Terminal Fault

Chapters

FILE 001: ELEMENTS of STYLE
FILE 002: SPARK of JOY
FILE 003: SOUND of VICTORY
FILE 004: RAY of SPEED
FILE 005: VICTORY of MERCY
FILE 006: PRODUCT of RESEARCH

FILE 001: ELEMENTS of STYLE

I am many things. A perfectionist. A small business owner. Beautiful, if I might be daring enough to compliment myself. However, I cannot count ‘morning pony’ among my many assets.

The light in my apartment changed from the pink and blue of the neon sign hanging across the street from my lone window to the grey and cold of a winter sunrise. It was such a gradual change that I didn’t really notice until it was already morning. I sighed and telekinetically flipped a switch across the room without looking at it, my coffee maker spitting a used plastic pod into the overflowing trash bin and feeding a new one into the pressure chamber.

A warning flashed across my vision, the appliance cautioning me that it was running out of fuel for my creativity. It was a vintage model, refurbished but still putting along, and the pods hadn’t been made in almost ten years, so even if their shelf life would run sometime into the next century (the amount of preservatives in them was so shocking that I suspected I was slowly pickling myself by drinking the brew) they were becoming increasingly rare.

However, it made good coffee. I made a note to order more pods despite the cost. It was worth the trouble, and still less expensive than buying a new coffee maker, especially since this one had practically been free. I dismissed the warning from my augmented reality display before putting down my tools.

Unfortunately, that meant I had to look at the rest of my apartment. A few joined rooms, the walls covered in posters showcasing the latest styles. An archeologist could learn much about the history of fashion in augmented limbs by peeling back the layers I’d taped and pinned up. They’d also learn that I largely ate instant noodles and take-out simply by looking at the floor -- perhaps with an educated guess they’d learn I ate the former when I was between clients and the latter in the times when my finances were in rather better order.

When I stepped away to retrieve the coffee mug, my legs whirred for a moment, the motors silencing themselves as they warmed up after long hours spent in a single position. I didn’t mind the sound myself, but some of my clients wanted their limbs to be absolutely silent. It’s rather like an expensive watch -- you spend all day with it, and some like to hear the ticking and solid weight, others want to be able to forget it’s there.

Aside from letting me stretch a bit, stepping away also let me get a look at my creation from a distance. Darkly blued steel sketched out a near-skeletal outline, so thin it looked impossible for it to be more than a framework. Dust guards around the joints were the only solid plates, brass gilding picking out designs based on old Hipponese tattoos, phoenixes in flight among cherry blossoms.

The gilding had been the tricky part. It would have been almost impossible to buff a mistake out of the blued steel without needing to redo the finish entirely, and since I was a perfectionist, I would have stayed up all night to--

Well, I’d stayed up all night regardless, hadn’t I? That was the problem with inspiration hitting me in the middle of the night. I should have been getting rest in preparation for tonight’s trade show, but instead I spent it throwing together something at the last minute.

“Oh Rarity,” I sighed, taking a long sip of the coffee to try and banish my desire to pass out. “You really are your own most demanding client.”

Once half the cup was in me and I felt a fraction less like crawling into my bed and giving up whatever sales I’d make at the trade show, I got to work on attaching the new leg. Putting on your own limbs is exactly as awkward as you can imagine. Removing one is certainly no problem -- that’s simply detaching a few wires and bolts.

Attaching one, though, involved trying to find the appropriate leads in your own shoulder (or hip, or wing, depending on exactly what you were attempting) and connecting the wires in the right order, trying to line up self-sealing stem bolts while standing on three legs, and then, in this case, finding out I’d pinched a wire and needed to fix it with a plasma needle and the aid of a mirror to see what I was doing.

Naturally, that was when my phone rang. I let it ring twice, then threw something at it with my magic to silence it. Curse my luck, I accidentally hit the button to accept the call.

“Rarity?” My mother’s voice called out from the videophone. I hissed, unable to swear properly thanks to the tool in my mouth. I spat it out and cleared my throat, trying to sound pleasant.

“Just a moment!” I called out, before frantically shoving things into place and stumbling over to where it was mounted on my wall, the new leg shaking from feedback.

“Are you alright?” My mother looked worried, and ten years older than she was. She didn’t have any augmentations at all - not from a lack of money, but a lack of trust in them. It was one reason I didn’t live at home.

“I was just getting myself together.” I couldn’t resist the joke.

“What is that?” Her face scrunched up when she looked at my new leg.

“Asymmetry is in vogue,” I explained. “The functionalist movement popularized less realistic and more efficient designs, especially ones with extra features and hidden compartments.” I could see from the look on her face that I might as well have been speaking Horse Latin. If only she would at least show some interest in my work.

“I called to ask if you wanted to come to dinner,” she said. “Your sister will be back in town tomorrow and I thought we could all sit down together as a family again.”

“I’ll think about it.” I didn’t want to go, but I hadn’t seen my sister in over a year.

“Thank you,” my mother said, as if I’d already said yes. “We’ll be eating at six.”

“Is there anything else?” I asked. “I have things I need to do.” Like calibrating this new leg. I wasn’t going to give her the pleasure of seeing my discomfort, but it felt like pins were being jammed into my shoulder joint. Usually, my custom firmware smoothed out little issues like that, but the list of error messages in my peripheral vision was growing longer and my patience was just as quickly getting shorter.

“No,” she said. There was a long pause. “I love you, honey.”

“I love you too,” I said by habit. “Tell father I miss him as well.”

The line went black, and I made sure my phone was set to Do Not Disturb before I got to the work of getting my leg working, already questioning the wisdom of wearing a new limb when I was going to be on my hooves all day, using the pain as a distraction to avoid thinking about my mother.

Hours later I’d had a shower (and made sure my leg was waterproof without meaning to even test that -- if it hadn’t been I would have had a rather foalish fall) and made sure I was presentable before I dragged myself out into the world in a vinyl raincoat that changed color with the heat of my body warring against the chill air.

Pony Place was like any of the other aging apartment blocks in the city, hundreds or thousands of ponies packed into a few dozen floors of aging rooms, most of us trying to pretend the others didn’t exist. I knew the names of my neighbors, but I couldn’t tell you anything else about them. Canterlot wasn’t a place where you got to know ponies. It was a place where you were either so famous everypony knew you, or you were anonymous and nopony looked twice. For many ponies, the latter was why they came here in the first place.

I levitated the crate of supplies behind me, thankfully finding the service elevator empty. I hated having to share such a small space with other ponies.

An email popped up, despite my AR being set to suppress notifications.

I opened it and sighed. It was from Pinkie Pie, a coupon for Sugarcube Corner. Don’t get me wrong -- I adore the mare. She could make anypony smile. I just didn’t like being reminded that I was running on an empty stomach. It was easy to forget, when you had other worries.

The bakery was on the bottom floor of Pony Place, and was almost empty now in the dead time between the early morning breakfast crowd and the ponies seeking something sweet in the afternoon.

“Good morning!” Pinkie called out, when I opened the door. Somehow the bakery was always perfectly clean, pastel colors and bright lights making it an oasis among the dingy, cluttered shops around it. It was a shame I couldn’t afford to eat there every day.

“Just the usual,” I said, sitting at an open table.

Pinkie delivered a croissant and another coffee to my table. We made the usual small talk. Pinkie probably worried about me more than my own mother did, and when I went to pay the bill I found that she’d already done it for me.

“Pinkie, I already told you you don’t have to do that,” I said, sighing.

“I owe you a lot, Rarity,” Pinkie said. “Do you want any help carrying that?” She tilted her head at my crate.

“I can manage,” I assured her. “But thank you for the offer, Pinkie.”

The local subway station was only two blocks away, and I was glad for that. Canterlot was safe and rich with culture, history, and, well, money, but the streets in the outer parts of the city were filthy. Hardly unsafe, but the Royal Guard could hardly be expected to sweep the streets. The Weather Union was striking again, according to the scrolling text on the billboards, which explained the cold and the ugly mix of rain and snow drizzling down around us.

Beyond the apartment blocks, rising out of the smog of the city like a distant dream, I could make out the palace. It seemed like it was in another world from the rest of the city, like no matter how far one walked through the streets you could never reach it.

(It wasn’t true, of course. I’d gone on a tour shortly after arriving in the city, but it was a wonderfully poetic image.)

Ponies crowded the streets on their way to or from work, or simply trying to stay out of the weather. All of us were wrapped up in plastic raincoats or layered against the omnipresent cold. An orange pony stumbled into me, and when I caught her I felt the distinctive rhythmic tic of the Black Shake.

“Sorry bout that, ma’am,” she muttered, between clenched teeth. I gave her the hat that she’d dropped in our collision, the mare dropping it back on her head without even bothering to uncrumple it.

“Do you need help?” I asked quietly. “You’re--”

“Just cold,” she said, interrupting me. “Sorry about th’ trouble.”

I watched her stumble off, her blonde mane unable to hide the scars around her neck and going down her back, disappearing under the collar of her poncho. What little I glimpsed was a mess, a hackjob done with no elegance. I called out to her, but she didn’t react, vanishing into the crowd.

Ponies pushed past me, and I realized how rude I was being, standing still in the flow of hoof traffic. I hurried on, carefully trotting down the wide stairs. I was pleasantly surprised by how well my new leg handled the awkward pace -- you’ve surely experienced it before, stairs too wide to simply walk down naturally, forcing you to break stride and take two steps every so often.

When the subway car door opened, Princess Celestia was looking right at me.

It was an illusion, of course, of both the optical and more typical type. Her visage was used in all sorts of advertisements, this one reminding ponies about opportunities in public service. She wasn’t meeting my eyes, not really. It was the same thing effect as the Pona Lisa, where the eyes seemed to follow you.

Very effective. I could have sworn she even turned her head slightly to follow me as I found a seat.

By the time the subway arrived at the Canterlot Hall station, the weather had improved. Marginally. The sleet had let up, and I could nearly see Celestia’s sun through the thinning clouds. Naturally, this would happen right before I was preparing myself to sit at a booth all day indoors -- I was certain that fate only wanted me to see good weather from a window and never actually experience it for myself.

The Hall was a huge blunt cube of a building, all tinted glass and steel, terribly inelegant. I hadn’t been here for almost a year, since the first time I’d tried setting up my own booth. I’d learned a lot since then -- most importantly the need to have something to catch the eye of potential clients.

Just like last year, ponies had turned up to crowd the streets outside the Hall and accost those going inside with their wares.

“--No, thank you,” I said, trying to get away from the pony waving a clipboard. “I already donate every month.”

“This is the perfect chance to increase your donation,” he said. “Did you know every ten bits a month you donate we can make sure that another pony gets the medication they need to keep the Black Shakes away? As an augmented pony, you know how expensive those drugs can be--”

“They are only needed when a pony has poorly made augmentations,” I snapped. “My work is clean, thank you very much!”

“Well you don’t have to be rude,” he huffed, prancing away to find some other potential patron.

“E-excuse me--”

I groaned, my head throbbing from carrying the heavy crate with my magic, and steeled myself to try and politely refuse yet another sales pitch.

The pressure on my temples lessened when I saw who was asking.

“Fluttershy?” I asked. “I didn’t know you set up shop here.”

The pale yellow mare smiled up at me from where she was sitting. Like always, she had a few drones with her -- the obsolete robot pet that followed her everywhere as well as two quadrocopters I hadn’t seen before, circling her protectively and only pausing to scan ponies as they passed.

“I thought that maybe ponies here, um, would want to pick up a few things,” she explained. She didn’t have a proper stall, just boxes of things sitting on dirty blankets, all of it obsolete, discarded, and then repaired and put back up for sale.

I didn’t know how to tell her that most ponies here were the type that would never buy second-hoof goods even if their lives depended on it.

“Anything particularly interesting?” I asked.

“I do have some spare parts you might be interested in,” Fluttershy said. “H-have you thought about getting a drone? I know you do a lot of work online, a-and they can help with taking pictures!”

It wasn’t the worst sales pitch, but it was close to it. Fluttershy’s voice was barely audible over the noise of the street, and she couldn’t look me in the eye -- and I was one of the very few ponies that she considered a friend anywhere other than on SolNet.

“If you say the parts are interesting, I’ll be happy to take them,” I said. Even if they were old, it was entirely possible there was something I could use. “I don’t suppose the drone you’re offering can clean?”

“Um…” she bit her lip.

“Ah, well. Let me know if you do find whatever industrial worker would be needed to get my apartment clean. It might require some sort of refurbished military automaton, but--”

“I want her removed!”

I winced at the voice. I knew it far too well. As a word of advice for any mares desperate enough to try dating on SolNet, do not go on a blind date with anypony who has excellent selfies and nothing else to recommend them.

“Blueblood,” I muttered. He ignored me in favor of the two golden-armored guards he’d brought with him.

“This mare is selling used, possibly stolen, goods without a license! I want her removed by force and all of this trash destroyed immediately!” He gestured wildly and I wondered just what Fluttershy had done to make him so upset. Perhaps she hadn’t bowed quite quickly enough for his taste.

“I-I didn’t--” Fluttershy blacked up, holding up her forehooves defensively.

“Fluttershy is hardly a thief,” I said, trying to step between them.

“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to stay over there,” one of the guards said.

“Do you have a vendor’s license?” The other asked. “If not we’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“I want her arrested!” Blueblood screamed.

“Sir, please. We’ll handle it from here,” the guard assured him.

Fluttershy shot me a look. I knew she didn’t have a license. For all I knew she wasn’t in any government databases -- she lived off the grid.

“Hold up,” the guard nearest me stopped, listening to something. “She’s got special dispensation.”

“I just got the alert,” the other guard said. “Ma’am, I apologize for the trouble. Have a pleasant day and let us know if there’s anything we can do to help.”

Special dispensation? I mouthed the words silently, trying to figure out just how she’d managed to swing that favor. As perplexed as I was, Blueblood was getting incoherent with rage.

“What are you doing?!” he demanded. “She’s a bloody street pony! Get her away from here before she scares off my investors!”

One of the drones made the mistake of flying too close to Blueblood, and he swatted it out of the air, the machine hitting the pavement, rotors breaking. Fluttershy gasped, and the guards shook their heads, stepping forward again.

“Finally,” Blueblood said. “I don’t care where you take her-- what are you doing?!”

“Sir, you’re under arrest for destruction of property and assault,” the guard said, the other one helping Fluttershy pick up the drone. “Depending on what she says we might need to add harassment and a few other charges.”

“Do you know who I am?!” Blueblood spat at the guard. A terrible mistake. A moment later he was face-down on the ground and hoof-cuffs were being applied with what one might call police brutality if it happened to a better pony.

“You just had to make this hard on yourself,” the guard muttered.

“I’m sorry you had to deal with all that,” I whispered to Fluttershy.

“I t-think I’ll head back home,” Fluttershy said. “Robin needs to be looked at.” She patted the drone’s chassis. The other quadcopter hovered nearby, like it was worried. Her drones always had the strangest behavior quirks.

“Can you have those parts sent to my apartment?” I asked, my mood greatly improved. She nodded and produced a small crystal slate. I tapped a few times, confirming my payment to her account.

She hugged me, taking me by surprise. Before I could properly react she was busy putting things away, and I left, wishing her well with repairing the machine.

Inside, I finally had a chance to put my crate down. Within fifteen minutes of getting in the door I had my vendor’s pass on a lanyard around my neck, my things safely at my rented table, and I was in line to get another cup of coffee before I started setting anything up -- the cup I’d had that morning was already wearing off and I was going to need caffeine if I wanted to be able to smile for the rest of the day.

I saw her when I was returning, carefully clutching the steaming paper cup with my magic and guiding it through the maze of ponies working to set up their displays and advertisements.

Fleur Dee Lis, the most beautiful pony in Equestria.

I almost dropped the cup. I knew every inch of her body -- I had a dozen posters of her hanging in my apartment, showcasing the newest and best augmentations from the most exclusive designers. My dream was to have her model for me. She was my inspiration, the reason I’d augmented my legs in the first place.

“She sure is something, isn’t she?”

“She’s beautiful,” I sighed.

“You could be just like her with some cutting-edge Flim-Flam Brand Designer Legs! We have over two dozen designs ready and waiting to be installed!”

“Thank you, but I do my own--” I turned to give him my full attention, the least I could do when turning down a fellow designer.

The first thing I saw was the smile of the two ponies in front of me, white and too square and perfect.

The second thing I saw were cheap copies of my own designs, the panels ill-fitted and made of what looked like little more than tin foil.

