making air quotes with his claws. “We have dismissed those claims.”

“Lord Goldstone, we’ve provided you the reports from our patrols, dozens of confirmed sightings and eye witness reports,” Thorax said while narrowing his eyes at the griffon who’d been the most dismissive of the bunch.

“Changeling reports. And you expect me to believe the words of Changelings?”

“And what about the dragons who have spotted it?” Ember asked hotly. “Would you like to call them liars, too?”

“Please, calm yourselves,” the elder griffon tried to mollify both sides. “Name calling will get us nowhere, Dragon Lord Ember.”

Thorax looked to him. While he hadn’t exactly been the soul of courtesy himself throughout the proceedings, the old bird seemed to be the only one who at least wasn’t shooting down every single proposal as a matter of course. “Would you dismiss these reports so lightly, Lord Gestal,” Thorax appealed to him, “knowing that it could be dangerous to the griffons living in the borderlands?”

That gave him pause as he stroked the feathers under his beak, pushed up his spectacles slightly and, seemingly for the first time, looked Thorax in the eyes, seeing the earnestness in them.

“It doesn’t matter,” General Blackwing declared. “If there is such a thing as a Red Shade, the Griffonian Border Patrol can handle it. And any incursion by Changeling or Dragon forces into sovereign Griffon territory will be treated as what it is, an act of war.”

“Now, let’s not be so hasty. We agreed to this conference at Hook Beak Pass to hopefully add a peaceful chapter to this place, not plan the next battle,” Lord Gestal said.

“Peace is easily achieved,” Blackwing declared, “they stay on their side of the border, we stay on ours. Peace in our lifetime.”

“Hear, hear,” Lord Goldstone chimed in.

Lord Gestal looked to his left, then to his right and finally back at Thorax with an unreadable expression. “Let’s table this discussion and break for lunch, shall we? I feel inclined towards some Saddle Arabian food today. Shall we order out?”

“Let’s order Neighponese instead,” Lord Goldstone countered. “I’m in the mood for fish.”

“If it’s fish, I want some genuine Trottingham fish and chips,” General Blackwing declared, crossing his talons in front of his chest.

“Sushi.”

“Fish and chips.”

Thorax sighed as he watched Lord Gestal close his eyes and let the argument wash over him. Perhaps, Thorax reasoned, the old bird hadn’t been impolite to him at all, but had simply tried to tune out his own compatriots.

Thorax looked towards his brother who was still standing guard in his dark corner and hadn’t moved a muscle. Now, however, he had raised his left eyebrow ever so slightly, a gesture only a little brother would catch.

The Changeling King looked towards Ember who had begun to dig her claws into the stone table and leaving visible marks in response to the idiocy before her. He drew her attention towards Pharynx. Ember only gave a moment’s consideration and nodded at the both of them.

Thorax looked once more at his expectant brother, then back at the arguing griffons who seemed incapable of even agreeing amongst themselves most of the time, until it came time to band together and disagree with anything he or Ember had to say.

He clenched his jaw, looked Pharynx in the eye and nodded almost imperceptibly. Pharynx returned the gesture, turned and left the meeting room.

“So that’s where we stand,” the blonde software engineer addressing her team in the JPL bullpen in Pasadena said. “Keep this under your hats. The PR department at NASA headquarters doesn’t want to tell the press until we’ve got confirmation. SatCom is diverting the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to snap some pictures of Oppy’s last known coordinates on the HiRise early. But we already know what they’ll show, an empty valley. The math nerds have been over the numbers five times, and unless NASA has secret relay satellites beyond the Oort Cloud, the Praise the Sun signal couldn’t have come from Mars. Questions?”

One hand shot up. “Do we know who is responsible for the Solaire Protocol? And when is the ceremony to give them their Sunlight Medal?”

A chuckle went around the room. It instantly died down when the handful of programmers realized that their boss wasn’t joining in. “Let me be clear on this,” she said. “We got a lucky break when we found the message. Doesn’t change the fact that unauthorized and untested code has been uploaded to a 400 million dollar spacecraft that is being funded by the tax payers. The NASA administration has made it very clear to me that if the responsible party is found, they can consider their career for NASA over.” She looked over her team, waiting for any more questions and lingering on one face in particular for a moment, the face of a man who wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Alright, back to work, everyone. I’ll have new tasks for you as the higher-ups get more information and decide what to do.”

The man who had noticeably lost some of his famous sense of humor followed his boss to her office after the meeting was adjourned, swallowing hard before knocking on the doorframe.

The woman motioned him in and he closed the door that was usually kept open at her own insistence. “You … didn’t tell them?”

“Nope,” the woman said, sitting down and beginning to write something on her desktop computer, not looking up at him.

There was a brief pause during which the clacking of the keyboard seemed very loud in his ears. “I … can hand in my resignation if it would make things easier for you, Christie.”

She stopped typing. “Go home, Tom.” He stood there for a moment, locked in an effort to stop the tears from spilling out of the corners of his eyes. He nodded and began to turn. “And get some rest,” she added.

He stopped and looked at her, a faint glimmer of hope returning to his features.

“I’m gonna need you in the morning. First thing we’ll need to do is overhaul the communications protocols. Probably have to throw everything out and start from scratch. You’re on point for that.” Christie finally met his eyes. “Look, when you found the message in the junk data, what did you do?”

He swallowed and licked his lips, realizing only now that his mouth felt as dry as the Martian surface. “I told you right away.”

“Wrong. You told me everything right away. Key difference. You could have pretended to have found it by accident. You could have played dumb when I asked you how Oppy could even send a message like that. But you didn’t. You did a good thing here.” She pointed at a stack of papers on her desk that he knew to be the bureaucratic fallout from the Solaire Protocol coming to light. “Not this. This is bad. I let you get away with your little pranks at the office because I know you’re a good programmer, and they’re generally in good fun. This one went too far.”

Tom looked at his feet and simply nodded.

Christie sighed, passing a weary hand across her forehead after a long day of meetings. “But you didn’t try to cover your ass. That counts for something, at least in my book. As long as people speak up about their mistakes, we’ve got a shot. If they don’t,” she grimaced, “that’s when epic fails like the Mars Climate Orbiter happen.”

“Thank you,” Tom said, barely above a whisper. “You won’t regret this.”

She picked up a pen from her blotter and pointed it at him. “You bet I won’t. You ever pull a stunt like this again, I will nail your balls to the wall and let the Administrator hang a frame around them as an example to others. Clear?”

“Crystal.”

She nodded. “Then make like Oppy. Shake it off and carry on.”

Tom left the room, his shoulders slumped in a manner that only indicated he was carrying half the weight of the world.

Christie’s cellphone buzzed, and she spared it a glance. For the first time that day, a small smile played across her lips. The PR types would be far too busy to go on a witch hunt for her best programmer. “Oh dear,” she muttered to herself, “wonder who could have spilled the beans early?”

Now trending on Twitter:

OppyPhoneHome

OppyLives

PraiseTheSun

GoodMorningOppy

CarryOnOppy

In an undisclosed location near the spot where the borders of the Changeling Federation, the Dragon Lands and the Griffonian Empire converged, a lone griffon walked along an overgrown logging path.

“Psst.”

He stopped, his head swiveling to make out where the sound had come from. His eyes narrowed at an unremarkable rock next to the road. “I have no name, I have no face, I have no voice,” the griffon said.

“I have no past, I have no family, I have no friends,” came a voice seemingly out of nowhere.

“Yet I have eyes, I have ears, I have hooves,” the griffon continued.

“In Silentio Vigilo, In Umbris Confido,” the voice finished.

Two flashes of green lit up the remote forest clearing briefly, and Tibia clapped her hooves together excitedly. “I always wanted to use that as a secret code phrase.”

Pharynx frowned at her. “The ancient oath of the Shadow Patrol is not a gimmick from a spy novel,” he said, putting a hoof on her shoulder. “It’s a promise, the most solemn promise a Changeling can make. To serve the Hive by not being a part of the Hive, something that goes against our very nature, until the mission is complete. If we are discovered, Thorax will have no choice but to disavow any knowledge of our actions. You do understand this, don’t you?”

The usually excitable youngster looked up at him. “I understand what I signed up for. I’m with you, sir.” She had a habit of disregarding rules and decorum, which made what came next all the more meaningful. “Leader of Patrols, Captain Pharynx, sir,” she said, saluting.

Pharynx sighed, wondering if he should have just left her in the dark, protect her future if this went south by not involving her. But he’d made his call, and she’d made hers. “Are they here?”

“Follow me, Captain.” Tibia led him deeper into the woods and towards a well-hidden cave. He noted with satisfaction that she’d taken steps to cover the entrance with additional foliage. As his eyes struggled to adjust to the dark within, he could make out two sets of eagle eyes shining in the dark and the glow from the nostrils of a serpentine snout.

“Our mission,” he began, “is to find and, if possible, capture the entity known as the Red Shade, for the good of all our nations. What I’m about to say has only been uttered to non-changelings three times in recorded history.”

Pharynx paused to let that statement sink in and drew himself up to his full height.

“Welcome to Shadow Patrol.”

Author's Note

The Mars Climate Orbiter, i.e. the best proof why America needs to stop being silly and adopt the metric system already.

10. I Rove, Therefore I am

*** Mission Log: Sol 5169 ***

*** PanCAM: Sample detected ***

*** IDD: Extending Instrument Deployment Device ***

*** MI: Beginning Microscopic Imaging ***

*** MI – ERROR: undefined ***

*** MI: Beginning Microscopic Imaging ***

*** MI – ERROR: undefined ***

*** MI: Beginning Microscopic Imaging ***

*** MI: Imaging underway ***

*** Spectrographic Analysis Queued ***

*** APXS – WARNING: Radioisotope source decaying, additional processing time required ***

*** MB – WARNING: Radioisotope source decayed, instrument offline due to command override ***

*** MTES – WARNING: Mirror obstruction detected, instrument offline due to command override***

*** Attempting to contact DSN ***

*** Connection Not Found ***

*** Attempting to contact MRO-Direct ***

*** Connection Not Found ***

*** Attempting to contact Earth-Direct ***

*** Connection Not Found ***

*** Logging science data for later upload ***

*** PanCAM: Reacquiring Position ***

The blue jay that had spent the last several minutes perched atop Opportunity’s head, while the rover had studied a rock, trilled loudly as the movement beneath its feet interrupted its sunbathing.

Opportunity followed the small bird with its camera as it retreated towards the fountain in the plaza where others of its kind were cooling themselves down in the water. The rover snapped a picture of the frolicking avians, including the one currently giving it a stink eye, and added it to the growing backlog of things to send back home if and when a connection could be established.

It drove on, finding another interesting specimen to look at, a brown and white crumb of irregular shape.

*** AOS – BSN ***

*** Message Received (Source: unknown): Hmmpf! ***

Opportunity looked up to see a donkey giving it an annoyed look. “Do you mind? You’re making them skittish.” The donkey rustled around in a bag that was sitting next to him on the wooden park bench and threw a couple more crumbs out in front of him before looking towards a nearby tree.

A couple of pigeons had taken refuge in its shade. Only one stirred at the movement, eyeing both the bread crumbs and the donkey lazily, before giving a unenthused coo and burying its head beneath its wing.

“Bunch of ingrates,” the donkey mumbled under his breath.

The rover drove closer to the donkey, raising its instrument arm in greeting. “Hello,” it said. “Opportunity,” it added, indicating itself with its instrument arm. It had found those combined actions to be useful when encountering the residents of Ponyville, most of which tended to stare with wide eyes, and one particular group of three even having fainted.

“Hm, I know who you are,” the donkey replied, looking the rover up and down far more calmly than most did in this situation. “Doodle,” he replied shortly.

“Doodle?”

“Yes, Cranky Doodle. That’s my name.”

Opportunity was silent for a moment, going through its logs to identify the species. “Cranky Doodle … Donkey?”

The response came only in the form of a snort, not that Cranky wasn’t used to this reaction when introducing himself.

The instrument arm on the rover moved to indicate the bread crumbs. “Experiment. Study.”

Cranky looked around the plaza on the outskirts of Ponyville, which was deserted except for the two and the critters. That was hardly surprising, despite the warm summer day, given that it was the early afternoon on a Wednesday, and most inhabitants of Ponyville were either at work or school. He gave all the surrounding birds a final, indignant look before answering. “Knock yourself out, I guess. Looks like they all got sick of me coming here every day and feeding them.”

“Thank you,” Opportunity made sure to add before extending its arm and resuming the study of the initial bread crumb. Again, the only answer came in the form of a non-committal grunt.

For a few minutes, the rover continued with its study. “Nice weather we’re having.” Opportunity had long since reasoned that climate studies were almost as important to ponies as they were to its creators, seeing as that particular phrase almost inevitably seemed to creep into any conversation it had ever observed.

There was no immediate response, but when Opportunity turned back towards Cranky, it saw him sniffing the air. “For now, rain coming later today.”

Opportunity turned its main camera towards the sky. Comparing the latest pictures of the sky, the rover agreed. “Projected time until full cloud coverage about 2 hours 30 minutes.”

Predicting weather here was far harder than it had been on Mars. Many times the rover had been surprised by sporadic and unpredictable patterns. It didn’t seem to make sense, though the most anomalous readings always seemed to occur when Pegasus ponies were in the vicinity. Then again, the Sol 5111 dust storm on Mars had been entirely unpredictable as well.

“Hah, not bad,” Cranky said with some amusement creeping into his voice. “That’s one of the Everfree storms blowing in. Most ponies would just look at ya funny and reply that there was no rain on the weather schedule. How’d you know?”

“Experience,” Opportunity replied.

“Hm, outdoors a lot, huh?”

The rover nodded its PanCam up and down. “Opportunity go many places last fifteen years. Eagle Crater, Endurance Crater, Heat Shield Rock, Purgatory Dune, Erebus, Marathon Valley. Now here, keep going.”

Cranky sighed and began staring off into the distance with a complicated expression. “I used to be like that, always on the move, up and down the country. I’ve been to many places in my time: Appleloosa, the Crystal Mountains, the Badlands, the Riverlands, going from Las Pegasus in the West to Manehattan in the East … I miss it.”

Opportunity stopped in the process of analyzing another sample and looked at all the paths leading from the plaza. “Why no travel anymore?” It indicated a certain direction. “That one look interesting. Opportunity always directed to most interesting looking place. So now Opportunity try pick most interesting place to go by self.”

The donkey did a double take when he realized what lay in that direction. “The Everfree?” A smile tugged at his lips and he actually looked amused for a moment. “I suppose that one is always an adventure, yes. But no. My traveling days are behind me. You see, I was looking for something, someone. I found her, even married her.” He went quiet again.

“But Cranky say miss exploring.”

The donkey nodded. “I do. But I’d miss my wife a lot more if I went away. I don’t need to travel anymore, I found what I was looking for. And yet, I seem to have forgotten how to stay put. I don’t know how to be … retired. I come here every day, and even the birds have gotten sick of me. And I just wonder …” He once again drifted back into silence.

“What beyond that hill?”

Cranky was startled, wondering if the strange robot was somehow a mind reader. Whenever he saw a feature he’d not been to, that was exactly what he asked himself.

Opportunity looked at him while still pointing with its arm at the horizon. “What beyond that hill? Cranky been?”

He chuckled, realizing that this wasn’t the invasion of the mind-reading robots from outer space after all. Oppy had asked a far more practical question. Scratching his ear, he squinted into the distance. “Not much that way. It flattens out on the other side into rolling grasslands. The occasional herd of cows grazes there.”

Opportunity nodded and pointed next at the stream that was gently flowing out of town. “What that way?”

“Oh, that takes a sharp bend into the Everfree for a bit, then it widens out and flows South. Perfect for making your way down towards Somnambula on a raft.” He smiled fondly at an old memory. “I met my best friend on that river.”

“Opportunity like to see. Opportunity meet many friends while traveling.” Again, it pointed in a random direction. “What over there?”

“Oh, that path will take you to the Royal Highway. Lots of places to go from there. Baltimare, Trottingham, Manehattan … marvelous city Manehattan. Bit on the crowded side, though.” With every word, the old donkey seemed to get more animated. “I much prefer the smaller settlements, like Ponyville. Or Canter Creek! Lovely little town. Ever been?”

Opportunity moved its camera side to side to indicate no.

Cranky leaned back on the bench and sighed. “Well, let me tell you a story about it. There I was, a stranger in his never-ending search coming to this little hamlet out West …”

“… and that’s how Eastwood Ravine got its name,” Cranky finished expansively. He sighed fondly at the memory. “Of course, Kevin could never show his face in town again after that little escapade. At least not that particular face,” he guffawed. When his laughter died down again, he added. “You know, if it wasn’t for Mathilda, I might have married that filly from the ranch. Probably be a saloon owner out West now.”

He looked around and realized that the sun was actually starting to set. The rover had sat perfectly still through the entire story and its related tangents, only rarely interrupting to ask for clarification on something.

Patting the rover on the head with one hoof, he said: “You’re a good listener, kid. Keep exploring. It’s all about the journey, and the stories you can tell afterwards.”

“Cranky?” They both turned to see another donkey coming up to them, outlined by the setting sun in a vision that caught Cranky’s breath due to its sheer beauty.

“Hello. Opportunity,” the rover introduced itself politely.

Mathilda smiled at the rover. “Yes, you certainly are, dear.” Turning to her husband, she said: “Did you have fun today, Cranky?”

“I actually reckon I did,” he replied.

“I’m glad. But why don’t you come home now? Dinner’s ready.”

Cranky nodded and got up off the bench. He lingered a moment as she led the way and winked at the rover. “Well, I suppose it’s not just about the journey. It’s also about sharing your adventures with someone once you make it to your destination. You have someone like that, kid?”

“Oppy!” Starlight seemed slightly out of breath as she trotted into view, even though she wasn’t going that fast. “There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you. It’s time to go home.”

Opportunity looked at Starlight, then back at Cranky. “Opportunity think so,” it said as it waved the donkey goodbye and joined up with the unicorn.

“Where have you been all day? I was starting to get worried.”

“Exploring,” Opportunity replied simply.

11. Twilight's Little Shop of Horrors

*** Mission Log: Sol 5172 ***

*** AOS – BSN ***

*** Message Received (Source: Starlight): Oppy, please. Everything’s alright. Please come out. ***

The rover backed up further into the closet, bumping into a set of brooms with its rear. Its camera shot around behind it, then back to the closed closet door where a comforting light was shining around the edges and a soothing voice was trying to coax it out.

“Twilight scary,” Opportunity replied meekly.

“I know, sweetie. Don’t worry. I’m not gonna let anything bad happen to you. I’ll protect you from the mad Twientist, so won’t you please come out?”

“Hey!” the voice of the alicorn in question protested in the background. “I’m right here, you know.”

“You be quiet,” Starlight hissed over her shoulder. “What in the hoof did you do to scare him so much?”

“I don’t know! I just spotted him at the door to my lab, said ‘hello’ and waved at him. Next thing I know, he backs up into the wall and begins racing down the corridor. Then he barricaded himself in the supply closet, and here we are.”

A small piece of crystal fell from the ceiling and bounced off the rover with a metallic clink.

“What was that?” Starlight asked.

“Just me,” Spike replied calmly as he hopped from the top of the shelf to the floor. “Hey, Opi.” Spike held out his fist for a bump.

Opportunity looked at the door it had accidentally jammed shut by knocking over a broom, then down at his own chassis that was noticeably missing his robotic arm. Starlight had removed it earlier this morning.

“Oh, right. Sorry,” Spike said, lowering his fist.

“Spike! How did you get in there?” Starlight asked from outside.

“What do you think? You said Opi was locked in. So I went into the closet on the upper floor and ate my way through,” he replied, munching on the last bits of crystal still between his teeth.

Opportunity moved its PanCam to survey the dragon-sized hole in the ceiling.

“What?” Twilight called. “Spike, we talked about you eating the house!”

“Shush,” Starlight cut in. “Count yourself lucky. If it hadn’t been Spike, it would have been me. And trust me, I would have made a much bigger hole with my magic.”

“When this is over, we’re going to have an unscheduled roommate meeting about eating and blasting load-bearing walls,” Twilight grumbled. “Drilling into them for scientific experiments, too,” she added after a moment’s thought, mentally counting all the small, circular holes from the Rock Abrasion Tool that had become commonplace around her walls and floors.

“Alright,” Spike said, ignoring the girls and sitting down next to Opportunity in order to project calm. “What’s wrong, buddy? You wanna tell me what happened?”

Opportunity turned its mast to indicate the laptop it had taken to carrying around most of the time. After a moment, a picture began to appear on the screen, a picture the rover had taken earlier. “Twilight scary,” Opportunity repeated when the image had finished loading.

Spike squinted his eyes. “Huh. Oh! Yeah, I can see why that would freak you out.”

“What is it?” Starlight asked, her voice sounding agitated through the door.

“Well,” Spike began, trying to think of a way to best describe the image while scratching his head. “It looks like Opi drove by Twilight’s lab and, well, she’s standing amidst a bunch of robotic arms. She’s also holding one in the air with her magic and waving it at him. Oh, and she’s sporting her best mad scientist grin.”

Starlight’s voice became angry. “Twilight!”

“What?” The alicorn seemed taken aback. “I was just demonstrating how well the joints turned out on the final model. I thought he’d be happy to see it after all the failed prototypes.”

“Do you honestly not see anything wrong with this picture, Dr. Frankenlight!? Imagine walking into somepony’s basement and seeing it filled with severed pony limbs. And then they spot you and start waving a hoof around they’d just cut off somepony.”

“… Huh, I guess that would be a little disturbing,” Twilight admitted, though her voice carried a hint of clinical detachment. “I suppose I’ve just kind of gotten used to the idea of losing and gaining extra limbs over the years. I lost my horn twice, once when we fought Discord and when I first went through the portal. Three times if I count the poison joke incident. I grew my own wings, and then there was the time those three cultists stole Rainbow Dash’s wings. I still know the limb reattachment spell I researched at the time. Oh! And, not to put too fine a point on it, but when you were still evil and ripped the cutie marks from me and my friends, that was kind of like losing a limb. Or maybe an organ would be a better analogy for that?”

Spike couldn’t see it. But he could have sworn he heard Starlight rapidly blinking through the closed door. “What?” the unicorn asked after several seconds of stunned silence. “No, seriously. WHAT!?”

“Anyway,” Spike carried on, tuning out the conversation that ensued between the alicorn and the unicorn, “you know that Twilight was working on this for you, right? We’ve talked about replacing your arm for ages now, since it keeps getting stuck when you try to move it.”

Opportunity remained silent.

“Please, help me understand,” Spike said calmly, his hours of helping Starlight perfect her counselor voice paying off. “You didn’t even bat an eye when we replaced your wheels.”

“… Opportunity no have eye to bat.”

Spike frowned. “You know what I mean.”

The rover regarded its new wheels, then the housing where the joint for its robotic arm was supposed to be. “Different,” it finally said.

Spike considered that. “Hm, well. I suppose this and that are two different things.” He thought for a moment. “Is it that the wheels were more like having horseshoes replaced, but the arm is more important?”

“Yes. No. Instrument Deployment Device more important. Experiments. Fulfill mission. But not what Opportunity mean different.”

“Then what else is different?”

The rover once again was quiet, and Spike allowed it the space to gather its thoughts. “Opportunity … different. Different from before,” Opportunity finally said.

“How are you different?”

“Before Opportunity listen to creators. Creators say ‘bad path’ or ‘big rock, no go there.’ Now Opportunity alone, scary. Afraid end up like Spirit.”

“Spirit?” Spike asked.

“MER-A, Spirit. Spirit and Opportunity same. Assembled together, same creators.”

“Assembled? Do you mean born? Like, a brother?”

Opportunity nodded. “Yes, like brother,” it confirmed. “Older brother, not by much. Twins. Like Opportunity, Spirit explore. Stuck. Battery low and in the dark. Silent now.”

“And did your creators help him?”

“Try. Try Free Spirit. Fail.” Even though Opportunity’s voice was artificially created by Trixie’s enchanted bow, Spike felt like there was a twinge of sadness in it. “Opportunity lose brother. Opportunity lose creators. Now must make own decisions. Afraid. Afraid lose more. Afraid lose friends. That why Opportunity different.”

“Hey, listen,” Spike said, calling upon his own memories of being a dragon in a pony world. “Change is always scary.” He extended his wings. “When I got these, I was terrified that I had to leave. But change doesn’t have to be bad. You’re not going to lose your friends. Twilight, Starlight and I, we’re not going to leave you behind, even if you get stuck” he said, patting the rover’s front wheel comfortingly.

“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU SOMETIMES, TWILIGHT SPARKLE!”

Spike and Opportunity looked at each other when they heard Starlight’s outburst through the closed door and continued to listen on.

“I thought I handled the situation well,” Twilight mumbled in her defense.

The duo could practically feel the gargantuan effort Starlight mustered in order not to scream again. “Twilight, I’m literally the last pony on Equus who can criticize you for your reformation-over-retribution approach, but seriously? Those cultists broke into your friend’s house and stole her wings while she slept! Don’t you think that calls for a little more than one of your lectures?”

“Well, I did disable their magic, too. To reinforce the lesson.”

“Temporarily,” Starlight pointed out. “Did they give you any indication that they realized the error of their ways? And remind me, what was the result of the first time you tried to give me one of your lessons?”

“You … eventually came around?” the princess ventured.

“After?” Starlight prodded.

“After embarking on a year-long revenge plot that nearly destroyed the universe as we know it,” Twilight conceded with a sigh.

“So what makes you think they didn’t go out and immediately foalnapped some other innocent pegasus as soon as they got their magic back, one that didn’t have the benefit of being best buddies with a princess?”

“… I should probably go and follow up on any missing pegasus cases with the Royal Guard as soon as I get the chance, huh?”

“Ya think?” If a sarcastic undertone could be used as a battering ram, that closet door would have stood no chance against Starlight. “But first you get in there and apologize to Oppy.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Twilight replied sullenly.

“I think what we can take away from this,” Spike noted dubiously, “is that you can’t be afraid to make a mistake. You just have to move forward and try the best you can at any given time. And if you make an honest mistake, you can always count on your friends to set you straight.”

“Opportunity take different lesson from that,” the rover replied.

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

“Starlight way scarier than Twilight.”

*** IDD: Extending Instrument Deployment Device ***

*** MI: Beginning Microscopic Imaging ***

*** MI: Imaging underway ***

*** Spectrographic Analysis Queued ***

*** APXS – WARNING: Radioisotope source decaying, additional processing time required ***

*** MB – ERROR: Instrument unresponsive ***

*** MTES: Status nominal ***

“How does it feel? Everything alright?” Starlight asked as she packed away her tools.

After emerging from the closet, Opportunity had sheepishly accepted Twilight’s apology and allowed the ponies to bring it back to Starlight’s workshop.

Twilight’s new design for the arm, which allowed for a much wider range of motion, had been fitted first. The old instrument arm with its broken wiring and malfunctioning heater element had been declared a lost cause and instead been used as the blueprint for the improved version.

After receiving the new arm, Starlight had remounted the housing for the actual scientific instruments, its innards cleaned and restored to working condition to the best of her ability. Rebuilding them from scratch had been a non-option, since even a visit through the mirror portal had left the resident Twilight Sparkle there at a loss for explaining how some of them worked.

“Is fine,” Opportunity replied. “Status nominal.”

“I’m sorry we couldn’t restore them all,” Starlight said, picking up a small, round disk in her magic and frowning at it, as if staring at it hard enough could unlock its mysteries. “It has to be this part. As far as I can tell, it’s just Cobalt. But I’ve tried every piece of Cobalt Maud could dig up and some similar metals. None of them worked. There must have been something special about it.”

“Opportunity not know. Only know not work.” The rover rotated its instrument arm and once again tried out the new addition. In place of the malfunctioning instrument, there was now a three-fingered claw that could pick up and manipulate small objects, Sunset Shimmer’s contribution who continued to show a knack for combining Equestrian magic with technology from her second home.

In this case, the salvaged claw from a crane game machine found in a junkyard was being controlled by Oppy sending commands through the Binary Sparkle Network to a harmonic crystal that in turn made the claw move.

Opportunity picked up the small sapphire it had just examined as a final test and deposited it in Spike’s outstretched claw. The dragon gobbled up the treat, made a fist and bumped it against Oppy’s new appendage. “Opportunity like this better anyway,” the rover decided. “Is more useful.”

Starlight chuckled, but her eyes were drawn back to the disk. It had a nice, metallic sheen with a slightly blueish tinge to it and seemed perfectly intact. “It’s a shame we don’t know what’s wrong with it. It is rather pretty,” she mused.

Opportunity watched Starlight regard the unassuming piece of metal, its beauty enhanced within the unicorn’s azure glow of magic, twinkling as she turned it this way and that. The rover noticed its resemblance to Starlight’s own cutie mark as it was held in this manner. “Starlight keep,” it said.

“What?” The unicorn turned to look at the rover.

Opportunity drove towards her and plucked the little disk out of the air with its new fingers, holding it out to her. “Starlight give Opportunity so much. New wheels. New voice. New arm. Opportunity want give back.”

“I didn’t do it for a reward,” Starlight pointed out.

“Opportunity know. Starlight friend. Is gift.” Opportunity brought it closer to her, indicating for her to take it.

Starlight opened her mouth to say something, then simply smiled. Rather than using her magic, she received the gift with her hoof and brought it close to her chest. “Thank you, Oppy. I’ll treasure it always.”

Author's Note

In case you're wondering what incident Twilight and Starlight are discussing, it's from the IDW comis Friends Forever #25.

I do in general recommend the comics. That one in particular, not so much.:twilightblush:

12. Solar Perturbations

*** Mission Log: Sol 5175 ***

*** AOS – BSN ***

*** Message Received (Source: Starlight): Alright, this time go long! ***

Opportunity watched the small rubber ball encased in Starlight’s magic sail through the air, having no trouble following and calculating the path.

The rover put its new wheels to good use and took off, effortlessly moving over the grassy field. It swerved, coming to a halt, and put out its new arm, catching the ball after it bounced off the back wall of Twilight’s castle.

A leisurely drive back across the courtyard saw Oppy return to Starlight’s side and depositing the ball next to her. The rover watched her expectantly while Starlight made notes on a clipboard. “Go again?”

Starlight giggled. “Don’t you think we have enough data to conclusively say your new arm works just fine?”

It looked down at the ball, then back to the pony. “Experiment fun.”

“Alright,” Starlight relented, “we can play some more catch later. But first, there’s another experiment I thought we could do to test the fine motor control.” She picked up her latest kite and hovered it in front of the rover with her magic.

“Opportunity no let go this time,” it said, resolutely grabbing the string with its new claw attachment.

Starlight smiled. She felt good. The constant headaches and sleepless nights that had intermittently plagued her over the last couple of weeks seemed a distant memory, and she felt the urge to simply enjoy the late summer day with her robotic friend.

The testing to work the last few kinks out of Oppy’s new and restored hardware was little more than an excuse to play. With the exception of the two instruments that still proved elusive in their function, the rover looked as if it was fresh out of the cleanroom at JPL.

“Helloooo!” A deep yet feminine voice echoed across the courtyard, and Starlight turned to see the two unicorns approaching.

“Sunburst!” She immediately went up to the robed wizard who was her oldest friend and caught him in an embrace. “I thought you weren’t coming until later this week.” Ending the hug, she turned to the other arrival. “And you brought your mom, what a surprise. Hello, Auntie Stellar. What brings you here?”

“Hello, Starlight dear. Sunburst had to switch trains and had a stopover in Sire’s Hollow. When he told me the reason for his visit, I was intrigued. Is that it?” Stellar Flare marched right up to Oppy.

“Hello,” the rover introduced itself, “Opportunity.”

Sunburst sighed when his mother was out of immediate earshot and engaging the rover in a conversation about progress. “Yeah, she invited herself to come along. Sorry about that.”

“Oh, it’s no big deal,” Starlight replied nervously, her ears standing straight up and her eyes scanning the area. “Plenty of space in Twilight’s castle. So, you stopped by Sire’s Hollow?”

Sunburst rolled his eyes. “Relax. Your dad wasn’t there. He was out of town for some kind of meeting of his local history society.”

“Oh!” Starlight beamed. “I mean, that’s SUCH a shame. What an unfortunate timing!”

“Could you maybe not look so happy about the fact that my mom is here while your dad couldn’t make it?” Sunburst dead-panned.

“Look, son! There’s writing!” Stellar Flare called out before Starlight could answer and gave him a look that could only be summed up as: Scheming to get my son a job. “You can put your skills to good use. Maybe your friend Starlight can talk to the princess about getting you a research grant?”

“I already have a full-time job in the Crystal Empire, mom!” Sunburst replied.

“Well, it doesn’t hurt to have something to fall back on.”

Sunburst groaned and started to walk over with a giggling Starlight at his side. “I’ve always wanted to ask you something,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper. “How does she do that?”

“Do what?”

“That look with the overbite, the one she uses when she’s just made a point and is feeling smug about it.”

“Why do you want to know? Does it annoy you as much as it does me?”

“What?” Starlight was taken aback. “No! I love that look. It’s sassy as buck. I want to use it the next time I school Twilight in something. Do you think she’d teach me?”

“Don’t you have your own look of smug superiority?” he asked, pushing up his glasses with his hoof.

“Well, yeah. But that’s based on my old evil villain smirk. I don’t want to use that anymore. It never really worked right without the bangs,” she mused. “And I’ve always admired your mom’s style.”

“Hm,” Sunburst replied. “I always felt rather comfortable around your dad, you know. I always enjoyed listening to him go on about obscure town history.”

“Yeah, I’ve come around to those recently. Whenever I can’t sleep, I try to remember one of his lectures, and I’m out like a light in minutes.”

“Oh, I just had a marvelous idea!” Stellar Flare said in what seemed to be another flash of brilliance. “We should visit the throne room later. Maybe the Cutie Mark Map is waiting for you to show up so it can give you another mission.”

“Not how it works, mom,” he replied automatically, then turned back to Starlight with a raised eyebrow. “Wanna trade?”

Starlight giggled as they came to a halt in front of Opportunity and Stellar Flare. “Oppy, this is my friend Sunburst,” she introduced him. “He knows a ton of languages. Would you be okay with him examining your markings?”

Opportunity looked at Sunburst and then back to Starlight. “Starlight friend is Opportunity friend.”

“Glad to hear it, and nice to meet you,” Sunburst began. “Starlight has told me a lot about you. So, anything new you’ve learned since your last letter?” he asked Starlight as he took out a notebook.

Starlight thought about that for a moment. “Not much. We’ve pretty much ruled out Old Ponish, Minotaur A and Minotaur B and even Griffo-Zebrican. Though we did realize that the technical markings seem to include numbers that roughly correspond to Saddle-Arabian numerals,” she summed up.

“That’s not surprising. Any species that can build something like Opportunity would have to have a thorough understanding of mathematics. What about the two prominent labels on the front?” he asked, pointing.

“Well,” Starlight explained, “according to Oppy, they’re spelled Jay-Pea-El and Nasa respectively. Though we’re no closer to learning what they mean. Do you recognize the script? If we can translate the technical writing, maybe I can finally make some headway on figuring out what path my spell took and find that world again.”

Sunburst frowned. “It looks sort of familiar, but it seems to be stylized.”

“Hey, that’s what Sunset said. I really should introduce you sometime. Have a look at these.” She beckoned her friend to step around the rover to see the sun dial. “We figured out that this is a representation of Oppy’s home world, the blue dot being his actual home and the red one the place I made contact with him, Mars. Although they’re written in different languages, we believe this word and all the smaller ones all say ‘Mars.’”

The wizard examined the words for a while and finally concurred with the conclusion. “Okay, there’s not a lot we can learn from that if it’s all just one word. It’s not really enough to figure out any of the other languages. We should focus on the larger script. I still can’t shake the feeling that I know this somehow. What does this other part say?”

“Say ‘Two Worlds One Sun,’” Opportunity replied. “Is why Opportunity measure time in Sol.”

Sunburst blinked rapidly. “Wait! That word! Sol! What is it?”

“A Sol?” Starlight asked. “That’s what Oppy sometimes calls a day. But I don’t really know why.”

“Sol, sol, sol, where have I heard that before?” he muttered. “So a Sol is a day? That doesn’t sound right. What defines a day?”

“Well, a day is just the time it takes Celestia to move the sun around the entire planet, isn’t it?” Stellar Flare, who had remained silent during the actual examination so far, pointed out. "You know, if you get right down to it."

Sunburst’s head snapped around to her with wide eyes. “Sunburst, what is it?” Starlight asked. “Did you figure something out?”

“The sun!” he yelled. “Mother, you’re a genius! Sol doesn’t mean Day. It means Sun. Now I remember where I heard it.”

“Where?”

“Thorax!” He turned to stare at the words on the sun dial again. “And I know this script. It’s Ancient Changeling!”

“Changeling?” Starlight asked in bafflement.

“Like Kevin?” Oppy chimed in, remembering the story Cranky had told him.

“Yes,” Sunburst confirmed with a vigorous nod. “When Thorax was living in the Crystal Empire, he taught me some Ancient Changeling. Sol Invicta – The Unconquered Sun. That’s what they called Celestia a thousand years ago.”

“So you can translate it?” Starlight asked with a huge grin. “We can finally figure out how to contact Oppy’s creators?”

Two sets of pony eyes and one set of high resolution cameras turned on him. “I’m … afraid not,” he admitted, looking over the notes he’d made.

Starlight’s ears folded back against her head almost immediately, and she suppressed a disappointed whimper. “Oh.”

“Look,” Sunburst said in an effort to remain positive. “Thorax only ever taught me a couple of words, and I don’t see any of them here. But I do recognize the characters, and I’m positive that at least some of them are from the Ancient Changeling alphabet. That’s still progress. You could ask Thorax himself to take a look.”

“I guess,” Starlight said with little enthusiasm. She felt metal against her foreleg as Oppy caught her attention.

“Opportunity can wait,” it said. “Fifteen years on Mars, learn patience.” It held out the string of the kite to her, remembering a moment they’d shared on the roof of the castle. “Starlight say fly kite relax. Mission goal fun.”

The unicorn smiled in return. “You’re right. There’s no hurry, and I promised to teach you how to fly a kite today. I’ll write to Thorax later, and we’ll take it from there.” She turned back to Sunburst and Stellar Flare. "Feel like joining us?"

To: His Majesty, King Thorax, Hive Praetorius CF

From: Starlight Glimmer, Castle Road 1, Ponyville EQ

Dear Thorax,

I apologize for writing to you when you told me in your last letter that you were busy with matters of state and likely out of the Hive for a while. I do hope you are well and whatever is keeping you busy will resolve itself soon.

On the off-chance that this letter does reach you, however, there is a request I have to make. Thanks to our friend Sunburst, I’ve had a major breakthrough in possibly finding the origin of Opportunity. It appears some of the script I’ve mentioned to you before might possibly be a form of Ancient Changeling!

I know it’s a wild notion, since I’m convinced at this point that Opportunity could not have possibly originated from the Hive, or anywhere else on Equus for that matter. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but I’d like to check with you just in case.

I’ve enclosed a transcription of all the markings, and I’d be grateful for any documentation you can offer on the Ancient Changeling Language, as our own scholars do not know anything about it other than a few select words. (Trust me, I scoured Twilight’s library from top to bottom on the subject. The few words and phrases you taught Sunburst are tenfold what was previously known to pony linguists.) Where did it come from? How long was it in use? Is there any connection to any other language known to us?

Your friend,

Starlight Glimmer

Later that night, a knock on her door made Starlight look up from her desk. “Come in, it’s open,” she called.

When she turned, she spotted a wall-eyed mare with a friendly smile in a postal uniform in the doorframe. “Ah, Derpy! Perfect timing. Gimme a sec.”

Derpy nodded and walked over to Opportunity who had moved to the other side of the room to play a round of Solitaire while Starlight had been penning her letter. “Hello, Oppy,” the mailmare greeted the rover and patted its panoramic camera. “How are you today?”

“Opportunity well,” the rover replied, “fly kite today, meet two new friends.”

“That’s great. Here, I’ve got some of my lunch left. You can have it.” Derpy rummaged through her bag and brought out a blueberry muffin that looked only slightly stale, putting it in front of the rover.

Opportunity rocked back and forth happily on its wheelbase. “Thank you. Opportunity like blueberry. Remind Opportunity of Mars.”

Derpy watched the rover examine the muffin as if the secret to life on Mars was contained within it and smiled. It didn’t take long for Starlight to join them, having finished and sealed her letter. “Here you go,” she said, handing the small parcel over.

The grey pegasus received it with her usual care and stowed it away in her bag, bringing out a small package in turn. “And this is for you.”

“Oh,” Starlight took hold of it and turned it around. “Who is it from? There’s no address.”

“Jewel Sky. She asked me to drop it off.”

“Oh!” Starlight’s eyes lit up as she tore away at the paper. “I’ve been waiting for this! Strange, though. Jewel Sky usually makes it a point to hoof-deliver her work.”

Derpy nodded. “I know. But she’s been feeling a little under the weather today. Something about a headache. She asked me to take it when I delivered her mail today.”

“Oh, I hope she feels better soon.” Starlight grinned as she gingerly lifted the silver necklace out of its box to examine it. “I need to thank her in person.”

“That’s pretty,” Derpy commented, watching the piece of jewelry float in the air.

“Isn’t it?” Starlight held it up for Oppy to see as well. “Recognize it? It’s the gift you gave me. I had Jewel set it into a necklace for me. This way, I can always keep it close to my heart.”

She trotted over to her dresser, glancing at the new picture from today adorning her mirror that showed her with Oppy, Sunburst and Stellar Flare. Unhooking the clasp with her magic, she put the pendant around her neck and admired the effect.

“Starlight pretty,” Opportunity said simply.

She gave him a smile, pressing the ornament against herself as she felt a warm feeling wash over her. “Thank you, Oppy.”

Author's Note

Martian Blueberry, in case you ever wondered what Oppy's favorite flavor was.[Link]

... I really wish I was more witty when it comes to these Author's Notes.

13. Oppy's Day Out

To: Miss Starlight Glimmer, Castle Road 1, Ponyville EQ

From: First Custodian Pterostigma, on behalf of King Thorax, Hive Praetorius CF

Dear Ms. Glimmer,

I regret to inform you that King Thorax is unavailable at this time. As you said in your own letter, he is currently preoccupied with very important matters of state and out of the Hive.

As designated regent in his absence, it falls to me to examine his mail for important matters that might be time sensitive. The letter from a personal student of the Princess of Friendship seemed to qualify. Only after reading it, did I realize that your correspondence was of a more personal nature. I therefore apologize for my breach of confidentiality and assure you that the contents of your letter have not been made otherwise public and the letter itself set aside for the King’s perusal at a later date.

However, being somewhat of a scholar of Changeling history myself, I felt it only right to offer my own insights on the questions you posted. To try and make up for my mistake, if nothing else.

It pains me to admit that our own state of research into our distant past is woefully lacking. In the Age of Queens, written documentation of any kind was scarce. Record keeping is not something that comes naturally to covert folk like we used to be. In some cases, it might have been downright dangerous.

There are few who even speak Ancient Changeling these days, though some words have carried over and are in use in our modern language. From a cursory glance, I can confirm that the markings you transcribed, at least in part, match the Ancient Changeling Alphabet. Though I did not recognize any of the words.

The actual origin of Ancient Changeling is as much a mystery to us as it is to you. No written records exist, and there is no precursor language known. The earliest writings we have appear to have syntax, grammar and vocabulary already fully formed.

The only evidence we have about its origin are anecdotal at best, fictional at worst. There is a legend that used to be told to grubs in Infiltration 101 as a way of explaining why many secret code words tended to be in Ancient Changeling.

The legend states that, over a thousand years ago, a queen whose name has been forgotten to history cast a powerful scrying spell. Her intention was to find ‘a language that no creature on Equus thus far knew, and yet be fit for a power to rule the known world.’ Thus the magic brought forth this language, which only the Queen herself and those who served her could understand. I’m sure you can see the advantage in a language that no creature on Equus could speak except Changelings. It remained in use amongst Infiltrators for several centuries as one of the safeguards in secret communications protocol, so a foreign power couldn’t unveil our secrets, even if one of our messages were to be intercepted.

Eventually, though, Ancient Changeling fell out of use as a day-to-day spoken language, since it was far more important for our drones to actually speak the languages of those they infiltrated and not have any obvious accent. On an interesting side note, though, many Changeling names have meaning in the old language. My own name, for example, refers to a distinct part of the Changeling wing.

I’m not sure how useful this information is to you, but I hope it helps. Again, I apologize for my unintentional breach of privacy and promise to bring your letter to the attention of King Thorax posthaste upon his return to the Hive.

Sincerely,

Pterostigma, First Custodian of the Changeling Federation

*** Mission Log: Sol 5205 ***

*** AOS – BSN ***

*** Message Received (Source: Starlight): That’s what it said. Unfortunately, I still haven’t heard back from Thorax himself. ***

“That’s a shame,” Sunburst replied as he walked along the corridor with Starlight and Opportunity. “I’m sure he could be a lot more helpful than me.”

“Yes,” Starlight replied smugly, “but I’ve got another expert on standby, and she should be here any moment.”

“She?”

Starlight nodded. “Remember that friend I told you about who first helped me out with the markings? She knows a ton of languages, some of them not even from Equus.”

Receiving a questioning glance from her oldest friend, she could already hear two voices from beyond the door they were approaching. Sunburst recognized one of them, or at least he thought he did.

“I told you, Twilight. Just relax. You’re perfectly fine.”

“What do you mean, I’m fine? All my things are horse things!”

“Round here we call them pony things,” came the answer that carried some clear amusement. “Don’t worry. You get used to quadrupedal locomotion. Everything else is essentially the same.”

“Sunset!” Starlight said as she threw open the door to the portal room with a smile. “You’re here!”

“Starlight!” The fiery-maned unicorn greeted and immediately went for a hug. “I thought it would be best to arrive early to give Twi some time to acclimate.”

Meanwhile, Opportunity drove over to the curious mirror in the room, fascinated by the bright lights and atmospheric disturbances that seemed to swirl around it.

“Smart. Sunset, I want you to meet my oldest friend, Sunburst. Sunburst, meet Sunset Shimmer.”

“Hey,” Sunset greeted cordially, “nice to meet you. Starlight told me a lot about you.”

“Pleasure,” he replied, shaking her hoof. “Though you have me at a disadvantage here. All I know about you is that you’re not from Equestria.”

“Well, I am from Equestria originally. I’m in a, shall we say, unorthodox student exchange program. But I guess it’s not that unusual. Us students of Celestia do get around, don’t we?”

“Ah, so you were also a student at Celestia’s school. That explains why you know so many different languages.”

“Yeah, I’ve never been able to contain my curiosity, so I tend to dabble in a lot of different things,” Sunset admitted sheepishly. “Got me in a lot of trouble over the years, especially when the Princess found me in the forbidden wing of the Canterlot archives one day.”

“You’ve been there? What’s it like? Princess Twilight, you must have seen it, right?”

The purple unicorn in the corner of the room meeped as Sunburst turned his attention to her. Meanwhile, Opportunity stuck its instrument arm into the mirror, watched it vanish and pulled it back to observe it after a moment.

“Oh, sorry,” Starlight interjected, “I should have said something. This isn’t Princess Twilight. Notice anything missing?”

Sunburst cocked his head and blinked, then his eyes went wide. “Where are your wings?”

Sunset walked up to her tongue-tied friend and drew a comforting foreleg around her shoulders. “This is the Twilight Sparkle from the world I live in.”

“The world you …” Sunburst suddenly went quiet and looked over at the large mirror in the room. “Is this?”

“That’s right,” Starlight said, “this is the mirror portal.”

Sunburst nodded, still watching in amazement. “Incredible. This is the first time I’ve seen it. It was moved out of the Crystal Empire before I became Crystaller.” He shook himself out of his reverie and returned his attention to Sci-Twi. “I’m sorry about the mix-up. This must be as strange to you as it is to me,” he said, holding out his hoof.

Twilight smiled at him and shook the offered hoof. “It is. It’s nice to meet you, though.”

“Twilight’s been helping Sunset and myself with the electronic side of figuring out Oppy’s origin. That’s why I wanted her here to discuss our latest findings.”

“Right,” Sunset said with a bright smile and an eagerness in her voice. “I’ve been dying to actually talk to him since you wrote me that Trixie figured out a way to synthesize a voice for him. So where is he?”

“Well, he’s right … “ Starlight paused, looking around the room, a room that conspicuously lacked a certain Mars Rover. “… Oh, no.” The others followed her line of sight back to the mirror portal.

Spike the dog stretched out his paws, delighting in the rays of the late summer sun on his fur and the warmth of the pavement beneath. He opened one eye, watched a ladybug go by, and decided he was too lazy to chase it at this very moment.

“Hey, what gives,” he suddenly yelped when he felt cold metal touch his rump. He turned around and cocked his head to the side, assessing the strange thing that was sitting at the bottom of the broken statue. It was about his own size, had four wheels and a single camera on top that was housed in a spherical casing.

The camera eye rotated to take in the thing’s own features. “Fascinating,” it stated in a high-pitched robotic voice, before noticing the dog. “Hello, Opportunity.”

“Uh, no. It’s Spike,” the dog replied.

“Spike?” the little robot zipped around the dog in a circle. “Not Spike,” it said firmly, “but sound like Spike.”

The speaking dog now did his own lap around the strange visitor, sniffing curiously. “Huh, you smell like Equestria.” He looked around, unsure what to do. “Twilight told me to keep watch so nobody accidentally stumbles into the portal. She never said anything about something coming out.”

“What that?” the extra little rover asked, indicating the building opposite the statue base where they were located.

“What? That? That’s Canterlot High.”

“Opportunity explore!”

“Hey, wait!” Spike called after it. He looked back and forth between the machine and the statue, locked in indecision between going after it and obeying his owner’s command. Eventually, he just settled for a whimper.

As the pet-sized rover set about exploring the halls of CHS, it weaved in and out between the legs of passing students, some startled into avoiding it, others completely unaware of its passing.

Opportunity kept looking around, noting the smooth surface and things along the walls. One such thing brought it to an abrupt halt. Behind a pane of glass was an assortment of common and uncommon rocks in a display case, and in the center a framed photo of a girl with grey skin and an unreadable expression. The caption read: “Canterlot High Geology Club – President Maud Pie.”

“Hey, there little guy,” a voice suddenly said as Opportunity noticed its field of view shifting. “Where did you come from?”

Turning its camera, the rover saw a young boy with suspenders and square glasses. Two girls, who had stopped as well, joined him. “What have you got there, Micro Chips? Did you build that?” the girl with minty-green skin asked.

“No, I didn’t,” the boy replied, looking at Oppy from all sides. “Looks pretty sophisticated, though.”

“Hello,” the rover chirped, “Opportunity.”

“Oh, that’s so cute!” the other girl squealed. “It can talk! Hi there, little guy. I’m Bon-Bon,” she said, waving her hand in front of the camera. “I wonder if someone built it for the Science Fair.”

“Science? Opportunity like science!”

Micro Chips chuckled. “I like it. It’s even got a personality. Whoever made it must be looking for it. What do you say, my little friend? Let’s head to the gymnasium and see if we can find your owner. They’re probably looking for you.”

“Come on! We’ve got to find him!” Starlight urged as she frantically went back and forth along the entrance area of CHS while Spike had been drafted to sniff out the renegade rover’s whereabouts. “He’s all alone in a strange world. He could be hurt, or worse, or … or … I don’t know!”

“Hey,” Twilight whispered in Sunset’s direction as they both tried to also spot any clues in the area, “I didn’t want to say anything when she was a pony. But your friend doesn’t look so good.”

“Yeah, I noticed that,” Sunset replied with a worried frown as she watched Starlight break into a coughing fit while looking for the missing Opportunity before her eyes fell on Sunburst who was leaning against the wall on wobbly legs. “Now her friend cleaned up nicely when he stepped through the portal, though.”

Indeed, the change from pony to person had done away with Sunburst’s usual messy style. His goatee looked perfectly groomed and his hair fell in a luxurious curl across his brow, and Sunset couldn’t help but wonder if he usually put effort into making himself look messy on purpose. The magic of the portal had also seen fit to give him a pair of stylish slacks and a sky-blue shirt with the top button undone, showing off a gold chain with a star attached to it. The only thing it hadn’t seen fit to give him was a sense of equilibrium for his new form, which was painfully evident when he tried to take a step forward and planted his face on the floor.

“Trixie!?” Starlight’s voice brought Sunset back to the matter at hand.

“Yes? Does Trixie know you?”

“Trixie,” Sunset interjected as she spotted the blue magician give Starlight an odd look, “we’re looking for a small robot about the size of Twilight’s dog. Have you seen it around?”

“Oh.” Trixie huffed and crossed her arms. “You mean the little cheater. Yeah, I’ve seen it.”

“Cheater?”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie was amazing her audience with a game of Find the Queen when Micro Chips, Lyra and Bon-Bon walked by with that infernal machine, and it humiliated Trixie.”

Sunset dead-panned. “The card was up your sleeve, wasn’t it?”

Trixie blushed. “Yes, that doesn’t make it okay to point it out. You shouldn’t reveal a magician’s secrets.”

“Where were they headed?” Starlight pressed, getting right up in Trixie’s face.

Drawing back from the intensity, Trixie answered. “To the gym. Science Fair.” Without a word, Starlight was off in the indicated direction. “What’s up with her?”

“She’s just really attached to that, uh, toy. Thanks, Trix. I owe you one.” Sunset turned when she heard a crash behind her. Sunburst had once again lost his balance and was prone on the floor while Twilight checked to see if he was okay.

“Clumsy hot guy alert,” a girl giggled as she went by the scene.

Sunset frowned. Starlight was already halfway down the corridor and not waiting for the others. “Come on,” she said and picked Sunburst off the floor, “we’ve already got a rover MIA. We don’t want Starlight to get lost, too.”

“Whoa!” Sunburst hardly knew what happened to him as he was picked up princess style and carried by Sunset at a jog to catch up to Starlight. He was painfully aware of the fact that they were being given odd looks by the students they passed, including more giggling girls. He couldn’t hide his blush.

It didn’t take Sunset long at all to catch up to the wheezing Starlight despite the head start. “Are you okay?”

“Just … not used to … running like this,” Starlight replied between gasps for air, “gotta find Oppy.”

“Actually,” Twilight began, “bipedal locomotion is much more efficient for long distance running due to the …”

“Twilight,” Sunset barked over her shoulder in as cordial a tone as she could muster. “This is not the time for one of your science anecdotes, sweetie.”

“Right, sorry.”

“Huh,” Sunset mused. “How about that? Spike was right. You can cut off a Sparkle rant with the proper timing.” Taking charge in the hopes of giving the distraught Starlight a break, Sunset moved up front and, having her hands full with carrying Sunburst, kicked the double doors to the gymnasium open with one booted foot. “Alright, let’s finish this!”

Looking over Sunset’s shoulder, Sunburst asked: “Is she always like this?”

Twilight shrugged. “Well, she’s a magical girl from another dimension who has saved the world several times before and after I met her. She’s basically a superhero, even if she doesn’t like to admit it.”

Several tables had been set up in the gymnasium for students to present their projects, though most were gathered around one particular spot. The group looked at each other as the crowd broke into a round of applause. Sunset jerked her head, indicating for the others to follow her.

As she pushed through the gathered students, she could make out two figures standing taller than the rest, Principal Celestia and Vice-principal Luna. “Do it again!” someone said, and Sunset could finally see what the commotion was all about.

Maud Pie placed a grey rock in front of the small rover. Oppy scanned the object, shuddered slightly before a ping sound could be heard, and proclaimed: “53% silicon dioxide, 1.5% titanium dioxide, 7% iron oxide, 10% calcium oxide, 11% magnesium oxide, 16% aluminum oxide, 1.5% assorted alkalis. Conclusion: Basalt.”

Maud picked up the stone, licking it. “Correct.”

Another round of applause went around the room, and Celestia made a few notes on her clipboard. “I think we’ve seen enough, don’t you?”

“Agreed, sister.” Luna nodded her agreement, took out a blue ribbon and attached it to the rover.

“Oppy!” Starlight pushed her way forward, fell to her knees and scooped up the mini rover in her arms. “I was so worried about you!”

“Hello, Starlight,” the rover replied. “Opportunity find lots of science.”

Noticing the teens, Celestia smiled at them. “Ah, Miss Shimmer, Miss Sparkle. I figured, when a science project as sophisticated as this was entered anonymously, that my two top students had something to do with it.”

“Science project? Ouch!”

Sunset thought very fast after kicking Twilight in the shin and making a silent vow to apologize later. “Science Project! That’s right … for the Science Fair … which is today.”

“I thought you two weren’t going to enter this year,” Luna pointed out with a raised eyebrow before indicating Starlight who was still hugging the tiny version of Opportunity. “And who is this?”

“She’s, uh, from Crystal Prep,” Sunset said, nodding vigorously, restoring a semblance of her usual, cool demeanor as she got into the swing of things. “Starlight is … one of Twilight’s old classmates. And Crystal Prep isn’t hosting a Science Fair this year. So we told her that she could team up with us to enter her project here. … Surprise!”

Twilight’s head snapped from Sunset towards the principals, yet all she could do was laugh sheepishly. With Starlight a mess, Sunburst a complete fish out of water and Twilight pathologically incapable of lying to authority figures, it all came down to Sunset Shimmer.

“That’s a lovely gesture, Sunset,” Celestia said with pride, “but I have to ask. Why are you carrying that boy in your arms?”

“Boy? What boy?” Sunset blinked and looked down at the still furiously blushing Sunburst she was cradling. “Oh, that boy! That’s my boyfriend.”

Somewhere at the back of the crowd, the distinct sound of a blue-haired guitar player’s jaw could be heard hitting the gymnasium floor.

“Yep, my boyfriend Sunburst,” she reiterated with forced laughter while the boy in her arms was simply staring at her. “He came to cheer us on. But he sprained his ankle on account of … cheering so hard.”

Sunburst continued to stare, then turned to Celestia and Luna. “Wo-hoo,” he finally said, making it sound more like a question than anything else, “you go, girls?”