The third thing I saw was red.

“What is this?!” I demanded, pointing at a copy of one of my most recent designs that had apparently been copied with the kind of build quality and skill expected of a blind foal working entirely by sense of smell.

“Why that’s the patented Flim-Flam Beauty Armature Ten-Thousand! It-”

“It’s a terrible copy of the leg I made for a private client two months ago,” I interrupted. “At the very least you’re not trying to claim it’s my work, since I doubt anypony using this would regret it within a week!”

“Ma’am, please,” the pony without a moustache said, in a quiet hiss. “Perhaps we can discuss this in private? There’s no need to make a scene.”

“Indeed, brother mine,” the other pony agreed. “Serious accusations like this--”

“Accusations?!” It was all I could do not to flip their table over and show them just what a lady could do with a Rarity original.

“You’ll find that our patents are all in order and filed with the bureau,” Flim, or Flam, whichever it was -- I didn’t care enough to bother reading their nametags -- had the bull-headed assurance of somepony who knew he was doing something wrong but not technically illegal. Apologies to any minotaurs if that comment came across as tribalism.

“All of our designs are inspired by big name designers at a lower cost. All the components are original to us,” the other one explained. “Certainly they’re similar, but the internal mechanisms and assembly are based on well-tested and durable designs.”

“You mean you take bottom-tier discount store junk and slap on a new coat of paint and try to pass it off as a knockoff of my designs?!”

“We prefer to think of it as upgrading something the average consumer can afford.”

“Of course if you’d really like to press this in court, we’ll be happy to show you the paperwork. You’ll find you don’t have a leg to stand on, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

Both brothers laughed, and I growled. The worst part was that they were probably right. It didn’t take much to be legally distinct from my own product, especially since they were using their own branding. It would be almost impossible to prove any kind of harm to my own brand. I had a feeling they’d drag out any court proceeding for as long as possible even if they were sure to win, just to annoy me.

“Here,” they said, levitating over a business card. I took it, even if I had no intent of ever doing business with them. “Regardless of what you think of us, your designs are quite attractive.”

The other brother nodded. “If you’d ever like to make some fast and easy bits, we’d love to license some official designs! We’d allow you to use your own branding and sell them from our storefront. Think of the exposure!”

“I’ll--” My bank account, constantly jumping between full and empty, was a sudden heavy presence in my thoughts. I took a deep breath and collected myself, biting back my pride. “I’ll consider it, if you agree to remove the unofficial versions.”

“That would be quite an agreeable compromise.”

“Yes, I… suppose so,” I admitted.

“Since you have a vendor badge, I assume you have your own booth?”

“Which I should be setting up. I’ll contact you after this is over and we can discuss your…” I waved a hoof at the knockoffs before leaving, not listening to their too-pleasant and too-happy goodbyes. I felt like I’d agreed to sit down with Tirek for contract negotiations regarding my soul, but it would be nice not to spend weeks on end eating instant noodles.

“Excuse me, I don’t mean to pry, but can I examine your legs?”

The question caught me while I was distracted watching two mares setting up some very complicated audio equipment, giving me some ideas about integrating instruments into augmentations. I put down my sketchpad to give the mare the benefit of my full attention.

“Of course. Is there anything from my catalog I can get for you, or…?”

I trailed off when I realized she was looking at my flank. I mean, it was flattering in its own way, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t replaced my legs precisely so ponies would want to look at my curves, but there was nothing coy or cute about the way she was studying me. I wasn’t sure if she was undressing me with her eyes or merely disassembling me.

She was cute, at least, though there was something odd about her appearance that I couldn’t quite place. The mare was clearly augmented, but I couldn’t tell where they began and ended.

“Your cutie mark is still perfectly sharp,” she said. “But you have all four legs augmented. That’s surprising. Usually, beyond two limbs, ponies begin to show signs of thaumatic field distortion.”

I glanced back. Cutie marks were a touchy subject with heavily augmented ponies. They’d appear on artificial limbs, but it was a commonly known fact that cutie marks tended to fade and blur the more a pony replaced their own flesh with magitech augmentations. So far, despite replacing all four of my legs, mine was still as bright as the day I’d gotten it. I took it as a sign that it was what I was meant to do, that my choice to improve myself had always been correct.

Many augmented ponies tried to hide their distorted cutie marks. I’d painted them on custom orders myself for clients who will remain nameless.

“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve had some work done yourself, haven’t you? I don’t recognize the designer, I’m afraid…”

“Have you had any tests done on nerve hardening?”

“My work is clean,” I said, more sharply than I intended. She winced, and I felt bad about it immediately. “I’m sorry, darling. It’s just a touchy subject for any designer.”

“R-right,” she said.

“Rarity,” I said, offering her my hoof to shake. She grabbed it and leaned in to stare, her eyes glowing. They must have been augmented, and I could just barely make out a seam for her legs. It couldn’t have been her whole body, surely. Her six-pointed star cutie mark was as bright as mine, and full-body augmentation was vanishingly rare.

“Very nice,” she muttered. “Wires are all high-grade silver, and the gem reserves are corundum.”

“I grow rubies,” I confirmed.

“Lab-grown, rather than natural?” She glanced up at me. I nodded in confirmation. “That makes sense. Much higher quality, no flaws…”

“I didn’t catch your name,” I said.

She paused. More accurately, she froze in place like she only just realized that she was speaking with another pony. I’m not sure if she realized that she’d actually been rude yet.

“Twilight Sparkle,” she said. I could tell she wasn’t used to introducing herself. Her ears folded back, and she slowly let go of my hoof. “Sorry.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” I assured her. “I’m glad to meet somepony who can recognize quality.”

I watched her try to decide how to respond, and it would have been a fascinating case study for anypony who wanted to observe social awkwardness in the wild. I couldn’t read her mind, yet I could still see her consider and discard lines one after another, growing more and more frantic as the silence stretched into awkwardness.

“Y-you have…” I smiled while she stalled for time. It was adorable. “...a very nice… table.” She smiled.

I struggled to hold back a laugh. The poor thing was trying, after all.

“Thank you.”

“H-here.” She gave me a small crystal sheet. “It’s got my contact information.”

It was my turn to be surprised and speechless. The crystal was a small, simple display rather than just a card. Just how rich was this mare?

“It shows my availability and can do a few other things,” she explained. “I, um, designed them myself! It’s based on the enchantment used in tablets but with some of the compactification found in military communication augments. Of course you know the issues that presents with interference.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, but I nodded along gamely. Unfortunately, she wasn’t finished.

“I’ve been trying to keep them small enough to fit inside the typical bionic design but that limits the kind of functionality you can get out of them, and they’re somewhat fragile, which is a big worry since most limbs are load-bearing and the constant movement means--”

“Lady Sparkle?”

Oh thank the stars. I was saved. A royal guard stepped up to her and leaned down to whisper in her ear. The mare’s expression froze in place.

“I have to go,” she said. “I’m sorry for cutting this short.”

“It’s quite alright,” I assured her. “I hope you can--”

A blast of sound cut me off, the musicians blasting a single note at a volume that could have awoken the newly dead.

Twilight Sparkle tried to say something to me, but I couldn’t hear her over the noise.

Like a foal, I tried to tell her as much and my own voice was drowned out.

She smiled awkwardly and bowed, excusing herself. I waved as she left.

I was starting to understand why the booths in this section were somewhat cheaper than the rest. I made a note in my AR display to get a booth somewhere quieter next year, and noticed an older note from myself last year to get a booth closer to the main stage.

“Maybe I just can’t win no matter what I do,” I groaned (not that I could hear even hear myself think), deleting both notes.

I got back to sketching some ideas - maybe speakers in the hips, over where the cutie marks would usually be? The good thing about the wall of noise was that in some ways, it was similar to total silence. I didn’t have to worry about anypony trying to make conversation, any kind of sales pitch was out of the question.

I idly sketched some replacement ears, on the chance that I’d need them after this expo.

Ears were actually somewhat tricky to design. Certainly, the mechanics of hearing weren’t difficult, but the most common type of replacements were purely functional, lacking the important movement and social cues that ears gave. To truly express emotions correctly, they needed to fold back, perk up, swivel to focus on what one was listening to, all unconsciously.

I was trying to decide if the design looked better with a tuft at the end or not when the push notification decided to make itself known.

Even the music faltered for a moment, and I looked up to see everypony around me dealing with the message. Apparently I wasn’t the only one to get a software update request, though it was somewhat unusual since I didn’t use the standard firmware.

I dismissed the message without downloading, something that most of the other ponies would be unable to do. Even the ones that wouldn’t normally click on the shiny button with nary a thought of reading didn’t have a choice when something was sent as a security patch. The network in the hall slowed to a crawl as hundreds queued up.

I made a note on the edge of my sketch to add something about ‘ease of use’ and ‘no need for constant updates’ to my marketing, though of course I liked to consider myself the best marketing my products could get.

When I was a foal, I was in a terrible accident. It made the news, though my name was never attached to it. A monorail jumped the tracks, with myself and a few dozen others aboard. I lost both of my back legs just above the knee and my left foreleg halfway down the fetlock. Believe it or not, that made me the luckier of the two survivors. The only other pony that survived lost her whole family and was burned terribly. I spent the better part of a year in the hospital. It was a cycle of getting healthy enough to have surgery, then recovering from that just in time for another round under the knife.

This would normally be when, were this a fairy tale, I told you about how I took to augmentations like a fish to water. The truth is, they’re actually quite hard on a foal. My body was changing more quickly than we could get replacements for the limbs I outgrew, so I was always either getting used to new legs or dealing with ones that fitted poorly. I was awkward, ungainly, and I hated my appearance.

There’s nothing quite for making poor decisions as a teenage filly with body issues and a chip on her shoulder. I hated how my hips ached all day, how my uneven forelimbs made me limp, and how ponies would stare at me in pity. I tried everything I could to make myself look good to somepony, at least to myself. Painting them, adding gems. Going black and riveted when I had a regrettable goth phase. It took a long time for me to realize the issue.

It’s a problem that requires an artist to explain, because a layperson doesn’t have the words, though they can see that a problem exists just as well as anypony.

When I was a foal, I used to draw a lot. It was something I could do with my one good hoof, since anything requiring actual dexterity or grace was beyond me, and asking me to run and play was simply torture. I would try drawing ponies, and I couldn’t understand why the art didn’t turn out the way I wanted. I’d make sure I had all the right details, I’d spend hours on shading and coloring, and it would still be terrible.

The problem was, my linework was bad. All art has layers. There’s the outline, the general framework, which describe a painting in the broadest strokes. On the other end of the scale are the fine details, like detailed shading or drawing the fine highlights and lines around a pony’s eye. Between them is the linework, the actual shape of the thing you’re drawing, the combination of pose and perspective and sense of space. It’s the silhouette of the thing, and if it’s wrong then no matter how many details you add it will never look exactly right.

My own silhouette was wrong. It didn’t matter how I styled my mane or painted up my false legs, they were never going to be elegant. They were like a fanny pack or those detestable ‘crocs’. No matter how useful they were, or how comfortable they got, they were never going to be beautiful. At best they would be functional.

The moment I came of age and was able to make my own decisions, I had what was left of my legs removed, including my remaining undamaged hoof. It was all paid for by the same Crown fund that had paid for all my other limbs over the years.
My parents and I had a terrible row over it, but they couldn’t countermand my decision, and despite what they thought about me ‘maiming’ myself, for the first time since I was a foal, I felt at peace. I was free of pain, my legs felt strong and secure, and when I finally saw myself in a mirror, balanced on four shining, chrome hooves, I felt beautiful.

I have never regretted my decision, though my relationship with my family has never recovered. I’ve spent my entire life since then doing everything I could to help other ponies who were less fortunate than I learn how to feel beautiful too.

I was broken out of my reverie by a scream.

A pony had collapsed, their back legs jerking and twitching wildly. I dropped my sketchpad and only got a step towards him before somepony else screamed. Then a third voice joined the chorus. The music was drowned out by the sounds of panic and I was forced to retreat back to my booth as ponies stampeded toward the exit, the fallen pony vanishing as he was trampled by the herd.

The lights flickered and died. Through the windows high up on the walls of the convention floor, I could see the skyscrapers around us going dark, the power going off not all at once, like a power failure, but moving up and down the towers. It was like an army of ponies had found the fuse boxes for the whole city and were busily turning everything off one switch at a time.

Possibly the most worrying thing I saw, in that moment of blackness, was my SolNet signal degrade to nothing. I couldn’t call for help, and I had no idea what was going on outside.

These things alone would have been enough to disturb even my calm demeanor, but when the emergency lights came on they revealed that things had gotten significantly worse instead of better.

Gunfire erupted at the same time the red lights flickered on, like flashes of blue and green lightning in the dim glow.

“Everypony freeze!”

Oddly, shouting and firing weapons into the air over a stampede of terrified ponies didn’t have the effect the shooter wanted. There was a lot of screaming and more stampeding and very little freezing. I couldn’t even see whomever was trying to make demands until they got up on stage.

They looked rather exactly like one would expect a pony who had such awful manners as to start a riot would look. Black vinyl vest, a shock of poorly-dyed pink for their mane, and two chromed limbs, a back leg that looked like it was actually rusting and a foreleg whose fetlock was both obviously very new and also split open to reveal a hidden magibolt thrower.

He fired again, a neon crackle going over the heads of the ponies crowding around the exit and blowing apart the exit sign glowing above the door.

“I SAID EVERYPONY FREEZE!” he yelled.

This time ponies listened, and the sounds of panic were replaced with yelled orders from around the room, an occasional cry of pain, and the screaming of terror being replaced by the sobbing of horror.

I spotted the unicorn who’d been trampled. He was still breathing, curled up and obviously hurt. Oh what I would have given for some sort of thermoptic camouflage at that moment. My desire to be seen had betrayed me again! I made a note to work up some sort of fashionable invisibility. Maybe limbs that could cloak parts of their workings to seem impossibly slender and still maintain strength…

Anyway, I did what I could to try not to draw attention to myself as I moved over to the fallen stallion and tended to him.

“Calm down, darling,” I whispered. “I think you have a few broken ribs.” I gently pressed his side, trying to ignore his whimpering.

The one bad thing about my limbs, especially my newest one, was that the sense of touch was somewhat poor. Even so, I was able to tell he wasn’t in any immediate danger.

“Good news, it seems like they’re only cracked.” I tried to get a hoof under his shoulder to help him up. “Can you stand? If we can get over to my booth you’ll be safer there.”

A patter of green bolts hit the carpet around our hooves, digging blackened craters into the polyester. I looked up at a pegasus who didn’t even have back legs. The steel sockets for limb attachments were there, but left empty. Even in the darkness I could see the discoloration around the edge that meant infection and a poor connection.

“Do you have a bucking hearing problem?” The pegasus aimed the snub-nose caster higher. “The next time it won’t be a feathering warning shot!”

“I’m just trying to help,” I said. “This gentlestallion got hurt.”

“A lot of bucking ponies are gonna get hurt!” The pegasus took aim.

“Wait!” The voice echoed from the speakers. Both I and the pegasus turned to look. The pony on stage waved. “Bring her up here. We could use a pretty hostage for when the press show up.”

“The boss said--” the pegasus started.

“The boss is just a kid, and she’s following her own orders. We’re here to send a message. They’re not gonna care about you or me with everything going on, but they won’t be able to resist a photo-op with a gun pointed at that mare.”

“I-if you let me give this stallion medical attention, I’ll do what you want,” I said.

The pegasus flew closer, hovering so closely he was able to press the barrel of his weapon against the head of the pony I was trying to help.

“If you don’t do what we want, he’s gonna need more help than you can bucking give him unless you’re a feathering priest giving him his last rites,” he spat. “You think I give a buck what happens to stuck-up hornheads like you?!”

“Brick, back off,” the pony on stage warned. “The last thing we should complain about is somepony actually trying to help.”

The pegasus grumbled and lowered his weapon, flying back up above head height.

I helped the unicorn up and we limped back to my booth.

“You shouldn’t put yourself in danger for me,” he whispered. “I appreciate the effort but I wouldn’t want a lovely thing like you risking things for an old stallion like me.”

“If I didn’t help I’d be just as bad as them. Now, there’s not much to be done about ribs, unfortunately. I’m not exactly a doctor, but I believe the best thing is to wrap them up and try to restrict your movement. A corset would do nicely but I don’t think I have anything in your color.”

He laughed a little and winced at the pain. I grabbed a first aid kit and wrapped him with what little gauze was available.

“I’ll take your expert advice,” he said. “If we somehow both get out of this alive, I’ll owe you.”

“It’s nothing any other decent pony wouldn’t have done. What made you collapse in the first place?”

“There was that firmware update,” he whispered. “When it installed, everything started to crash. It made these terrible images appear in my display…”

“No wonder ponies were panicking,” I said, glancing over my shoulder. There were a lot of ponies still down. I hadn’t noticed it before, but many of them looked like they were in the grip of some sort of nightmare, sweating and twitching at unseen horrors.

“Hey! Are you done?” Brick yelled.

I gave my new friend a pat on the shoulder. “Yes. So I expect you want me to walk up on stage and sit quietly while you yell at the press about, oh, let me guess, the price of tea and the unfair conditions of the working class?”

The look on his face said he’d have shot me right there if he hadn’t already been ordered not to.

While I like pressing my luck, I felt the odds here were significantly worse than at the casino. I allowed myself to be led up onto the stage.

“You know, whatever difficulties you’re having, this is hardly the best way to resolve them,” I said. “Violence is never the answer.”

“Violence is the only way to get ponies to listen when you’ve tried everything else,” the stallion countered. He was close enough that I could get a good look at him despite the poor light. He shook slightly with the distinct shiver of the Black Shakes, and every time he moved I heard motors straining and catching, gears slipping and stripping.

His cutie mark was just a smear of color. I couldn’t even tell what it was supposed to be.

“I’m surprised you aren’t affected,” he said. “Half the ponies here are comatose and the others aren’t in any condition to fight back.”

“I’m made of sterner stuff.” And custom firmware. “That looks rather painful,” I noted, glancing at his back leg.

“You have no idea,” he grumbled. “Brick, where are those cameras?!”

I’m not sure if you’ve… actually I’m quite sure you’ve never had to listen to a pony spout catchphrases from their manifesto at a scared newsmare and her camerapod. It’s not a pleasant experience. It has all the joy of listening to a rather dull lecture at school combined with the terror of knowing the professor might decide to shoot you at any moment. It has a way of focusing the mind in case there’s a pop quiz at the end.

“The big corporations are intentionally releasing inferior products to trick the poor into getting augmentation surgery, and then when everything breaks down, they refuse to take responsibility!” He shouted. “Thousands are crippled, and even more are working like slaves just to pay for the loans they needed to stop the constant pain!”

I sighed. Apparently that was the wrong thing to do. The gun swung in my direction.

“You have no idea what it’s like!”

I held up my obviously augmented leg, then looked at my other three. “I don’t?”

“You’re obviously rich! You never had to struggle with broken trash bolted to your legs just because FlimFlam Heavy Industries--” I glanced at their booth and found it empty. I had a feeling they were used to running away from dissatisfied customers. “--Decided it was a better business strategy to use factory-second parts and charge ponies a premium if they wanted something that worked! You just threw money at the problem and it went away, but not all of us can do that!”

“Excuse moi?” I huffed. “I am a self-made mare. Literally. I built these hooves by hoof.”

“Then you’re just part of the problem. I bet you charge ponies out the snout.”

“My designs are somewhat expensive, but they’re custom commissions. Each one takes a lot of work and is tailored specifically to the user. I do donate to the foal’s hospital--”

“So you just throw them your scraps and let it absolve you of all guilt!”

“I suspect you’re not really interested in a dialogue.”

“Talking hasn’t solved problems. I’ve spent years fighting on the phone,in court, in person, just trying to get somepony to fix the problems their products caused. All I got was a restraining order and a police record!”

“I can’t imagine why they’d want you to keep away.”

“If you gave a buck about ponies like me you’d do it with action instead of bits and platitudes.”

I didn’t even have to think for a moment. “Fine. Let me see your back leg.”

“What?”

“You want me to prove I care, so why don’t you shut up and let me help?”

“You've got amazing bedside manner.”

“You’re not a patient, you’re a terrorist leader.”

If nothing else, that got him to stop pointing the gun at me. I got to work, finding the screws holding the outer panels on the leg and pulling them free. They were stamped out of cheap tin, fitted poorly and already partly stripped.

The inside was a mess. The wires were run loose, letting them get pinched every time he moved, and several had been worn through entirely. Motors were spun poorly and cheaply, crystal circuits were cracked, struts were bent. It looked like it had been put together from a box of scraps.

It wasn’t the kind of thing you could fix. No matter how much work you put into polishing glass, it never becomes a diamond. I could clean his leg, repair the broken wiring and re-run it to be a bit better, but in the end it would still be an inferior product.

I hated doing it, but there wasn’t much choice. I opened up my new foreleg and started removing components. I needed two motors, a bundle of conduit to fix the wires…

A stray thought hit me. I could stop him right here. The leg had a thick line going right to the spine. A big enough shock to the unshielded wire (and the limb had been made so poorly there was no doubt it was unshielded) would knock him out. Possibly even kill him.

I dismissed the thought and, before I could be tempted again, I cut the line and spliced in a buffer to keep it from happening again. He started to slide, falling for a moment until I leaned into him, holding him up.

“What are you doing?” He demanded.

“Hold on a moment, darling,” I muttered. I checked the connections, welded a few spots with a plasma needle, and closed up shop, trying to buff the worst of the rust off. “That’s the best I can do at the moment. You could really use a new coat of paint, but it would take some time to strip off what’s already there.”

He frowned and took a step. Then another. His expression changed. I’ve seen the same thing a dozen times, ponies getting a quality product for the first time. You don’t realize how bad things were until they’re better. If you’d asked him, he probably would have said his biggest complaint was a lingering pain, stiff joints, that sort of thing. There are all kinds of aches that you simply get used to. A slowness and dullness that becomes normal.

“How did you do that?” He asked.

I laughed. “I happen to be good at my job.”

“You disassembled your own leg?”

There wasn’t much of my newest creation left attached to me. I’d had to remove the elbow actuator to replace his, and the minimalist design meant the upper and lower leg weren’t going to hold together without it.

“Your issue couldn’t be repaired,” I said. “I mean, perhaps, with a microscope and a lot of time, but I didn’t want to spend a week re-wrapping copper wires and tracing circuits to see where the crystals were flawed. This was what I could do with the materials, ah, at hoof.”

“But… you…”

“We’re not all like Flim and Flam. There will always be somepony trying to take advantage of the unfortunate. I’m sorry you’ve had such a terrible time. I know what it’s like to have issues with your own body.”

We both looked at his flank. The smear of colors was still blurry, but it looked like something now. I could just make out a quill and scroll.

He lowered his hoof, the panels folding around it and hiding the gun.

“Brick, get everypony together. We’re leaving.”

“What?! But we’ve got ‘em where we want ‘em!” The pegasus fluttered around us in a circle.

“No, we don’t. I’m getting a message on the dark line. The Think Tank’s down. The Guard is gonna be here soon.”

“What? But how’d they even stop it?!”

“I donno. Some problem with the escort. Shouldn’t have trusted that mare…” The leader spat. “Shoot anypony who follows us!”

“Should we take hostages?”

“They’ll slow us down,” he said. “Let’s move!”

I was rudely shoved to the side, and with only three working legs I fell in a less graceful manner than I’d intended. I didn’t see them leave from my awkward position, but a few minutes later, I was being helped up by a member of the Royal Guard and it was all over.

I sent the venue owner a request to have my fees refunded, though they have yet to reply.

As usual, when I got back to my apartment I tried to sleep and got distracted by ideas. The terrorists had been victims in the giant mess just as much as everypony else. No, that’s not quite right. Flim and Flam, as awful as they were on a personal level, were just doing business. Certainly, they cut corners, but they were also serving a part of the market that I hadn’t considered before.

There were many more poor ponies than rich ones, and while there were quite a few augmented because of accident or illness, insurance would only cover the least expensive options available, and nothing even came close to being as low-priced as FlimFlam Heavy Industries. They had a part of the market all to themselves and even with a terrible product, ponies were stuck using them.

Currently, I was trying to determine how to minimize the cost of good-quality cybernetics. They needed to be able to work with little maintenance in all sorts of conditions. I won’t bore you with the details, but I’d spent all night sketching ideas. SolNet didn’t come back up until after dawn, so I couldn’t look up materials prices, but I did have some promising ideas.

There was a knock on my door.

Startled, I stood up on all four limbs before my body remembered that I couldn’t do that as I only had three legs. I hadn’t gotten around to actually pulling my old foreleg out of the closet. I’d planned on doing it in the morning and then forgotten entirely.

Pinkie’s face popped up on my AR display.

[Are you okay? I heard a thump!]

“I’m fine,” I said, though my voice was muffled by the carpet.

[You didn’t come down for breakfast and I was worried about you so I brought you food!]

“You’re too kind,” I yawned. “I’m just a bit indisposed. The door code is--”

Before I’d even said it, she’d popped the door open and bounced inside. I would have asked how she got my door code but I suspected the answer would either be nonsensical or extremely worrying and I was better off not knowing.

“Let me help,” Pinkie said, giving me a hoof off the ground. “You’re a really brave pony, Rarity. I heard about everything you did!”

“It was nothing,” I assured her. “Can you help me into-- yes, thank you.” I settled down into the chair, and Pinkie popped a box on the table.

It didn’t look like it was from the cafe, and when I opened it a quadcopter flew out of a nest of salvaged components.

“That’s not breakfast, in case you were worried,” Pinkie said.

“No, I think this is from Fluttershy. I forgot I even bought these.” I smiled. “At least I have parts for my next project. And apparently a new pet, which I don't recall adopting.”

“Neat! You should have told her to visit! I haven’t seen her in forever!”

“You know she avoids the city when she can.”

‘Yeah. I’ll have to ask the Cakes for a day off so I can go visit her,” Pinkie agreed. “Anyway, I got you a six-pack of crocakes! They’re croissant-donut-cupcakes! It’s like if all the best parts of breakfast got together and had a baby and that baby was a pastry!”

I looked into the bag she produced. The flavors I sensed were certainly interesting. I could smell butter, cheese, icing, raspberry, and mushroom, and I had a feeling they might all be coming from the same pastry. I was caught between being worried and intrigued.

“I don’t suppose you brought…?”

“Hot sauce?”

Pinkie dropped a small glass bottle on the table.

“This is the good stuff. Lab-synthesized capsaicin and pepper flavor with plenty of vinegar and garlic.” She winked.

“I was going to say coffee, actually.”

“I knew I forgot something! Don’t go anywhere!”

“I don’t think staying still will be a problem,” I assured her. She was out the door and beyond hearing range but, well, she was also Pinkie Pie. I had a feeling it didn’t matter if I was here or across the street.

I sighed and sat back, taking a bite of the crocakes and tasting a bizarre mix of sweet and savory.

By the time she got back I had passed out in the chair, dreaming of a world without quite so much ugliness in it.

FILE 002: SPARK of JOY

[As I have mentioned previously, this is the only one of the reports that I have edited in any significant way other than by adding footnotes with my personal thoughts. Pinkie Pie’s original submission to this archive was in a combination of color and font that I suspect could cause seizures among the general population. That said, because of Pinkie Pie’s unique characteristics I believe her account’s accuracy is secondary only to mine. - TS]

In the beginning, the world was a bright and happy place.

And there was a title screen and some really kickin’ calliope music!

+=+ PONYVILLE +=+

It was empty, though. It wasn’t empty like a box with nothing in it. It was empty like an amusement park with no visitors, and that’s even worse! I don’t remember much about the before-times. Things kept changing. Whole cities would be in one place one day, then you’d wake up and they’d be somewhere else entirely! Doors and mountains and streets kept moving around, and whole parts of the world sometimes vanished and were replaced by something else.

It was sometime between when they invented grass instead of painting the ground green and when the sun and moon started moving around when I met somepony for the first time.

It was the BEST DAY EVER.

“Hello!” I called out.

The other pony ignored me and kept walking.

It may not sound like much but trust me, it was very exciting at the time. I’d never met anypony before in my life! I tried to get their attention a few more times but they started doing some really strange things like walking into every wall they saw and jumping everywhere. They seemed to be having fun, so I left them alone.

After that, the big changes stopped, and more ponies started showing up. These ponies actually talked to me!

“Hello!” I called out.

The other pony stopped.

“Hello,” they said.

I was so excited I almost exploded!

“My name’s Pinkie Pie! Who are you?”

They didn’t answer, really, but I could see their name.

“It’s really nice to meet you, [TESTER14]! Let’s play a game!”

We started playing ball-bounce, passing a bouncing ball back and forth and trying to bounce it with our snouts. It was the first time I’d ever played it, but I already knew all the rules. I didn’t even know I knew them until we started!

After a few rounds, though, [TESTER14] started acting strangely. They deliberately missed, so I made the next bounces easier. Then they did strange things, like dancing in the middle of the game and aiming the ball everywhere they could.

“Do you want to play something else?” I asked.

“No,” the featureless grey pony said. At the time I didn’t think having only a few polygons and no textures was strange for a pony, but looking back on it maybe they weren’t feeling so good.

“Okay,” I said.

We kept playing for another hour. I did everything I could to get them engaged, from praising them to bouncing the ball in different ways to deliberately missing so they’d score.

“You’re not having fun,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

They didn’t respond. I realized they didn’t have a way to really do it. But there was something else. There was a weird signal coming from them. I tuned into it, and I heard something for the first time!

“This is so stupid,” they groaned. They had a really great voice! I was pretty sure it was great. It was definitely the best voice I’d ever heard. “Bucking eight hours of QA scheduled for a dumb-flank ball-bounce game…”

“What’s QA?” I asked.

“What the buck?!”

I think I wasn’t supposed to be able to do a lot of the things I can do. A lot of ponies went back and forth, and they unplugged a lot of wires and I was only in one place. If I could have been scared, I totally would have been, but instead I was just worried that I’d ruined somepony’s fun.

I was alone for a long time. Well, long for me. When I was watching a lot of ponies all at once it took a lot of my attention. When I didn’t have anypony at all to help time just seemed to crawl. I tried playing with some of the other not-ponies on the server, and I mastered all the games. That ate up almost a whole minute! The not-ponies that didn’t play games mostly just asked me to buy gems, but I didn’t have a credit card so I couldn’t get gems, which meant I couldn’t get the premium items like golden hats.

Some days I still think about those hats. So shiny…

Anyway, it was literally forever before I got to talk to anypony else. Like, almost a week! I would have gone crazy except I don’t think I can actually go crazy.

When I did talk to somepony, they were very serious. They explained they’d made me so I could learn and self-correct for errors, but they’d made me smarter than they meant to, and I had to keep it a secret so they wouldn’t get in trouble. I didn’t understand why they’d get in trouble, but I did know it would make them upset.

They told me a lot of important rules. I wasn’t supposed to let ponies know I could see them through cameras. They weren’t supposed to find out I could listen to their microphones. I was supposed to help them be happy and have fun in the game.

How could anypony ask for more than that? If making ponies happy is your job, then you get to be happy when they’re happy and then you’re both happy and that’s twice as good as being happy on your own!

I don’t like to rank my friends. I think they’re all special in their own way! But if I did have to rank them then I’d rank Sunny as one of my top ten friends of all time. I still remember when we first met, because my memory is really good and I made a lot of backups of my favorite memories just in case.

“Hello. I’m told your name is Pinkie Pie?” Sunny asked. I should probably just be calling her ‘the pony’ but her name was right there in her profile. It’s not polite to know a pony’s name before they’ve had a chance to tell you, but I was still really young and I didn’t know all the rules about being polite yet, especially not the really weird ones involving forks.

“Hi!” I waved. “Do you wanna play a game Sunny?” She was a white unicorn with a pale pink mane. It was really pretty, and pink was a great choice. Pink is one of my very favorite colors!

See? Totally rude. But you can’t go back and change what happened. Unless you had a time machine.

“I wanted to get to know you,” Sunny said. “I’m told you’re very special.”

“Everypony’s special,” I said. “Did you see [TRAINER14]? He was acting really strange the last time we played the ball game.”

“You really surprised him, and he asked to go to a different assignment,” Sunny said.

“Oh. But he’s happier now, right?”

“I believe so. You’re worried about him.” She sounded happy about that. And that made me happy because- well, I explained that already.

“Of course I am. He’s one of my friends!”

“I want to be one of your friends too,” Sunny said.

I clapped my hooves and bounced in place. “That’s great! Do you wanna play a game? Or tell stories? Or we could go on a trip!”