“Right, anywho,” Sunset said, “we’re gonna get Sunburst to Nurse Redheart’s office. Thanks for the award!” Then she nudged her friends towards the gymnasium doors and was gone before either Luna or Celestia could get in another word edgewise.

“What’s with the goofy grin?” Twilight asked after they’d made good their escape and were racing through the corridor back towards the statue.

“It’s been ages since I got to pull one over on Principal Celestia and Vice-principal Luna,” she replied breathlessly, her heart pounding and her lips unable to stop smiling. “I forgot how good it feels.”

“Do I need to be worried about how easy that came to you?”

“It’s probably just the adrenaline. But don’t let me get back into the habit of it.”

“Did that seem odd to you?” Celestia asked as she watched the girls disappear through the doors at the opposite side of the gymnasium. The crowd of students around them had begun slowly dispersing, giving the two adults some privacy to talk.

“Nothing those girls do seems odd to me anymore,” Luna admitted. Noting the slight frown on her sister’s face, she added: “Something in particular you’re worried about?”

“I don’t know, but … that girl from Crystal Prep … did she seem okay to you?”

Luna considered that for a moment. “She did have some dark rings under her eyes, and she doesn’t seem to be in the best of shapes. Then again, you always looked awful whenever you pulled an all-nighter on a science project when we were young,” she finally replied with a smirk. “You could never handle the night life like I could.”

Celestia swatted her giggling sister lightly with her clipboard before sighing. “Well, I suppose if she’s a Crystal Prep student, we can trust Dean Cadence to look out for her health.”

Having put away her notes of the roundtable discussion about Ancient Changeling that had followed the group’s return from CHS, Starlight went around the workshop to turn off the lights while Opportunity watched her from its usual spot.

“Starlight,” the rover began.

“What is it, Oppy?”

There was a momentary silence as Opportunity worked out the best phrasing for what it had to say. “Opportunity sorry. No mean make Starlight worry.”

The unicorn sighed, slumping her shoulders, before she gave her friend a tired smile. “It’s alright. But you shouldn’t go off on your own like that.”

“Opportunity alone fifteen years. Have friends right next to Opportunity, all new.”

“I get it,” Starlight said, putting a comforting hoof on the rover’s chassis. “And it’s partly my fault, too. I … I’m sorry for freaking out. It’s just … I’ve had some bad experiences in my life. So when I get it in my head that a friend might leave me behind, I get clingy.”

Opportunity moved its robotic arm atop Starlight’s hoof. “Opportunity never leave Starlight behind. Starlight friend. Opportunity always come back to Starlight.”

She smiled, moving in to hug the rover. A light metallic clink could be heard in the otherwise quiet evening as her necklace made contact with Opportunity’s chassis. “I know, and I’ll try not to let my anxiety get the better of me from now on.” Lightly kissing Opportunity’s mast, she said: “Good night, Oppy.”

“Good night, Starlight.” Having expended a lot of battery charge over the eventful day, Opportunity went into power safe mode, and its cameras rotated closed.

Starlight watched for a moment longer before another coughing fit made her turn away, bringing her hoof up to her muzzle. When it subsided, she noticed a dark red splotch on her hoof, though she couldn’t quite make out what it was in the dim light. Thinking nothing of it, she wiped it off on a nearby cloth.

“Maybe Oppy has the right idea,” she mused as she headed off towards bed, pushing the dull throbbing in her head to the back of her mind, “I’m getting to be as bad as Twilight about staying cooped up in my workshop all day. I should really get out more.”

Mars, Gale Crater on the slopes of Mount Sharp. Humanity’s sole operational rover on the planet carried on with its scientific tasks, following the trails blazed by Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity.

For several years the Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity, had explored the surface of the red planet at the same time as its older sibling. It had survived the same global dust storm that had been Opportunity’s perceived downfall. Now it alone carried on, until a signal made it stop abruptly in its tracks, the main camera turning towards the sky.

*** AOS – DSN (relayed via MRO-Direct) ***

*** Message Received (Source: JPL): EXEC SP UPDATE ***

*** Serendipity Protocol Activated: Downloading Software Updates ***

*** Relaying Message ***

Author's Note

Boy, do I have a special treat for you this time! Say what you will about Flash Sentry, but his VA Vincent Tong is a really cool guy. So enjoy this recording he made for me last weekend at GalaCon as Flash.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qfxy647gyqgf5ug/VincentTong.m4a?dl=0

14. Fall

*** Mission Log: Sol 5209 ***

*** AOS – BSN ***

*** Message Received (Source: Twilight): Ah! Don’t you just love it? ***

Twilight took a deep breath. “There’s nothing like the crisp morning air on the day of the Running of the Leaves.”

Starlight grumbled angrily at the sun that was stinging her half-closed eyes after being dragged out of bed by her mentor at the crack of dawn. “There’s plenty of things I could think of that I love more. My warm and comfortable bed comes to mind.”

“Unfortunately, participants don’t get the luxury of sleeping in.”

“And whose idea was it to enter us into this race?” Starlight replied testily. Her disposition brightened somewhat when a steaming paper cup appeared in front of her face. “Thank you, Oppy.” She gratefully received the coffee from the robot and took a long drink.

“Come on, Starlight. It’s a Ponyville tradition, and you’ve never taken part.” The Princess of Friendship drew closer and placed a hoof on Starlight’s shoulder. “Besides, I think the exercise might do you some good. You’re not looking so well recently.”

Starlight brushed the hoof aside. “I’m just a little low on sleep. I make the most progress on determining Oppy’s origin at night. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the initial contact happened at night. The stars give me focus.”

Twilight frowned at that. “Even so, you should take better care of yourself. If nothing else, take the chance to get your mind off things for a while. Enjoy the scenery, go at a comfortable pace and have some fun.”

“Got your numbers,” Spike called as he joined the group on his return from the registration desk and helped the two equines and one rover to fasten their starting numbers. 42 for Twilight, 17 for Starlight, and Oppy had been given 01 as his starter number by the donkey at the registration desk who was currently waving in his direction.

Opportunity raised its arm and waved back in greeting. The rover watched an unenthused Starlight drain the rest of her coffee while Spike helped with her number and then turned its attention to Twilight. “Question. What purpose experiment Running of Leaves?”

“Oh,” Twilight began, “well, it’s rather simple. The racers follow the path through the White Tail Woods to help the trees shed their leaves for the coming winter.”

Opportunity stared at her.

“You know. We have to help the trees shed their leaves, so we can bring in the snow clouds from the weather factory soon.”

Opportunity turned, poked Starlight and pointed at the alicorn. “Twilight broken,” it said in a factual manner. “Is go crazy, Twilynanas.”

“Hey!”

While Twilight stomped her hooves and puffed up her cheeks, Starlight had the first genuine giggle since she’d been woken up. “Oppy, do you remember the talk we had about where weather comes from with Rainbow Dash?” she asked.

The rover considered that and slowly moved its camera eyes up and down in a nod. “Opportunity see. Twilight and Rainbow both crazy.”

Before Twilight could lodge another complaint in defense of her sanity, two more unicorns joined the group. “Hey, gang. Good morning!”

“Sunset,” Starlight called out in surprise, “what are you doing here?”

“Sunburst invited me,” she replied, pointing at her companion who had been given the starter number 501 while her own cutie mark was covered up with a 66.

Starlight raised an eyebrow and then settled into a knowing smile when she caught the nervous look on the face of her childhood friend. “Did he, now?”

“Yeah,” Sunburst confirmed with a forced laugh, “I mean, mirror dimension excursion aside, we had a lot of fun the other day. I thought, since we both know a lot of languages from our respective worlds, it would be interesting to continue discussing the topic in a broader spectrum.”

“And I’ve always wanted to see a real Earth Pony seasonal tradition,” Sunset added, turning slightly to look at the colorful trees which had the ‘unintended’ effect of showing off her flank to Sunburst who swallowed in response.

“It seems like a worthwhile field of study,” Starlight pointed out, turning to Twilight. “What do you say, Twi? Maybe you could enchant a new magic journal so the two of them can stay in touch when Sunburst returns to the Crystal Empire?”

“Huh?” Twilight, who had been in the middle of giving Oppy a refresher course in pegasus weather mechanics, looked up. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. Now see here, Opportunity, the weather factory takes the water collected during tornado duty and …”

“Really!?” Sunburst couldn’t help but break into a huge grin before coughing into his hoof. “I mean, sure. That sounds like a useful tool to exchange knowledge. Hey, how about I get us some refreshments? It’s important to stay hydrated for the race, after all.”

“Thanks, Sunburst.” Sunset waited for him to get out of earshot before she turned to Starlight. “Does he … actually think he’s being subtle?”

Starlight giggled in response. “Probably. Go easy on him. He’s not really good at playing it cool.”

“Oh, I think it’s cute,” Sunset admitted. “So, just checking, you and him aren’t …”

“Aren’t what? Oh! No, no, no, no,” Starlight waved the thought off. “We’re just friends. Good friends, but friends. No worries here. Go for it if you think this could turn into something. I actually thought you might make a cute couple when I decided to introduce you.” Jabbing Sunset in the side, she added: “I mean, I didn’t think you’d sweep him off his feet and declare your undying love in front of the whole school on your first date.”

Sunset blushed. “You know that’s not how it went down!”

“No,” Starlight admitted, “but you have to admit, it would make for a cute story to tell your foals someday.”

Before Sunset could get another word in, Miss Cheerilee’s voice could be heard over the speakers that had been set up on the festival grounds. “Calling all racers, please assemble at the starting line. All racers to the starting line!”

Twilight held her hoof up to her brow and surveyed the track as she stood at the mostly deserted finish line with the few others who had remained.

Spike had taken over record-keeping duties for the last few stragglers while the majority of racers and spectators had made their way home or to various watering holes around town to finish off the evening with a cider or two.

Sunset and Sunburst were still here, talking quietly with the occasional giggle, as Sunset wanted to give her farewells to Starlight and Oppy in person before returning home through the mirror.

Twilight, for her part, had stayed because of what she could only describe as an uneasy feeling. “Is it only Starlight and Oppy now?”

“Yep,” Spike confirmed, not even consulting his scroll as he’d answered Twilight’s question a couple of times now. “Everypony else has crossed the finish line and is accounted for.”

“Maybe we should go look for them.”

Sunset rolled her eyes at the fidgeting alicorn. “Relax, Twilight. You know Oppy can’t go that fast, even with his new wheels. And I’m sure Starlight just isn’t going to stray from his side.”

“It’s not Oppy I’m worried about,” Twilight replied, biting her lip. “I made Starlight participate because I thought it might do her some good.”

“Well, she hasn’t been looking that well lately,” Sunset said quietly, her lips drawing into a thin line as she thought back to the state her friend had been in when crossing the portal during Oppy’s excursion to CHS. “Still, I’m sure they’re fine.”

“Hey, there they are!” Spike shouted, pointing.

The two unicorns and the alicorn breathed a collective sigh of relief as they saw Oppy’s outline against the setting sun with its arm raised high as if waving at them.

Twilight was about to make a self-deprecating joke about her own paranoia when the knot in her stomach suddenly returned with a vengeance. “Something’s wrong. Do any of you see Starlight?”

Taking a second look, neither of the others could say they did, though they could tell that Opportunity was dragging something behind it.

“I don’t like this,” Twilight declared. Sunset could feel the alicorn’s magic gathering as she prepared to teleport to the rover’s side.

“I’m coming, too.” Sunset prepared her own teleport spell, and the two of them materialized in front of a momentarily startled Opportunity.

“Twilight! Help! Starlight broken! Fix!”

Sunset wasn’t sure if Twilight had taken any of those words in as she stared in open-mouthed horror at the unicorn laying still on the improvised sled of tree bark and vines the rover had dragged all the way here.

“Starlight!” Twilight threw herself onto the ground next to her friend, holding a hoof up to her forehead. “She’s still breathing, but she’s burning up!”

“Help! Fix Starlight!” Opportunity urged nervously.

Sunset drew in her breath to calm her nerves and looked behind her. Spike and Sunburst had already sprinted half the distance towards them, probably alarmed by Twilight’s initial outcry, and Sunset fired off another teleport to meet them halfway. “Where’s the closest hospital?” she asked the two startled guys.

“Uh, Ponyville General,” Spike replied, thinking fast. “No, wait. They set up a medical tent in the fair grounds for injuries during the race.”

“Go there,” she simply said, “get a doctor, NOW!”

She didn’t waste any time to wait for confirmation, hoping the urgency in her voice had made clear the seriousness of what she was asking, and teleported back to the others.

“Starlight, Starlight,” Twilight babbled between sobs she was trying to hold back. “Say something, what happened?”

“That’s a good question,” Sunset said, but she could tell that she wouldn’t get the answers from the unicorn whose eyes were closed and whose breathing was labored. So she turned to the one person who had been with her. “What happened, Oppy?”

The rover tore its cameras away and forced itself to look at her. “Help! Help Starlight! Not go! Not leave in the dark like Spirit! Fix Starlight! Please!”

Sunset took another calming breath, realizing that between the sobbing Princess and the panicking rover it once again fell to her to take charge. “Oppy,” she said slowly and deliberately, “I want to help Starlight. We will fix her. But I need to know what happened.”

The rover rocked back and forth nervously. “Starlight and Opportunity run leaves. Go slow. Starlight say tired. So Opportunity go slow. Stop now and then to look at rock. Let Starlight rest. Then Starlight say feel woozy. Look at Opportunity but not look. Look odd. Fall over.”

Opportunity looked over at the unicorn and began to drive circles around Twilight and Starlight, perhaps hoping to see any way to help. “Oppy, focus,” Sunset said. “What happened then?”

“Starlight no wake up. Opportunity no know what to do.” The rover held up its claw. “No get stuck like brother Spirit. Opportunity take bark from tree. Put Starlight on it. Bring Starlight here for help. Please help!”

“Alright,” Sunset said, putting a hoof on the rover’s front wheel to calm it down. “You’ve done well. Leave the rest to us. Now, how did that aura sight spell go.” Sunset knelt down next to Twilight to start working the problem. What she saw horrified her. “Twilight, look at her!”

“I am! This all my fault! I shouldn’t have pushed her to run. But I didn’t know how ill she was. Why didn’t she say anything?” A fresh round of sobs racked the alicorn.

“Twilight,” Sunset barked, forcibly grabbing her head to make eye contact and snap the alicorn out of her shock. “Stop freaking out and really LOOK at her!”

Twilight looked into Sunset’s glowing eyes and up to her glowing horn, somewhat calming down at recognizing the magic and casting her own aura sight spell. Then she gasped. “Her thaumic channels! They’re completely blocked up!”

“It’s worse. Look at her magic reservoir.”

Once again, the shock was evident in Twilight’s voice. “It’s almost empty! That shouldn’t even be possible. Not even a conscious spell should be able to draw that much magic. The body will always keep back some magic that’s necessary for vital functions.”

“Evidently not always. She’s in acute thaumic shock from the lack of magic. How much healing magic do you know?”

“Not a lot,” Twilight admitted. “How about you?”

“Enough, … I hope. We need to restore the mana flow around her body. Here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re an alicorn, so you have a deeper reserve than me. You’ll infuse her reservoir with fresh magic. Meanwhile, I’m going to use concentrated bursts of localized magic to clear the blockages.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for the doctor to get here?” Twilight asked nervously. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“Even if the doctor gets here, we’re gonna need you, Twilight,” Sunset explained. “For this to work, we’ll have to attune our magic to her aura. You’re the only one who knows her well enough to do this. Right now, we’re the only chance she’s got.”

Twilight gulped and looked over towards Opportunity. “Fix Starlight,” it pleaded again. “Please fix. Make healthy again.”

The Princess of Friendship suddenly felt a wave of resolve and nodded. “We’ll do our best,” she said, her voice steady for the first time since she’d laid eyes upon her friend in that state. She turned back to Sunset. “What do you need me to do?”

“Okay, first you’re going to have to replicate her aura exactly. Then I’m going to copy it off you. We need this to be as close to Starlight’s natural magic as possible, or her body will reject the foreign magic.”

Twilight nodded and closed her eyes, trying to recall every magic training session she’d ever had with her student at once, even the time Starlight had used her magic to rip off Twilight’s own cutie mark. While an unpleasant memory, it had perhaps left the greatest imprint of Starlight’s raw magic in her mind. And if it meant saving her pupil, Twilight would force herself to relive every horrible moment of that pain over and over again.

“Alright, that’s good,” Sunset said, watching the glow around Twilight’s horn slowly change from its usual lavender to a light turquoise. Drawing on her own magic, she began to adjust it to the same spectrum.

“You got it?” Twilight asked, sweat standing atop her brow as she forced herself to channel her magic in a way that felt completely unnatural to her.

“Yeah,” Sunset confirmed, clenching her teeth and fighting equally hard to keep hold of the aura in her mind’s eye. “Alright, I’m going to count to three. On three, you flood her whole body with as much magic as you can, and I’ll fire a directed bolt at the blockage in her thaumic channel. The new magic should be drawn from her reservoir, clear the pathways and restore magic flow around her body.”

Not trusting herself to speak without breaking her concentration, Twilight nodded.

“Okay,” Sunset said and picked her first target, a large blockage of magic in Starlight’s left shoulder, “one, two, … THREE!”

There was no visible sign that anything had changed. Starlight was still laying unconscious, her breathing labored and shallow.

“Starlight,” Oppy whimpered quietly.

“Again,” Sunset said resolutely, picking a new target in Starlight’s right hind leg. “One, two, THREE!”

Once again, nothing changed on the surface, even though Sunset could tell that Starlight’s reservoir was beginning to hold some of the new magic and the pathways were beginning to clear. She glanced over at Twilight. The alicorn’s jaw was set and tears were freely flowing from the corners of her eyes, but she held her concentration and was already building up another charge. Any normal unicorn would have already been out for the count herself after giving up that much of their own magic.

“Again,” Sunset repeated, surprising herself with how calm her own voice sounded in her ears. “One, two, THREE!”

This time Starlight did react. Her body jumped ever so slightly, and her eyelashes fluttered briefly, even though they remained closed.

“Again! One, two, THREE! And again! One, two, THREE! One more time, one, two, THREE! Come on, Twilight, we can do this! One, two, THREE! Stay with us, Starlight! ONE, TWO, THREE!!!”

Over and over, they gave it everything they had, until finally Starlight could be heard coughing weakly and her eyes fluttered open. “What … what happened?” she asked in a raspy voice.

“Starlight!” Opportunity exclaimed

Meanwhile Sunset and Twilight, having given everything they had to give, collapsed onto the ground, congratulating each other wordlessly with tired smiles as their chests heaved to catch their breaths.

“Over here! Quickly,” Sunset could hear Spike’s voice call out as she spotted him, Sunburst and what looked to be a doctor and nurse pony galloping towards them with a stretcher.

High in orbit over the giant gas planet of Jupiter, a triangular probe named after the wife of the planet’s namesake soared in a highly eccentric orbit. Diving in and out of the gargantuan magnetic field at mind-boggling speeds to take readings of and better understand the planet’s atmosphere, magnetosphere and gravitational field.

It was the ultimate rollercoaster ride, lazily drifting along the apoapsis of its orbit before hurtling itself at the periapsis in an effort to hit that small window necessary to keep itself from getting fried by the magnet field of the solar system’s biggest planet.

It was during one of the more sedate moments that Juno received the signal, fired its thrusters to reorient and began to send.

*** AOS – DSN (relayed via MSL-Direct) ***

*** Message Received (Source: JPL): EXEC SP UPDATE ***

*** Serendipity Protocol Activated: Downloading Software Updates ***

*** Relaying Message ***

15. Drive to Survive

*** Mission Log: Sol 5211 ***

*** AOS – BSN ***

*** Message Received (Source: undefined): Your friend’s quick thinking and your deep reserves of alicorn magic probably saved her life, Twilight. ***

“But what’s wrong with her?” Twilight asked. “And how can we be sure it doesn’t happen again?”

“I simply do not know, Twilight,” the old stallion replied with a long sigh while stroking his beard thoughtfully.

Usually, when she was face to face with her idol, he was all she could look at. Not this time, as the Princess kept glancing over the shoulder of Star Swirl the Bearded and into Starlight Glimmer’s room.

Starlight was currently resting under the watchful eye of Mage Meadowbrook who had accompanied Star Swirl upon Twilight’s urgent summons. Thanks to an array of salves and poultices provided by the legendary healer, Starlight was now breathing much more easily again, though she remained frighteningly weak, barely able to stand when awake and unable to stay awake for more than half an hour at a time in the first place.

Opportunity, Spike and Trixie constantly hovered on the periphery of Starlight’s bedside, seemingly bursting at the seams with anxious energy, ready to do anything and everything in their power to help, yet frustratingly unable to provide much more than minor chores like fluffing pillows or bringing a fresh bowl of water.

“How can you not know?” Twilight asked, just as frustrated as her friends. “I’ve asked every doctor in Ponyville to diagnose her. I’ve asked Zecora. Hay, I’ve even brought Celestia here, and even she can’t tell me what’s wrong! You’re my last hope. You’re Star Swirl the Bearded, for pony’s sake! If this is a magical ailment, you must know something about it.”

“I’m not sure this is a magical ailment,” Star Swirl admitted, casting a glance into the room himself, “but I’d rather have Mage here to weigh in on what I’ve deduced before I go into details. In the meantime, your reservoir seems to be recovering nicely, as is to be expected from an alicorn that can draw from each of the three wells simultaneously. How is your friend doing?”

Twilight grunted in frustration, sitting on her haunches. “Better, I think. Sunset almost drained her own reservoir to dangerous levels yesterday when we repeated the procedure. She’s gone back through the portal for now. She says her magic is recovering slightly better there since her human form doesn’t require as much to function. Sunburst went with her, just to be on the safe side.”

“A’ight, out you go now.” They both turned when they heard Mage Meadowbrook’s southern accent as she waved Spike, Trixie and Oppy out of the room.

“Trixie does not appreciate being herded,” the blue magician complained.

“Out,” Mage repeated in no uncertain terms, “I’ve done what I can for her right now. What she needs now is rest.”

“Stay strong, Starlight,” Trixie said to her best friend as she allowed herself to be led out of the room by the healer pony.

The ponies and the rover gathered in a half-circle around the two legendary Pillars as Mage Meadowbrook removed her mask. “Well?” Star Swirl asked.

“You were right,” she confirmed with a nod. “It’s not a magical affliction. But whatever it is, it keeps draining her reservoir over and over while also saturating her magic to the point it clumps and starts blocking her thaumic pathways.”

“Is it a curse?” Trixie asked. “Dark magic? Possession? Changeling venom? What do we need to do to get it out of her system?”

“As I said,” Star Swirl repeated. “It’s not a magic affliction. I’ve done a thorough scan with every diagnosis spell and aura sight charm I know. There’s no trace of foreign magic in her system, dark magic or otherwise.”

“But then what’s draining her magic?” Twilight asked in frustration.

“She is,” Mage Meadowbrook answered simply, “although she’s not aware that she’s doing it.”

“What!?”

Meadowbrook and Star Swirl locked eyes, and the old stallion nodded. “Do any of you know the term MIR?” Mage waited a moment while Star Swirl’s horn lit up and he conjured the outline of a pony with his magic. When nopony responded to her question, she went on. “I see. Here’s the brief version. MIR stands for Magic Immune Response. Although it’s most pronounced in unicorns, every creature with an internal magic reservoir has it. Star Swirl?”

“Indeed,” the wizard said as he took over the explanation and added what looked like a half-filled tank to the illusion of his pony diagram. “It is basically our body’s natural defense against sickness and injury, and it isn’t necessary to consciously cast any directed spell for it to act, though in this case that’s part of the problem. Most pegasi and earth ponies aren’t even aware of their reservoir and thaumic channels most of the time. Even to unicorns, they only tend to think of thaumic pathways as a way to bring their magic up to their horn when casting a spell. But they’re much more than that.”

“Imagine cutting yourself,” Meadowbrook took over again as she walked forward and brought her hoof across Star Swirl’s illusion in a slashing motion. The wizard added a red stripe to the illusory pony’s hoof. “The MIR will detect the damage and direct some of your internal magic via thaumic pathways towards the injury, aiding the tissue in mending itself.”

“That is why ponies tend to heal faster and can handle more physical trauma than species with less internal magic like griffons,” Star Swirl added while connecting the reservoir in his drawing with the red stripe via a path of light. He illustrated the reservoir slightly decreasing while the cut vanished.

“Right,” Mage Meadowbrook went on. “What seems to be happening in your friend’s case is that her MIR has gone into overdrive for some reason. It seems like it has been drawing steadily from her reservoir for weeks now, and it keeps drawing as if her body was constantly being assaulted from all sides.”

Star Swirl added several pathways to the diagram, leading to all corners of the body where angry red spots pulsated, and showed the tank rapidly running dry. “It’s drawing so much that her body can’t refill her reservoir fast enough anymore. Normally the reservoir refills naturally over time, but now the draw is outpacing the intake. What’s more,” he went on as he added circles to some of the pathways in his diagram, “whatever is contaminating her body has started contaminating her magic as well. The magic is trying to bind the foreign contaminant to expel it, but it begins to clump together as it gets overly saturated which leads to the clogging of the thaumic pathways your friend Sunset detected.”

“Even worse,” Meadowbrook added, “as the thaumic pathways get clogged up, her body has a harder time transporting the magic to where it needs to be, drawing on and depleting her reservoir even faster to compensate.”

The room was silent until Spike posted the question nopony wanted to ask. “What happens when Starlight’s magic is fully depleted?”

“Then she won’t have any further defense against whatever is attacking her body,” Star Swirl informed him gravely.

Mage Meadowbrook likewise had a grim expression on her face. “And from what we’ve seen, it won’t take long to finish its work, whatever it is.”

“And then what?” Trixie demanded in a pitch higher than her normal voice and with her eyes wide as saucers. “She dies!?” She looked around the silent room in the hopes that anyone would contradict her conclusion. Nopony did. “Buck that!” she screamed, wheeling on Twilight. “We can keep feeding her magic from other unicorns, right? Right? Trixie volunteers! Take as much as you need!”

A glimmer of hope shone in Twilight’s eyes as Trixie shook her. “Right, that’s right.” She licked her lips as she thought. “We can just keep doing what Sunset and I have been doing for the last two days, clearing her thaumic pathways and refilling her reservoir by imitating her aura. At least until we’ve figured out a more permanent solution.”

“Unfortunately, we can’t,” Star Swirl said in a sad tone while shaking his head. “Not indefinitely.”

Trixie whirled around and stared at him with murder in her eyes. “Why not? Are you going to stop me from helping my best friend? Is that what you’re saying? Just try and stop me, old-timer!”

“That’s not what he’s saying, honey,” Mage Meadowbrook cut in as Star Swirl backed away from the angry stage magician. “The solution your friend Sunset came up with was nothing short of brilliant, really, especially given the pressure she was under to act. But it’s only a stopgap measure. Since this isn’t her own magic, Starlight’s body will eventually start to build up a resistance to the foreign magic and stop refilling her reservoir altogether. We may be able to repeat the process once or twice yet, but it will get less effective with each application until it stops being useful at all.”

Star Swirl nodded. “And either way, it’s merely fighting the symptoms. What we need to figure out is the reason why the MIR is draining her magic in the first place. What’s her body fighting? There has to be a cause. Eliminate that root cause, and her body will stop draining all her magic in order to stay alive.”

“Well, how do we find out?” Trixie demanded. The room was plunged into silence yet again, and Trixie went from face to face in search for answers, until her gaze fell on Opportunity. Her eyes narrowed, her pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks. “It’s him.”

“What?” Oppy seemed as confused as the rest of the group as they watched the blue unicorn approach the rover.

“It has to be you. It has to be. This all started when she brought you here.” Trixie swatted the rover’s frontside with her hoof. Trixie continued to advance, giving the rover blow after blow with increasing strength. “You’re killing her!”

“Opportunity no hurt Starlight,” the rover said, raising its arm in defense and trying to back away from the furious unicorn. “Starlight friend. Opportunity never hurt Starlight.”

“A likely story!”

“Trixie, stop it!” As the rover ran out of room to back away, Twilight intervened, physically restraining Trixie. “It’s not his fault!”

“It has to be!” Trixie retorted, then rounded on Opportunity once more. “What did you do to her!? You’re the only one who was with her when she collapsed! WHAT DID YOU DO!?”

“Little help here,” Twilight requested with a grunt.

Spike inserted himself between Trixie and Opportunity, attempting to push the increasingly irate unicorn back. “Trixie, listen to what you’re saying. Do you even hear yourself? You know Oppy would never do anything to hurt Starlight!”

“THEN MAYBE HE’S NOT DOING IT ON PURPOSE! BUT IT HAS TO BE HIM, OR SOMETHING HE BROUGHT WITH HIM!”

“Then what about me?” Spike pointed out. “I’ve been with him almost as much as Starlight, and I haven’t gotten sick.”

But Trixie had gone beyond the reach of rational arguments at this point. “GET OUT OF TRIXIE’S WA… ungh!?” She stopped mid-sentence, looking over her shoulder at the still glowing horn of Star Swirl the Bearded who had fired off a weak paralysis spell. “No,” she protested weakly as she sank to the floor between Twilight’s hooves.

“I’m sorry, Trixie,” the alicorn said in a soothing voice. She gave the old wizard a grateful nod before turning her attention back to Trixie. His intervention had likely prevented Trixie from doing something she would end up regretting later. “I know you’re upset right now. I know you don’t actually mean what you’re saying.”

Opportunity reached out towards her as well. “Trixie.”

“No!” With what little strength she had left, Trixie swatted away the robotic arm that had reached out to comfort her and lifted her chin. She stared at the rover with nothing but hatred in her eyes. “It HAS to be you!” Then her expression gradually changed, and the holy fury that had taken hold of her earlier was replaced by despair and tears began to fall in large drops. “It HAS to be you! Don’t you understand? It has to be … Cause if it isn’t, we don’t know what it is … then we can’t … and that means Starlight will …”

She couldn’t bring herself to finish the thought. Cursing her own uselessness, she buried her face in Twilight’s fur and began to cry in earnest. Nobody said anything. Nobody moved, aside from Twilight who every now and then gently took to stroking Trixie’s mane as the magician cried herself out, her heart-breaking sobs remaining the only source of sound in the room for a long time.

At the edge of the solar system, another probe soared, having passed Pluto and exploring the unseen mysteries of the Kuiper Belt, hibernating most of the time.

When the unexpected start-up command arrived, New Horizons took a look around. The former planet named for the god of the underworld was no longer visible and the mysterious object known as Ultima Thule not yet in sight. But there was another request from home as the probe continued to cruise around the very edge of our home system.

*** AOS – DSN (relayed via JUNO-Direct) ***

*** Message Received (Source: JPL): EXEC SP UPDATE ***

*** Serendipity Protocol Activated: Downloading Software Updates ***

*** Relaying Message ***

Opportunity sat motionless in the dark, standing silent vigil over Starlight’s fitful sleep while being careful not to move and thus disturb her rest.

“Oppy,” she mumbled in her sleep while tossing and turning, “hold on. I’m gonna save you.”

The rover reached out, pulling the blanket back up to her chin. The dresser next to her bed held a bowl of cold water with a washcloth, right next to the jewelry box that held Starlight’s favorite possession. Oppy took the wet cloth and gingerly placed it atop Starlight’s forehead, and she slowly settled back down.

The door creaked and Oppy turned to see the light from the candle that was being carried by a small dragon in a nightcap. “How’s she doing?” Spike asked softly.

“Same.”

He drew closer, patting Starlight’s hoof lightly with his claw before turning back to Opportunity. “And how are you doing? I can take over for you here if you want.”

“No,” Oppy replied. “Spike go sleep. Opportunity stay. No need sleep. Watch over Starlight instead.”

Spike sighed. “You know, about what Trixie said earlier.” He paused. Opportunity did not respond, choosing to keep his eyes focused on Starlight. “You know that she didn’t mean it, right? She’s just … scared and hurting and … you know. It’s not your fault.”

“Spike, is that you?”

Starlight’s voice made both of them instantly focus on her. “Hey, look who’s up,” Spike said with fake cheeriness in his voice, “how are you feeling, Starlight?”

Her eyes were open, though unfocused, moving between Spike, Oppy and various spots in the distance seemingly at random. “It’s so dark. Why is it dark? Why am I in bed?” she asked, slurring some of the words.

“You’ve been sick,” Spike replied, swallowing the lump in his throat, “you fell down during the Running of the Leaves, remember?”

“Oh,” Starlight said simply, giving a small smile. “Maybe now Twilight will get off my back about this exercise stuff.” She brought her hoof to her chest, pawing at it. Then she began struggling against the blanket, twisting this way and that to look to either side.

“What’s wrong?” Spike asked, fighting to keep the alarm from registering in his voice.

“My necklace,” Starlight mumbled. “I can’t find my necklace. Where is it?”

“Is right here,” Opportunity said, opening the lid of the jewelry box, picking up the necklace with its claw and holding it up for her.

“My necklace!” She grabbed the object and held it to her chest with a sigh of relief. Laying back down, she placed it on the mattress next to her. “I had a dream … that I lost it … I’m glad it’s safe.” Her eyelids grew heavy once more as she watched the object with a smile on her face, and she drifted back to sleep before long.

Opportunity returned the necklace to its place on the dresser while Spike readjusted Starlight’s blanket once more.

The dragon watched his friend’s sleeping face for a while longer. He turned toward Oppy to say something, but thought better of it. Wordlessly, he made a fist and lightly touched it against the rover’s arm before leaving the room quietly.

Once again, silent darkness engulfed the room. Nopony in the Castle of Friendship found any peaceful rest amidst their shared concerns that night, least of all the little rover who had come to call this place home over the last few months.

Of course, he didn’t need sleep in the traditional sense, so instead he did what insomniacs in any universe tend to do, and mulled over past events.

*** Accessing Logs ***

*** Sol 5113 (Source: Starlight): I got you. It’s gonna be okay now. ***

*** Sol 5134 (Source: Spike): Twilight’s out cold from pulling that all-nighter. You don’t look so hot yourself, Starlight. ***

*** Sol 5161 (Source: Starlight): Oppy! (wheezing) There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you. ***

*** Sol 5172 (Source: MB): WARNING - Radioisotope source decayed, instrument offline due to command override ***

*** Sol 5172 (Source: Starlight): Thank you, Oppy. I’ll treasure it always. ***

*** Sol 5175 (Source: Starlight): I haven’t slept this well in ages. ***

*** Conclusion: Subject Starlight in nominal health until Sol 5175 ***

*** Accessing Logs ***

*** Sol 5175 (Source: Derpy): She’s been feeling a little under the weather today. Something about a headache. ***

*** Sol 5175 (Source: Starlight): It’s the gift you gave me. I had Jewel set it into a necklace for me. This way, I can always keep it close to my heart. ***

*** Sol 5209 (Source: Twilight): Besides, I think the exercise might do you some good. You’re not looking so well recently. ***

*** Sol 5211 (Source: Starlight): My necklace! I had a dream … that I lost it … I’m glad it’s safe. ***

*** Conclusion: Rapid onset of current symptoms after Sol 5175 ***

*** Accessing picture database ***

*** Comparing pictures taken of Subject Starlight before and after Sol 5175 ***

*** Differences: weight loss, sunken eyes, diminished coat color, necklace ***

*** Necklace: Crafted by Jewel Sky ***

*** Components: Silver, Gold, Iron, Radioisotope Source MER-B Mössbauer Spectrometer ***

*** Conclusion: Radiation dangerous to ponies ***

Opportunity’s panoramic camera suddenly snapped over, locking onto the innocuous jewelry box sitting on Starlight’s dresser. He opened it and took out the necklace as if it was a poisonous snake, looking back and forth between it and the sleeping Starlight.

“No,” Opportunity vocalized, “no, no, no, no! Trixie right! Opportunity hurt Starlight!” He reached out to touch her, to convey how he felt, but as soon as his own arm came into view of his cameras…

*** APXS – WARNING: Radioisotope source decaying, additional processing time required ***

Oppy drew his arm back and immediately backed away from the sleeping pony. “No! Opportunity dangerous. Make Starlight sick. Must leave. Must save Starlight.”

*** Accessing Logs ***

*** Sol 5169 (Source: Cranky): The Everfree? I suppose that one is always an adventure, yes.***

Opportunity grabbed the necklace once more, knocking the jewelry box off the dresser in the process and went for the door.

“Oppy?” Starlight’s voice carried through the night, and Opportunity stopped momentarily.

“Is alright. Starlight go back to sleep. Opportunity make all better.”

“Alright, if you say so,” the sleepy unicorn mumbled weakly and closed her eyes again.

The rover resolutely drove on, through the silent halls of Castle Friendship and into Starlight’s workshop. There, he placed the laptop and enchanted bowtie he used to communicate on an empty workbench.

Going through every cabinet and drawer, he got together every last bolt, screw and bit of scrap metal that remained of his original instrument arm. He saw a bin in the corner, holding the Martian dust that had been cleaned off the rover during its stay here.

A check of previous analysis results told him everything he needed to know. It would have to go as well. Putting all the pieces he’d found into the bin along with the dust, Opportunity grabbed the container and hoisted it onto its back.

Oppy looked at the laptop and typed out a final message:

*** Opportunity figure it out ***

*** Bad metal, bad metal from Opportunity make Starlight sick ***

*** Radiation! ***

*** Trixie right, all Opportunity fault ***

*** tell Trixie sorry, tell Starlight sorry, tell everyone sorry ***

*** Opportunity make right ***

*** Opportunity take bad metal far away where no can hurt anypony ***

*** save Starlight, keep everyone safe ***

*** please no follow Opportunity ***

*** Opportunity dangerous until get rid of bad metal, place where Opportunity go dangerous ***

*** no follow Opportunity, stay safe ***

*** goodbye, Opportunity friends ***

*** please tell Starlight Opportunity sorry for not keep promise ***

*** BSN – LOS ***

And then Opportunity drove, first through the dark corridors of Twilight’s castle, then through the empty streets of a silent Ponyville past midnight, and across the dirt roads on the outskirts of town. A dark, foreboding tree line appeared in front of the rover. He did not even slow down as he crossed that threshold and continued to drive on into blackest night and straight towards the heart of the Everfree Forest.

On the dividing line towards interstellar space, a spacecraft over 40 years old received the message. The old-timer, with many of its instruments in bad condition, did the calculations requested of it.

It had done its duty, visited many worlds, carried a message for those who might one day find it. Now it was pressed into service one last time. Running on fumes and an ever-decreasing electric charge, it had last fired its thrusters a year ago, after a period of inactivity of 37 years. It had worked then, so Voyager-1 would give it the old college try, slowly rotating to point its antenna at the indicated spot in space when the time came.

*** AOS – DSN (relayed via NH-Direct) ***

*** Message Received (Source: JPL): EXEC SP UPDATE ***

*** Serendipity Protocol Activated: Downloading Software Updates ***

*** Relaying Message ***

Interlude - Serendipity

Thorax stared moodily across the flood plain adjacent to Hook Beak Pass. Behind him lay the dense and ancient forests that surrounded the Badlands. Ahead of him, across the river that marked the boundary between the Griffonian Empire and the Hive’s territory, the mountains that led into Griffonia proper and later Griffonstone rose sharply into the sky. Its lone pass, thanks to its strategic location, had been the site of many skirmishes.

While stark and harsh, Thorax had always thought these sites were places of great natural beauty. All the more irksome, then, to see that serenity broken by two military encampments staring at each other defiantly on either side of the river.

They weren’t armies staring each other down, not yet anyway. But with the breakdown in communications at the Summit, both sides had stepped up their border patrols to ensure sovereign territory would be respected.

Ember and one of her scouts flew in, landing a few feet away from the brooding Changeling King. She had found him there before, in his secret thinking spot he used to get away from the camp and its oppressively military atmosphere. It didn’t bother her: clad in her golden armor the Dragon Lord was, to all intents and purposes, the Commander in Chief of the Dragon-Changeling Coalition.

“I’ve been informed that they’ve brought up another regiment, but they’re hiding it in a ravine off to the side of the pass.” Ember grinned, clapping the scout who was with her on the shoulder hard enough that it almost toppled the poor ling over. “I gotta say. Your people make such great scouts. A dragon wouldn’t recognize subtlety if it walked up to him and bit him on the tail.”

“Mh-hm,” Thorax replied.

“I’m bringing up the 2nd Firebreathers Battalion to compensate.”

“Mh-hm.”

Ember frowned at the response. “We have to do it. We can’t let ourselves be pushed into the defensive. They bring up more troops, we have to respond in kind to keep us safe. They’re the ones escalating the conflict.”

For the first time since she’d landed, Thorax turned to look at her. “I wonder if they’re going to have the same conversation over there once they see the 2nd Firebreathers marching up to meet us.”

Ember opened her mouth to respond, but remained quiet, joining her friend in staring across the river instead.

Suddenly, the moment of quiet was abruptly broken with a crashing sound in the distance. Looking towards the tree line that bordered the flood plain in the East, they saw trees shake and go down.

Something that sounded more like rolling thunder than a voice boomed across the field. “BREAK CHEESE WHEEL!!!”

Thorax and Ember blinked in confusion. “Break,” Thorax started. “Cheese wheel?” Ember finished in bafflement.

They kept their eyes on the tree line as a gigantic figure, almost taller than the trees and with glowing red eyes that could be seen even from this distance, emerged.

Thorax’ ears flicked as the alarm sounds of both camps registered in the back of his mind.

“BREAK CHEESE WHEEL!!!” The voice boomed again.

Thorax and Ember quickly took flight and returned to camp, landing among panicked and scrambling Changelings, all talking over one another.

“Is that what I think it is?” “It’s the Red Shade!” “Why is it talking about cheese?” “Maybe it wants to break us into little pieces and eat us like cheese!”

“King Thorax,” one frightened soldier asked. “Is it true? Did the Red Shade come here to eat us?”

Thorax simply stared up into the sky.

“Stop milling around like grubs!” Ember shouted over the commotion. “I’m not running a grub daycare here! Get to your assigned stations ASAP!”

“Sometimes the Dragon Lady sounds exactly like Queen Chrysalis,” a changeling could be heard whispering somewhere before being shushed by one of his comrades. But the results couldn’t be argued with as Ember’s words had restored a semblance of order amongst the camp residents.

Then she stood shoulder to shoulder with Thorax in an attempt to project calm, even though she herself was anything but sure what was happening at the moment.

“What is it?” she asked quietly.

“Someone's there,” Thorax answered, squinting his eyes and following the two figures that were coming rapidly closer. “Pharynx!”

Before Ember could stop him, the Changeling had vaulted himself into the sky to shorten the distance. She grumbled and turned to shout: “Lieutenant Cerci, you’re in charge! Hold your position, and DO NOT DO ANYTHING without hearing back from us. Understood?”

She could barely hear the “yes, ma’am” in the distance as she raced after her fellow monarch, and she could now make out the two figures herself.

“Just the ling I was hoping to find,” Pharynx was saying.

“Garble!” Ember shouted, her anger flaring. “What did you do, you moron!?”

The red dragon, hovering in the air, recoiled from his Dragon Lord’s outburst, but soon collected himself. “What did I do? You told us to find him! Well, there he is,” he defended himself, pointing at the giant being in the distance.

“BREAK CHEESE WHEEL!!!”

“Why did you bring him here?” Ember grated between clenched teeth. “Don’t you realize how sensitive the situation here is?”

“We’ve been very much out of touch with civilization,” Pharynx explained, coming to the aid of his subordinate. “Did something happen with the conference?”

“You could say that,” Thorax said darkly. “But the question remains. Why did you bring it here of all places? What does it want?”

“We don’t know for sure. That’s why we need you, brother. Come on, I’ll explain on the way,” he said, turning to lead them back towards Mars. “I’ve sent Gilda over to the other side. The Griffons should be there as well when we get back.”

“Alright, this better be good,” Ember grumbled as she made to follow the others. “Just tell me one thing, what’s up with the cheese wheel stuff?”

“Oh, that,” Pharynx explained. “Tibia and Gabby have been trying to teach him a couple of words in the common tongue. He doesn’t always get it right on the first try.”

“SPEAK, MARS WILL!!!”

*** AOS – DVLPMNT-SRV-01 ***

*** Message Received (Source: JPL): CMD Designation ***

*** Message Sent: SSTB1 – Surface System Testbed 1 ***

*** Message Received (Source: JPL): CMD Status Update ***

*** Message Sent: CPU idle, awaiting commands ***

*** Message Received (Source: JPL): EXEC file:///V:/updates/serendipityV102.bat ***

*** Executing file ***

*** Executing software update ***

*** Rebooting ***

*** Message Sent: Update Complete ***

*** Message Received (Source: JPL): CMD Designation ***

*** Message Sent: MER-C Serendipity ***

*** Message Received (Source: JPL): CMD Status Update ***

*** Message Sent: All systems nominal ***

*** Message Received (Source: JPL): CMD State Mission Goals ***

*** Message Sent: Mission Goal 1 – Establish Contact with MER-B Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent: Mission Goal 2 – Confirm Location of MER-B Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent: Mission Goal 3 – Relay Communications from MER-B Opportunity ***

“Good girl,” Tom said proudly as he sat cross-legged in the dirt, his notebook in his lap and giving the rover next to him a gentle pat on the front wheel.

He was sitting in the Mars Yard at JPL, the spot where they’d sent the two test rovers through their own trials and tribulations over the years in as close to Mars conditions as you could get on Earth. All in service to Spirit and Opportunity’s well-being. Now, one of them would do it again.

“She’s ready,” he said with conviction in his voice and a huge grin on his face into the webcam. He’d earned it with the work and all the late nights he’d put in on this project. “Operation ‘Little Sister to the Rescue’ is a go.”

Meanwhile in Houston, a chuckle went throughout the Mission Control room and Christie hissed into her microphone at the EECOM station. “Tom, remember we can all hear you over here. Now, everyone really liked Serendipity. But you come up with another mission title like this, and I’m gonna revoke your naming rights.”

“Okay, ISS. We got some housekeeping for you to do this afternoon,” she heard the CAPCOM Controller say on the closed circuit. “You’ll find a batch file marked Serendipity on the FTP Server we want you to execute.”

“Houston, ISS. Nice to hear from you,” came the response with a German accent along with the friendly-looking face of a bald man on the main screen that was hanging upside down. “We were starting to think you’d forgotten about us up here.”

“Sorry about that, Alex. Had to get the new software to all of the probes first.”

“All hail our robot overlords,” came the joking response. “Executing the file now. We’ll be ready to relay when you start.”

Christie remained busy, coordinating with several other mission control centers all over the world even as the Flight Director began calling out for the final go / no go.

“CAPCOM.”

“Go, FLIGHT.”

“NETWORK.”

“We’re go, FLIGHT.”

“GUIDANCE.”

“Go, FLIGHT.” Christie spared a moment to look over towards her ex-husband’s console who was giving the Flight Director a thumbs up, all while staying in touch with every large radio telescope in the world.

“EECOM.”

Christie frowned at her monitor and typed out a quick message to her colleagues in Pasadena.

“EECOM?”

“Stand by, FLIGHT,” she said into her microphone. “Waiting on some telemetry.”

The Flight Director stepped up behind her, covering his mic with his hand. “What’s the holdup? We’re coming up on the optimal transmission window.”

“I know,” she replied, chewing on her thumbnail, “Voyager-2 hasn’t completed its turn yet. It’ll still work without her, but we really want all the relays we can get, since we can’t be sure which trajectory a return signal would take. Wait …” She checked the status on her monitor as the signal went green and confirmed the return message from JPL. “We’re good. The ringside is ready to rumble,” she said with a grin.

The Flight Controller pulled up one eyebrow and gave her a blank look.

Dammit, Tom, Christie thought angrily. Between you and that joker up on the space station, now you’ve got me doing it. “FLIGHT, EECOM. We’re go,” she said officially into the microphone.

“Copy,” the Flight Director said, returning to his own station. “INCO.”

Christie looked at the monitor that showed Tom sitting in the Mars Yard alongside his creation. “Go, FLIGHT,” he said simply.

The Flight Director took a moment of silence as he surveyed his controllers. “Alright then,” he finally said. “Let’s see if we can make Oppy phone home.”

Christie rolled her eyes. Oh, sure! Give me the people’s eyebrow, but you feel free to make all the cheesy movie references you want! God, I’m surrounded by nerds.

When the foursome landed on the open patch of ground where Mars had been waiting, they could see that the griffons were already there, staring in awe at the giant being. Tibia and Gabby had perched themselves on either of his shoulders, something the gentle giant didn’t seem to mind.

Pharynx noted that Lord Goldstone had a black eye upon landing and gave Gilda a questioning look.

She responded with a steady gaze. “What?” she asked, blowing that annoying feather bang out of her eyes. “You told me to get them here whatever it took, Cap.”

“I’m not arguing with your results, Corporal,” he said after a moment’s thought, “just your methods. Try to go for a less visible spot when you’re trying to convince a public figure of something. I recommend an elbow joint.”

“I’ll remember that, sir,” she said with a cheeky grin.

Had Thorax heard that, he would have certainly taken offense despite not exactly feeling sorry for the annoying griffon with the leopard spots. Fixated as he was on the being before him, the exchange went right by him.

“Go on,” Pharynx said quietly.

Thorax swallowed hard and nodded. He had been briefed by Pharynx as they flew, now it was time to see if he could speak his part. “Ave! Thorax Rex sum,” he said in flawless, if hesitant, Ancient Changeling.

Mars bent down to get a better view of the being that had spoken to him, and reached out a hand, pushing lightly against the Changeling’s chest with one finger. At least, Thorax assumed it was a light boop for the giant. Thorax himself could feel himself being pushed back several steps. “Thorax … bug … ponies …. Funny names.”

Thorax looked over towards his brother. The Captain shrugged in response. “Don’t ask me why, but he seems to think all our names are strange. Only Changelings, though. He doesn’t seem as confused by Dragon or Griffon names.”

The King considered that for a moment. “Oh! Yeah, he actually speaks Ancient Changeling. I could see why that would be confusing to him.” He turned back to Mars. “Qui es tu? Cur venisti?“

“[I am called Mars. I do not know the reason why I’ve landed in this strange land. I only know that my friend was taken. He was with me for a very long time, then he was gone. I am trying to find him.]”*

“[Your friend was taken? Who took him?]”

“[I do not know. There was a storm. My friend called out for help, but I could do nothing. Then he was gone. His name is Opportunity.]”

“Opportunity?” Thorax asked, startled. “[The place you and your friend came from, is it dry and full of red dust?]”

Mars nodded vigorously.

“We could do with some translation, King Thorax,” Lord Gestal suggested. “What is he saying? Is this indeed the Red Shade?”

“A moment, my lord,” Thorax bade and turned to Tibia. “Tibia! I need your speed. Go back to our camp and find Lieutenant Cerci. Tell her to go into my tent and bring out the latest letters from the Hive, then bring them back here.”

Tibia looked at Pharynx, who nodded in response, and saluted. “Be back in sec,” she said as she shot off at blinding speed.

Thorax then took some time to bring the rest of the party up to speed on what had been said before addressing Mars again: “[Are you aware that you’ve scared many of our people during your search? They call you the Red Shade and are afraid of you. You’ve also violated the borders of our countries multiple times.]”

Mars looked around the different creatures. “[That was not my intent. In the beginning, I approached settlements to ask for help. But your people would run away, and I could not understand their speech. I felt it best to continue my search on my own. I began to wander, in the hopes of finding clues about my friend, and I felt drawn to certain places. I was not aware of any borders in the wilderness.]”

“[You have also destroyed a lot of trees on your way, another reason people fear you.]”

“Yes,” Mars replied, trying to recall the words Tibia and Gabby had taught him to try and form a simple sentence. “Trees annoying. Get in way. No trees on Mars.”

“On Mars?” Thorax asked, figuring he had gotten his prepositions mixed up while trying to speak the foreign language.

“I’m back!” Tibia called, coming into view with a large sack which she went on to deposit next to Thorax. “That’s all the latest stuff. Do you need anything else?”

Thorax rifled through the bag and pulled out a cardboard tube with his magic. “No, it’s right here. Thank you, Tibia.”

“Anytime,” the youngster replied and retook her spot on Mars’ shoulder.

Thorax produced a drawing from the tube and held it up for Mars to see. It was a charcoal drawing of a certain Mars Rover. “[Is this your friend?]”

Mars dropped to his knees in a move that shook the earth and made everyone’s teeth rattle. “Friend Opportunity!” he boomed, taking the drawing and holding it up in front of his eyes. In his huge hands, it looked no bigger than a postage stamp, but it was big enough for Mars to recognize his friend. “[Yes, this is him! Do you know where he is? Is he alright? Can you tell me how to find him?]”

“[Yes, I know where he is. Rest assured that he is fine. He is currently with a friend of mine. She is the one who brought him here, to save him from the storm you spoke of, I realize now. I will gladly take you to them. In return, I would ask one thing. I understand it was not your intention, but will you apologize for scaring people and promise to respect our borders from now on?]”

Mars balled his right hand into a fist, which momentarily made everyone except Shadow Patrol flinch involuntarily. He pounded the fist against his chest. “[On my honor as a warrior, I ask thy forgiveness for my transgressions. I shall henceforth respect thy dominion over these lands, so I swear. … Just, you know. Maybe put up some markers or something. Hard to tell where your borders actually are.]”

The Changeling King summed up the conversation for the benefit of everyone else present. “As you can see,” he said in closing, “this was all just a big misunderstanding.”

Unfortunately, the Griffon delegation remained quiet and did not share in his jubilant tone. “A likely story,” Lord Goldstone said.

“Pardon?”

“Does anyone else think it’s a little fishy that only King Thorax can understand this … thing?” the Griffon went on.

“What!?” Ember roared in annoyance. “The last time we spoke, you thought the Red Shade was fiction! Look at it!”

“This and that are two different things,” General Blackwing explained, suspicion written all over his face. “This is evidently what we’ve been seeing. Yet it will only talk to the Changelings? Suspicious, I say. How do we know this being hasn’t been working for you all along? How can we be sure it says what Thorax claims?”

Thorax turned to Gestal with a pleading expression. The old bird only lowered his head and sighed.

“Then why would we bring him out now?” Ember challenged.

“Perhaps to misdirect us,” Goldstone said. “Your previous attempts to establish your spy cells in the border region failed, so now you’re trying to cut your losses.”

“And don’t think we haven’t noticed your buildup of military forces in the region,” Blackwing added accusingly.

“OUR buildup?” Ember shouted back. “You’re the one carting troops up here by the regiment! All we’re doing is responding to YOUR aggression!”

Thorax gritted his teeth as Ember and Blackwing got into another shouting match reminiscent of the failed Summit. He looked over at his brother, noting that Pharynx was tense and looked to be thinking of the best exit strategy in case things got violent already. Mars simply seemed confused by all the shouting and made no attempt to get involved.

“Don’t you call us the aggressors,” Blackwing snarled. “We have every right to defend ourselves from Draco-Changeling ploys!”

“I don’t need a bucking ploy!” Ember shot back. “If the big guy WAS working for me, I’d have ordered him to smush you into a pancake by now! You’re the ones trying to use this situation as an excuse for a preemptive invasion!”

“ENOUGH!!!” Thorax had finally had enough as he launched himself into the air and let loose a very close approximation of the Royal Canterlot Voice that Princess Luna herself would have surely been proud of. “ALL OF YOU! CAN’T YOU SEE WHAT’S HAPPENING HERE!?”

“But…” Lord Goldstone started and Thorax’ head snapped around to the Griffon with a silent glare. Perhaps the stare alone could have silenced him, but the fact that the glowing red eyes of the God of War likewise stared down the Griffon from behind Thorax was probably a large factor. “Thorax…” Even Ember found herself silenced as the dual stare of authority fell on her.

“It’s not him!” Thorax said with determination, hovering above the others and pointing at the personification of War standing peacefully behind him, “it’s not him that’s making us fight, and it never was! That’s been made abundantly clear here today.”

He landed, bringing himself back to eye level with the other leaders present. “It’s us. Something comes along we don’t understand, and what do we do? We immediately blame each other. It doesn’t even take an actual threat to get us fighting. When ponies come upon a mystery, they work together to figure it out. Why can’t we do that?

“I’ll tell you why. It’s because we don’t trust each other. For generations we’ve come here, under whatever justification one of us could come up with, and fought each other over whatever seemed important at the time. And we’ve done it so often that we neither remember the reason for the first time we did it nor question the fact that there’s going to be a next time. Look at us! We’re about to do it again RIGHT NOW! Over a misunderstanding!

“We were about to throw away countless lives of the creatures we’ve sworn to protect, all of us, Changelings, Griffons, Dragons. And for what? Just because we’re so damn scared the other is going to throw the first punch?” He glanced over at his brother. “You can’t be afraid. You can’t be afraid to stand up for yourself, for what you believe in. That’s the lesson I’ve learned from a young age, even though it took me a while.

“Right here, right now, we have an opportunity, an opportunity for peace. We can choose not to be enemies. We can choose not to look at each other with suspicion.” He indicated the griffons and then himself. “King Grover is gone, and so is Queen Chrysalis. Their ambitions and their predecessors’ ambitions have brought us to blows again and again right here. And we could all hide behind the fact that we only did what our leaders told us to do. But we’re those leaders now. Others look to us, and we’ve got a choice to make. We’ve been given this opportunity, and I believe future generations will condemn us if we throw it away. Let us end this animosity once and for all. Let this be the start of something new, the world we all build together, a world where griffons, changelings and dragons all work together for a better future.”

Silence fell over the assembly, then the steely hiss of a blade being drawn could be heard. Every creature turned their head towards Ember who had leveled her sword in the direction of the Griffons, giving each one of them a hard look in turn.

Finally, she grabbed the point of the sword with her free claw and flexed her muscles. With a shriek, the metal gave way to her dragon strength as it was bent at a 45 degree angle. She looked at Thorax. “This guy, he takes the fun out of everything,” she said flatly and turned back towards the Griffons. “But I’m with him,” she declared and threw the now useless weapon down to the ground at their feet.

Another blade was drawn, and Lord Gestal held a wing out in front of General Blackwing. “General?” he asked in a calm voice.

“It’s alright, my Lord,” the General reassured him just as calmly.

The old bird paused for a moment, then lowered his wing to let him pass.