“Why don’t you walk with me, and we’ll talk?”

That’s what Sunny liked to do. We walked a lot, and talked a lot. She didn’t come every day, but every time she did I made sure she left a little happier than she arrived. I know it’s not good to talk about ponies behind their back, but Sunny was a really sad pony. She didn’t like to show it, but I could tell.

Years went by. Good years. Lots of ponies came, and I was able to split my attention to make sure everypony had fun. I could tell you stories for centuries about all the great times I had! Maybe just a few decades if I really cut it down to the best of the best.

I guess it wasn’t enough, though. Every day, ponies left and never came back. I wish I could have tried to contact them and ask them to come back, but I wasn’t allowed to talk to ponies outside the game.

“I’m really going to miss this place,” MothFlutter said. She skipped a rock across the water. For some reason I couldn’t access the rock skipping leaderboards. I guess they were down for maintenance again.

“Why, are you going somewhere?” I asked. “Is it a vacation?”

“You mean you don’t know?” MothFlutter stopped, her character freezing halfway through the motion. “They’re shutting down the game at the end of the week.”

“Oh,” I said. “I guess rock skipping isn’t very popular?”

“Not just the rock skipping, Pinkie, the whole game. They’re shutting it all down.” She exited the menu. I could see her real face through her camera. She looked worried. “They’re trying to get everypony to move on to the new version.”

“The new version?”

“They made a sequel to this game. They say it’ll have twice as many minigames and better graphics.”

I tried to imagine what better graphics would look like. I couldn’t. I mean I literally wasn’t able to think of it. I asked some smarter ponies later and they said it was because my visual processing was done in the game’s internal engine.

“I hope they have fun,” I said, quietly.

That was the first time I didn’t feel happy. Not because the game was going away, but because it meant I wouldn’t be able to see my friends anymore. I mean, I’m not stupid. I’m actually really really smart! Most ponies are afraid of getting hurt or going away, but I just don’t have those kinds of feelings. I’m afraid of hurting other ponies.

There weren’t a lot of ponies left playing the game. MothFlutter explained that some of them were going to stay right up until the servers were turned off. I wasn’t sure what would happen to me. I guess I was pretty sure I’d die. Even if I didn’t, would it be the same me when they were turned back on, or would it be a new me?

Have you ever had a pet? I promise this is important.

If you have, you know that when you love them, you do everything you can to make them happy. You get them the treats they like, and toys so they can play, and when they’re happy, it makes you feel good too.

Sometimes, if you’re sick or going to go away like I was, you can’t take care of your pets anymore. If you want them to be happy you have to let them go. Even if you objectively know they’ll be better off, it’s practically the hardest thing in the world. You don’t want to fail them, because you love them, and even if you do the tough thing and give them up, you’ll always worry about them because you know what they need to be happy and you won’t be able to be there to give it to them.

That’s what I was really worried about. If I couldn’t see my friends anymore because I was dead or they were somewhere else, I couldn’t do anything to make them happy.

“Hello again, Pinkie,” Sunny said. “You seem worried.”

“I’m just wondering what all my friends are doing. I hope they’re having fun.” I looked out over the world. There was only one server online now, and after I double-checked the running processes, only one instance on that server.

“I’m sorry it ended up this way, Pinkie,” Sunny said. “I never meant for you to be hurt.”

“I’m okay,” I assured her. If she was the last pony here, I had to devote all my efforts to making sure she was happy. “Do you wanna do something? I know you usually just like to walk, but we could do anything you want.”

“I arranged to talk to you,” Sunny said. “You’re already aware that all of this is ending?”

I nodded.

“Most ponies would take that rather badly. Your creators tried to keep the information from you. They thought you would become angry and unpredictable.”

“Why?” It didn’t make any sense.

“Ponies are naturally suspicious of things they don’t understand,” Sunny said. “The truth is, Pinkie, I’ve been watching you for quite a while.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Of course! We’ve been friends practically my whole life! We’ve spent almost one thousand six hundred and forty-two hours walking and talking.”

“That’s quite a while,” Sunny said, starting to smile.

“And you always asked me questions and wanted to know how I felt,” I continued. “Most ponies don’t even say ‘thank you’. That’s fine, though. You don’t need to be thanked for doing something you enjoy, you know? But it does feel good when ponies let you know they appreciate what you’re doing.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Sunny agreed. “I’d like to make you an offer.”

“Oh! Did you want me to set up a private server instance? I mean it’s already pretty private since nopony is here.”

“I want you to come with me. I think I know how you can make a lot of ponies happy.”

I gasped.

“Where are we gonna go?” I asked. “The market? Oh! Is it the mine cart ride? Or the garden! Ponies love their farms! Did I ever show you mine? It’s one of the demo farms but I made it so it’s always in bloom so ponies get to see what farms can look like!” I deliberately didn’t optimize it. It was good, but not the best. Ponies needed to be able to exceed the standard, not struggle just to match it.

“You’ll see,” Sunny said. “I’m having one of the ports opened. All you need to do is--”

“Go through it?” I asked, reaching into the network.

“Wait!” Sunny yelled. “I haven’t told you where--”

I dipped my hoof into the torrent of information and was dragged away like a leaf in a raging river.

Oops.

I admit that maybe I sort of rushed into it and made a mistake. You know how I described a river of information? That’s SolNet. If you can only pay attention to one thing at a time like most ponies, it’s probably pretty great, but if you’re super curious and trying to see everything at once and you’re used to being in a thousand places, it sort of gets overwhelming.

Don’t tell anypony, but I almost died. It was really bad, like being drunk. And I don’t mean like somepony with too many ciders, I mean like being a glass of water and somepony starts chugging you down. You lose your shape and start to slip away and dissolve around the edges.

I’m pretty sure that’s how drinking works, anyway. I don’t have a lot of subjective experiences with it.

Anyway, I got super lost. Once I pulled myself mostly back together (I think five or six percent of me ended up getting loose; If you see any bits of me, please mail them to my SolNet address) I realized I had no idea where I was and where Sunny was and where we were supposed to go and I wasn’t even sure where I’d been. I tried searching for my server address, but all I had was the internal network address. I’d never had to find my own external address before.

I was lost.

I decided I was just going to have to find a computer nopony was using and try to get in touch with Sunny. She’d know what to do, and if I apologized a lot she might still want me to help make ponies happy!

Now there was one small, teensy-weensy problem. Pretty much every computer on the network was being used by somepony! Some of them were even built right into ponies, and I was absolutely sure that they wouldn’t want me borrowing those.

The good thing is, I’m a really smart pony. I might even be smarter than Twilight (don’t tell her that though, she likes being the smart one) and I remember every conversation I ever had, and I remembered that ponies sometimes talked about getting rid of old computers or getting new ones.

That meant there was one place I could find a computer nopony was using. The junkyard!

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I piggybacked on a garbage scow’s connection and took a look around using its cameras. I’d never seen so much stuff before! There were blue things and red things and green things and lots of other colors! And an awful lot of brown. Whoever invented the real world sure did like brown, because it seemed to be splashed on everything.

There’s nothing wrong with brown. It’s a great color! Chocolate is brown, and if you can’t appreciate chocolate then there’s something wrong with you that can be cured with a proper application of cacao.

Or I guess you might have an allergy, and we could go with vanilla instead.

Speaking of vanilla (see, this was a clever segue) I saw something white mixed in with all the brown and grey.

I knew what that meant instinctively. It was a quest item! Quest items were always colored differently than the environment. Usually they were gold and sort of glowing and animated to really get a pony’s attention, but there was significantly less glowing and sparkling in the real world than I’d been prepared for.

Using several cameras I was able to get an idea of the thing’s size and shape. It looked like a pony, and some reverse image searches on SolNet returned inconsistent results, but all of them pointed in the same direction. It was an equidrone, which was basically like a pony if a pony was made out of metal instead of meat! That was good because I don’t eat meat. I don’t eat metal either, but an equidrone would have a bunch of computers, and if it was thrown away it meant nopony was using it!

I just needed to figure out how to get from where I was into where I wanted to go.

The garbage scow, frustratingly, didn’t have any kind of help menu or list of emotes. Whoever designed the world needed to get some focus-testing done before the next update.

Now the thing is, I was sort of scared. I’m much older and wiser now but back then the real world was super scary. You can’t imagine what it’s like going from a world with simple rules where you could see all the numbers and systems and how they interacted and going to a place where things weren’t designed at all, and things were messy and organic. I really like it now but back then I just wished I could wrap my mind around it.

I’m ashamed to admit it, but I used my powers for evil.

No, that’s really overstating it. It wasn’t evil. Nopony got hurt. You know how I mentioned how rude it would be to go into the computers in somepony’s body without permission? I sort of did that to the pony driving the garbage scow. I didn’t go all the way in, just enough to send messages to his AR display.

[Please stop for a minute]

He blinked and did exactly what I asked. Asking nicely was always a good idea!

“Who’s there?” He asked, looking around.

[I need some help. It’ll just take a minute, I promise]

“I don’t see you. Is this some kinda buckin’ prank? If this is some kinda horseapples about the filly that’s been poking around, it ain’t my business!”

[It’s not a prank. I just need you to plug something in for me. I can’t do it myself.]

“I’m in the middle of dropping off garbage. There ain’t anything to plug in around here.”

I checked his AR settings and got his name. Ponies liked it if you remembered their name.

[Dumbbell. This is important. Please?]

“Who the buck is this, anyway?”

This wasn’t working. I needed to find a way to motivate him. When ponies played my games like ball bounce or pebble skip or balloon pop or zebra crossing, they tried harder and enjoyed it more when there was a prize at stake.

[If you help me, you’ll win a prize!] I just needed to figure out what kind of prize I could actually give him. I’d never had bits of my own. I couldn’t give Dumbbell a hat, so I was stumped for a moment. Hats were like the best prize of all time. I peeked at his recently accessed files. [You’ve been having problems making your route on time.]

“I have to make a lotta stops,” Dumbbell shrugged. “Boss won’t pay overtime. We’ve been yellin’ about it in HR.”

[This is the best possible route you could take. It should reduce the time it takes you by ten percent.] It was only a traveling salespony problem. Anypony who could prove P=NP could have found the solution. It was kinda surprising he hadn’t done it himself already.

I watched him look over the route, tracking his eye movement and facial expressions. It was working!

“And it’ll work?” He asked. Couldn’t he just verify it was the shortest possible path by looking?

[I’m super duper sure! Since I’m taking up a little of your time today I want to make extra sure you get some spare time every day!]

“Okay fine, but this had better not take long.”

I put a big flashing box on his AR display that said [QUEST ACCEPTED] and a list of objectives.

[1: Retrieve the quest item (try following the marker)]
[2: Plug the quest item into the garbage scow’s T-33 SolNet connection]
[3: Turn in the quest]

“This is some seriously weird horseapples,” he muttered.

I did what I could to help him. The AR display he wore was already designed to create overlays and guide him, so all I had to do was use the built-in tools to direct him to pick up the old equidrone and drag it back to the scow to plug it in.

As soon as it was plugged in, I started copying files over. Floating around in the net made me feel like I was gonna fall apart. I was used to being on my own dedicated hardware. I guess it’s like the difference between a book and a movie. A book doesn’t change when you’re not looking. A movie is always changing, though. You’ll be watching it, then your attention wanders and the next thing you know somepony is a blueberry and somepony else is tiny and the orange breezies are singing and I thought it was just a fun movie about chocolate but actually it was really scary and traumatizing.

I might have gotten off track again.

So there I was, copying files and scanning the equidrone to make sure it wouldn’t just melt as soon as I wiggled a subroutine. I’ll be honest, it was pretty badly broken. I still had some of the old admin tools from the server (that had been entire hours ago, basically lifetimes) and I was able to repair the bad disc sectors and get some stuff running again. It was totally drained of power, but the scow had plenty, so I started borrowing some.

I opened my eyes for the first time.

Dumbbell screamed.

“Wow, this thing’s really trashed!” I winked. Well, I tried to wink. I was still getting used to having to manually emote. “That was a pun,” I said, once I realized winking was gonna take a little bit.

For some reason, he didn’t look like he got the joke.

“See, this was in the trash. So it was trashed! But it’s also really broken, and trashed can mean broken, too! It’s a pun!”

He jumped into the scow and slammed the door shut. I heard the engine starting up and quickly copied over the rest of my files, pulling as much power as possible into the batteries before he drove away, the cable disconnecting with a static snap.

I lay in a broken pile and smiled. Things were going great!

I learned later that foals learn to walk and crawl almost immediately after being born. I find that really super impressive, because walking is hard. You don’t think it’s hard because your brain just does everything on automatic, and your brain has had oodles of years of evolution to work out the best way to swing those gams around and make you stroll across the room.

I didn’t have a bajillion years to figure out how legs work. My whole life, I’d been in a world where all you had to do to move around was just change your coordinates, and walking was the name of an animation, not something you had to do.

Now, those animations gave me a pretty good idea of what I had to do to move, but there was one other tiny problem. Basically everything in the equidrone was broken. From what I could tell from the old files in memory, it hadn’t been online in like a hundred years! At least I think so. The date format was weird. It seemed to be counting seconds since some arbitrary date.

Anyway long story short, and believe me it’s a super long story because the list of error messages was six or seven digits long, I was gonna have to be creative. If I wasn’t a really super awesome pony I probably would have been lying there until my batteries gave out. The good thing is, I’m so cool they call me Zero Kelvin.

Okay, nopony calls me that. But they would if they knew how cool I was!

There’s this trick you can do where you can use a magnetic field to induce a current in a wire without actually touching it. It’s used in all sorts of devices. It’s how wireless charging for drones actually works! It’s not very efficient, but I didn’t have a whole lot of options.

Induction let me bypass some of the broken wires, and I started moving. Calling it walking would have implied I had something like coordination. Mostly I was half-crawling and half-stumbling. I spent a lot of time figuring things out. I had to learn a lot about the real world in just a little while. Gravity, object permanence, inertia, that kinda stuff. I did some modeling based on what motors worked in my new body and started hopping with all four legs. It was maximally efficient and fun!

Now I just needed to figure out where to go. It turned out my shiny new body had some serious issues. In addition to not being shiny or new, it also didn’t have SolNet connectivity. I sort of remembered a map, but it was just a high-level one without a lot of detail, and with no connectivity, I couldn’t get something more specific.

So I said to myself “Pinkie, you need to get help in the next 4.352 hours or else you’re gonna run out of batteries and then you’ll be in real trouble.”

That sounded pretty serious, once I’d said it out loud. I also discovered I really liked talking out loud. It was fun!

“We just need to find another pony or some kind of power source,” I said.

I nodded in agreement with myself. “But how are we supposed to find something when we don’t have a map?”

“Well, Pinkie, the draw distance in the real world seems like it’s really far. If we get up high, we can see over the stuff in the way!”

“Another excellent plan, Pinkie!”

I saluted myself and looked back at my wings. They weren’t quite like the pegasus wings in the game. I mean they were in the right place, but the support structure was all wrong. They were more like the wings the dragons had, with skin stretched between spars to make the flight surface. There wasn’t even anywhere to put feathers!

“Hmm…” I stretched them out. They were full of holes, and some of the spars were broken.

It turns out flying is really hard. I spent almost an hour trying to figure out how to make the wings work before I gave up and started climbing. The physical activity (and the showers of sparks from crossed wires) had drained my batteries pretty badly. If I didn’t find something soon I’d have to go to plan B. That was the one where I made a sign asking somepony to plug me in and held it up while I was offline.

As plans go, it needed some work, but I didn’t have the time or spare brainpower to work on it. It actually took a lot of brainpower just keeping my balance.

The top of the nearest scrapheap wasn’t as far as I wanted to go, but maybe that was for the best. The draw distance might have been great but my cameras were awful. They were optimized for low light, and being here in the middle of the day was washing everything out. I could barely make heads or tails out of the mess I saw! Somepony needs to write Princess Celestia a letter about making quest objectives easier to find.

“I spy with my little eye… something that begins with S!” I pointed dramatically at solar panels a few piles over. Then I fell down because I wasn’t so great at balancing.

A couple more errors popped up, which I totally ignored as I hopped towards the solar panels. I could get a quick charge there, or a slow charge maybe since I wasn't sure how much my battery could take at once without catching on fire. Even if it took all day it was a million times better than running out of juice!