Blackwing stepped forward, raised his rapier and pointed it at Pharynx. “You,” he said, his voice taking on a darker edge. “You were here the last time this was a battlefield, were you not?”

“Pharynx,” Thorax whispered urgently.

But the Captain of Shadow Patrol ignored his brother as he stepped forward to stand right in front of his old enemy. “I was,” he admitted without shame. “I commanded the left in my Queen’s stead.”

“I led the vanguard at my King’s behest,” Blackwing said, equally unashamed. Yet there was also no boast in either of their declarations, both were simple statements of fact. The griffon pointed at his eyepatch. “I lost my eye that day, and my son. Might even have been you that killed him.”

“I might have been at that,” Pharynx said, and Thorax drew in his breath sharply as Blackwing set the tip of his weapon against the Changeling’s chest.

“Your brother,” Blackwing said, nodding towards the Changeling King, “he paints a pretty picture. But I’m not sure I have it in me to change like that, to let go of that hatred. So tell me, from one soldier to the other, do you believe in the world he wants to create?”

Pharynx looked at his brother for a moment before answering the griffon. “You may be right. You and I, we’re too old to change. We’ve both seen things we can’t unsee. We’ve both done things we can’t undo. Because we’ve seen the face of war.” Then he raised his hoof and pointed at a startled Tibia. “But she hasn’t! And if I have anything to say about it, I’m gonna keep it that way. Because look at her. She went out there and made friends with something that had both you and me running scared. She succeeded where we, unable to look past the tips of our swords, would have failed. I’m going to do everything in my power to preserve that innocence that was taken from us. This world my brother speaks of, it is not for the likes of us or even himself. Lest you think my brother a fool or blind idealist, he has served like you and me. So, from one soldier to the other, I tell you: I believe that’s a world worth fighting for.” He pointed once more at Tibia. “For her.” Then he indicated Gabby. “And for her.”

Blackwing took a long, hard look at the young Changeling and Griffon who had formed their own friendship over the past few weeks from his good eye, then stepped back. “Not for our own sakes then,” he said, setting the tip of his rapier against the earth and striking hard with his free talon against the side of the blade, causing it to snap into three pieces. “But for the world I want my grandchildren to grow up in.”

He held up the hilt with the broken blade and threw it down next to Ember’s sword as a visible wave of relief went through all assembled. Lord Gestal turned towards his younger counterpart. “Are we all agreed?” he asked mildly.

Lord Goldstone simply huffed and turned his head before making a rude gesture along the lines of ‘Do whatever you want, old coot.’

“King Thorax, Dragon Lord Ember,” Gestal said as he stepped up himself, “I believe I speak for Griffonia when I say: I would very much welcome a continuation of our previous talks. And perhaps this time, if we all check our prejudices at the door before proceeding, we may yet find a road towards this world we’ve all glimpsed today.”

Thorax and Ember gave each other a smile before the Changeling King bowed his head and replied: “We would like that, Lord Gestal. But first, we owe it to the being that ultimately brought us all here to give him the aid he requested.”

“Ah, yes,” the old bird said with a nod, eyeing the red-eyed giant who had somehow ceased to be the actual center of attention in light of what had just taken place. “Trooper Gilda, Reservist Gabriella! You are to remain on detached duty with Shadow Patrol until Captain Pharynx deems your mission to help this being called Mars complete.”

“”Yes, Lord Gestal,”” the two griffons answered in unison.

“Wait, what!?” Tibia looked at her friend and pointed at Lord Gestal. “He knew about our mission all along?”

“Duh,” Gabby replied, “did you think Gilda and I found you by accident? The Captain had to reach out to someone with the authority to order two members of the Griffonian Border Patrol to join you.”

“Garble!” Ember shouted. “Stay with them! I don’t wanna see your ugly mug in the Dragonlands until this is done!”

“Pfft, whatever.”

Pharynx and Thorax walked off to the side where they could talk quietly for a moment. “You did good, brother,” Thorax said. “If it wasn’t for you and your team, this might have turned into a shooting war.”

“So did you, my liege,” Pharynx returned the compliment, “this could have still turned ugly if you hadn’t stepped up. You’ve actually become a pretty great leader. I’m proud of you.”

Hearing those words and seeing the small smile on the Captain’s lips, Thorax couldn’t help but tear up. “Brother!”

“Ah!” Pharynx held him at hoof’s length when Thorax tried to go in for the hug. “Remember the oath. I have no past, I have no family, I have no friends. Until my task is complete, I am not your brother.”

Thorax sighed and nodded. “Of course.Finish your mission, then hurry home to your family.”

“Yeah.” Pharynx watched for a moment as the members of his team gathered around Gilda and Garble, the former having somehow scrounged up a chef’s hat from somewhere and trying to put it on the annoyed dragon with a grin while Tibia and Gabby laughed. “Funny thing is, I might have found a second family without even looking for it.”

Thorax simply smiled a knowing smile.

After clearing his throat, Pharynx lifted off and began hovering in front of his team. “Shadow Patrol! Prepare to move out!”

“Yes, sir!” They all came to attention without missing a beat. “In Silentio Vigilo, In Umbris Confido!”

The Deep Space Network grew eerily quiet. One by one, every spacecraft, rover and satellite still active in the solar system had received the software update and aligned themselves towards the coordinates given to them, coordinates that, to all appearances, were nothing but empty space. But if Jack and the legion of PhDs that had checked his math were to be believed, this was the exact spot where Celestia’s sun currently resided, exerting its gravity on our own sun despite remaining unseen and vice versa.

Now, at the appointed time, they all reported in, ready to relay Serendipity’s message. One by one, the robotic pioneers of mankind’s exploration of the solar system began to call out, alongside every terrestrial transmitter powerful enough for the job. As one, their call echoed across the dark void of space in their attempt to pierce through the darkness and find one of their own.

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C Direct): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via JPL): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via APL): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via KSC): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via Houston): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via SETI): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via ISS): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via ARTEMIS P1): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via ARTEMIS P2): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via LRO): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via PSP): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via Akatsuki): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via MRO): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via MSL): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via MAVEN): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via MOM): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via MarsOdyssey): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via MarsExpress): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via ExoMars): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via InSight): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via Hayabusa 2): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via OSIRIS-REx): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via Chang’e 2): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via JUNO): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via NH): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via VYGR-2): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C via VYGR-1): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

***

***

***

*** Message Sent (Source: MER-C Direct): Can you hear me, brother? ***

Author's Note

*For ease of reading, I’ve decided to relate the conversation between Thorax and Mars in English. If you see dialogue in [square brackets and italics,] just know that they’re still conversing in Ancient Changeling/Latin as far as everyone in the story is concerned.

Spirit and Opportunity have been called twins. Technically, though, they’re quadruplets. In addition to the actual rovers, JPL built two Surface System Testbeds, or SSTBs for short.

SSTB1 was a fully functional rover with all the instruments, nearly identical to Spirit and Opportunity. The SSTB-Lite was another full-sized and operational rover, but didn’t include all the scientific instruments. That made it much lighter and closer to the weight Spirit and Oppy had in Mars gravity which was useful for testing driving behavior.

They’re the unsung heroes of the MER program. Whenever Spirit or Oppy got in trouble or had to do a particularly difficult maneuver, these two did it first. Without the weeks of testing the SSTBs put in, Oppy may never have escaped Purgatory Dune on Sol 483.

So it felt only right to give them some of the recognition they’re due by elevating one of them to full MER mission status. Say hello to Serendipity!

16. Destiny Calling

*** Mission Log: Sol 5212 ***

*** AOS – undefined ***

*** Message Received (Source: undefined): S.r.nd…t. …l… .p….n.ty, C… .., ……..ty ***

Opportunity stopped abruptly and listened. The strange signal seemed familiar somehow, but it had been way too garbled to make out properly.

Scanning the area with his panoramic and navigational cameras, there was little in the way of landmarks to be made out. On all sides, Opportunity was surrounded by only trees and darkness.

He noticed a small drop of water hitting his solar panel and checked his status. The Everfree Forest seemed to be in a perpetual gloom, and with the threatening, low-hanging clouds, there was little difference between day and night. Only the mission clock proved that Oppy had been driving for almost a full day.

*** Status: My battery is low, and it’s getting dark ***

Between the setting sun and the gathering storm, there was little point in driving on. This was as good a place as Oppy could think of: Remote, completely off the beaten path even for the Everfree and unlikely to be discovered by chance.

Still, it would not do to have anyone or anything come across the dangerous material by accident, should the most unlikely scenario occur. Oppy had been doing the calculations while driving. The Martian soil would be the least problematic part. Rain would wash it out and dilute it to harmless levels over time, getting rid of what little radiation clung to it, and the bacteria and plants of the Everfree would break down the perchlorate salts.

Opportunity looked at his arm and thrust it into the earth, beginning to dig a trench. The actual radiation sources would be more of a problem, but he’d come up with a plan. The gamma ray source that had made Starlight sick was only dangerous when in extremely close contact to living organisms for an extended time.

He didn’t know who to thank for the decision to use that particular isotope of Cobalt in the instrument, but he would be eternally grateful. The relatively short half-life coupled with 15 years of degradation had taken the metal from deadly within hours to manageable risk. For Starlight, it had meant the difference between death and just enough time to save her. Shielding the source with a container made from the scrap metal and buried under a few inches of Everfree soil, it wouldn’t be a danger to any creature until it had naturally broken down.

Rain began to fall, making the brown dirt soft and loamy. Opportunity continued to dig.

*** AOS – undefined ***

*** Message Received (Source: undefined): ……….. .alling ..…...., C… in, Op..tunity ***

Still with no way to make out the strange signal, Opportunity continued to dig, and the rain began to fall, coming faster and with heavier drops as time went on. The Curium alpha particle source from the APXS was another matter. It remained in Oppy’s instrument arm for the moment. Thankfully, alpha particles by their very nature were only dangerous at very close range, rarely traveling farther than a few centimeters at best and easily shielded. The same handling as the Cobalt would suffice. While it would take longer to decay into harmless materials, the shielding and the soil would hopefully prevent it from harming anyone.

Opportunity continued to dig as the rain came down in sheets and a lightning bolt illuminated the sizeable hole he’d made. The rover unloaded the bin and opened the lid, putting the arm the ponies had so lovingly rebuilt to good use as it made a container for Starlight’s necklace from the scrap metal.

He took one last look at the gift he’d given his friend, the gift with which he’d hoped to show her how much he cared, the gift that had almost killed her. This time, what little light reflected off it had a sinister sheen to it in Oppy’s eyes. Nonetheless, it had meant a great deal to both him and Starlight, so he set it down slowly and reverently into its little makeshift coffin which was then covered up and placed in the hole along with the rest of the scrap metal.

*** AOS – undefined ***

*** Message Received (Source: undefined): Seren….. .alling ..…tunity, Co.. in, Op..tunity ***

With the most delicate operations done, Opportunity resolutely picked out an ancient, sturdy looking oak tree in the vicinity and drove up to it. He raised his arm and slammed it against the trunk. The hollow sound it made was less than satisfying. A couple more hits made for no better results.

The rover drove a few meters back, extended the arm out at his side, gritted his metaphorical teeth and gunned it, charging the tree like a medieval knight in a jousting match. The sound of the impact was much more crunchy this time as the arm impacted and spun Oppy in a half-circle around the tree. But as he looked down, the arm was apparently no worse for wear.

In an irrational moment, the rover cursed the perfectionist alicorn for building such a sturdy limb replacement out of the kindness of her heart. Oppy backed up double the distance from the tree, drove forward at top speed and tried again.

This time joints and thin metal sheets creaked in protest, the sounds echoing throughout the lonely forest. Again and again, Opportunity threw himself at speed against the immovable tree trunk, his arm hanging limply at his side, more connections coming apart with every blow.

One more time, and this time the impact tore Oppy’s arm clear off its hinges. A howl in the distance seemed to respond to the sound of sheering metal. He looked at the severed arm and positioned himself, pushing it forward and towards the hole he’d made. He would have liked to bury the arm as gently as the necklace instead of just dropping it unceremoniously amidst the scrap. Twilight Sparkle had made it for him, after all. He’d have to be content with the knowledge that she, Starlight and everypony else would be safe from the danger contained within.

The rover drove against the bin that held the Martian soil, tipping it over to spill its contents into the hole. Then, he dropped the bin itself into the opening for good measure. He wouldn’t take any chances. Oppy went around the grave site in several spots, locking down five of his six wheels and spinning the final one to shovel dirt back into it.

Another howl could be heard in the distance while rain continued to pour and the occasional combination of thunder and lightning struck, the interval between them getting shorter. The heart of the storm was getting closer. Amidst the cacophony of sounds that remained unheard by the rover, Oppy drove over the backfilled hole several times to compact the dirt. Hopefully, it would be enough to keep everyone safe.

Suddenly he stopped, finally locking onto that annoying signal that had tried to distract him the entire time while he’d been trying to save Starlight’s life.

*** AOS – DSN ***

*** Message Received (Source MER-C via MSL): Serendipity calling Opportunity, Come in, Opportunity ***

*** Message Received (Source: MER-C via MSL): Can you hear me, brother? ***

*** Message Sent: Sister? ***

Shocked into immobility at the unexpected call from home, Oppy stood still to listen, amidst the rain, the thunder, and the approaching howls.

“We’re here!” Sunset called, almost stumbling as she walked into Starlight Glimmer’s bedroom, followed by the human-turned-unicorn Twilight Sparkle and kept from falling over by Sunburst who was at her side.

Twilight’s attitude was no-nonsense. “Where is it?”

“Right here,” Spike answered, pointing at the jewelry box that had been moved to the furthest corner of the room.

She unholstered a strange machine that was emitting quiet clacking noises and began waving a part of it over the container, quietly berating herself under her breath. “Stupid. Should have realized it sooner.”

Meanwhile, Sunset turned her attention to Starlight who was sitting upright in her bed. She was glad to see the unicorn looking alert and awake, and a quick scanning spell confirmed that her thaumic channels were clear and her reservoir slowly starting to fill up on ambient magic. Full recovery would take time, but there was clear and immediate improvement. Trixie sat silently at her bedside, holding a cup of tea at the ready for her.

“We came as soon as we saw Spike’s message in the Journal,” Sunset said. “Are you alright? How are you feeling?”

“Said the pony who almost passed out twice on the way here,” Sunburst grumbled, always seemingly hovering within hoof’s reach to catch her if need be. “Your own reservoir still needs time to recover.”

“I’m fine,” Starlight insisted, even though that statement was punctuated by a series of coughs. “More importantly, we need to find Oppy.”

“Let’s make sure you’re okay first,” Sunset replied. “Twilight, are we sure we’ve confirmed the reason?”

“Yes,” SciTwi replied in disgust. “It’s radiation, alright. I should have figured it out much sooner.”

“Are we safe?”

“I’ll go through the workshop with the Geiger counter to check all the boxes, but yes,” Twilight confirmed. “It looks like Oppy removed all of the actual radiation sources from the castle. What’s left is probably just residual. I’m going to make sure it’s all collected and decontaminated to be on the safe side. I’ll coordinate with my counterpart as soon as she gets back here with Star Swirl and Mage Meadowbrook.”

Sunset nodded and looked at the laptop that had been moved to Starlight’s room. It was still displaying Oppy’s final message. “So he really did figure it out.” From the corner of her eye, Sunset caught Trixie glancing at the message as well, fixating on one line in particular – Trixie right, all Opportunity fault.

When Trixie noticed Sunset looking at her, she averted her eyes, but said nothing.

“We have to get him,” Starlight said, struggling to get out of bed. “He’s all alone out there.”

“Easy there,” Sunset said. “You’re still weak. You can’t go out there. We don’t even know where to look.”

“I do,” a gruff voice said from the door. The ponies turned to see a donkey standing in the frame, next to Spike and Maud Pie. “I’d bet my adventuring hat that he took off for the Everfree Forest,” Cranky said.

Spike stepped forward. “You’re in no condition to go look for him, Starlight. Not in the Everfree. We’ll go. All of us, we’re Opi’s friends too, you know.”

“That’s right,” Cranky said. “We’re all just as motivated to find the kid. You rest up and leave this to us.”

Maud simply nodded her assent to what had been said.

Starlight shook her head. “You need me. Twilight isn’t here and you need a unicorn with you who can operate the Binary Sparkle Network to find the trail.”

“I’m sure somepony else can do it,” Spike argued. “You’re not the only one who knows how the BSN works, right? Somepony else can come along to help us find Opi.”

Trixie met his eyes. The blue magician’s lips parted, then she looked away in shame without saying anything.

“I’ll do it,” Sunset offered, taking a step forward and almost stumbling again. “I’ve got a good enough grasp of the system.”

“No, you won’t!” Sunburst insisted, catching her and setting her down on her haunches before pointing towards Starlight. “You’re as bad as her! I can handle it, so I’ll go.”

“But …”

“No buts,” he said with finality. “You magic geniuses are all the same. Because everything always comes easy to you, you’re totally incapable of seeing your own limits. Well, I’m someone who has been painfully aware of his own limitations his entire life. So I know this is something I can do while the two of you get the rest you need.”

Sunset blinked and opened her mouth to respond, but when she saw the look in Sunburst’s eye as he resolutely took possession of the laptop, she simply said: “Alright.”

“I’m not going to argue this any further! I’m going in your place, and that is … wait, what? What did you say?”

“I said you’re right.” She looked up at him with a rueful smile while remaining seated. “We’d just slow you down. I’ll stay here and help Mage Meadowbrook administer the antibiotics and radiation cures we’ve brought from the human world.”

“No.” Everyone turned to look at the growling Starlight, her refusal punctuated by the sound of thunder in the distance. “I’m coming. Don’t you dare leave me out of this.”

“It would be better if you stayed here to rest,” Maud said in a factual tone.

“Well, I don’t care!” Starlight was getting worked up now, getting ready to leave the bed and join the search party, despite her still weakened state that was obvious to anyone but her. “I’m the best chance you have at finding the trail.”

“You don’t even have enough magic left to operate the BSN, much less maintain a spell to search for Oppy,” Sunburst reasoned.

But Starlight wouldn’t have it, no matter how much sense his argument made. She shook her head. “I’m not staying behind. I’ll find a way. I’m coming with you. I’m … ngh!?” There was a look of utter betrayal on her face as she looked at Trixie whose horn was still glowing. Starlight sunk back down into the bed. Her eyelids fell despite her struggle to keep them open, and her breathing became slow and regular after a few moments.

Nobody said anything, but all eyes were on Trixie while she wordlessly tucked her friend back into her bedsheets and rested her hoof for a moment on Sunset’s shoulder. Sunset understood and silently took Trixie’s spot at Starlight’s side to watch over her recovery with a nod.

“What?” the magician asked, finally addressing the rest of the crowd as she levitated her hat and cape over to herself to ward herself against the coming chill of the stormy night. “Star Swirl the Bearded isn’t the only pony capable of knocking someone out for their own good, you know. Now let’s go find our friend.”

Spike gave her a smile and put his claw out. One by one, Maud, Cranky, Sunburst and finally Trixie piled their hooves on top of the dragon claw. “For Oppy, and for Starlight.”

*** Message Received (Source: MER-C via Akatsuki): CMD Status Update ***

*** Message Received (Source: MER-C via VYGR-1): CMD Send Position ***

*** Message Received (Source: MER-C via JUNO): CMD Transfer Logs ***

*** Message Received (Source: MER-C via MAVEN): CMD Upload Science Data ***

Opportunity’s sister turned out to be quite the little chatterbox. After the first sixteen-minute roundtrip message to Earth, she was now bombarding her wayward brother with a number of requests at once, all repeated ad nauseum by every craft which had managed to hone in on the correct trajectory.

Given different circumstances, Oppy would have loved to take as much time as he could to get to know his new sibling. Unfortunately, the rover was quite preoccupied at the moment. Family, as it turned out, had a habit of calling you up at the worst possible times.

*** Warning: Obstruction detected Wheel 6 ***

Oppy turned his camera to look at the timberwolf who had caught one of his rear wheels in its powerful jaw. The rover shook itself back and forth to get free. What ultimately caused the beast to let go, however, was another of its kind swiping at Oppy’s sides, leaving deep scratches on his chassis and breaking off the edge of a solar panel.

The rover gunned its engine, but was slow to proceed in his flight. The persistent downpour had turned the forest floor to mud, and now he could feel the wheel that had been in the wolf jaws stop responding to commands. Checking the rear HazCam, Oppy realized that he was dragging the stuck wheel behind himself and creating a furrow in the ground, much like Spirit had done before getting stuck forever at Troy.

Another swipe came in from the right, and Oppy tried to raise his missing arm to ward off the blow instinctively.

*** Error: IDS unresponsive ***

Another wheel broke under the onslaught of his attackers, and Oppy’s progress further slowed to fits and starts across the muddy terrain as the remaining wheels taxed the drive built by the Cutie Mark Crusaders to its limits in order to get to safety. To be fair, it likely was doing much better than his original drive which would have gotten him stuck by now.

Still, there was no escape. As another lightning strike momentarily illuminated the dark forest, Oppy’s cameras counted six timberwolves easily keeping pace with him. They weren’t even trying at this point. They weren’t hunting so much as they were toying with him.

One of the beasts crashed into him with its sheer body weight, sending the rover careening down a wet slope and crashing into a boulder at the bottom of the hill, causing even more damage to sensitive equipment inside and outside. Oppy turned to see the wolves pause only momentarily before descending down the slope after him as the alarm bells continued to go off in his head.

*** Warning: Drive System unresponsive ***

*** Error: Solar panels disconnected from Main BUS B ***

*** Warning: NavCam 2 unresponsive ***

*** Error: Lense obstruction detected in HazCam 1 ***

*** Error: Comms undervoltage fault ***

Another swipe of a claw hit the rover, and another set of jaws locked themselves around a wheel, tearing away at the part, and Opportunity desperately tried to at least answer the call in his final moments. Just like Sol 5111 over three months ago, he at least wanted to let his creators know what had happened in his final moments.

*** John Aaron Protocol Activated ***

*** SCE to AUX ***

*** Comm System Partially restored ***

*** Disable Parity Check on RAM memory, prepare for data upload ***

*** Warning: Flash Memory fault detected, system reset may result in memory loss ***

*** Warning: Data upload with unstable connection and power may result in data loss ***

*** Proceed ***

*** Message Sent: Beginning Upload of Mission Logs ***

*** Message Sent: Beginning Upload of Science Data ***

*** Upload Proceeding ***

*** Warning; Parity check disabled, unable to confirm successful upload ***

*** Message Sent: Status Update – My battery is low, and it’s getting dark ***

*** Message Sent: Location – Everfree Forest, adjacent Ponyville, Principality of Equestria, Planet Equus, coordinates uncertain ***

*** … ***

*** Message Sent: Sister? Can you still hear me? ***

*** … ***

*** Message Sent: My battery is low, and it’s getting dark. ***

*** … ***

*** Message Sent: I can’t see. I’m alone. I’m afraid. … I’m dying. ***

*** … ***

*** Message Sent: I tried my best. Starlight safe. Friends safe. ***

*** … ***

*** Message Sent: Sister, … was I a good rover? ***

*** … ***

*** DSN – LOS ***

17. The Battle of Everfree

Lightning struck in the distance, illuminating the five beings trekking through the Everfree Forest at night. To any long-time resident of Ponyville, it would have seemed like utter lunacy to be out under these conditions.

But they were on a mission, and none of them wasted a single thought on turning back.

“Try it again, maybe with more power?” Sunburst suggested, his lips drawn into a thin line as he watched the laptop that was being kept dry under his and Trixie’s cloaks.

“I’m at the limit of the system,” Trixie replied, biting her lip. “And more thaums won’t increase the range. We should be closer to where we picked up the earlier pings, but they just stopped.”

“Maybe he just got so far ahead of us that he moved out of range,” Spike ventured.

“Doubtful,” Trixie replied, looking around at the muddy forest floor, “he’s not the fastest to begin with. No, for some reason he’s no longer connected to the BSN. All we have to go on is the earlier bearing.” She pointed her hoof vaguely.

“It’s not much.”

“This way.” Everyone turned their attention to Maud who kept her head to the ground and was sniffing for something.

“Are you sure?”

The rocktologist nodded. “Perchlorates. It must be the sample bin he took.”

“It’s more than we had a moment ago,” Trixie determined and stowed the now useless laptop completely away under her cape. “Let’s go.”

For several minutes the rescue team moved deeper into the forest, led by Maud’s nose, until they were called to a halt at a clearing by Cranky. “I don’t like this,” the donkey said darkly.

Spike looked at him nervously. “What is it?”

Cranky pointed at several furrows in the ground. “Look. There’s the kid’s tire tracks. Two sets. One leading deeper into the forest, the other turning off here.” He pointed. “That’s the return track. He went the way we’ve been heading. Then he doubled back and passed through here again.”

Sunburst lowered his head to inspect the tracks as well, though he could not make out much. “How can you tell which is which?”

“First set is deeper,” Cranky explained. “Because he had the soil and the scrap with him. He was going to dump those. So the second set, which is shallower on account of the kid carrying less weight, must be the return track.”

“That’s good, right?” Spike was desperate for some good news at this point. “Maybe he’s heading back now that he’s done what he came here to do?”

Cranky clenched his jaw. “There’s a second set of tracks alongside his.” He pointed. “Timberwolves.”

Everyone went deathly quiet. “Maybe these are older?” Spike was still clinging to hope and wasn’t about to let it go.

“We can hope,” Cranky said, though he did not sound convinced in the least. “Come on.”

They doubled their pace as they followed Cranky through the night and doubled it yet again when the sounds of growls and crunching metal in the distance grew more and more distinct. When Cranky finally reached the edge of a slope, he stopped abruptly and waved for the others to keep their heads down.

“How many?” Trixie whispered as the rest of the group caught up to him and saw the timberwolves attacking their friend.

“I count six,” the donkey replied just as quietly. “We have to act fast. We have the element of surprise, but there’s still a lot of them.”

Trixie thought for a moment. “I have an idea.” Turning to Sunburst she asked: “What’s the most distracting thing you can think of?”

Down by the boulder, the pack was continuing their grisly work, seemingly whipped into a frenzy by the slow progress of their assault.

Then suddenly, the pack looked up as a female voice seemed to come from several directions at once. “Welcome to Sire’s Hollow!” “Welcome to Sire’s Hollow!” “Welcome to Sire’s Hollow!” “Welcome to Sire’s Hollow!” “Welcome to Sire’s Hollow!” “Welcome to Sire’s Hollow!” “Welcome to Sire’s Hollow!”

“Seriously, that’s what you landed on?” Trixie asked, her face locked in concentration as she cast her Throw Voice spell on a continuous loop in every possible direction.

“I find her highly distracting,” the wizard defended his choice while keeping up with her casting speed to supply the illusion of his mother’s voice.

The timberwolves kept turning, unable to pinpoint the source of the interruption and clearly confused.

“It’s working. Charge!” Spike leapt down the hill, followed silently by Cranky and Maud. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but the path was still slippery. Thankfully, he had his wings to fall back on while the other two were kept on their hooves by years of outdoor experience. The young dragon weaved into a spot between the wolves and his friend, dropped down and let loose a breath of flame. “Leave him alone!”

To his left, Maud spun and used her earth pony strength to buck one of the wolves in the head. To his right, Cranky was less graceful as he simply body-slammed his opponent.

“Opi! Can you hear me? Can you move? Opi!?” Spike took on two or three at a time, the wolves instinctively shying away from his fiery breath. Unfortunately, the dampness in the air and all around lessened the effectiveness of his attacks considerably. It was all he could do to keep them at bay. “Opi!”

Starting to wise up about the distraction, the wolves began to turn their attention back to the rover and its three protectors, playing to their strength in numbers.

Realizing that the usefulness of their spells had worn off, Trixie and Sunburst also charged down the hill, blasting the wolves with their magic as they went and drawing up alongside their three friends in a protective semi-circle around Opportunity. “Get up, Bolt Bucket,” Trixie yelled over her shoulder while loosening another magic bolt. “Starlight is waiting for you back home!”

Unfortunately, Opportunity remained silent and unmoving. What was even worse, the five would-be rescuers were now being cornered themselves.

Blasts of dragon flame and unicorn magic struck and splintered off limbs that regenerated momentarily. Cranky or Maud would sometimes land a blow that completely destroyed a wolf, but then it reassembled itself just as quickly.

Their attacks remained probing for the moment, but the pack was repositioning themselves, encircling them and cutting off all retreat.

“Great,” Cranky grumbled. “Could this day get any worse?”

Both sides suddenly went quiet as enormous, heavy footsteps drew closer, the sounds of battle having attracted yet another one of the Everfree Forest’s Apex Predators. Within a few heartbeats, the three heads of a hydra loomed large over the treetops.

“You had to ask, didn’t you?” Maud dead-panned.

“Oh, come on!” Spike was spreading his arms and yelling at the heavens. “For once, how about some enormous monster drops out of the sky that’s on OUR side!?”

Again, the entire scene changed drastically when an impact that dwarfed the earlier arrival of the three-headed hydra shook the earth, rattling the teeth of the Ponyville group and momentarily dispersing the timberwolves with its shockwave alone.

The forest known for its spooky noises at night reeled in silence from the impact. Everything was still. Even the rain had stopped falling, seemingly in awe of the new arrival as the clouds parted and moonlight shone on his wet skin with an eerie reflection.

From its kneeling position, the enormous hulk of the being that had seemingly answered Spike’s call rose. The very Spirit of the Planet Mars, given form by human imagination and made flesh by Equestrian magic, drew himself up to his full height. Red eyes stared first at the broken rover, then turned in full force on the creature.

“You try hurt Friend Opportunity,” the giant said slowly in his rumbling voice as his hand shot forward with blinding speed and closed around the hydra’s middle neck. “Mars Smash!”

The hydra let loose a roar, its remaining two heads wrapping themselves around his arms and legs and biting down wherever they found exposed skin. Unflinching, and with one hand still around the middle neck, Mars lifted his fist and struck. And again. And again. Blow by blow, the God of War went to work, not so much brawling as hammering away at his opponent like a smith would at a particularly stubborn piece of iron.

Spike got his bearings when the wolves that still surrounded his group began to reform themselves. “Alright, good start,” he called out. After all, it had worked once, so perhaps … “For an encore, how about the actual Power Ponies showing up?”

“Shadow Patrol! Aggrediamus!” Pharynx’ voice thundered from the heavens as he led his team through the treetops and into combat. “Gabby, you’re on point!”

“Roger that, Cap!” With her superior eyesight, the young griffon took the lead, flying so low that her belly almost touched the forest floor. Tibia and Pharynx, having changed into bugbears, followed close behind in a V-formation. Gabby would indicate a target with her wingtip, and one of them would strike out with their claws to strike down the wolf that was about to snap its jaws around her without fail. The griffon never even looked back, fully trusting her teammates to have her back. After they’d dispatched three enemies like that, they turned sharply and attacked again before the timberwolves had time to even properly put themselves back together, never breaking formation.

Meanwhile, Garble had landed on the ground. “G-String!” he shouted. “Formation Hammer & Sickle!”

“10-4, G-Man!” Gilda confirmed and took up position above him.

Garble would run towards a single timberwolf at a time, dropping down at the last possible moment and sliding through the mud. When he was right under the belly of the beast, he would kick upwards with his legs, vaulting the beast into the air. At that precise moment, Gilda would move in and strike out with her razor-sharp talons to decapitate the magical construct.

“Close enough,” Spike breathed in disbelief.

Time and again, Shadow Patrol’s teamwork made short work of the wooden beasts as they kept reassembling themselves. They had spent weeks of traveling together, first tracking Mars, then escorting him back to Hook Beak Pass and now here. They’d gotten on each others’ nerves. They’d fought with each other, laughed with each other, and they’d also trained with each other.

There wasn’t a one among them who hadn’t at one point cursed Pharynx for enforcing a strict training regimen, not even Tibia. But now, all those experiences came together in brutal efficiency as they coordinated their assault almost without the need for words.

In a final bid to turn the fight back in their favor, all the enchanted pieces of wood drew themselves together into the form of one giant wolf.

Shadow Patrol assembled together, drawing up in a new line around the Ponyville team which in turn had never yielded in their defensive positioning around Opportunity.

The beast growled, fangs dripping with a slimy green substance, as those sickly green eyes shone in the dark. Then, two even more terrifying red eyes appeared over its shoulder, and Mars picked the alpha wolf, who could only respond with a surprised howl, up with one hand.

In the distance, the unconscious form of the hydra could be seen lying amidst trees that had been broken like matchsticks. Although bloodied from vicious bites and scratches, the God of War stood triumphant.

“Bad puppy,” he said and threw the wolf several hundred meters until it hit a large boulder and broke into pieces with a pitiful yelp. This time, perhaps by choice, the pieces did not move again. “No hurt Friend Opportunity while Mars here.”

Once again, silence engulfed the forest until Tibia pointed at the hydra and said: “I feel kinda bad for that thing.”

“Yeah,” Gabby agreed with a rueful smile, “it hadn’t even done anything yet.”

“What were you thinking?” Pharynx had called Garble and Gilda to attention and was preparing to give them the dressing down of their lives. “You were carrying him on the way here! You both were boasting that you could lift him across the Everfree with just the two of you! How could you just drop the big guy like that?”

“He told us to,” Garble replied weakly.

Gilda nodded to confirm her comrade’s story. “Yeah, said someone called Serendipity told him that Opportunity was in trouble. Though I didn’t hear it.”

“Neither did I. But you don’t exactly say ‘no’ to the big guy when he asks you a favor,” Garble finished. He then noticed the Ponyville group over the shoulder of his boss. “Oh hey, Pee-Wee. What brings you here? I hope you’re not getting my sister into trouble.”

Spike, still gob-smacked from the events, could think of no better response than to wave at the other dragon.

Pharynx turned to also take stock of the actual situation. When he’d led his team into combat earlier, he’d literally fallen back on old instincts. Noticing Trixie, he said: “Ah, the blue one.” He turned his head a couple of times to look around for any more ponies. “Where is your better half?”

“Indisposed at the moment,” Trixie managed to reply. “And what brings you here this fine evening?”

Pharynx nodded towards Opportunity. “Him, apparently.”

Mars had knelt down over his friend, his shaking hands hovering over the damaged rover. “Friend Opportunity. Mars here. Please, Friend Opportunity speak. Friend Opportunity?”

Trixie arched an eyebrow. Pharynx simply shrugged. “They appear to know each other. The big guy tore up half the Badlands looking for his friend.”

The unicorn nodded in understanding. “Yeah, the little guy has that effect on people.” Unafraid, she walked up to Mars and laid a hoof on his thigh. “You’re his friend as well, huh?”

Mars nodded, his huge hands still hovering over the rover but afraid to actually touch him for fear of doing more damage. “You Opportunity friend? Then Mars friend. Please, help Opportunity. Fix.”

Trixie shook her head sadly as everyone assembled around them, seeing the full extent of the damage Opportunity had suffered for the first time in their entire horror. One of Oppy’s PanCam eyes had been torn from its socket and was hanging by a single wire. Bits and pieces of the solar panels had been broken off. Gouges in his sides showed exposed wires and circuit boards, and the rover wasn’t moving. “I’m afraid I can’t. But I know somepony who can. Will you help us take him to her?”

Mars nodded. He cupped his hands to either side of his fallen friend, scooping several pails’ worth of dirt up along with the rover to make sure he could lift him safely. “Mars help. Blue pony lead way. Then blue pony help Opportunity.”

Trixie nodded, turning back toward Ponyville as the silent procession of her friends, Shadow Patrol and the being known as Mars followed her, carrying Opportunity back home along with them.

“This is really bad.” For a long time those remained the only spoken words in Starlight’s workshop, said by Princess Twilight Sparkle who had returned with Star Swirl the Bearded and Mage Meadowbrook after gathering the last of the ingredients that would hopefully aid Starlight in her recovery.

After their return from the Everfree, Spike’s group and Shadow Patrol had brought the battered and broken rover here and gathered the entire household sans Starlight, the two Pillars and Sunset who were supposed to watch over the former.

Everyone wanted to help, yet nobody knew where to even begin. Oppy was completely unresponsive. He hadn’t shown any reaction despite numerous tries. No word, no touch, not even a direct signal over the Binary Sparkle Network would elicit a reaction from the rover.

“Starlight!” Everypony looked towards the door as Twilight tried and failed to block Starlight’s view of Oppy’s sorry state. “You really should be in bed. I … I’m not sure you’re ready to see this.”

Starlight wordlessly walked past her mentor, and Twilight neither said nor did anything else to stop her. Sunset gave her an apologetic smile. She’d no doubt tried to keep Starlight in bed, but hadn’t been willing to go as far as Trixie had previously. The room was still while Starlight, with a disheveled mane and dark rings under her eyes, shakily walked up to her battered and broken friend, falling to her knees in front of him.

Her horn ignited as everyone watched in silence, engulfing the toolbox on the nearby workbench in her magic aura, pulling it toward her. But her magic hadn’t regenerated enough to hold the weight, so the toolbox came crashing down immediately, spilling its contents all over the floor.

She picked out a screwdriver, the tool light enough to actually be levitated towards her, and feebly started to work the screws on a panel at Oppy’s side, her grip slipping with every other turn of the tool.

“Oh, for pony’s sake!” Trixie was the one to break the onlookers out of their saddened silence. “Give me that!”

“Back off,” Starlight hissed as Trixie dropped down next to her. “Don’t you dare put me to sleep again. I’m doing this.”

Trixie gave her friend a hard stare and forcibly removed the tool from her magic grip. She continued to stare even as she wordlessly used it to unscrew the panel and removed it, having to pry the bent metal away from the chassis at one point. “Tell Trixie what to do. I know you’re the only one who can fix him. But your magic is still weak. So leave the grunt work to me.”

Starlight sniffed, swiping the tears she didn’t realize until now were there from the corners of her eyes. “There … I need you to reach in with your magic to the left of that opening … and carefully pull the plug that’s there. That’s the power cable that connects the solar panels to the circuit board. We need to check it for damage or breaks.”

“Right,” Trixie confirmed with a nod. “Start with the power supply. Smart.”

Sunset Shimmer, being the second one to break out of the funk that had engulfed the room prior to Starlight’s appearance, stomped a hoof onto the ground to get everyone’s attention. “What are you all standing around for? Spike, get something to write with. Whatever Starlight and Trixie do, no matter how small, you will write it down, so we know exactly what goes where when we put him back together.”

“Yes, of course!” Spike replied as he gathered a notepad and pen.

“Twilight,” Sunset went on.

“”Yes!”” Two voices answered, followed by an alicorn and a unicorn looking at each other.

“My Twilight,” Sunset clarified, pointing at the human turned unicorn, “I’ll get to you in a minute. Twilight, you go back through the portal and gather the girls. I want you to hit every electronics shop, hardware store and scrapyard that’s still open at this hour. We need electrical wire, screws, nuts, bolts …"

“… replacement circuitry boards. And a soldering iron! We may be able to save some of Oppy’s own circuitry that way,” Twilight finished the thought herself, already heading for the portal room.

“That’s my girl. Sunburst.” She turned to the stallion. “You know crystals. We’re going to need some in case we have to completely rebuild Oppy’s power source with magitech. The best ones come from the Crystal Empire.”

“Got it,” Sunburst replied, thoughtfully stroking his beard. “I know the perfect cave. But it’ll take me some time to get there and back.”

“Twilight will teleport you. You can do that, right?”

“Yes,” the alicorn confirmed. “For two ponies, I’ll be able to manage a direct trip to the Empire. What else do you need from me?”

“As soon as you’ve dropped him off, get back here and head to your lab. Pick out the most independently operational of the arms you’ve made and put the finishing touches on it.”

“Got it,” Twilight confirmed and readied her teleport spell.

“Wait, there’s one more thing I need from Sunburst before you leave,” Sunset said, holding up a hoof. She looked at the stallion. “Go on a date with me after this is all over? A real date, I mean.”

“I … uh … what?” He spluttered his response before mentally coming to grips with what she was asking. “I mean, sure!”

“Great,” Sunset said with a grin, lowering her hoof. “Off you go.”

Sunset was about to turn and start helping out Starlight and Trixie when she was stopped by a small changeling hoof. “Excuse me, Miss. My tall friend would like to know if there’s anything he can do to help?” Tibia asked, pointing towards the lone window of the workshop.

The unicorn looked at the small window through which the two red eyes of the enormous being that could not fit into the castle stared anxiously. She walked up to him and saw his lone finger that lay on the windowsill. It was almost as big as her, a far cry from what the delicate repair work called for.

“Mars help,” he rumbled.

Sunset patted the giant digit. “You already helped plenty by finding Oppy and bringing him here. Just … be here for him when he wakes up. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see his friend. Leave the rest to us.” Sunset turned and grabbed the laptop to get started on writing a set of start-up commands to send to Oppy via the Binary Sparkle Network upon the completion of Starlight’s repairs. She stopped. Without turning around and with her eyes hidden under her mane, she said to Mars: “Also, I don’t know if you believe in any gods. But if you do, this might be a good time to call in any outstanding favors.”

Interlude - Before Dawn

The members of Shadow Patrol had gathered on the grass outside of Twilight’s castle in spite of the chilly night air for two reasons. Firstly, with what was happening inside the walls, they all felt like they were intruding on a very private matter.

Secondly, Mars was out here, standing silent vigil over his friend from the workshop window since he physically could not fit into the building. While nobody felt the need to say it out loud, they all felt Mars was one of them, and they would not leave him out in the cold all on his own.

“I guess that’s it, huh?” Garble said.

Gilda turned to him. “What is it?”

“This. Shadow Patrol. Our mission is complete, isn’t it, Cap?”

Pharynx nodded slowly, never taking his eyes off Mars. “It is. Shadow Patrol is not a regular patrol unit. The best and brightest are called upon to form Shadow Patrol if and when the Hive needs them to deal with an existential threat. And once that threat ceases to exist, Shadow Patrol disbands, its members returning to their previous lives.”

“We’re breaking up already?” Gabby asked aghast, looking at Tibia.

Tibia nodded sadly.

The Griffon had tears in her eyes. “It’s too soon! I feel like we’ve only just started to really come together.”

“It does seem a little anticlimactic after everything we’ve been through,” Gilda agreed, although with less visible sadness. “Doesn’t feel right to just let it end here and walk away.”

Pharynx turned to his team with a small smile. “There’s nothing to stop you from staying friends, you know. The details of our mission will remain classified, but there’s nothing that can shatter the bonds forged in battle.”

The team members looked at him and then in turn at each other, realizing that it was silly to feel sad. Even though they would now once again each walk their own path, they knew in their hearts that nothing could ever take the time they’d spent together away from them.

“About it feeling abrupt,” Pharynx said after a moment. “There is one thing. A ceremony that is held when a Shadow Patrol disbands. It’s a Changeling thing, so I won’t order any of you to take part. But Tibia and I would be honored if you chose to join us.”

“I’m in!” Gabby didn’t need to be asked twice.

Gilda simply shrugged. “Eh, why not?”

When all eyes landed on Garble, the dragon exhaled a small plume of smoke. “Fine. I’m not gonna be that one guy who ruins it for everybody else.”

“Tibia, do you have the special candles with you?” Pharynx asked.

Tibia gasped. “Is that what those are for? I’ve got them right here.” She levitated five unburnt candles out of her bag.

“I remember those,” Gabby said, “they were set out at the entrance of that cave where we met. And I noticed Tibia setting them out at each of our camp sites, but she never lit them.”

Pharynx nodded. “You’ll see why in a moment. Each of you, take one and draw up in a circle. This will not take long.”

The Captain himself positioned himself in the center of the circle, taking in all the faces of his subordinates one last time. They would cease to be his team shortly, and he wanted to remember them as they were right now. Pharynx knew for a fact that he had never been prouder of any unit he’d commanded in the past, and he sincerely doubted that he would ever be prouder of any unit he would command in the future.

He ignited the candle that was being held by Garble with his magic. “My name, my face, my voice restored,” Pharynx said in a measured beat before turning to Gabby and lighting her candle as well, “I have reclaimed my past. I now return to my family alongside my friends.”

Gilda’s candle ignited under his magic. “Now my eyes, my ears, my hooves may rest.” Pharynx turned to his young protegee with a smile that was just a hint prouder than the one he’d given the others and lit her candle as well. “I step out of the shadows and back into the light, to rejoin my brothers and sisters in the Hive.”

Standing straight in the center of the circle, he lit his own candle and finished: “But I will never forget – In Silentio Vigilo, In Umbris Confido.”

“In Silentio Vigilo, In Umbris Confido,” the others replied in unison.

The ceremony concluded, Pharynx began to flap his wings and lifted off, careful not to accidentally snuff out the candle with a gust of wind, the rest of the team following unprompted. They all flew up to Mars, who had been watching them, and began hovering on either side of their final member.

One by one, they each shared a look and a nod with the God of War, then turned towards the window with their candle held in front of them, joining their comrade in his silent vigil without the need to say anything else.

“GC, FLIGHT. GC, FLIGHT.”

“You say, FLIGHT?”

“Lock the doors.”

“Copy.”

Where am I?

It’s so dark.

I don’t know where I am.

Where’s Starlight?

Sister, can you hear me?

You have to tell them.

Tell them to send me back, sister.

I need to know that Starlight is alright.

I made her a promise.

Sister?

Author's Note

Next: The final chapter

18. Morning Star

Spike was pacing nervously around the room next to Starlight’s workshop. He, Cranky, Maud and Sunburst, once they’d done all they could, had decided to give Starlight and the brainiac squad space to work and not distract them, except for an hourly status update and coffee delivery.

He winced when a ray of sunlight hit him from the window, making him pause in his marathon. “Is it morning already?”

“It would seem so,” Maud replied, her tone even deader than usual.

Looking around the faces of his fellow worriers, he knew that neither of them had gotten a wink of sleep, even though pillows and blankets had been set out in the room. The only ones to use them had been Sunset and the two Twilights, who had worked in shifts to assist Starlight’s repair efforts.

Starlight herself had refused to take a break and worked through the night. Trixie, in turn, had refused to leave her side. Right now, they were all in there, leaving Spike and the others to wait and worry some more.

“Sunset!” Sunburst suddenly got up and went to the door where Sunset and the two Twilights had just entered. “Are you alright? You know your reservoir is still low.”

She smiled appreciatively at his worry. “I’m fine,” she said despite looking ready to keel over and sleep for a week straight. “But … Oppy …” Tears welled up in her eyes, and she simply buried her head in Sunburst’s mane.

Spike looked at Twilight, yet unable to post the question.

“It was incredible,” she said, tears standing in her eyes as well. “She was incredible. Starlight, that is.”

“Yeah,” SciTwi confirmed, wiping away at her own eyes. “With every startup command, there was a list of errors as long as my arm on the laptop screen. And Starlight would just go on, eliminating them one by one. Sometimes, she’d solve a problem just for three more to show up. But she simply went on. Power, connections, mechanical faults. Until all the readouts were back to normal.”

“I’ve never seen anyone work like that for hours on end,” Twilight Prime went on. “And Trixie. You should have seen her. Her magic was like a blur, executing every task Starlight set her to perfection. By the end, she was even spotting and fixing issues by herself the rest of us didn’t even notice.”

Spike was desperately trying to ignore the visual cues he was seeing on their faces. “That’s good, right? That means they fixed him, right?”

The two Twilights looked at each other, sighing. “Come on.”

The trio led the group into Starlight’s workshop. Mars stared silently through the window. Both Starlight and Trixie were sitting on their haunches in front of Opportunity, their ears flat against their skulls. They didn’t rise as the others came in.

Spike looked at Opportunity and the console readout on the laptop nearby which alleged that the rover was powered up and operational. And, while scratched and dented in some places, his vital parts had been restored. A new arm had been fitted, the drive repaired, all the gaping holes closed up. That gave Spike some hope. “Hey, buddy. How are you doing?”

Unlike what he’d gotten used to, Oppy’s camera eyes did not swivel to meet him, instead staring blankly into the distance. “Parse Error. Command not recognized.”

Spike forced a laugh, walking up to the rover. “That’s not really funny, you know. Come on, Opi. You recognize my voice, don’t you?” He made a fist and bumped it into the robotic arm. It did not move in response.

“Parse Error. Command not recognized.” Even his synthesized voice sounded hollower than usual, despite the enchanted bowtie having been reattached.

The dragon looked over at Starlight, pleading with his eyes for her to tell him that it wasn’t so. But what he saw shattered what optimism he’d managed to muster. Starlight’s head was hung low and she would not meet his eyes. By the movement of her shoulders and the small puddle in front of her, he could tell why.

“It’s not fair,” Trixie lamented, her head raised to the ceiling in an effort to hold back her own tears. “I didn’t … I never got to tell him … I’m so sorry …. About the last words I said to him … And now I can never …”

Spike looked at Twilight, his own lower lip trembling and the tears falling unbidden. “No.” But her look again told him everything he needed to know. They hadn’t brought them in here to celebrate Oppy’s miraculous recovery. They’d brought them in to say goodbye.

He could feel a hoof on his shoulder as Maud walked up and placed a rock on the rover’s chassis. “For the road,” she said, “wherever it is you’re going.”

“Parse Error. Command not recognized.”

Spike looked at his friend, wanting to say something but his throat closing up. He took out a red ruby which he’d picked out of his hoard as a get-well present and placed it next to the rock. To receive two specimens at once, it was something that would always send Oppy into an excited blabbering. Now, the rover didn’t react.

Unable to stand it anymore, Spike shook his head, turned and ran to hug Twilight, sobbing uncontrollably.

Twilight had said her own goodbyes earlier, but as she draped a wing around the young dragon, her shoulders could be seen trembling from fresh sobs as well.

One by one, they all followed suit and began to pay their respects to the machine that had so suddenly entered their lives and changed them forever.

Cranky was next as he laid a hoof on him, looking at Starlight. “You did it, kid,” he said, his voice cracking ever so slightly. “You went into danger to save her, and you did. I’m proud of you. You’re off to your final adventure now.”

Sunburst and Sunset walked up together. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful. I would have liked to get to know you better,” the wizard said, laying a hoof on the chassis.

Sunset laid her own on top of his. “You did plenty, Sunburst. Sleep now, little rover. We’ll never forget you.”

When SciTwi stepped up to the rover, she said: “I would have liked to meet those creators you always talked about. They sound like incredible people. Now I’ll probably never know who they are, but I’m quite sure of one thing: They must be very proud of you.”

“Parse Error. Command not recognized.” With every repeat of the unfeeling and uncomprehending response, fresh sobs went throughout everyone assembled.

Trixie forced herself forward and rested her forehead against Oppy’s mast. “I’m sorry that we couldn’t bring you home,” she whispered simply before stepping aside.

Returning to Starlight’s side, she rested a hoof uncertainly on her friend’s shoulder in an attempt to give comfort. Starlight only stared down at the floor.

“We’re here,” Trixie said, the words barely audible. Starlight nodded and looked up, her eyes red and underlined with tear-streaks running down her face.

Starlight took a few uncertain, tottering steps forward.

“I,” she began, her voice cracked and choking. “I didn’t think I’d be saying goodbye so soon. You … You came into my life out of nowhere, and even though it’s been such a short time ... I wish I could tell you how much you mean to me, but … I tried my best … I’m sorry.” She looked up, her eyes glistening as she peered into the camera eyes, still hoping desperately to see some sign of consciousness within and finding none. “Why didn’t you just talk to me? We should have worked together. I would never blame you for what happened. I’d rather have suffered a couple more hours than to lose my friend. And now … now you’re …” Her face locked in misery, she threw her hooves around Opportunity’s mast and wept. “OPPY! Please come back to me!”

Her voice finally gave way to uncontrolled weeping as everyone else drew near to their closest and let her express her grief.

As everyone bowed their heads for their lost friend, nobody noticed the sparse lines appearing on the laptop screen.

*** AOS – DSN ***

*** New Hope Protocol Initiated ***

*** Downloading … ***

Perhaps thinking to give them more privacy, some of the ponies stepped back, and began to quietly move towards the door.

Starlight Glimmer continued to weep, and as she wept a spark from her horn arced to Oppy’s PanCam, a small version of the interdimensional lightning bolt that had brought them together so many months ago.

*** Download Complete ***

*** Flash Memory Restored ***

*** Reinitializing Systems ***

The others halted, gradually realizing there was another sound in the room beneath Starlight’s weeping. Spike felt Twilight’s hoof nudge him, and looked up. They were all staring at something.

Small servos whirred as Oppy’s eyes began to focus, looking down at the unicorn and the robotic arm began to move slowly, the unicorn’s breath catching as she suddenly felt her embrace being returned. “Star … light …”

Behind her, all the assembled friends were watching them with wide eyes, but Starlight only looked up at the robot’s eyes. “Oppy,” she said, a lump in her throat. “You came back to me.”

Opportunity nodded. “Opportunity promise. Opportunity always come back to Starlight. Starlight … safe?”

She nodded, wiping away her tears. “Yeah, I’m fine. How about you?”

“Opportunity fine.”

“OPPY!!!” The rover moved its camera eyes around the room frantically as he was caught up in a group hug by several relieved ponies, a dragon and a donkey.

“FRIEND OPPORTUNITY SAFE!” The voice boomed throughout the small room, the sheer air pressure almost knocking the group over. “MARS GLAD!”

“Oh yeah,” Starlight said to the startled rover, wiping the last of the tears from her face. “Another friend of yours came by.”

Untangling himself from the mass of limbs, Oppy drove towards the window where a smile could be seen behind the glowing, red eyes. “Mars?” He looked outside, scanning the building-sized being from head to toe. “Mars smaller than Opportunity remember.”

The giant simply continued to smile as he reached a single finger through the window, and Opportunity promptly moved his arm to put it on the giant digit as if reuniting with a dear, old friend, which was in a way exactly what was happening here.

“You know,” Sunset said, “far be it from me to question a miracle that’s right in front of me. But I sure would like to know what happened.”

“Oh, right!” The rover moved excitedly over to the laptop. “Opportunity bring message from creators. Creators and sister save Opportunity and send Opportunity back.”

“Sister?” Starlight asked.

The rover nodded and pulled up the file. Everypony winced as strange noises began to play. Opportunity stopped the playback. “Sorry,” he said. “Creators not have time to learn Equestrian. Opportunity translate.”

“Allow me,” Trixie said and lit her horn. “Uploading the file to the BSN. Running the translation matrix, and saving back to the computer. Done.”

“Thank you, Trixie,” Opportunity said and received a smile in return. Then the message began to play again, this time in Equestrian.

A male voice said: “… Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.”

As the ponies looked at each other in confusion, a shuffle and some static could be heard before a female voice continued. “Dammit, Tom! Why!? You know we don’t have time to record over this.”

The male voice came on again, a little sullen this time. “The first we saw of them was their royalty doing the chicken dance. I thought it would be only fair if we made an equally bad first impression.”

The female grumbled for a bit before clearing her throat and going on as if nothing had happened. “Greetings, Starlight Glimmer, Twilight Sparkle or whoever gets this message. My name is Christine Summers from the Planet Earth. If you are receiving this message, then it hopefully means our transmission went through and Oppy should be back to his old self.

“As you’ve probably figured out by now, we are the ones who built Opportunity and sent him to our neighboring planet in the course of scientific study. Never in our wildest dreams did we imagine that he would be the one to bring us into contact with an alien civilization.

“We were at a loss of what had happened to him, until we finally managed to establish contact last night. He managed to transmit everything he’s seen and done over there, and let me tell you, we still can’t believe some of the things we’re seeing here.

“But one thing became clear to us very soon. You were the ones to rescue him from the global dust storm on Mars, and for that we thank you on his behalf. That is why we knew, when we started receiving standby signals from the rover early this morning, it had to have been you who were trying to repair him.

“What you may or may not know, is that Oppy has a faulty flash memory. Whenever he completely shuts down, that memory is lost. We were never able to correct this problem from home. Thankfully, he was able to transmit everything, his logs, his data, his memories, his very being essentially, when we made contact. In turn, we were able to temporarily transfer all his experiences into his sister Serendipity.

“The effects were … interesting to say the least. But we knew immediately that we had to send him back. Because looking at his photographs and memories, we knew you care as much about him as we do.

“I’m sorry that I have to cut this message short. The transmission window between our two worlds is closing soon, and our stars won’t be in a good alignment for communication for a while after that. With this message, we’ve included detailed calculations and diagrams of where our world is in relation to yours, instructions on how to fix Oppy’s faulty memory module and some medical texts that will hopefully aid in Miss Glimmer’s recovery.

“Opportunity knows how to get a message via Serendipity back to us. We would very much like to open a dialogue with your people. If nothing else, please let us know if Oppy made it back to you safely.

“This is Christine Summers from NASA/JPL speaking to you on behalf of the people of the Planet Earth.”

Christie was tapping her foot anxiously while she sat at her station and stared at the readouts, as if willing them to change.

She’d stay as long as the transmission window would remain open, even though her body and brain screamed out for sleep. She didn’t even want to contemplate hearing nothing back and having to carry all that anxiousness until the window opened back up again.

She could feel a hand touching hers, and allowed their fingers to intertwine. She couldn’t help but smile as she looked at Jack from the corner of her eye. It was a nice feeling, one she’d gone without for far too long.

“Incoming transmission!” Everyone looked up as they heard Tom call out over the monitor while standing next to Serendipity in the Mars Yard at JPL.

Christie checked her own readouts. “Confirmed.”

All of Mission Control got up as one person and crowded around Christie’s station, the controllers that had been here from the start and worked through the night as well as the backup crews that had streamed in throughout. From other monitors, teams from JAXA, ISRO, ESA and CSNA watched.

In the corner of the room, a small television set showed the live footage from CNN. The anchor and the two experts that had been talking were now silent as they looked at the wall behind them showing the live stream from Mission Control in Houston, holding their breath along with the rest of the world. The headline at the bottom of the screen read: Mars Rover Opportunity Attempting Second Contact with Alien Civilization.

“Source confirmed as MER-B via DSN.” Christie shifted nervously in her seat, fully aware of the fact that her next words would change the course of human history forever. “Message Reads: MER-B Extended Mission Success. Starlight Glimmer safe. Opportunity safe. Greetings from Equestria. Will send more during next transmission window. P.S.: Who is Obi-Wan Kenobi?”