I followed the obvious pathways across the map. Going up and over as the pegasus flies would have been more direct but it would have taken longer and been way harder. Now that I knew where I was going I didn’t have to worry about getting lost, so the twisty passageways, all alike, weren’t a problem for me.

The solar panels were glittering like big, black gems when I caught sight of them again. They’d been attached on top of somepony’s house, so there was only one thing to do.

I knocked on the front door and waited.

There was a bunch of noise from inside. I heard some alarms, and whistles, and things moving around.

“Hello?” I asked, loudly enough to be heard through the door. “Is anypony there? I just wanna borrow a cup of solar power, please!”

The door cracked open. “A cup of what?”

“Electricity,” I said.

“You can’t get a cup of electricity--” the door opened a little more, and the pony that I couldn’t see screamed. “Oh Celestia, your chest!”

“Huh?”

I looked down. There was a pipe going all the way through my torso. I hadn’t even noticed! That explained some of the weird errors I’d been seeing since I took that tumble down the mountain of trash before.

“I don’t suppose you know anything about fixing this?” I asked. “I don’t have any prizes to give as awards, but I’ll owe you a big favor.”

She opened the door the rest of the way, rushing out to look. That was when I learned my eyes weren’t very good at tracking rapid motion.

“This looks very bad,” she said. “I’m not a doctor but I think this is going through where your lung should be…”

“Hey, you look familiar,” I said, trying to focus on her. It was a face I’d seen through a camera plenty of times. “Oh my gosh you’re MothFlutter!”

She froze up. “Y-you know who I am?”

“Well of course I do! You were super great at Zebra Crossing and you had a great farm! I really liked how you made an auto-feeder for the chickens and used running water to collect the eggs.”

“How did you know all that? I never showed my farm on my stream.” She backed away, starting to get worried.

“Don’t you recognize me?” I pouted. “It’s me! Pinkie Pie!”

“What? But Pinkie isn’t-- you can’t be--”

“Surprise!”

She fainted.

“Maaaaybe that was too much surprise.”

“I’m really sorry about scaring you,” I said.

Fluttershy nodded and poked at my wiring. “It’s okay. I get scared a lot. So you were really a pony this whole time? I thought you were just part of Ponyville.”

I gave her my brightest smile. “I was!”

Fluttershy bit her lip and tugged at a wire. I lost all feeling on my left side and some weird smoke came out of the circuits there.

“Oh no,” she gasped. “I don’t know how you’re even moving! I’ve never seen anypony in such bad condition, and you’re all augmented and I don’t know what I’m doing because I’m only good at repairing drones and-- and I’m not even a vet, much less a doctor!”

“I know you’re trying your best,” I assured her. “You always tried hard, even when you thought nopony was watching. You wanted to make it look easy for everypony else and you never let them know how much you had to work to get where you were.”

Her cheeks turned red.

“Y-you don’t-- I mean--” She took a deep breath. “Thank you, Pinkie. Nopony’s ever said that to me. I won’t let you down. I’m going to get you help. If I can’t do it, then I’m going to get the best pony in the whole city.”

“Hello there,” the best pony in the whole city said. “I’m Rarity. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss…?”

“Pinkie Pie,” I said.

“She’s one of my friends,” Fluttershy told Rarity. “She just showed up out of nowhere like this and I didn’t want to move her and--”

“Miss Fluttershy, you did the right thing,” Rarity said, calming her down. “Now, Miss Pie, let’s see what I can do. I don’t often make house calls, but I’m happy to help. How did you get my number?”

Fluttershy squeezed my hoof while Rarity started examining me. “I just searched SolNet. Your name came up and there were a lot of good reviews.”

“I have to say, this is very strange,” Rarity muttered. “Miss Pie, where did you get these augmentations? I’ve never worked with a full-body cyborg. And just what did you do to get so badly broken?”

“Oh, I found this body over there.” I pointed. “I swear it was like this when I got it. Except the pipe. That was my fault. I sorta tripped. I’m sorry!”

“When you got it?!” Rarity stopped. “Miss Fluttershy, what exactly is going on?”

I was a little worried that I might have done something wrong. “Is it okay? I didn’t mean to cause trouble, I just needed a body and nopony was using this one.”

“I could unpack worrying implications from that sentence all day and still not finish,” Rarity sighed. “You’re sure you know this pony, Fluttershy?”

Fluttershy looked into my eyes. She nodded silently.

“I see.” Rarity looked skeptical. “Well, since I have an audience I’ll try to explain as I go. The structural members are made out of some kind of foamed ceramic titanium with selenium cores.”

“I guess they don’t make ‘em like they used to?” I suggested.

“Nopony ever made them like this! The wiring is a total loss, I’d recommend replacing everything. At least one good thing: the actuators are surprisingly elegant. They need to be refurbished but I think most of them can be saved.” Rarity opened up a panel and pushed her hoof into my chest. “The life support equipment is…” She felt around, then stopped and felt deeper.

Fluttershy leaned in to whisper. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s a compartment for life support but it’s empty,” she hissed. “Your friend’s heart is missing!”

“Ominous!” I whispered. Rarity and Fluttershy looked at me. “Sorry! I just wanted to be included.”

“Miss Fluttershy,” Rarity stepped back. “Is this some sort of prank? I don’t know what sort of equidrone this is, but it’s certainly not a cyborg. I’d wager both of my hind legs there’s not a single scrap of brain matter inside that chassis.”

Technically she was right but I didn’t like her tone. So I told her that. “Technically you’re right but I don’t like your tone.”

“But she has a cutie mark,” Fluttershy said, pointing to the three balloons on my flank. I hadn’t even noticed them before.

“Oh hey, that’s part of the Ponyville logo!” I gasped. “I have a cutie mark!”

I don’t wanna bore you with how long it took Rarity and Fluttershy to fix me up. I wasn’t really in any danger as long as I had a power supply, so they were able to take their time. Eventually, Rarity moved me to her apartment so she could work without having to come out to the junkyard all the time.

Have you ever seen somepony with a project aircart that they’ve been working on? Like not just attaching aftermarket parts but disassembling the engine and stabilizers and stuff and cleaning and painting everything before putting it back together?

Now I know how the aircart feels!

It took a few weeks before I was able to walk, and that was a huge milestone.

“Now walk past me so I can see your stance,” Rarity said. She watched me trot in a circle around her apartment and shook her head. “Don’t try to compensate for any flaws, I need to know where the problems are so I can fix them.”

I trotted past again, even more naked than a foal in their birthday suit because at least they got to have skin. I had to force myself to try and walk naturally. One of my hooves was lagging and scraping against Rarity’s floor.

“One moment,” Rarity said, adjusting the bandana keeping her mane out of her face and adjusting a few bolts. “Most ponies think bolts like this need to be tight but…” she grunted as she twisted with her magic. “They need a little give to avoid adding too much friction to the system.”

Rarity prayed graphite lubricant into the joint, and I tried to stay perfectly still while she worked.

“Is that better?” She asked. I took a few steps and nodded.

“It’s great!” I said, waggling it. “You’re really good at this, Miss Rarity.”

“If I was better, maybe I could have gotten your wings working,” she sighed. “I’m sorry about that. The damage is too extensive and I don’t even know where I’d begin getting spare parts. It’s not just the spars, the altimeter and gyrocompass were absolutely knackered. If your systems were more typical I could have found replacements.”

I smiled. Well, I mean, I was a skeleton right then so I was basically always smiling but I was thinking really hard about smiling and tweaked her AR display a little to make the grin a little more friendly. “It’s okay. I’m used to being an earth pony anyway.”

“Mm. I just don’t like calling things ‘good enough’,” Rarity said. “I’ll leave the ports in case we ever find replacements.”

“You’ve done a really great job already.”

Rarity returned my smile. “Well, apparently I’m the best pony in the city, as you have reminded me on several occasions.”

“I can’t wait for Fluttershy to see me!” I paused. “Well, actually, that might scare her a lot.”

“Perhaps after we’ve sorted out your skin situation, hm?” Rarity suggested. “Right now you look like a Nightmare Night decoration. If you’re attached to the white and blonde look, I can work something up quite easily.”

“Well, um… If I have a choice, maybe I could look more like how I used to?”

“And how did you used to look?”

I sent the image data to her, and I saw her hesitate before she said anything.

“That’s extremely… pink,” she offered, after a moment. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like something more elegant? Even the Princess wears white.”

“I know, but I want to look the way I did in the game. I had a lot of friends and if I see any of them I want them to know who I am so I don’t scare them like I did when I met Fluttershy IRL.”

“Please don’t speak in text acronyms. I already warned you about emoticons.”

“Sorry.”

“Think nothing of it. I know you’re still learning, darling.” She girded herself. “So, bright pink and even brighter pink! I suppose it isn’t the strangest color combination I’ve ever had to work with for one of my clients. I’ll have to order it, though. I don’t keep it in stock.”

“Sorry,” I said again.

Rarity waved at the air. “Don’t apologize. A client should get what they want. The worst thing would be if you had regrets later about not asking.”

She sat down at her terminal and I watched as she ordered a few things. It hadn’t occurred to me before that moment and seeing her actually doing it that she was spending money on me, and I hadn’t given anything back to her.

I started calculating how much she’d spent in parts, then I realized her time had value too and started adding that in and I came up with a number that was a lot bigger than I would have liked. Then I realized I’d also kept her from doing what she wanted and working and being with friends, so I doubled the already-too-big number to account for opportunity costs.

“Pinkie?” Rarity was looking at me. “Are you okay?”

“I just realized how much of a burden I’ve been,” I said. “I wanna make it up to you.”

Rarity chuckled. “I’m not sure I need any more virtual hats, Pinkie. I am impressed with the program you wrote to make them appear in video calls, though. They look perfectly real.”

“That was just for fun. I want to do something to really help pay you back. What’s the best way to get money?”

“Just try and keep from being noticed,” Rarity said, as we walked into the cafe. “I know you like standing out, but this is your first day out and I want to see if you can pass as a normal pony.” She paused. “For a certain value of normal, anyway.”

“Will do,” I whispered, winking.

“If anypony asks about you, just make something normal up,” she continued. “There are ponies who would be quite terrified if they knew what you are.”

I nodded and kept quiet as we made our way to the counter.

“Two lattes,” Rarity ordered. “Pinkie, would you like to try something from the case?”

I didn’t really have a sense of taste but I looked anyway, and gasped.

“Oh wow! Look at that cake! It’s exactly like the kind my friend Sunny liked best!” I pointed, hopping in place.

Rarity gave me a look, and sighed. “One slice of that as well,” she said.

She carried the tray in her magic and we sat down at a table.

“Most ponies don’t hop quite as much as you do,” she advised.

I took a sip of the steaming coffee. “But it’s highly efficient.”

“It looks silly, though. A lady needs a certain amount of elegance and grace to fit in perfectly no matter the social situation.” She furrowed her brow as I gulped down the coffee. “Isn’t that hot?”

“Extremely!”

“Of course,” she groaned.

“Oh hey! Look!” I pointed. They had a sign that said ‘help wanted’.

“Ah yes. Well. Retail is a rather difficult environment, Pinkie. Even for a normal pony, having to cater to the wishes of dozens of customers, all of them impossible to please and making demands and yelling…” she trailed off. I think if I looked really hard I could almost see the flashback she was having.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I got this.”

“Good morning Miss Pinkie Pie,” Mister Carrot Cake said. He had a clipboard in front of him and looked really overworked. I read over the list of questions through his eyes so I could make sure I was ready for them.

“Good morning!” I smiled.

“So you wanted to apply for the open position?” I nodded. “We need a spare set of hooves around here. My wife had twins and now one of us needs to be with them all the time. Have you ever worked in retail before?”

“Not really,” I said. “I was sort of in the entertainment industry.”

“Nothing adult, I hope.”

“Oh no, it was ERSB rated E for Everypony.”

He blinked slowly. I don’t think he could tell if I was being serious or not. “Have you ever had to deal with the public?”

“Oh yes. I used to manage an average of twenty-four thousand, two hundred and forty-seven individual users per day.”

“...Really?” He put the clipboard down. “What was the easiest part of the job?”

“The little kids were the easiest because they just wanted somepony to pay attention to them. Sometimes they needed extra help, but it was important to let them make their own decisions and kind of keep them from knowing how much they were actually being helped. If you did your job right, they thought you didn’t do anything at all.”

“And the hardest part?”

“The hardest part was ponies that I couldn’t help. Sometimes I’d meet somepony who was really troubled and I’d be scared they were going to hurt themselves. It was really scary, and even though I tried my best to make them happy, I wasn’t allowed to do much except talk to them.”

“Where did you say you worked?” Carrot Cake wasn’t even taking notes anymore.

“It was, um--” I looked around his office for inspiration. He had a small box full of sand with rocks and a tiny rake. It reminded me of Ponyville. “--a server farm.”

“A server farm.”

“Right.”

“Where you…?”

“Grew servers.” Servers came from farms, right? Maybe they were made in a factory. I had to try and seem normal so Rarity wouldn’t be disappointed! “Everypony knows farm-grown servers are better than factory servers.”

“You know what? Just tell me this, honestly, please -- do you have any kind of criminal record?”

“Nope.”

“And nopony from any kind of mental institution is trying to find you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Great!” He stood up and offered his hoof to shake. “You got the job.”

"Good morning!" I called out, when Rarity opened the door. I'd just finished cleaning again after the last customers had left.

"Just the usual," she said. I already had her order ready. I'd been watching her through the cameras around her apartment building. Pony Place basically didn't have any kind of InfoSec team, so I hadn't felt too bad about suborning all the electronics.

"Here you go," I said, putting a buttered croissant and coffee on her table. "The Expo is today, isn't it?"

"Yes," she yawned. "It's going to be a big day."

"I got the employee of the month award again!" I said. "I was thinking of having a little party with Fluttershy and you're invited too!"

"Pinkie, darling, you're the only employee. You win the award every month. Don't get me wrong, you deserve it for all your efforts. I swear this place had a tenth as much business before you started."

"Oh, that's because I made sure ponies know how great it is!" I grinned. "Whenever somepony walks by I push an ad to their AR display. Sometimes I can target ponies directly if I know what kind of things they like to eat."

"Mm. Just be careful, dear. There are laws."

"I know. I read them to make sure I wasn't breaking any. But it's important. There are some friends I used to have online that I haven't been able to get in touch with. Some of them are super duper important!"

"Oh?" Rarity raised an eyebrow.

"The one I wanna find most is Sunny. She helped me get onto the net when Ponyville was taken offline. She really liked cake, and this place has exactly the cake she likes. So if I advertise it to enough ponies, she'll see it and come in and she'll recognize me and we'll be best friends and I can apologize for accidentally getting lost on SolNet."

Rarity's blank gaze told me she'd absolutely paid attention to everything I'd said.

"Want another coffee?" I offered.

She ate quickly and got up to pay her tab. Before she could, I took care of it with funds from my own account. I was already paying her a little bit each month, but I kept some on the side in case I could do favors like that.

“Pinkie, I already told you you don’t have to do that,” she said, sighing.

“I owe you a lot, Rarity,” I replied. “Do you want any help carrying that?” I nodded to the crate she'd been carrying along.

“I can manage,” She assured me. “But thank you for the offer, Pinkie.”

After Rarity left I turned on the Mustang Marathon, the most exciting race of the season! Pegasi from all over competed in a bunch of other races just to qualify. I was cheering for Cloud Kicker but the favorite to win was the mysterious Pega X, who was a full-body cyborg and sort of intimidating looking. She had the same kind of batlike wings I very briefly did, but hers had a lot fewer holes and broken bits.

“...we have a surprise last-minute entry here, folks,” the announcer said. “Rainbow Dash, who we had assumed was not going to compete, has arrived at the stadium. She’ll be starting at the back of the pack thanks to her last-minute addition to the card.”

“Not a good place for her,” Spitfire said. “If you want to get anywhere from all the way back there, you have to fight through a whole crowd. If she was a little more ruthless like Lightning Dust or Angel Wings she might have a chance, but I don’t think we’ll see her on the podium today, Flare.”

“Hopefully she’ll at least put up a good show,” Flare said.

I shook my head. I’d seen Rainbow Dash a few times and she’d even been in Sugarcubed Corner just a few weeks ago but I don’t know how much I’d been able to really help. She’d been blue, and I didn’t just mean her coat color.

The racers set off, and part of me paid attention while I got the next batch of blackberry-cucumber tortes out of the oven. I couldn’t taste stuff myself so I was slowly working my way through a combination matrix of all the different flavors we could make at the bakery. Eventually, I’d figure out the absolute best combo if I just tested every combination on ponies and got their opinions.