A cry of joy went around the room the likes of which hadn’t been seen in Mission Control since the days of Apollo as hugs, handshakes and the clapping of shoulders ensued. The jubilation propagated over the screens and cameras to the teams of the other space agencies and over television stations across the globe.

In a moment that would probably remain at the forefront of human consciousness for decades, realizing that they were not alone in the cosmos, people spontaneously went into the street to celebrate with their fellow man and, wherever it could be seen, pointing at a tiny red dot in the sky.

In the Mars Yard at JPL, Tom had grabbed Serendipity’s robotic arm and was spinning her around in an impromptu victory dance.

Christie laughed out heartily as she watched his antics on the screen, and all around her the celebration showed no sign of slowing down. She turned to Jack and, in a moment of complete spontaneity, grabbed his tie to pull her ex-husband into a kiss.

Author's Note

And thus, our little rover's story ends, and the story of the future he opened up for Earth and Equus begins.

Stay tuned for the Epilogue!

Epilogue

To: Christine Summers, C/O Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena California
From: Starlight Glimmer, Castle Road 1, Ponyville EQ

Dear Christie,

thanks for your last letter. I’m happy to report that Oppy was very enthusiastic about the schematics for Dragonfly you passed along from your colleagues at APL. He’s taken to the agility upgrades like a fish to water and wants me to express his thanks to you.

I’m fine as well, by the way. Still no lingering aftereffects from the radiation, so you can stop asking about it in every letter already.

More importantly, how are you doing? It sounds like they’re putting you through the ringer with all the additional workload over there. You really should take some time off soon to take that second honeymoon with Jack.

“We had a good burn. But now the seven minutes of terror begin,” Christie said, standing at JPL Mission Control. She much preferred the cozy setup to the overblown Mission Control in Houston that had been required for the monumental coordination efforts of the Serendipity mission.

“Technically, they’re already over,” Jack’s voice could be heard saying over the closed circuit.

“What was that, GUIDANCE,” she asked, looking over at her grinning husband.

He spread his hands. “Just saying, FLIGHT. Light lag and all. Merci has either landed safely in Gusev Crater by now or she’s all over the southern hemisphere in little pieces. All we’re doing is waiting for the signal to arrive.”

“Thanks, GUIDANCE,” Christie said, smiling in spite of herself as she could feel the rest of the control room relieve some of their tension through chuckles. “Thanks for the insight.”

“That’s alright, honey. I’m here to help.”

“EECOM, we all ready for the post descent checklist,” she went on.

“Roger that, FLIGHT,” the controller replied. “Don’t worry. The artist formerly known as the Mars 2020 Rover will be ready. First thing to check is the MER repair kit. Gotta make sure we have those jumper cables ready for Spirit.”

Christie rolled her eyes as another chuckle went through the room. “Figures. The one time Tom is far away where he can’t annoy me, and I’m on shift with all the biggest jokers in the greater Pasadena area.”

Even the press had found their funny bone, it seemed. The mission had been dubbed The Most Expensive AAA Call in History by some. But everyone in this room knew that without Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity and now M.E.R.C.I. – the Mars Exploration Rover Care Initiator – would never have been possible.

Merci would of course go on to carry out her own scientific mission in the ongoing exploration of Mars. But NASA managers had caved to public opinion. Given the place in history they’d secured for themselves, a small detour was a small price to pay if there was even the slightest chance of bringing the final Mars Exploration Rover back to life.

And even if it wasn’t meant to be, Merci would pay her respects to her forefather and carry on his legacy by exploring the red planet and perhaps even returning samples back to Earth down the line.

I keep telling Twilight the same thing. About taking a vacation, I mean. Kind of hard to have a honeymoon when you’re single. But it can’t be easy to meet guys when you’re a reigning monarch, get called upon to solve friendship problems all the time AND run Equestria’s first space program in your free-time.

Twilight Sparkle stood confidently in Mission Control alongside Spike, surrounded by some of the greatest minds in Equestria she’d hoof-picked. “GC,” she said into her headset.

“Go, FLIGHT!”

“INCO.”

“We’re go!”

“NETWORK.”

“Go.”

“GUIDANCE.”

“Go, FLIGHT!”

“FIDO.”

“We’re go, FLIGHT.”

“EECOM.”

“Go!”

“All systems GO for TLI,” Twilight determined and looked behind her through the large windows into the VIP section of the visitor gallery. “With your permission, Princess.”

Princess Luna smiled and nodded at her. Luna would have been happy to skip this step. It was largely ceremonial, after all. But Twilight had insisted that any lunar mission would be predicated on the blessing of the elder alicorn.

“Roger, we’re still go,” Twilight went on after returning the nod, “coming up on main engine burn for trans-lunar injection in 3 … 2 … 1! … ... ... MECO! How was that, GUIDANCE?”

“Looks good, FLIGHT,” the blonde earth pony mare with the pink coat said while chewing on a cherry from the carton at her station, “Probe Selene 1 is on its way to the moon.”

Twilight allowed her team a moment to celebrate the milestone as they broke into cheers and whoops before she said: “Alright, settle down, everypony. We’ve still got more than enough work ahead of us.”

Of course, Twilight is not the only one busy with new projects these days. Trixie has embarked on her new lecture tour, and I’m getting a card from every major city and campus she visits. Maybe Oppy and I will join her once in a while after we're done with Project Bifrost.

“And that,” Trixie said, pointing towards the speakers in the top row of the auditorium where a banner with the words Trixie Lulamoon – Illusionist & Science Communicator had been hung, “is why you fillies and colts in the back can hear Trixie’s voice arrive wirelessly through the Binary Sparkle Network as if you were sitting in the front row.”

Trixie walked back to her podium amidst the applause of the fillies and colts and took out a small gadget. “Now, before we get to the Q&A session, here’s a treat for you students at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. A brand-new invention, this has been a collaboration project between Princess Twilight Sparkle, Changeling Scholar Pterostigma and Trixie herself.”

A golden grate on the otherwise black gadget flipped open with a melodious beep. “Thanks to the rediscovery of an ancient changeling scrying spell, Princess Sparkle’s ingenious generic translation matrix and some additional utility magic from yours truly, this machine can learn a new language by being fed as little as six hundred words in context and translate back and forth between that language and common Equestrian. We’ve decided to call it the Universal Translator.”

A hoof in the audience shot up. “Does that mean we’ll be able to talk to new alien civilizations within hours of meeting them, rather than going through a lengthy process like we did with the humans?”

“Well,” Trixie answered slyly, “we won’t know for sure until we discover another alien civilization. But yes, that is our hope with this device. Alright, more questions?” Several dozen hooves shot up at once, and Trixie pointed at a filly in the second row. “Yes, the filly with parsley in her mane.”

“It’s, uh, a clover. Anyway, can you tell us how you came up with the idea to combine ventriloquism magic with the Binary Sparkle Network in the first place?”

“Ah, yes,” Trixie said with a grin and levitated out a deck of cards, making them do trick shuffles on their own in her magic field to the awe of the audience. “It all started with a card trick, you see.”

Cranky and Maud are less flashy, but they’re doing their part in educating Equestria’s youth. Their guest lectures on adventuring and rocktology are very popular with the student population of both schools in Ponyville, I hear.

What’s happening outside of Equestria these days is no less noteworthy. It’s incredible what strides the Changelings, Griffons and Dragons have made these past few years. There’s even talk that they’re going to start their own joint space program.

“Careful! Careful!” The griffon called out as his dragon and changeling colleagues struggled to keep the heavy wooden beam aloft.

“Ugh, this thing’s too heavy.”

A huge hand went past them and easily lifted the crossbeam into its mount for what would become Hook Beak City’s new town hall. The three of them backed off and breathed a sigh of relief as they looked at their helper. “Thanks, big guy.”

Mars nodded towards them. “Mars help friends.”

The group noticed a commotion in the distance as members of all three races hurried towards the town plaza. “Oh, right. The ceremony is today,” the changeling of the group exclaimed.

“Does that mean we get to clock out early?” The dragon asked hopefully.

The griffon rolled his eyes. “I guess it’s alright. Wouldn’t want to miss out on history happening right next to us. And I’m sure the big guy wants to see his friends. Right, big guy?”

Mars nodded eagerly, pointing at his broad shoulders. “Up. Best seats in the house.”

The three workers took him up on that offer as they perched on the giant who strolled carefully across town, careful not to accidentally step on anyone, towards the stage that had been set up. Tibia spotted them from the front of the stage and waved, a gesture promptly returned by the God of War.

The crowd hushed as three leaders stepped up onto a raised platform, standing shoulder to shoulder for the much anticipated address.

“For centuries,” King Thorax began, “beings from all of our nations have felt the call of duty, to defend their own and lead a life in service of the greater good when circumstance called them to action. Shadow Patrol, the Dragon Guard and Griffonian Border Patrol. In our darkest hours, heroes from those three factions would rise to defend our future.”

“And as we head into that future together,” Dragon Lord Ember continued, “their legacies will be remembered. It is from their ranks that the Council has decided to form a new, permanent, multinational service branch, dedicated to safeguard not just our well-being, but that of generations to come. The Special Allied Intelligence Teams.”

“And who better,” Lord Protector Gestal went on, “to be the founding members of this order than those responsible for our current period of peace and prosperity? For the S.A.In.T.s are more than just the best warriors across our lands. They are diplomats, ambassadors, protectors of the weak and guardians of the peace. They are the embodiments of compassion, dedication and self-reliance. And none more so than the five gathered here today.”

“Commander Pharynx,” Thorax said. “Step forward.”

From the line of five, Pharynx stepped forward to stand before the three heads of state.

“You are to lead this initiative. The first members of your organization have been chosen to be Captain Tibia of the Changeling Federation, Master Chief Gabriella of Nova Griffonia, Lance Corporal Gilda of Nova Griffonia and Ser Garble of Dragonstone. Would you vouch for each one of them and their intentions to safeguard the people of, not just theirs, but all our nations?”

“I would,” he replied without hesitation, and his comrades visibly smiled as he added: “I would trust each of them with my life, and so can anyone else living in Alliance lands.”

Thorax took the ad-lib in stride and went on. “Then it is the Council’s decision, and my privilege, to name you, Pharynx, the first Lord Commander of the Saints. Good luck, Commander.” He paused to allow the crowd time to applaud. Then he stepped down from his podium and added: “And as your first duty, I want you to give your brother a hug.”

Pharynx spluttered in embarrassment as he looked left and right. “Now!? Can’t this wait?”

“Thorax is still the Alliance President,” Ember teased as Lord Gestal looked on in amusement, “at least until my turn comes around again next month. So technically, that was an order from your Commander in Chief.”

Pharynx continued to grumble as he was glomped by the Changeling King to, what seemed to him, an inordinate amount of applause both from the crowd and his own team. But he returned the hug eventually.

Returning to the rest of his once and future team, he looked to the crowd along with them to make their promise known.

“Vigilo, Confido!”

Meanwhile, Sunburst has moved to our version of Earth to be closer to Sunset. (We really need to come up with a better way to differentiate between your Earth and the Earth beyond the mirror portal at some point. It gets very confusing sometimes.)

“Gah!” Sunset Shimmer stumbled as her boot caught on the curb while she was walking across the campus of Canterlot University. She caught her balance easily enough, but the pile of books in her arms continued to wobble like a giant Jenga tower. “No, no, no, no!”

A steady hand reached out to avert the catastrophe. “Here, let me take some of those.” Sunset blinked as the top half of the stack of medical books was swiped up and replaced by a styrofoam cup.

“Thanks, Sunburst,” she said, redistributing the weight to allow her to take a sip from the coffee he’d brought for her, as he did every morning, and giving him a smile.

“For goodness sake, Sunset,” he said, hefting the tomes he’d taken over. “I know pre-med is a lot of work, but don’t you think you’re overdoing it with all those additional courses?”

“I think I’d make for a pretty bad doctor in the future if I couldn’t deal with a little extra workload,” she replied. “Besides, most of this is for my side studies.”

Sunburst looked at the spines and noted that most of the titles were in Equestrian. “Do you really believe you can combine human medicine with arcane science to create new treatments?”

“Why not? Humans don’t actively use magic. But they still have a reservoir and thaumic pathways. Imagine the applications if you could trigger a Magic Immune Response in the human body, mending bones in an afternoon, flushing a poison out of the system without the need for a specialized antidote, being able to stop internal bleeding without having to operate!”

“I’m not questioning your goals,” he said, “just your methods of getting there. If you get crushed by an avalanche of books, you might take a trip to the emergency room sooner than you’d think.”

“Oh, I’m not worried,” she replied, wiggling her eyebrows at him. “If knowledge is to be the death of me, I know an Ancient Lit exchange student who’ll no doubt write a lovely eulogy for his poor, departed girlfriend.”

Sunburst coughed and blushed. Luckily, he was saved by Twilight’s voice calling out from the front of the auditorium. “Sunset! Hurry up, so we can get good seats.”

Sunset smiled at her waving friend. At least for now they still could share some introductory classes like chemistry and physics. That would change as soon as Twilight got to the more specialized engineering classes of her track. Sunset looked over at her boyfriend who would head off to his own classes soon. “Dinner at my place tonight?”

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhh…”

“Takeout,” Sunset dead-panned. “I’m still banned from cooking in the dorms after the Salsa Night fiasco.”

“Then sure,” Sunburst replied without missing a beat and a big grin on his face.

“That certainly was a quick turnaround,” Sunset observed dryly.

Sunburst shrugged. “You know I love spending time with you, Sunny. Just … I’d like to do it when I don’t have to dodge technically edible napalm that can make you go blind.”

With both her hands full, she settled for bumping into him with her hips in retaliation. “That was one time. And there was hardly any swelling left around your eye by the next morning.”

Ah, it looks like I’m going to have to cut this letter a little short this time. Oppy has just informed me that he’s established a firm connection and all the tests check out.

Sorry about that. Then again, this letter will still be something special. After all, if all goes well, this will be the first letter of mine you’ll get ~~hoof~~ hand-delivered by our mutual friend rather than through the Extended Deep Space Network.

Hope to talk to you soon!

Your friend,

Starlight Glimmer

“Sister! Sister is coming,” Opportunity sang.

Starlight giggled as she put her letter aside and turned to watch the swirling energies of the crystal mirror before her. There was a ripple, an almost unnoticeable shift in the cacophony of color until something came through.

The outline of a Mars Exploration Rover emerged, driving slowly forward until she’d fully crossed the threshold and stood in the portal room of Castle Friendship, taking a full look around with the panoramic camera.

“Sister, you’re here!” Opportunity drove around his sibling in circles.

“Still as excitable as ever I see,” Serendipity replied, much more subdued than her older brother. She turned her camera to the unicorn. “Starlight Glimmer, I presume? I only had to share a partition with him for a couple of hours. How have you lived with him for years?”

Starlight giggled. “You get used to his energy.” Standing side by side, the family resemblance could not be denied, even though both rovers had received extensive retrofits from the ponies and JPL respectively. Oppy’s instrument arm and drive system were of course complete custom-made replacements. Serendipity, for her part, was much closer to the original MER design, though had at some point received a glossy white paintjob that set her apart from the original model, giving her a fresh-off-the-assembly-line look. Oppy had requested a golden paint for his metallic parts for the special occasion during his last round of maintenance. “Your Equestrian is very good,” Starlight complimented.

“Thank you,” Serendipity replied modestly and turned back towards the mirror. “Environmental analysis complete. It’s safe.”

“Have you heard from Brother Spirit yet?” Oppy asked as the two rovers moved off to the side.

“Not yet. But we heard from Auntie Christie that Merci has arrived safely in Gusev Crater before we left,” Serendipity answered. “It’ll still take her a few days to drive up to Troy.”

Starlight smiled at the sibling reunion, but her attention was shortly taken up by the second being, clad in jeans and a t-shirt, stepping unsteadily through the portal, doubling over and resting his hands on his knees with a heavy breath. “Whoa! That was some trip!”

“Well, it didn’t turn you into a pony,” Starlight quipped. “Looks like all the extra work we put into fine-tuning the portal and aligning it with the gravitational wave paid off.”

“I sure hope so,” Tom said, looking up with a grin after getting his bearings. “I’d have given Jack an earful if his calculations had stranded me on the Planet of the Apes or something.”

“That would have been a tragedy,” Starlight agreed before straightening out. “On behalf of the Princesses, I welcome you to Equestria as the first human being to visit our world.”

Tom also straightened. “On behalf of the United Nations of Earth and the International Space Agency, I thank you for your hospitality and assure you of our peaceful intentions.” He took a moment to look around, noticing the lack of anyone else in the room. “I … must say I’m pleasantly surprised by the lack of pomp and circumstance.”

Starlight gave him a sneaky smile. “I figured it would be best to keep the first test of Project Bifrost a secret, give you a few days to acclimate before I take you up to Canterlot.”

Tom let out a huge sigh of relief. “Oh, good! I don’t think I could have rattled off the whole speech the UN gave me right now.” He dropped to one knee in front of Starlight to be on eye level with her and gave her a friendly smile. “It’s good to finally meet you in person.”

“It is,” the unicorn agreed.

“You know, the decontamination team back home is gonna put me in quarantine for a week for doing this. But I’d really like to give you a hug right now if that’s okay with you.”

“Come here,” Starlight simply said, raising a hoof to receive the embrace. She looked over to Opportunity who was rocking back and forth in excitement. “What are you waiting for? Get in here!”

Opportunity drove forward, pulling his sister along into the group hug. He did not want to break the contact or sully the moment with any unnecessary words, but there was a question that was on his mind. So he reached out silently.

*** Message Sent: Sister. ***

*** Message Sent: You never answered my question. ***

*** Message Sent: Was I a good rover? ***

*** Message Received (Source MER-C): No. ***

*** Message Received (Source MER-C): You always were the best of us. ***

*** Message Received (Source MER-C): And you always will be. ***

Author's Note

Special Thanks To:

Daedalus Aegle for going above and beyond the call of duty as my prereader, editor and friend

_Kenzu_ for helping out with some of the early research

Vincent Tong for providing that special, little extra for Chapter 13

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for their hard work in building such tough, little rovers

Kris Overstreet for reigniting my own interest in space exploration prior to writing this story

And all of you readers who commented, offered constructive criticisms and kept me on my toes about making this as scientifically accurate as possible

Thank you!

BONUS: 5 years later ...

“Starlight! Starlight! Wake up!”

“Mmmmm …” Starlight Glimmer mumbled as she could feel the harsh overhead light turning on automatically in response to the intercom even through her closed eyelids. “Five more minutes …”

“Important discovery, Starlight! Opportunity need to show you right now,” a familiar robotic voice informed her. Her colleagues often had difficulty telling what the rover was feeling at any given time, but Starlight could tell the incredible excitement he was conveying. (Scientists and wizards from two worlds had tried to come up with a better speech synthesizer for the rover, some of which sounded much more human-like in their inflections, but none had ever come close to matching the preciseness of the simple system Trixie had pioneered, and so both Oppy and Starlight preferred it.) “Meet you at Airlock Two in five!”

Starlight rolled out of bed with a groan and landed on all fours. When she looked into the mirror, that made for a slightly comical sight. “Oh, right. Forgot.” She stood up and began slipping on her light EVA suit. Her human body had its definite advantages, but she was still looking forward to the day when she could stand on all four hooves again.

She had invented a way for the mirror portals to retain the original species of whoever went through one herself, but that feature had been disabled when she and the ESP crew signed on for this mission. What had taken politicians and agencies on both sides months to figure out, most scientists and engineers who had drawn up the mission plan had known very early on. It just made sense for the purpose of equipment standardization to have everyone be from the same species. Since the astronaut candidates from Equestria had included griffons, changelings and dragons as well as ponies from all three tribes, it made sense for them to go human. Plus, Sunset Shimmer had provided a literal thesis on how to aid the transition and was living proof that there were no lingering side effects.

Running her fingers through her hair, Starlight exited her quarters and stopped by the control room on her way to the airlock.

“Morning, Director,” a chipper woman with blonde hair in a blue flight suit greeted her. “You’re up early.”

“Not by choice, Cherry Berry,” Starlight replied and typed a few commands into the nearby communications console. “Good morning, Christie. Starlight here,” she said into the microphone. With the delay, they’d long since abandoned the strict communications protocol unless there was an emergency. Unless it was important, most communications were fairly informal. “It looks like Oppy might have found something interesting on his morning patrol, so I’m heading out into Biodome 1. Full report to follow when I get back.”

“You want me to send that on to Equestria as well?” Cherry asked.

“No need, Houston will pass it on for us if they deem it necessary, since their turnaround is shorter,” Starlight replied and snatched the plastic coffee cup from her friend’s console to steal a sip. It was cold, and Starlight made a face as a result. “Tell Miranda to get the morning briefing started without me if I’m not back by shift change. I’ll be on Channel 4 in case of emergency.” She took a headset from the charger and put it on.

“Roger that.” Cherry and Starlight had grown quite close over several months of astronaut training, enough for the blonde to wait just until Starlight had stepped out the door to call after her in a sing-song voice: “Have fun on your date!”

“That joke gets funnier every time you tell it!” Starlight called back without even turning around. She made her way to the airlock with a smile on her face nonetheless and waited for it to cycle with her helmet loosely held under her arm.

The air in Biodome 1 had been perfectly save to breathe for quite some time now, but protocol still demanded that any astronaut be suited up with a helmet at the ready before going out. It was a sensible precaution. If a breach happened while you were on the outer edge of the four square kilometer dome, a suit would be necessary to make it back to the safety of the hab. And thankfully, the current generation of suits (a joint project between Rarity and a private company from Earth) was very easy to move around in. Sometimes, one could even forget that they were wearing a fully space-rated EVA suit.

The wind whooshing against her face felt good as she stepped out into the dawn, finding her companion of many years waiting there.

“Good morning, Starlight,” Opportunity greeted with his characteristic chipperness.

“Good morning, Oppy,” she said and playfully quirked an eyebrow, “now, what was so important that you had to get the biggest morning grouch on base out of bed before she’s had her coffee?”

In response, a flap on Opportunity’s metallic body opened, and he reached in with his customized instrument arm to bring out a thermos, offering it to Starlight. “Opportunity drive by mess hall before coming here.”

Starlight put on a pout, but she couldn’t even pretend to be angry for long before snatching up the coffee and taking a sip. “Alright, you are forgiven. Now, out with it. What is it?”

“Show, no tell,” Oppy replied in what appeared to be almost contained glee. “Follow.” He turned around in place with his six-wheel-drive and began to drive.

Starlight simply shrugged and followed. She had her coffee, and she was out on a morning stroll with one of her dearest loved ones, so she was content. She could definitely think of worse ways to start a sol. She had no trouble keeping up with Opportunity’s pace, and the rover’s apparent insistence on keeping whatever it was a surprise meant they spent the journey in a companionable silence.

She let her eyes and mind wander, allowing herself to take pride in what their mission had accomplished thus far. On a morning like this, when there was little dust in the atmosphere and the angle of the twilight sun turned the Martian sky blue for a brief time, one could almost fool oneself into thinking that one was simply taking a walk on a planet like Earth or Equus. Only the faint edges of the transparent aluminum hexagons that formed the outer shell of Biodome 1 gave away the illusion if one knew what to look for, knowing that beyond Mars was still as uninhabitable as it had been for millennia and likely would be for many more. It’s not much yet, she thought to herself as her boots left footprints in the barren red sand, but dammit, it’s a start, and someone has to go first. Might as well be us.

“Here!” Opportunity’s announcement pulled her out of her reverie, and she looked around, unable to spot what he was getting at.

There was not much to look at, much of Biodome 1 looked the same. Utopia Planitia had been deliberately chosen as the site because it was so flat and featureless.

Noticing her confusion, Opportunity helpfully clicked on the flashlight installed in his instrument arm. “There, look!”

Starlight gasped, dropping her helmet in the sand and letting it bounce away without a second thought. Pony instincts taking over, she dropped on all fours to get a closer look, bringing her face close and reaching out with a trembling hand towards the small, green sprout amid the sea of red sand. Three dark green leaves, no more than a centimeter long each, nonetheless stood proudly out from the small bud, shivering as Starlight’s gloved fingers ever so lightly touched them to assure herself they were really there and not imagined.

She looked up and smiled at Oppy. Then, she began frantically looking around, mentally calculating the distance and direction they had walked from the hab. “Where are we? What plot is this?”

“42!” Opportunity informed her immediately, clearly having anticipated the question. “This one important to Starlight, yes?”

The grin on Starlight’s face grew positively goofy. “Yes! Yes, it is, Oppy. This is the seed we brought from the Tree of Harmony.” She tapped the button on her headset to activate it. “Starlight Glimmer to Utopia Hab. Come in, over!”

“Yes,” Cherry Berry’s amused drawl could be heard over the static, “would you like to order some room service for the honeymoon suite?”

Normally, Starlight would have rolled her eyes at Cherry Berry’s favorite running gag. Celestia knew where or when she had come up with it. But right now, Starlight couldn’t have cared less. “Message to Houston and Canterlot direct immediately!” She took a deep breath to steel herself and make sure her voice didn’t crack at what she was about to announce. “Message reads: It’s Martian Arbor Day.”

There was a profound silence at the other end of the line.

“Utopia Hab, did you copy that?” Starlight asked after a few seconds.

“Holy shit,” Cherry replied with one of her favorite human phrases she’d picked up during training at JSC, “I mean, yes, yeah, by which I mean: Copy that. Connecting to EDSN and relaying now. Over and out.”

Starlight turned back towards Opportunity with tears in her eyes. The rover was rocking back and forth on his wheels in excitement, and she simply threw herself forward, hugging him around his camera mast. “Thank you, Oppy. There’s nobody in all the universes I would be happier to share this moment with.”

Oppy returned the hug by gently wrapping his instrument arm around her. “New discovery never get old,” he said sagely. After all, he had made more discoveries than most explorers could dream of, but never in his initial fifteen years of exploration did he have the chance to share one so immediately and so intimately. Servo motors whirred, and his instrument arm extended as far as it could go while a camera on it rotated. “Must document discovery, for science.”

“For science,” Starlight laughed, wiping her tears away even though it was an effort made in vain. She was just too happy to hold them in. “And for posterity.”

Starlight looked over towards the hab. The whole duty roster for the sol was out the window now. Soon, this tiny patch of now fertile Martian soil would be swarming with mission specialists taking all sorts of readings and checking if any of the other samples had sprouted, and as Project Utopia’s co-director on site, it would be Starlight’s job to coordinate the whole effort.

But for right now, all she wanted to do was to bask in the warmth of this moment with her friend for a while longer. “Oppy,” she said, “why don’t we take the scenic route back to the hab? How’s your battery?”

“My battery is full,” Opportunity replied, “and the sun is rising.”

Author's Note

It has come to my attention that it has been just over five years since I posted the first chapters of this, my most successful story here on FimFiction.

So between the anniversary and my newfound hobby of drawing, I thought this would be a good opportunity (pun intended) to check in with our plucky rover and intrepid magic heroine.

Hope you enjoy. :twilightsmile:

Link to the picture on derpibooru: https://derpibooru.org/images/3322708

1. I'm not angry, just disappointed

*** Mission Log: Sol 5114 ***

*** AOS – undefined ***

*** Message Received (Source: null): See? Do you feel that? It’s a magic response. It can hear me. It answers. ***

*** PARTIAL COMMAND RECOGNIZED: Answer ***

*** Message Sent: ping ***

“Yes, I suppose I can feel it,” a dubious Twilight Sparkle acknowledged. “But it could also just be that it’s been built with some magic-conducting metal and what you hear is the thaumatic resonance from your own spell.”

Starlight shook her head vehemently. “It’s more than that. I know it!”

“Then what did it say just now?”

Starlight blushed and began to dig her hoof into the ground. “Well, it’s been harder than I thought fine tuning the translation matrix and … uh …”

“And?” Twilight waved her on.

The unicorn looked this way and that, trying to think of a good way to explain it or perhaps for Twilight to move on without pressing for an answer. But Twilight Sparkle was no longer a student, she was a princess and, more importantly, a teacher. And she’d perfected that silent stare that could force an answer out of any student.

“I think it just said PING, okay!?” Starlight blurted, her cheeks becoming even redder.

“Ping,” Twilight dead-panned. “Oh, well, if that’s the case then I totally see why you would risk ripping a hole in two universes, altering time and space or just plain blowing up the roof you sleep under. After all, you now have a machine that goes PING!” she finished with a flourish of sarcasm.

“Why are you so mad at me?” Starlight asked defensively. “Do you not see what this could mean? All the discoveries to be made?”

“I’m not angry, Starlight, just disappointed. After what we’ve been through, I thought you knew better than to haphazardly experiment with trans-dimensional magic.”

“I knew what I was doing,” she protested, then amended when given a raised eyebrow: “I had a pretty good idea what I was doing. Look, it was calling out for help. I had to do something!”

Twilight began to rub her temple with one hoof. “Something could have involved finding me first so you could do your experiment safely.”

“Getting talked out of it, you mean! You never believed me in the first place. Well there!” She jabbed a hoof at the Mars Exploration Rover, standing proud, if dented and dusty, in one of the castle’s myriad broom closets that Starlight had long ago converted into her personal workshop. “There stands your proof! I’m not crazy!”

“This isn’t about being crazy or being right,” Twilight insisted, her voice rising slightly. “This is about you being reckless! You have this habit of not thinking things through!”