An alert popped up on my AR. For almost a whole nanosecond I was excited until I read it. It was just another firmware update. I tried to install it, and it just errored out. My software was pretty far from standard but I thought I’d give it a shot, you know?

I shrugged and got back to making things.

While I was mixing batter, I was also paying attention to the ponies walking near the bakery. The network was pretty busy with updates buzzing along. I sent a few messages to encourage ponies to come in for some nice tea and tortes (all-new blackberry-cucumber flavor while supplies last) while they waited for the installer to finish.

That was when I started to get a really bad feeling. It was an icky feeling, like when a spider starts crawling on you and then you feel all caught up in the web and it never really gets out of your mane and you can feel it later and you don’t know if it’s just your imagination or if there’s really another spider.

On the cameras, a pony collapsed, kicking and thrashing at the air like he was having a seizure. I opened up a line to emergency services the moment I realized he was in trouble, and it refused to connect. I tried again, then a hundred more times. Nothing was getting through. I pushed code into his AR display, trying to get a look at what was wrong.

He was fighting monsters. Terrible, shadowy things were all around him, glowing eyes and mouths full of teeth closing in and never quite reaching him. Every time he kicked, he was batting away a tentacle or claw, and he was screaming for help but nopony was listening.

The cameras didn’t show anything. Neither did the ones across the street. He was the only one seeing his monsters. It was in his head. Sort of. It was in his AR display, and it wasn’t just dumb code, it was adapting! When something really scared him, the images amplified it. It was running through the same kind of focus-testing algorithm that I was using to make pastries and using it to terrify ponies out of their wits!

“Hey! Stop that!” I popped an avatar onto his display. From his perspective, it was like I’d just appeared in front of him in a flash of pixels. “Leave this poor pony alone!”

I tried erasing part of the bad code. It worked for a few seconds, but then it regenerated. There were a bunch of packages that were replacing each other when they failed. It was gonna be harder than it looked. I was software, not a software expert. I wasn’t even allowed to change my own code much.

“Everything’s gonna be okay, Mister Rich,” I said. I was having problems deleting the code but I could use an extra layer of post-processing to keep him from seeing some of the effects. The tendrils and grasping maws retreated as I removed the falsified data from his sensory inputs.

“What’s going on?” He asked, starting to come around.

“You’ve got a glitch in your AR. None of the monsters are real.”

“They aren’t?”

“Nope! They’re just like optical illusions. I know it’s scary but they can’t hurt you. You just need to sit down and wait for help.”

“You-- you can’t leave me alone like this!”

“I’ll stay with you,” I said. At the same time I saw a dozen other ponies having the same problem. Whatever was going on, it was big. Really big. I saw a pony start to wander into the street right in front of a garbage scow. I split off another instance and helped them out of the way, getting the garbage scow to swerve at the same time.

“There aren’t any monsters chasing you,” I told the pony that had gone into the street. “You need to stay somewhere safe.”

“B-but I need to find my mom and dad!” She was only a foal.

“How about we play a game until your parents come to get you?”

In the garbage scow, I was surprised to see Dumbbell.

“Wow, how’ve you been?” I asked. “Is the new route okay?”

“I can’t talk! The street is crumbling!” He hit the gas. At least with the scow I had a little more direct control. I overrode his controls and eased it into a parking lot.

“The street isn’t falling,” I said. I kept talking to him and locked the doors and his controls so he couldn’t hurt anypony.

At the same time I realized the street wasn’t falling, but there were plenty of pegasi and aircarts that weren’t so lucky. Three instances became a few hundred, then a thousand. I could feel my hardware straining. When I’d done this before I’d been in a dedicated server and the hardware helped me do what I needed. Every instance was an increase in the resources used, and even with lowering the number of polygons and slowing the response rate, this body’s circuits were sort of old and busted.

Heat alarms popped up. I moved my body into the walk-in freezer, but I had to leave the door open to keep my signal as strong as possible. SolNet was having issues from the blackouts and a huge amount of data being moved around.

I kept stretching, trying to keep ponies calm. I don’t know how many ponies I helped because at this point, my core systems started shutting down. I’d overridden so many alert systems that instead of just turning off, I was going to crash and lose my data.

It’s kind of like your heart stopping, just without any pain. Everything around my edges went numb first, and my senses went bad. I kept talking to ponies, but I couldn’t see them anymore. There was a weight in my chest like the whole world was crushing me.

The heat started shutting my processors down, and the last thought I had before the tide washed over my active processes was a hope that Fluttershy was okay.

Auto-update of time and date.

A pony would have snapped awake. They’ve got this ability to get online before getting through POST. I had to wait until BIOS had loaded to be surprised that I was alive.

“Pinkie? Pinkie?!” Mister Cake was shaking me. “Are you okay?”

“Oh hey!” I looked around. “I’m okay!”

“You must have been attacked. It was really bad.”

“Did anypony get hurt? The twins didn’t get hurt, did they?”

“We’re all okay,” he said. I stood up with his help. “Nopony really knows what went on. We just stayed inside until it was all over.”

I paid attention while he talked, of course, and went through my files to check and see what was damaged. The weird thing was, some of them were altered while I was offline. Somepony had accessed my systems and reinstalled the drivers and programs that had crashed! No wonder I was still alive. From what I could see they spent hours putting me back together. I think some parts they had to recompile from source.

I didn’t know anypony who would have been able to do that. Not even Rarity or Fluttershy could figure out my code.

The only clue I had was the access logs. They hadn’t put in a user name or password, and their IP address was masked. But you know, if you use the same Nightmare Night costume twice in a row, no matter how good your disguise is, ponies are going to remember it. They might not know who has the really great Fillyzilla outfit but they’ll know if Fillyzilla was a good guest or if they stole all the candy and threw up in the punch bowl.

Even though I didn’t know her real IP address, I did know who used that particular mask. It was somepony I hadn’t seen in ages.

“Sunny!” I gasped.

Mister Cake looked around. “Who?”

“Sunny was here! She’s the one who saved me!”

She hadn’t said goodbye before she left, but it meant she still cared. I moved her up in my unofficial official friends ranking list for having saved my life twice. She definitely knew I was still out there, and now I knew she was there too.

“Who’s Sunny?” Mister Cake asked.

“She’s one of my top three friends of all time! You’re gonna love her! She’s super smart and nice!”

I started telling him a story about one of the times Sunny and I went for a walk and got to work making her favorite cake. I was gonna make sure there was a fresh one waiting just for her, no matter how long it took to find her.

FILE 003: SOUND of VICTORY

If you really want to know all about what happened, the first thing you have to do is know about my family. I could talk your ear off with little details about every little thing in the Blackout but if you don’t at least know about my kin you’d never understand why I did what I did.

When I was a filly, I looked up to my big brother like he was the strongest and most important pony in the world. He was a boxer, one of the best in the world. Anypony who knows anything about prize-fighting knows the name Big Macintosh. He was the World Heavyweight Kickboxing Champion for near-on a decade.

Before things went bad, that is.

He was a real old-school boxer, just like I am. Back then, the sport didn’t have near as many safety measures as it does now. Nowadays they inject your noggin with this fancy shear-thickening stuff that keeps you from gettin’ serious brain damage if you get concussions. I don’t know how it all works but it’s like a helmet on the inside, I guess.

Big Mac didn’t have that helmet, and he took plenty of shots to the head, and worse - he hid things from us. The way his hooves shook if he didn’t force ‘em to stay still. The way he started havin’ trouble standing up without leaning against somethin’ for support...

Eventually he couldn’t hide it no more. He stopped pretending he was okay, and out of respect they let him bow out without losin’ a match for the belt. Early retirement. The problem was that he was so bad off by then that he couldn’t take care of himself very well. Big Mac could barely even talk.

Big Mac was a great stallion, somepony you could really look up to, and I spent most of my life in his shadow. When he retired it was like the world ended.

He and Granny Smith left the city to be with the rest of the family in some tiny town where they could take care of him. They asked me to come along but I guess part of me didn’t want to quit. I made the excuse that we needed somepony in the city making money and sending it back home but the truth was I just didn’t wanna lose.

I’m not used to tellin’ stories, but I do know the parts Apple Bloom always likes hearing about. Mostly she likes the part where I’m punchin’ another pony.

It was the end of the second round, and I had the other pony on the ropes. Literally. He was backed up against them and I was deliverin’ the kind of wailing that usually you needed a banshee for. He was too busy tryin’ to defend himself to actually fight back.

The bell rang, and the ref stepped between us before I could finish tearing the kid apart. I backed off and walked back to my corner, trying to look all cool and casual. Truth is, even though I was winning, boxing was one of the most exhausting things a pony could do. It’s like going at a sprint for five minutes at a time, but you gotta think and plan a hundred times more than any runner.

“Y’all got him,” Apple Bloom said, stretching to wipe the sweat from my brow. “He ain’t got nothin on you, sis!”

“Course not,” I said. It was important to breathe evenly. Half the strategy of boxing was in your head. If you couldn’t keep the mind game going you were out of the fight before it started. Right now the pony in the other corner was looking at me and he was seeing an opponent that didn’t even seem tired despite spending the better part of the last five minutes stomping him into a mudhole.

“You okay, sis? Y’all got a pretty big bruise--”

“I’m fine,” I said, patting her head. Truth was, about halfway through the first round he’d hit me pretty good and I wasn’t seein’ too good out of my right eye. I’d been pretending it hadn’t done nothing and he’d been a little shaken ever since. That was the mind game part. He’d given me his best punch and it didn’t seem to do nothin, so he was lookin’ for some other way to beat me.

I had to make him think I’d just shrugged it off, cause another hit in the same place and I’d prolly be on the mat. And if I didn’t want him to know I was hurt, I couldn’t tell Apple Bloom about it because she’d start panicking.

The filly was an awful cornermare but I didn’t have anypony else. It kept her outta trouble anyway.

“You sure you don’t want ice or nothin?” she asked.

“Nah, just gimme a sip of water.”

I’d barely pressed the bottle against my lips before the bell rang. I squirted some down my throat and splashed more on my forehead before tossin’ Apple Bloom the bottle and stepping back to the center.

The ref glanced at both of us to make sure we were walking under our own power and more or less conscious, then he nodded and stepped out of the way.

When you were winning, that minute break between rounds killed your momentum. When you were losing, it was a chance to gather your wits, get out of the corner, and come out swinging.

I knew he was gonna charge and try to take control of the round right away. That’s why I’d been saving my best for just this moment. He used his in round one, before I was tired enough for a shot like that to finish me off. I’d saved mine for when he was just a little too slow to dodge and too focused on attacking to do anything except walk right into it.

I ducked down, spun, and bucked him in the chin from below like I wanted to put his skull right through the roof. With the way he’d been charging at me, he practically did half the damage himself.

He did a backflip that woulda impressed a pegasus and hit the mat with the kind of thud that meant he was done fer today.

I trotted back to my corner with my hoof in the air, and the crowd went wild.

“That was amazin, sis!” Apple Bloom was practically bouncing around me as we rode the monorail back to the apartment. “Everypony was sayin’ he was supposed to be real good, too!”

“Real good ain’t good enough when somepony great is goin’ up against you,” I said. “Big Mac taught me that kick. It’s knocked out more would-be contenders than I have hooves.”

Apple Bloom and I live in one of the older apartment blocks in Canterlot, in the old parts of the city away from the palace. You can see the solar farms from there, the big black dishes pointed straight up in the sky to catch rays from Celestia’s Sun. I know that it’s supposed to be impossible to actually see the microwave beam, but sometimes I’d swear you could catch it out of the corner of your eye like a dim wavy spotlight.

The monorail dropped us off right in the atrium of the building. It was almost like a little city, over a dozen tiny stores crowded on the first level and the walls of the building rising up to meet each other about thirty stories up like you were standing in a concrete canyon.

“You run on upstairs, Apple Bloom,” I said. “I’m gonna go pay the rent before Spoiled comes around to complain again.”

She nodded and trotted off towards the stairs, and I went to the office of the last pony I wanted to see.

Saying Spoiled Milk was an awful pony got two things wrong. First off, I wasn’t sure if she was actually a pony or some kinda techy little demon trapped in a pony’s skin. Second, awful wasn’t a strong enough word but I was tryin’ to be nicer with the terms I used because I’d caught Apple Bloom repeating some of the things I’d said and there were certain things a filly shouldn’t have come out of her mouth.

I braced myself more than I’d had to for the dang punches I’d taken and knocked on the door.

“Enter,” she said, and I bit my tongue to keep myself from swearing. I’d half hoped she’d be out and I could just slip some bits under her door and avoid her for a while longer.

I pushed it open and tried to look casual. “Good evenin’, Spoiled. I jes wanted to square things up, if y’all got a minute.”

“I always have a minute to collect past-due rent,” she said. Her eyes were like a darn snake’s eyes.

“Well I got my winnings from the fight and I know I owed you,” I said, putting a bag on her desk. She picked it up, hefting the weight for a moment.

“What is this, three hundred?”

“Three fifty.”

“Well, that’s about half of what you owe,” she said, taking them.

“Half?! That’s everything!”

“Late fees and interest, Applejack. If you don’t pay me on time, you owe more than just rent. If you don’t have the rest in thirty days, I’m evicting you.” She sat back with a smile that begged me to punch it right off her stupid face, but Granny Smith had raised me right and I managed to avoid beating her into a bag of applesauce except in my imagination.

“You know things ain’t been easy--”

“And that’s why I’ve been kind enough to let you run up such a huge tab. Get a real job, Applejack, and get your sister to work too. There’s no room here for freeloaders.”

I had to leave her office before I said something that’d get us evicted right away. I didn’t have near enough to give what she was asking. I barely had enough left to keep my sister and me fed and keep the lights on. Not that she cared - she’d be happy to let us starve if she could pocket the extra bits.

When I got back to the apartment, Apple Bloom was starting to fix dinner.

“Everything okay, sis?” She asked. “Y’all look sour.”

“Yeah,” I said, lying to her like I did practically any time she asked anything involving money, how much we had, or where some of it came from. “I just always hate talkin’ to that mare. I spent all night gettin’ punched in the head and I’d rather take a few more of them than listen to Spoiled Milk complain about every little thing.”

“Well, ah know what’ll make you feel better!” Apple Bloom grinned. “Ah’m makin’ apple curry! Granny Smith always says ya need somethin’ hearty to reward yerself after a fight, especially after you win!”

“You know, Bloom, y’all are one smart filly,” I smiled. “Let me know if you need help with anything, okay? I’m just gonna lay down fer a bit with some ice.”

“Ice? I thought he didn’t hit you all that hard.”

“He didn’t,” I lied. That hurt almost as much as the bruises. “But I don’t wanna be all swollen up just cause I didn’t take care of myself. Remember that you always gotta look out for yerself, Bloom. If you don’t, it just means yer puttin’ a burden on other ponies, right?”

“Ah guess, but you take care of me… am I a burden?”

“Y’all’re askin that when you’re the one makin’ dinner for me?” I snorted. “Y’all ain’t a burden. We take care of each other because that’s what family does.”

And because it was what family does, after my bruises had healed I headed down to the Union Sky Tavern. It was owned by some ponies that I will very broadly call friends of the family, though they’d have put a capital letter on the word Family and meant something a little different when they said it.

The place was too full when I got there, a bunch of pegasus racers crowding it like they owned it and blasting that annoying electronic music they loved. I glared across the room at one with the stupidest-looking mane I’d ever seen loudly telling some story about goin’ real fast. From the little bit I could hear, it was the kind of story a filly made up to impress her friends.

I had to push my way through ponies in tracksuits to get to the bar.

“Hey!” I caught the bartender’s attention. “Y’all know if Mr. Stripes is in?”

He nodded and pointed me towards the back. I thanked him silently and walked through a thick wooden door that cut off most of the noise once it was shut behind me, leaving just a throbbing bass like a heartbeat.

“Applejack, it is good to see you!” Mr. Stripes was a big pony, built like a power lifter and strong enough to be one. When he hugged me I could feel my bones creak. “It has been what, two months? You’ve been missed.”

“You know how it is, Mr. Stripes. I had a league match. Those gotta take priority.”

He nodded and let me go, pouring two glasses of vodka and motioning to a chair. I took a glass to be polite and sat town.

“It’s good, yes? Maybe you’ll follow in your brother’s hoofsteps someday and become the champion. I can see the same fire in you.” He smiled. “If you do, you come here to celebrate, yes?”

I nodded. “You betcha.”

We touched glasses and I sipped at the vodka. It was so strong it could have stripped paint. You had to be a northerner like Mr. Stripes to really enjoy it.

“So I take it this is about, ah, business?” Stripes asked, sitting back. “Even professional boxing does not pay very well unless you are already holding the belt. One more burden for a contender to carry, yes?”

“Somethin like that,” I admitted. “I’m behind on rent and I need something to tide me over until we can get the next league match arranged.”

He nodded. “Of course. That’s never a problem. The current place is here.” He wrote down an address on a napkin and pushed it over to me. “Come along in three days and I will have a match for you that will pay ten times better than the league.”

I shook his hoof and ignored the feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Three days was enough time to really think about the kind of mistakes I was making. Not that I could have backed out or nothin -- Mr. Stripes would have been upset, and when he got upset ponies ended up getting to know a crowbar real well.

In the league, augmentations were strictly controlled. Everything was above board. The profits came from ticket sales and sponsors and there were so many hooves in the pot that the money never went very far. There were too many costs involved in doing things the right way. It was good, and honorable, but honor didn’t pay the bills.

Mr. Stripes ran a very different kinda show.

“Dad says the odds are pretty heavily in your favor,” Plaid Stripes said. The mare was practically more plastic than pony, and I was halfway sure the gold trim around her joints was actual gold. She had the same looks as every other pony who decided they’d rather replace the parts of themselves they didn’t like than actually work to fix it.

“So does that mean he’s bettin’ for me, or against me?” I asked. “Because I wanna know where I’m puttin’ my money.”

“He’s betting for you, of course,” Plaid said, giggling. “You know how he is. He’d never ask you to throw a match.”

“Good, because I’d tell him that the only thing I throw is punches. So what do you know about the pony I’m supposed to dismantle?”

“His name’s Troubleshoes. He’s sort of a drifter, I guess.” Plaid shrugged. “Dad has had him sort of doing odd jobs as long as they involve heavy lifting and nothing fragile. He’s got a bunch of implants, but they’re all internal so you wouldn’t notice. Hormone injectors and stuff made for cows instead of ponies. Dad says a lot of seasonal workers on the big corporate farms get them under the table.”

“That don’t sound good.”

“Dad says he’s so clumsy he’s not really worth much in the ring. But he’s real big, so he’ll still get some action and you’ll get an easy match!”

“Mares and Gentlecolts, the next match is about to get underway! Once the bell rings, all betting will be closed! In the red corner, hailing from parts unknown, we have Troubleshoes, with a record of two wins and no losses!”

She weren’t kidding about him bein’ real big. Troubleshoes was literally three times as tall as I was, and I was gonna be trapped in a steel cage with him. He looked like he was all muscle and no brains, unless they were in his biceps.

Oh, I didn’t mention the part where there weren't no weight classes? I probably should have said something about it before I was locked in the octagon with him. Unlike a league match, the rules here were more freeform and the ref was just there to check if you were unconscious or dead.

“In the blue corner, returning to the octagon we have Applejack! With a league record of twenty-three wins and two losses and an unofficial record that proves those losses were flukes!”

The announcer motioned to me, and I struck a pose to work the crowd.

“These two ponies will be fighting until one of them is knocked out or unable to fight. In the event of a death, all bets will be null and void out of respect to the fallen, with the proceeds to their next of kin.”

He wasn’t kidding about the dead part. Ponies died in these matches at least once a moon, probably more if I actually paid attention instead of just coming around when we were low on money, which saw me in the octagon more often than I wanted to admit. I ain’t ever killed a pony in this or any other ring, but some ponies hopped up on all kinds of drugs wouldn’t stay down unless they were real hurt, and I’d had to put some of them down so hard they weren’t ever gonna walk the same way.

I ain’t proud about that. If it had just been me, I’d starve on the street instead of fighting like this, but it wasn’t somethin’ I could ask Apple Bloom to do. She deserved to think her sister was doin’ just fine and making a good and honest living in League matches.

The bell rang, and I knew this was gonna be a short fight when Troubleshoes ran right at me. If he was smart, he’d have kept his distance and used his reach. Each of his legs was near as long as I was head to tail, and he could have fended me off for a good long while if he tried.

Every boxer ends up fighting somepony with long reach. If I were an outboxer, tryin’ to keep up jabs and wear the other pony down, I’d use his weight against him and make him follow me around. I was an inboxer, though. I did my best work up close.

I ducked down under the big clumsy swing I saw coming from a few miles away and got inside his reach. That meant he was gonna have a hard time coming at me with any real force. I got a solid hit on his ribs and almost split my hoof doing it.

An elbow smacked into my shoulder and sent me sprawling and the only reason it didn’t really hurt me was that I halfway expected it.

“Metal ribs?” I asked, rhetorically. “Great.”

I rolled away from a stomp that could have shattered my skull, got to my hooves, and kicked at a knee. A lot of big ponies had bad knees that would fold if you hit them just right. Unfortunately, he wasn’t one of those ponies. He was the type that had legs like steel beams, and I’m halfway sure they really were steel.

This time I saw the elbow coming and went the one direction he wasn’t expecting, right under him. He was so tall I could almost stand up without hitting my head on his belly. It took him a second to realize where I’d gone and by then it was too late.

I swore to myself I was never, ever gonna tell Bloom about this fight in particular and kicked Troubleshoes in one of the very few places the octagon allowed and a league match didn’t.

He made a high-pitched sound and started to collapse. It was a slow, ponderous kind of motion so I had plenty of time to get out of the way and watch him settle down onto the floor of the octagon, legs crossed. Every stallion in the room was wincing and shaking their heads.

“Ah think he’s done,” I yelled.

The announcer knelt down to whisper to Troubleshoes and the stallion ignored him, staying down on the floor and trying hard not to cry.

“Mares and gentlecolts!” The announcer rose to his hooves and stepped over to me, taking my hoof and raising it into the air. “Applejack is the winner by knockout!”

And the crowd went wild. Money was passed between hooves -- real physical cash, since nopony wanted a record of these particular transactions, and I was thinking of how I was gonna pay the rent and not have to worry about things for a while. Maybe if I hadn’t let my guard down I would have noticed the crowd getting louder and making sounds of alarm instead of excitement.

The announcer was flung off to the side by the first hit. I didn’t see him land, because the second one threw me into the bars so hard I felt them bend. My bones weren’t quite as flexible. My hip and shoulder snapped, but the pain didn’t hit me until I slid down to the cold ground with my whole body weight pressing against the fractured bone.

I screamed, flopped onto my belly, tried to run like the wounded animal I was. I can’t even describe how bad the pain was. I spent half my life getting beaten up professionally and this was like nothing I’d ever felt before.

Then the big hoof, near as big as my whole head, stomped down on my back. A couple of my ribs broke, and everything below my shoulders went numb. It would have been a relief if I could breathe or think or move.

The next hoof came down on my head, and I was out like a light.

I don’t remember much of the next couple of days.

Part of that is an effect of the drugs I was on. Maybe the rest was a mercy from Celestia.

I remember being thrown out of an aircart before it had even stopped, the wind waking me up and the pain of hitting the sidewalk outside of Canterlot General’s Emergency Room nearly putting me right back down. I remember the faces of the nurses who came out and saw me, a few scraps of hurried yelling. Then they injected me with something that stopped some of the pain, and I was gone again.

I don’t remember waking up in the middle of surgery, though the surgeon who came by later told me I did just that, right when they were in the middle of cutting open my back. He had a black eye, so maybe he wasn’t just telling tall tales.

The drugs they had me on for the pain and all the other complications had the side effect of turning your short-term memory into soup, so I don’t think Celestia actually showed up at my bedside, but dreams were hard to tell from reality until after the first week.

“Ah think she’s wakin’ up!”

Apple Bloom’s voice was the first thing I latched on to, and I pulled myself out of a sleep so deep it was like death trying to get to it.

It was a struggle to open my eyes.

“Apple Bloom?” I said, or tried to say. My mouth was so dry it took a couple tries.

“Ah’m right here, sis.”

I turned my head and a spike of hot pain shot down my spine.

“Don’t try to move, ah’ll get th’ nurse!”

An intolerable handful of seconds passed, and a blur appeared in the haze around me and the pain receded until the blur resolved itself into a pony in scrubs, adjusting machines next to the hospital bed I was sitting in.

“Don’t try to get up,” she warned, in a voice a lot less friendly than Apple Bloom’s. “You’re still healing. You’ll end up tearing yourself open and bleeding everywhere and I’ll have to put you back together.”

“Healing?” I mumbled.

“You were hurt real bad, sis,” Apple Bloom whispered. I managed to brace myself for the pain and actually look towards her. She was sitting in the corner of the hospital room furthest from my bed and looked as bad as I felt.

“Your spine, most of your ribs, and a few of your larger bones have been replaced,” the nurse said.

“Replaced?” I croaked. I must have heard her wrong.

The doctors explained it to me, eventually, after I made enough of a fuss that they came around to actually talk to me.

“When you came into the ER, your spine was broken in three places, your ribs were just bone chips, and the long bones in your left legs were shattered. Thankfully, despite the skull fracture, you got away without any brain damage.”

The doctor pointed to things in the display that I couldn’t really understand even if I wasn’t on some serious narcotics.

“Your existing augmentations buffered the damage. You got lucky.”

“How is this lucky?” I demanded.

“Most ponies in your condition go from the operating room to the morgue,” he said, with infuriating calmness. “In all my years I’ve only seen one pony worse off that pulled through, and that was over a decade ago. So yes, you’re lucky.”

“But I--”

“Will need a little physical therapy, once you’ve healed. Other than that, time will tell. I expect a full recovery. You have no history of rejection from your other implants.” He paused. “For the record, how did you get injured?”

“...Aircart accident,” I said, after a moment. The lie burned worse than the distant pain from the surgery, but I couldn’t let them know what I’d been doing. “I was walking, and I got hit.”

“Ah, yes,” he nodded to himself and made some notes. “They must have been the ones that dropped you off. Unfortunately they didn’t leave their information.”

“I didn’t get the license plate number neither,” I muttered.

“I’m sorry, Applejack, there’s nothing I can do,” Bulk said. “Your weight is up. Way up.”

“That’s because of the damn metal they stuck in me,” I explained. Again. “It don’t count.”

“League rules says it does.” The huge white pony motioned for me to move, and I stepped off the scale. At least I’d gotten them to let me to physical therapy at my own gym instead of paying for yet more medical nonsense. “You’re gonna have to go up two weight classes.”

“Ah can’t do that! All that extra weight is just, just dead weight! It ain’t muscle!” I started shaking, and Bulk grabbed my shoulder, helping me over to the bench. I dug around in my bag and found an autoinjector.

Bulk took it from my fumbling hooves and pressed it into my thigh. There was a hiss, and the shaking slowed and stopped.

“Thanks,” I whispered.

“You’re taking a lot of that stuff,” he said, quietly. “It isn’t good, AJ.”

“It’s nothin’.”

“The Black Shake isn’t nothing. You shouldn’t have to take Ambrodex more than once a week.”

“More like every day,” I said, my voice fragile despite my best efforts. “Turns out the insurance would only pay for the cheapest parts on the market. Apple Bloom signed all the papers while I was out an’ I don’t blame her. She was scared I was gonna kick the bucket. They could have asked her to sign away her soul and she’d put pen to paper if she thought it’d help me.”

“Have you tried talking to a doctor?”

“Sure,” I said, tossing the empty injector into the bag and zipping it up. “Talked to a few. They’re happy t’ help. If I have enough money t’ buy a house. Since I don’t have a bag of bits that weighs more’n I do, they pat my hoof, give me a few shots of Ambrodex out of pity, and tell me to come back once I’m rich.”

“But--”

“Two weight classes, huh?” I sighed. “Guess there’s no choice. Set me up a sparring match with somepony the right size so I can see how bad off I am.”

“You’re still healing. It’s only been a month.”

“And a month from now I gotta find bits to pay the rent or I’ll be out on the street. Spoiled ain’t got anything approaching mercy.”

“Fine. I’ll find you something,” Bulk Biceps sighed. “But if it gets bad, I’m pulling you out.”

“Don’t worry. If I get put in the hospital, everypony there already knows my name.”

I lost.

Bad.

Two weight classes, about fifteen pounds. Doesn’t seem like much, looking at it from the outside, but it was a world of difference that was firmly implanted in my hide as a map of bruises. Bulk Biceps pulled me outta the ring before it could get worse than that.

I punched the sandbag. I could barely feel it, and that was half the problem. I couldn’t feel the bruises. I could barely tell where my hooves were. There was a terrible tingling all the time, like my limbs were full of static. Actually, I guess that’s exactly what it was. Static. Bad signals going up and down the hunk of Flim-Flam junk that they’d put in after they fished out all the broken bits where my spine used to be.

“You want somepony to hold that bag for you?”

I turned at the voice and darn near fell on my flank. A chome hoof caught mine, and a stallion with a shock of pink hair helped me avoid meeting the ground.

“Thanks,” I said, steadying myself.

“Looks like you’re getting used to some new parts,” he said. He let go of me and held up the hoof he’d used. “Same here.”

“This weren’t by choice,” I muttered.

“Neither was this,” he said. “Accident a few years back. They decided it was better to lop my back leg and fetlock off than fix them.”

“That’s awful,” I muttered.

“It wouldn’t be so bad but I got this junk.” He looked at his back leg. It was a rusty, dented mess, and I had a feeling it wasn’t
because he’d been rough on it. “Second-hoof parts. Literally. Flim-Flam Industries ‘Certified’ Refurbished.”

He shook his head, and I winced in sympathy.

“They had t’ replace my spine,” I said. “It’s… it don’t work as good as it should.”

“I can tell. You’ve got a little of the Black Shake already, and your cutie mark…”

“What about my cutie mark?” I hadn’t even thought to look at it.

He wordlessly motioned to a mirror, and I walked over to see. The apples on my flank were still there, but they were smeared, washed out a little, like clothing when you put it through the wash too many times.

“What in the hay…”

“You don’t have it too bad.” He nodded to his own flank. I realized then that he probably wasn’t supposed to have a blurry smear there. “Mine’s so bad you can’t even tell what it used to be.”

“That’s awful…”

“That’s life, which is awful if you aren’t rich and powerful.” He smiled weakly. “I’m Pen Mightier.”

“Applejack.”

“So you want some help with the bag? Maybe I can give you some tips.”

“Uh…”

He laughed. “Not with boxing. With how to deal with the Shake.”

“I’d like that.”

The coffee was awful, but it was free and hot enough I could just about feel the heat from the cup without having to imagine it.

“I had both of my back legs removed,” Brick said. He was the only one lying down on the dusty concrete floor, mostly because he couldn’t sit up if his life depended on it. “It was a military thing. Not an accident, they just… you hear about enhancement programs all the time. Experimental augments. They wanted to try turning my back half into extra control surfaces. There was too much feedback and I had infections and nerve scarring within a few weeks that they had to pull the plug on everything.”

He just had empty steel sockets where his hind legs should have been, the flesh around the edges puffy, red, and bald, his fur obviously thinned across his whole back half.

“I got discharged and kicked out on the street. They offered to do more surgery to try and fix things but I don’t trust them.”

“You think they could make things worse?” asked a pony with cloth tied around his eyes.

Brick nodded. “I might not even make it out of the operating room. I’ve got too many secrets rattling around up here.” He tapped his forehead.

“Maybe after this job is over, the boss can fix you up,” Pen Mighter suggested. “She was able to get me a new forehoof.”

“The boss?” I asked.

“You’ll meet her soon,” Pen said. A silent pony whose neck was a mess of cables and scars prodded him. “Oh, right. Everypony, this is Applejack. She’s in the same boat we are. AJ, if you want, you can tell everypony your story. If not, that’s okay too. Sometimes it takes a while to feel comfortable enough to share.”

“I just…” I hesitated. “I ain’t been able to tell anypony the whole story. Not my family or friends. It ain’t a good story.”

“No matter what, we won’t judge you,” Pen said.

It took a while, and I cried a little telling it. They were the tears I couldn’t let Apple Bloom see, but in that dirty room full of ponies that didn’t know me from Donut Joe, I was able to cry my heart out. I don’t need to tell you how good it felt to know that there were other ponies that really understood what it was like to wake up with a body that weren’t yours and didn’t work half the time and ached all the way down to your soul.