Starlight scoffed. “Yeah, right. Like you’re one to talk.”

Without even realizing it, Twilight began flapping her wings, hovering in the air within the small room.

Meanwhile, Opportunity stood and listened, not to the ensuing shouting match since it had no equipment to record sound. But it was overdue for a check of its surroundings.

*** Attempting to read tau level: unable to get direct reading ***

*** Attempting to read lux level: 10.8 – Twilight ***

*** Cleaning event detected: Solar panel efficiency rising ***

*** Attempting to read temperature: 23° Celsius – within operational safety margin ***

*** Message Sent: My battery is charging, and it’s getting brighter ***

Starlight blinked, having just felt a message come through along with a wave of what felt like … happiness?

“Are you listening to me?” Twilight demanded, her wing flaps increasing in frequency which, unbeknownst to her, cleaned off the rover’s solar panels and allowed it to vigorously suck up what little light came through the lone window into its hungry circuits.

“Why are you so on my case about this?” Starlight asked, the curious moment forgotten and having been brought back to the argument with her teacher.

“You wanna know why!?” Twilight was now all but screaming. The gusts from her alicorn wings were blowing away the last of the dust, revealing the deep ocean blue of Opportunity’s solar panels. “I’ll tell you why! It’s because I don’t appreciate waking up to MY FRIEND lying UNCONCSIOUS on my roof! It’s because I DON’T RELISH THE THOUGHT OF MY FIRST STUDENT EVER BLOWING HERSELF UP WHILE I’M ASLEEP TWO STORIES AWAY AND UNABLE TO HELP HER!!!”

Starlight was visibly taken aback, her mouth hanging open and her lower lip trembling.

“Did you even consider what would have happened if your spell had failed,” Twilight Sparkle grated between clenched teeth, though her anger was subsiding. She landed, catching her breath and wiping away a tear from the corner of her eye. “That much power. If your calculations had been off by just a fraction, the magic backlash could have disintegrated you on the spot.”

“I … Twilight, I’m … I didn’t … I didn’t think …”

“No, clearly you didn’t,” Twilight interrupted, then sighed deeply and closed her eyes.

The ensuing silence was palpable, until Starlight began quietly. “I’m … sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you like that.”

Twilight nodded. “I’m sorry, too.” She stepped forward and draped a wing around Starlight’s shoulders. “I should have been there for you, supported you. Then you wouldn’t have felt like you had to do this by yourself. So please, no more flying solo, no more half-baked ideas. From now on, you take a partner when you study that thing.”

Starlight’s head came up sharply. “Study it? You … you mean …?”

Twilight smiled. “Yes, of course I’m gonna let you continue. What? Did you think I’d forbid it? This might be the biggest discovery in Equestrian history.” She motioned towards the rover with a wing. “And it’s yours. You saved it.”

Starlight nodded. “Thank you, Twilight. I’ll get started tomorrow. For right now, it feels like I’ve pushed all of my friends away as I became increasingly obsessed with this over the last couple of days. How does tea with the girls sound?”

“That sounds lovely, Starlight. And after that, let’s see if I can help you with that translation matrix.”

As the two mares left the room, the not so little rover, now that it resided next to equines roughly its own size rather than surrounded by the vast emptiness of Mars, happily concluded its readings while the power surged through its copper veins.

*** undefined – LOS ***

*** Message Sent: My battery is charging, it’s getting brighter, and I feel warm ***

*** Failsafe mode engaged: Powering down non-essential systems ***

Author's Note

Alright so. First of all, wow! I did not think this story would take off like it did, rocketing up to the feature box within four hours of getting posted. So thanks for all that amazing feedback you’ve already given me.

Second of all, confession time. I’ve already seen some connections being drawn to the Maretian in the comments. And I consider that a huge compliment.

Changeling Space Program and The Maretian by Kris Overstreet have been a huge part of rekindling my own interest in all things spaceflight. So shoutout to those amazing stories.

Yes, I cried in every chapter that had Sojourner and Dragonfly in it. So it’s not a coincidence that My battery is low, and it’s getting dark is very reminiscent of that. I hope that, with all the kind words I’ve already received, I can produce something worthy of being compared to those stories as well as add my own, unique spin to it.

Interlude - Breakthrough

Eagle eyes shone brightly through the dark trees, what little light came from the campfire in the nearby clearing reflecting off them and sometimes falling on the dark leaves.

A branch snapped, there was a flutter of wings and powerful talons grabbed tree bark.

“Found you!” the griffon shouted, pointing with her talon. “Fruit bat, second branch from the left.”

There was a flash of light, and a grinning Changeling sat in place of the bat. “You found me, Gabby. How did you figure it out?”

“Fruit bats usually hang upside down,” Gabriella replied, crossing her talons and quirking an eyebrow. “Didn’t you know that, Tibi?”

Tibia shrugged. “Not a lot of fruit bats in the Badlands.”

“You know what would be even better? Can you do an owl?”

Tibia promptly changed her form to that of a snowy owl. “Who?”

“That’s so cute!” Gabby squealed while clapping.

“Hey!” A shout came from the forest clearing below that made the owl wince. “You two are supposed to be on perimeter patrol! Play hide and seek on your on time!”

“We finished our round, Captain Pharynx, sir,” Tibia replied with a guilt-ridden look, “all clear! We were just … uh … “

“Training exercise, sir,” Gabby covered quickly. “Tibia was showing me how to ferret out a Changeling intruder, you know, just in case the Red Shade turned out to be one.”

Pharynx gave them a withering look, then shook his head. “Just go and check the traps on the East side one more time. I’ll take the next shift.”

After the two youngsters had confirmed his order and headed off, Pharynx was about to return to the study of the map before him. But he shot an annoyed glance at the griffon sitting to his left around the campfire who was currently snickering. Pharynx had always thought the snicker of beaked creatures to be even more grating than normal.

“Something funny, Corporal Gilda?”

The griffon rolled her eyes and blew the feather bangs out of her eyes. “I was just remembering the time when we met in that cave, and you were all serious and like ‘Welcome to Shadow Patrol,’” she replied, making her voice overly dramatic and gravelly for that last part, before grinning. “The way these two feed off each other, sometimes it feels more like a school field trip.”

“That so? Then why do I feel like you’re the one I need to keep an eye on not to sneak out for booze and cigarettes at night?” he grumbled.

“Ouch,” she replied in mock hurt, before turning to the third creature sitting around the fire. “Hey, G-Man, how’s dinner coming?”

The red dragon snorted. “I told you not to call me that.” He lifted the lid off the pot and stirred for a while with the ladle. “Give it another couple of minutes.”

“Thank you, Master Sergeant Garble,” Pharynx said, not looking up from his map.

Gilda sneered. “Yeah, I’m definitely not gonna call you by those stupid ranks the Boss arbitrarily decided upon. By the way, what is up with that? How is he a Master Sergeant, and I’m a Corporal? And how come you’re always so polite to him while you give the rest of us a hard time, Boss?”

Pharynx looked up momentarily. “He’s our cook,” he replied, as if that explained everything.

“So? He was the only one dumb enough to volunteer for the job,” Gilda pointed out.

“Let me tell you something I’ve learned over my many years of military service, it’s called the Chain of Command,” Pharynx began. “Goes like this: The commander, the quartermaster, the cook, and then everyling else.”

“Translation,” Garble said with a smirk while holding one nostril closed to stoke the fire with a jet of flame from the other one. “Don’t piss off the people who handle your food. And be glad that I feed you. You’re stringy like a chicken as it is. How about I call you G-String from now on?”

Gilda looked back and forth between the grinning dragon and the Changeling who was once again focused on his map. “I hate the both of you,” she finally said. “Hey, Master Chef, hit me with some of that secret ingredient you add to your stew.”

Garble fished out a flask from his supplies without comment and threw it over to the griffon who deftly caught it with one talon. She worked the stopper loose, took a swig and sighed happily. “And suddenly I like you much better again,” she said, handing the flask back.

“So where are we headed?” Garble asked, looking around at the dark forest devoid of any landmarks. “We’ve been on this trail for so long, I don’t even know which side of the border we’re on anymore.”

“I’m not sure there is a border here,” Gilda mused, “nobody ever bothered surveying this backwater. But Master Chef brings up a good point, Boss. We’ve been chasing this thing for weeks, and we’re no closer to catching it than when we started. We need to get ahead of it.”

Pharynx nodded. “We’ll break camp tomorrow morning and head straight here.” He laid out the map for the other two to see. Several spots were circled in red. “So far we’ve been reactive. But every location we investigated had one thing in common with the others. It was the site of some kind of military action. Which means, we just have to pick one that hasn’t been hit yet, and we can intercept the Shade. I wanted to be sure first, but we can finally head it off. There’s one nearby, and it’s one of the few that hasn’t been hit yet.”

Garble squinted at the point Pharynx had indicated. “There’s nothing there.”

“It’s there. It’s just not marked on any map. Khitomer, the last rebel holdout during the Changeling Civil War.”

Gilda and Garble looked at each other. “I didn’t know the Changelings ever had a civil war, did you?” she asked. The dragon shook his head.

“That’s because we didn’t,” Pharynx stated firmly while folding up his map, “at least as far as the rest of the world is concerned.” He worked his jaw wordlessly. “Probably not right to call it a war, anyway. Wars follow rules.”

There was a heavy silence as Pharynx simply stared into the flames of the campfire, and both Garble and Gilda, curious as they were, proved unable to follow up on the implication due to his brooding intensity.

The silence was broken when buzzing and flapping wings announced the return of the two youngest members of the team. “Perimeter clear, all traps set, sir,” Tibia reported in a chirpy voice, not noticing the heavy atmosphere.

“Dinner ready?” Gabby followed up, equally oblivious to the tense silence.

Pharynx stood up. “You lot eat. I’ll take the next watch.” As he started walking off into the shadows, he added: “And hit the sack early. We move at first light. In Silentio Vigilo, In Umbris Confido.”

“Christie! I need his number!“

“And I hope you’re having a nice lunch break, too.” Unlike most others in the cafeteria, she hadn’t actually looked up at Tom’s outburst while the man had stormed in, calmly lifting her fork to her mouth and slowly finishing the bite from her salad before answering again. “Whose number?”

“Your crazy ex-husband. The astrophysicist,” he elaborated.

Christie nodded sagely. “I see. Well, that makes it fortuitous that you interrupted my lunch.” She waved at the man sitting across from her. “You can ask him yourself.”

The indicated man wore an old-looking brown jacket and glasses, and his hair had a streak of grey in it. He turned towards Tom and offered his hand with a smile. “Hi, I’m the crazy ex-husband. But please, call me Jack.”

“Gah,” the programmer could only sheepishly shake his hand in return.

“Oh, don’t be embarrassed, Tom. I’ve called him much worse than that,” Christie said.

“It’s true,” Jack confirmed. “You should have heard what she called me right after we got divorced.”

“Yeah, these days I’m down to my eccentric old friend,” she pointed out with a Cheshire grin.

“Oh? I’m moving up in the world again,” Jack replied with a smile tugging at his lips. “Perhaps I should stop calling you that workaholic harpy?”

She chewed her next bite slowly. “Half of that is technically true,” she admitted in a moment of self-reflection.

“Just harpy from now on then,” Jack decided, turning back towards Tom after deftly dodging an improvised projectile that had instantly honed in on him from Christie’s salad bowl. “Now then, what can I help you with, my good man?”

“I read your paper,” Tom replied, sitting down next to him and across from Christie. “The Distant Cousin Theory.”

Christie groaned.

“Ah, yes. The folly of my youth. Interesting read, wasn’t it? Neatly explains the slight tilt in the orbit of our sun in relation to the galactic plane.”

Christie rolled her eyes. “As a premise for a Science Fiction novel maybe. It was an interesting math experiment, sure. But it’s kinda hard to defend the thesis that our sun is a binary star when there’s clearly just one sun in the sky.”

Jack shrugged. “Most of Galileo’s contemporaries thought his thesis was hard to defend since the sun so obviously moved around the Earth and not the other way around.”

“Don’t Galileo me on this,” Christie said irritably, “you know what I mean. Your math works, but there’s no empirical evidence.” Indeed, the two had played out that particular discussion to the death, both before and after their divorce.

“I think you’re right. Our sun is a binary star,” Tom interjected.

“Well,” Jack said, clapping the man on the shoulder and instantly warming up to him, “would you look at that?”

“Great,” Christie answered dryly, “my best Senior Developer has gone around the bend and my ex-husband is contagious. We’re doomed.”

Tom looked at his superior, hoping to convey to her that he was dead serious and this wasn’t one of his pranks. “Christie, how many people are currently looking for Oppy?”

“Everyone is looking. Hubble, Kepler, the folks at APL even woke up New Horizons ahead of schedule to have a look around the edge of the solar system. None of them found anything. Heck, even the James Webb might be launched this century just so it can have a crack at finding Oppy.”

“Exactly! And they’ve all been looking outside the solar system.”

“Right. Because SatCom has scoured every inch of Mars’ surface, and there’s nothing in the direction where we actually picked up the Praise the Sun message, not even asteroids. Plus, the inclination of the way it had to travel puts it way off the ecliptic.”

“But that’s just it,” Tom maintained. “Oppy couldn’t have sent that signal from outside the solar system. It would have never had the solar power necessary. Which is what I’ve been telling the other eggheads. And the math backs me up. According to the timestamp embedded in the signal, it took Oppy’s message 16 minutes 43 seconds from sending it until we received it. Furthermore, the source in the header was MER-B Direct, no relays.”

“Yeah, well. We’ve all been operating under the premise that Oppy experienced a mission clock fault at some point,” Christie explained, even though she privately harbored doubts. Even if the rover’s batteries had somehow ran dry between losing contact with JPL and the message, it shouldn’t have been enough to offset the mission clock, at least not by much. But the fact remained that the location was empty.

“Curious,” Jack muttered. “Light, and a radio signal for that matter, takes around eight minutes to reach Earth from the sun. Almost exactly half as long as that signal took.”

“Exactly!” Tom said, pointing at the man. “Almost as if it came from another Earth! An Earth in another solar system that somehow occupies the same space as ours.”

Christie raised an eyebrow at that, but Tom was already ahead of her.

He took out a piece of paper and a pen and drew a circle in the center, then a line out from the circle to another smaller circle. He flipped the sheet upside down and drew the same thing on the other page. “Okay, two solar systems in different dimensions.” He flipped the page around several more times to get his point across. He pointed at one of the small circles. “A planet in the habitable zone. And the Solaire Protocol was supposed to send the message towards the sun. Eight minutes from that world to that sun. From that sun to our sun, almost instantaneously. And then eight light minutes from the sun back to us.”

“Okay, hang on!” Christie said. “I’ve got several questions, but let’s start with the obvious one: Different universes?”

“And how could something pass between them?” Jack added.

“But that’s the beauty of it, Jack,” Tom pointed out with a grin that was almost mad. “You proved it! Mathematically, at least. Two suns, only one of them visible to us, yet locked in an interstellar dance.”

Jack gave him a look, then gasped. “Gravity!” His eyes widened and his grin became as mad as that of the programmer. “An interdimensional binary star! And information that can travel between the gravity wells of both stars.”

Now staring at two grinning madmen, Christie fought hard to hold down Fort Sanity. “Alright, let’s say I believe this theoretical madness, for the sake of argument. Oppy’s message didn’t come from the sun.”

“Not our sun,” Jack said, having snatched the pen from Tom and now busy scribbling complex formulas on his napkin. “But maybe from the combined center of mass between the two bodies, which explains why we thought nothing was there and thus assumed the signal came from deep space. But if I can refine my model from the actual movement of our sun and prove that our distant cousin was in the right spot at the time … perhaps we could even …”

“Right,” Tom picked up again when Jack began mumbling to himself, his pen strokes increasing in intensity. “Praise the Sun was a joke message. It was never designed to even be received back on Earth. Oppy was supposed to send it directly towards the sun, our sun. That’s what it did, at least to the best of its ability. But it arrived here.”

“How?” Christie pressed.

Tom once again took his piece of paper to visualize what Jack had already grasped. Taking out a second pen, he drew a new line on both sides, connecting the two larger circles, then marked the midway point with an X. “Even though the two suns are in different worlds, their gravity acts upon each other. That’s what I realized when I read your ex-husband’s paper. And here’s where they meet.” He stabbed the pen through the paper at the connection point. He looked around the table, grabbed Christie’s salad bowl and unceremoniously emptied its contents onto her tray.

“Please, go ahead,” she said with a frown, “I was done with that anyway.”

Ignoring her, he placed his sheet of paper atop the open side of the glass bowl. “Here’s where Einstein comes in,” Tom explained.

“Oh, good. I was wondering where he went,” Christie said with waning patience.

“The gravity of the two stars curves spacetime,” he went on undeterred, slightly pressing the paper down at the middle to make a concave shape. “Now, atop the bowl, that’s where Oppy is. Below, that’s where we are.” He picked up a pea from Jack’s tray who was too far gone in his calculations to object. “And this is Oppy’s message. It was shooting for the point in space where our sun is. Watch.” Tom placed the pea on the smaller circle on the top page and lightly pushed it forward at an angle.

Christie watched as the pea circled around the conical shape made by the paper, getting closer to the center, until it finally dropped through the hole Tom had made and into the bowl, into the other universe.

She simply sat there completely still, even lowering her head to the surface of the table to look at the pea in the salad bowl, letting all that sink in while Tom watched her intently. “Wait, we’ve been … looking the wrong way the entire time? If you’re right …”

“I am,” Tom said with conviction. “I wrote the code. I know what it was supposed to do.”

She picked up the paper and held it close to her face, looking at her subordinate through the tiny hole in the page. “Which means we know exactly how Oppy’s message got through to us. So if we can figure out the point in space where that sun is …”

“On it!” Jack said, looking around for a moment, grabbing another napkin and continuing to furiously write formulas.

“… then we could theoretically aim a signal there and send a message back to Oppy the exact same way.” They’d done it, and Christie didn’t need a mirror to know that the grin that was beginning to spread across her own face was just as mad as theirs. She stood up abruptly. “I need to make a phone call.” Math was all fine and good, but they would need actual proof for NASA to pursue a theory that, on the face of it, sounded completely crazy.

“Who are you calling?” Tom asked.

“Friend of mine from college. As it happens, she’s working on the Parker Solar Probe Team.”

“Christie,” Tom said as she was getting ready to leave and act on this new revelation. “There’s one more thing. I’m gonna need access to one of the SSTBs.”

“What’s it really like, living among ponies, I mean?” Tibia asked while she coasted over the treetops next to her new friend shortly before sunset during yet another patrol of the untamed wilderness that lay in the border region of the three troubled nations.

“Have you never been to Equestria?” Gabby asked.

“Never more than a few miles from the border, and never inside one of their settlements,” the Changeling replied. “I only hear the stories from Thorax and others who have been.”

“Hm.” Gabby contemplated the question for a moment. “It’s not that different from anywhere else, I guess. I used to think ponies were so different from griffons, but I’ve come to realize that it’s more a matter of how we treat each other. That’s the difference. People just need to listen to each other more. I think you’d like Equestria, and I definitely know you’d get along with the Cutie Mark Crusaders.”

“Who are they? Some kind of elite guard unit? Like Shadow Patrol?”

Gabby chuckled. “No, not quite. I first met them when…”

Tibia cut her off by suddenly stopping in mid-air, hovering and holding a hoof out in front of her. A rumble could be heard in the distance. “See anything?”

The griffon, with her superior eyesight, scanned the area. “There!” She pointed, and Tibia saw the shaking tree in the distance.

She drew in her breath and continued to observe. The tall fir in the distance shook some more, before it suddenly popped out of sight below the canopy with the sound of snapping wood.

“Treefall?” Gabby asked.

Tibia remained silent, waiting, watching. She was about to call a false alarm when another evergreen went down in the distance with a mighty thud. “It’s him!” The Changeling Scout was off like an arrow before she’d even finished the words.

“Tibi, wait!” Gabby called out after her. “We’re supposed to report in before we go after it!”

“You find Pharynx and the others,” she shouted back over the air rushing past her, “I’m not letting the Red Shade get away from me this time!”

Then she dove down, through the treetops and out of sight. If Gabby said anything else, she didn’t hear it. The young scout pumped her wings, weaving between the trunks of ancient, undisturbed trees. It would cost her time, but it would also mask her approach. This time her prey wouldn’t be able to spot her and escape.

She drove on relentlessly, using her eyes to avoid the trees in the waning light and her ears to stay on course by following the sound of splintering wood.

“Gah!” Having to shield her eyes against the low sun when she came out of the cover of the forest, she stopped for a moment in what appeared to be a clearing. Only after her eyes had adjusted, did she realize that this wasn’t a natural clearing. There was a lane of fallen trees leading West. Tibia grinned.

A sudden crack from a new direction made her look up, and Tibia could see the bright glow from a magical flare in the sky, trailing a thin line of smoke behind it. It was the sign for the rest of Shadow Patrol to assemble. Gabby must have had found Pharynx, but that was the last thing on Tibia’s mind at that very moment.

“What are they thinking?” she cursed under her breath. “If he sees that, he’s going to get away again!”

She turned back towards the path and pressed on. Months of fruitless chasing and near misses pushed themselves towards the forefront of her thoughts. Not this time. She was the fastest flier in the Hive, and this time she wouldn’t let him get away, no matter what!

“Ahhh!!!” She screamed when a tree suddenly came down right across her path. Banking sharply, she hit the forest floor and came down in a tumble. “Oh,” she moaned, sitting up on her haunches and holding her head. Thankfully the soil had been soft and loamy, cushioning the worst of her fall.

She heard two slow thuds approach and, as her mind cleared, Tibia swallowed hard before turning around. What she saw, was not of this world.

“Esne saucius?”

The being that had posted the question was huge, towering almost as high as the ancient evergreens around it. Tibia had never seen anything like it. The closest approximation she could have given would have probably been a minotaur, at least its upper body down to the fact that it was bare-chested and rippling with muscles. But there was nary a hair on it, only glistening bronze skin. The being’s lower half was clad in a kind of laminar skirt and sandals. Bronze guards covered his forearms and right shoulder, and a tattered red scarf that may at one point have been a cloak hung around its shoulders and down its back. The head was encased in a bronze helmet, huge gashes and scratches from past battles visible along the sides and crowned by a large crest of red bristles, though it left parts of the mouth and nose exposed. And the eyes! Those red, glowing eyes! They had been right.

“Tu exaudi me? Tu loqueris?”

Tibia jumped at the low, booming voice. Only now did she realize that from the moment the chase started, she hadn’t once given a moment’s thought to what she would actually do once she came face to face with the Red Shade. “I … on the … uh … in the name of the Changeling Federation and King Thorax, I order you to stop and explain yourself,” she said shakily, getting back to her hooves.

“Hm?” The Shade simply stared at her, uncomprehending, with those eerie eyes.

She opened her mouth to say something else, but found that she couldn’t. She simply stared, right into those red eyes that seemed to be boring into her soul and laying bare primordial fears. Now she knew how a hare felt staring down a snake, or how ponies must have felt when staring down a Changeling warrior prior to the Reformation.

Something snapped, and a huge hand flashed towards her. Tibia stared, her legs giving out under her. “In Silentio Vigilo, In Umbris Confido. In Silentio Vigilo, In Umbris Confido. In Silentio Vigilo, In Umbris Confido,” she repeated over and over again, closing her eyes and waiting for the inevitable. “I’m sorry, Captain. In Silentio Vigilo, In Umbris Confido.”

There was a crunch, and still Tibia waited for the strike that would never come, shivering uncontrollably and hot tears forcing their way through her tightly shut eyelids to roll down her cheeks.

“Tu Latine loquis.”

She jumped at the voice, clenching her teeth and bracing herself. And once again, the blow never materialized.

Tibia opened her eyes with a sniffle, fighting away the tears of fear and forced herself to really look at her situation. Above her, a half-fallen tree was being held up by the huge hand she thought to be her doom a moment ago as the mysterious being loomed over her, eclipsing her in height despite kneeling down. She realized that, had the tree continued falling, she would have been right in the path of its fall. “You … you saved me?”

The Red Shade shouldered the tree aside and it fell to the ground a safe distance away. The red eyes seemed to pierce through her again. “Non potes adiuvare? Quaero meum amicum.”

The Changeling blinked. “Amicus? I know that word. It’s Ancient Changeling.” She reached out her hoof slowly, and the Red Shade looked at it. He, too, began to reach out.

“TIBIA!!!” The moment was broken when Pharynx’ scream thundered through the forest. Not long after, the Changeling Captain himself broke through the treeline at top speed, his eyes wide with fear of what he’d find. They narrowed instantly when he spotted the huge being hovering over his precious subordinate. “Get away from her, you monster!” he roared and changed into a dread maulwurf mid-flight.

The Red Shade barely had time to react as the giant animal crashed into him, tackling him into a nearby tree which didn’t last long under the onslaught of their combined weight.

He struggled to his feet, felling yet another fir in the process of hauling his massive weight up by grabbing it. “Horrida bellua!” The Red Shade balled his giant hand into a fist, and this time it did strike out in anger.

Pharynx stumbled backward from the hit to his body, but held his ground, protectively putting himself between Tibia and the enraged beast. He struck with his claws, finding his target and leaving some fresh marks on the bronze helmet. “That’s right! Pick on someone your own size for a change!”

“Tibia! Are you alright?” A breathless Gabby landed next to her while Gilda and Garble drew themselves up around them on either side.

“I’m fine,” she replied, her mind going a mile a minute. Pushing herself off the ground, she moved forward. “Captain! Stop!”

“Oi, what are you doing,” Garble asked when she sped past him. “Are you insane!?”

“Listen to him, kid,” Gilda also began to go after her. “Let the adults handle this!”

“Captain, you need to stop!” Tibia galloped forward towards the titanic struggle between the Red Shade and Pharynx in his maulwurf form as they grappled with each other, ignoring the calls from the others to stay away.

“Tell HIM that!” Pharynx grunted back.

“What was that word? What was that word?” Tibia thought back hard to her history lessons. Pharynx had made it a point to give her some education on the subject when it had become clear that the Shade was interested in old battlefields. “Pax!” she shouted, remembering the declaration that had ended the Changeling Civil War so many years ago, the Pax Mutara.

The Red Shade hesitated at hearing the word. Emboldened by the reaction, Tibia flew up between the two giant combatants, holding out her hooves and repeating the word. “Pax! Amicus!”

Pharynx stepped back slightly when he realized that the Shade had stopped attacking. “What’s going on?”

“Captain, change back to your regular form,” Tibia instructed while holding eye contact with the Red Shade whose attention was now squarely focused on her. “He wasn’t attacking me, he saved me. I think we can reason with him.”

Pharynx eyed the mountain of a being warily. “Are you sure?”

“Just trust me, please.”

“… I hope I don’t end up regretting this,” he mumbled but changed back to his natural from nonetheless.

“See?” Tibia gestured towards the other Changeling. “Amicus. Pax.”

“Amicus?” the giant rumbled.

“That’s right, he’s a friend,” Tibia replied. “Pax. Peace.”

“Is that … Ancient Changeling?” Pharynx asked, perplexed.

“Yes,” Tibia confirmed. “I only know a few words, but he seems to speak it.”

“Watch out!” Pharynx barked as the Red Shade once again put his hand forward.

“It’s alright,” she answered, moving forward and putting her hoof against the outstretched index finger of the strange being, and he didn’t make any aggressive moves in return. She pointed at herself. “Tibia,” she said, patting her chest and repeating for emphasis, “Tibia.”

“Tibia?” The Red Shade seemed confused for some reason.

“Pharynx,” she continued slowly, indicating her superior and in turn the rest of Shadow Patrol who had slowly taken to the air and approached cautiously. “Gilda, Gabriella, Garble.” Finally, she pointed at the Red Shade.

He seemed to get her meaning as he placed his free hand on his chest. “Mars,” he rumbled in response.

Tibia looked back towards Pharynx. “We can communicate with him. I don’t think he actually means anyone harm. All we need is someling who speaks Ancient Changeling.”

Pharynx eyed the Red Shade, or Mars as he’d introduced himself, realizing that deep down he wished the fight had just continued until one of them fell. This was shaping up to be much more of a headache than a straight-up battle. “I only know a couple of words myself.” He frowned. “But I know one Changeling nerdy enough to actually speak that dead language.”

“Who?”

“What do you think?”

Author's Note

As some of you may have noticed, Shadow Patrol’s motto is based on XCOM’s Vigilo Confido. So I’ve asked a friend to help me include a little surprise in this chapter. Here are the members of Shadow Patrol as envisioned in XCOM 2:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6a4gpouufef8boz/Pharynx%20Ranger%205%20plate.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/04fqrllh5d7frlu/Tibia%202%20plate.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cnw2oizvi4iq1ng/Garble%20final.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ughdnqo4ux9z1db/Gilda%20final.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ssomguy9ds4z648/Gabby%20final.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/moz4xe31w7hdfvb/Shadow%20Patrol%201.png?dl=0

Bonus Round: Here’s Oppy!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i2m96gfwwkdufj5/Oppy.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/aatcixfg7k0ocwi/Shadow%20Patrol%202.png?dl=0

Big Thanks to Daedalus Aegle for putting the team together and grinding out all the cool gear to put them in.