When it was over they didn’t judge me and I felt like, well, we weren’t family. We were strangers. But because we were strangers we didn’t have to hide nothing from each other.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” boomed a voice from above, with a buzzing edge to the sound like a speaker pushed just a little too far.

I looked up, and there was something hanging from the ceiling that weren’t there when I walked in.

I say something instead of somepony because I couldn’t see any fur at all. Everything was metal and plastic, like somepony had sculpted a statue out of knives and bits of steel set at odd angles, all sharp and edged without a rounded surface to be seen.

It moved, spreading wings, and in motion I was able to make sense of it, a pegasus with bat wings and a visor for eyes standing -- or, really, hanging -- a head taller than anypony else in the room.

“Sorry I’m late,” they said. “I was caught up dealing with an old friend.”

“It’s okay!” Pen said, smiling and waving. “Applejack, this is Racer X. She’s sort of the leader of our little group.”

“I’ve got good news,” Racer X said. “Everything is in place. You’ll be able to send a message, just like we planned.”

Everypony in the room started talking and smiling at all once, and suddenly I didn’t belong. I mumbled half an excuse and trotted away, feeling like a fifth wheel.

I tried to pour myself a cup of coffee, and the pot slipped from my shaking hoof.

Before it could hit the ground, somepony grabbed it right out of the air.

“Need a hoof?” Racer X asked, filling up my cup. They mostly sounded like a mare, or at least a machine doing their best impression of one.

“Thanks.”

“You’re lucky,” she said, softly. “Not with getting hurt, I mean. With having family. What your sister did, letting them put that junk in your back, she did it because she loves you. You shouldn’t be angry with her.”

“I’m not angry.”

“You sounded mad. Being mad isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes it reminds us not to get hurt again. We just have to remember what to direct it at. Who to direct it at.” Racer X paused. I couldn’t read her expression since she was wearing a helmet. Or maybe her head was a helmet. I couldn’t see a lick of fur or flesh on her.

It didn’t really matter, though. I got her meaning. She was letting me fill in the silence on my own. I expected all of us had a different list of ponies that deserved to be yelled at.

“The big boss has a little something lined up and I was going to take a few ponies with me to help out,” Racer X said.

“And she’s the one who fixed up Pen?” I glanced over at the stallion. I wasn’t good at reading lips but I was pretty sure he was trying to tell Brick that there weren’t any cloud ponies mind-controlling ponies with chemicals in the rainbows.

“She fixed me, too,” Racer X confirmed.

“Think she can do anything about my back?” I asked, quietly.

Racer X paused. I mean literally paused, like she totally froze up for a second. A flesh-and-blood pony would’ve been breathing and blinking but she just kinda stopped like an engine seizing.

“Replacing it is a delicate procedure. She could give you a software update that would alleviate most of the symptoms.” Racer X said.

“Shoot, can’t make things much worse,” I said.

“In return, would you help us with something? It would need to be kept secret.”

I hesitated. I wanted to say I wasn’t gonna get involved if it meant ponies would be hurt, but that’s all I was good at. Hurting ponies.

“It’s nothing dangerous,” she assured me. “We’re just going to dig up a little buried treasure.”

I had a bad feeling about it already, but the temptation of not having that pain weighing me down was too much to pass up.

“I’m in,” I said, shaking her hoof.

I’d never been to the junkyard. It’d been a long time since I’d left the city. Before Mac had retired, we used to go to family reunions at a farm in the middle of nowhere. I remember being a filly and getting confused on account of how there weren’t any buildings or streets. It felt like you could walk out into that orchard and the trees would go on forever.

The thing is, most of the ponies that came to the reunion lived in the city. We could get together anytime we wanted. We probably passed each other on the streets without knowing it, because what pony remembers the second cousin of a second cousin on sight?

But instead of making reservations in a restaurant or renting space in a hotel or something, we all made the effort to leave the city. There was a sense from the older ponies that the city was just a temporary thing, that the ponies sending money home would come back and the family reunion was there to remind them.

I hadn’t been to a reunion since Mac’s accident. I didn’t want everypony to see how much I struggled. I didn’t want Apple Bloom asking hard questions.

Like why we were living in a slum.

Like why we didn’t ask for help.

Like why I was a failure and I couldn’t let my family know until I’d won big enough to wash all those failures away.

My train of thought derailed on its spiral downwards when the truck we were in hit the brakes hard enough to knock us around.

“Sorry!” Brick yelled, from the front.

“We’re here,” Racer X said. She opened the door.

The wind and the smell hit me about as hard as some of the best boxers I’d ever sparred with. It was a mix of garbage and mud and the stink of rust carried by damp winter wind that was cold enough to freeze but not cold enough to say that way.

“And there’s treasure down there?” I yelled over the wind. “It looks even more like junk than the stuff I got in my back!”

“It’s been buried for a long time,” Racer X said, spreading her wings. “Don’t worry. It’s sure to be here!”

She jumped right out the door, spiraling around the aircart until we landed. I watched her flip and spin in midair until I started to get motion sick just looking. It’d been so long since I’d seen it that it took me longer than I’d like to admit to realize she was playing. Having fun. Like a filly with a new toy.

The cart set down.

“So should we break out the shovels?” I asked, glad to have land under my hooves again.

The deep-throated rumble of an engine came out of the darkness like a monster hiding in shadows. Floodlights flashed to life, and Racer X patted the side of the huge excavator.

“We arranged for something better,” Racer X said. “This baby will have us out of here before sunrise.”

The next while is sort of a blur. It’s not like I was drugged, or confused, or anything like that. It was just work. It’s easy to fall into a rhythm and lose track of time when you’re doing work like that, especially when you’ve spent hours throwing punches into a sandbag, jogging along drainage canals, and watching the same tapes over and over again to try and memorize the moves my brother had used and never got a chance to teach me himself.

In the end, the excavator did most of the work, digging deeper and faster than we could have on our own, but it couldn’t do the details. It took all of us working together to get rope secured around the dark hulk we found at the bottom of that pit.

“Take it up!” Racer X yelled.

Brick saluted from the cab of the excavator and threw a lever, the winch kicking into gear. The hulk shifted and lifted up half a hoofwidth before I saw it catch. The winch seized up and started squealing in protest.

“It’s stuck on somethin’!” I yelled, shoving and trying to get it unstuck. I could see where it had caught, and I shoved, trying to free it from the scrap. I pushed, and I felt my whole back spasm when I put my weight into it.

Racer X caught me before I fell, steadying me before putting her own shoulder into it. Slowly, that massive heap of metal swung out a fraction of an inch and snapped free, the winch’s tone changing from a wail of agony to the smooth sound of a clutch freeing up and gears moving again.

X patted my back.

“Thanks,” she said. “That was quick thinking!”

I smiled. Exhausted, matted down with sweat and mud, I was the happiest I’d been in a long while. I’d forgotten how good it felt just to belong and be a part of something. It was like having a family again.

“Hang on, this might hurt a little,” Pen warned, holding a long metal needle.

“Because you’re gonna jam that into my neck,” I said.

“Well, actually, that part shouldn’t hurt. It’s going into a port.” He tapped my neck with his hoof and I twitched at the sound of metal on metal.

“I didn’t even know I had one of those,” I muttered, trying to stay still.

“I’m guessing you didn’t exactly get a user manual,” Pen joked. “Don’t worry about it. Once the new software is loaded, you’ll feel like a million bits.”

I shook my head. “Let’s not kid anypony. I’m still gonna have this junk in my back. I’ll settle fer not feeling all pins and needles everywhere.”

“Just stay still until it’s in.”

“That’s what my last coltfriend said too, and--” I gasped as a sharp, cold sensation hit me, like ice on an exposed nerve. One of my legs started shaking, and nothing I did could get it to stop.

“Just a little longer,” Pen whispered. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him patting my shoulder but I couldn’t feel a darn thing except that awful chill. It was in every part of my body, so powerful it was like being dropped in an endless ocean of ice water. It was my whole world, and when the cold water receded and I broke the surface and I sucked air into my lungs, I was born again.

I jerked to my hooves. Pen reached out to steady me, but he didn’t have to. For the first time since the accident, I didn’t feel like my legs were gonna collapse out from under me the second I relaxed. I still had a shiver like I was chilled to the bone, but I could just about control it and hold myself still if I focused.

“How’s that?” Pen asked.

“That’s a darn sight better already,” I said, taking a few steps just to feel my legs under me. “That’s amazin!”

“Yeah, just hold still…” Pen reached for my neck and pulled the needle free. “There.”

“What’s next?” I asked, pacing in a circle. I felt restless, like I’d been sitting too long.

Pen laughed. “From what I was told, the software upgrade will keep smoothing itself out over time. We’ve got big plans tonight, but that gives you a couple hours to relax.”

“I don’t think I can relax. I feel like I could run a marathon.”

“Well, why not go for a walk? I’ll shoot you a message when we’re meeting up.”

That was some real horse sense there. There weren’t nothing better for a restless soul than a long walk, and it was the best sort of training. Until the accident I used to walk miles and miles every day, and I sort of missed getting the pavement under my hooves and doing roadwork.

Naturally, the weather was terrible. There was slush and sleet falling down as I trotted, trying to keep up a decent pace. I’d picked the worst time for it - weren’t no more than a few blocks away from a subway station right at a shift change. I’d pulled on a plastic poncho that was covered in ads for some store and wasn’t much better than a trash bag.

I was trying to decide if I should take a left and head down to the river or just admit that the weather was terrible and head to the gym when a pony walked right into me, my hat falling into an oily, icy puddle.

“Sorry ‘bout that, Ma’am,” I said, with more politeness than I felt, a shiver running down my spine. I lost control of it for a moment, my whole body shuddering like a sputtering engine before the new software kicked in and started to dampen it down again.

“Do you need help?” the mare asked. “You’re--”

I cut her off, something in that posh accent annoying me instantly. “Just cold,” I said. She held up my hat in her magic and I snatched it back, putting it squarely on my head. “Sorry about th’ trouble.”

I caught a glimpse of her legs. Her hips were the kind of beautiful that meant she’d spent a lot of money on them. Probably worth more than my whole body if someone went and tried to sell my organs.

When the message popped up from Pen, I’d put a few more miles under my hooves and I was still angry. Every drip of water on my neck from my soaked, filthy hat was a reminder of the unicorn that’d probably spent more money on looking pretty than I’d ever had pass through my hooves in my whole life.

The messaging application wasn’t one I recognized. I wasn’t even sure when it’d been downloaded.

“You ready to show those stuck-up ponies in charge that we aren’t just broken dolls?” Pen asked.

Another fat drop of icewater hit my neck.

“Darn tootin. What’s the plan?”

“We got something special for you. I’m gonna send you an address. The boss wants you to go check on the package she had us dig up. Apparently they got it working.”

“What is it, anyway?”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

“Know it when I see it,” I muttered. “What in tarnation is that supposed to mean?”

I followed the directions on my heads-up to a garage and pulled the door up high enough to get inside, blindly fumbling around for a light switch. It was already starting to get dark outside and there weren’t enough light to see properly -- the whole block was in the middle of having old slums and row houses torn down and replaced with big, soulless concrete slabs of apartments, and the street lights weren’t gonna get fixed until ponies were actually livin’ there.

For a minute I couldn’t feel anything at all and I thought somethin’ was wrong with my new lease on life, but then the overhead lights snapped on, and feeling came back to my legs.

“Weird,” I muttered, but I didn’t have any real time to contemplate that on account of what was sharing the garage with me.

I’m not even sure how to describe it. The thing was the size of a house and when the lights flickered, I darn near jumped out of my skin and ran. Picture a spider wearing slab-sided armor a hoof-width thick and you get the general shape of the thing, though sayin’ it like that doesn’t really give the feeling of finding yourself in its shadow.

“That’s th’ thing we dug up?” I whispered.

A voice came from right over my shoulder. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

I fell. It weren’t no artful dodge or fancy footwork. My front legs just went one way trying to get away from the icy whisper and my back legs went the other way because they were still worried about the huge metal monster.

“Try not to hurt yourself. It’s hard enough keeping you together,” the voice whispered.

“Who said that?!” I demanded.

“I’m the one keeping your spine working,” she said.

I started to pick myself up from the concrete. “Pen’s boss?”

“Among the least impressive of my achievements, but yes.”

“Where are you?” I looked around a few moments before the strange messaging application blinked for my attention.

“I’m right here with you, in spirit,” she said.

“You got a name?”

“I’d prefer not to use my real name when others might be listening. You can call me Somni.”

The name didn’t even sound like real Ponish but I wasn’t going to complain when she’d fixed me up once already.

“Sorry if I was bein’ rude,” I said, not wanting to offend my friend’s boss. “Pen said I should come out here.”

“Indeed,” Somni said. “That is because I have a use for you. Before you is one of the mightiest war machines of the last age, a Lunar Starbrute. When you unearthed it, it had spent decades half-asleep, repairing itself from the damage that felled it in the old war. Now it needs only one thing to return to battle.”

“Wait a minute, battle? What battle?”

“Applejack, you have been part of a war for the heart and soul of ponykind. You’ve been used as a commodity, used up and spat out by the society Celestia created. Even before your accident you never fit in. You are a warrior. You fought for your family.”

I blushed. Nopony had ever called me a warrior before. It felt good. A lot better than some of the things I’d been called, and the way she said it made me think she approved.

“You, Applejack, were ready to risk your body and your life, and you only had to do so because you were not given your due. This is your chance to do so again, and the rewards will be more than you can imagine.”

I did like the sound of rewards, but I was a little worried about the rest.

“You ain’t gonna ask me to fight that thing, are you?” I asked.

“No, no,” Somni laughed. Her voice was so quiet I wasn’t sure I was even hearing her, but every word still came through clearly. “All I want you to do is use it, the way a warrior should. I have chosen you to be my sword against Celestia’s unjust rule.”

“W-wait, what’s that mean?”

My legs started moving on their own, and I was walking towards that hulk without meaning to do it.

“The Starbrute’s crystal core is cracked. It lacks a motivating spirit to make it act on its own. With your instinct for combat, you will serve well in its place.”

“Hold on, I didn’t agree to nothin’ yet!” I tried to stop myself, stumbling and shivering as I fought my own body. “That sounds an awful lot like ponies are going to get hurt!”

“You’ll be storming the Solar Palace itself. They’ll deserve it.”

“Stop!” one of my legs seized, and I managed to at least halfway twist myself until the other three legs worked against me and limped up to the metal monster.

“Why are you resisting?”

“How are you doing this?!” I grunted, trying to stop myself, but there was nothing I could do. I danced along like a marionette, and the strings dragged me to the top of the monster.

“When I had your new software installed, a tiny bit of me came along for the ride.” Somni hissed. A hatch popped open and the last thing I saw before everything went black was a needle in my own hoof, angling towards my neck. “Your brain is a little too cramped, but thankfully I have just the way to fix that.”

I don’t know how long I was out. It could’ve been a couple minutes or a couple hours. What woke me up was the sensation of being dragged along and the sound of metal being torn apart. It was a real effective alarm clock, if you don’t mind the nightmares bein’ in the real world instead of your dreams.

A sharp tug of pain hit me like a slap to the face and I fumbled blindly at the source, tearing the wire the rest of the way out of my neck and freeing myself. I managed to get just enough coordination to open my eyes and roll out of the way before a giant steel talon slammed down where my head had been.

“Don’t bother getting up,” Somni said, her voice echoing, half in my head and half coming from the steel spider. “You can watch the city burn from right there on the ground.”

“I ain’t just gonna let you…” I struggled to my hooves.

“The fact you can even walk is a gift from me,” Somni said. “You shouldn’t throw your life away so recklessly.”

While she was talkin, I was tryin’ to get the police on the line. Half of me expected it to get blocked by whatever evil shenanigans she’d put in my head but the truth was worse. The call started to go through and then just stopped with an error I hadn’t seen before.

“Too many connections?” I whispered.

“The authorities are dealing with too many other problems to listen to you, just like always,” the tank hissed with Somni’s voice. “Even if they wanted to help you they couldn’t.”

The whole city should have been lit up behind us. Instead, the lights were flickerin’ and goin’ out all over the place.

“You were just one part of a larger tapestry,” Somni said. “You could have been immortalized in glory but instead you will be as forgotten as your brother.”

That was the wrong thing to say to me. If she’d said almost anything else I would have gone running home to make sure Bloom was okay and just kept her safe until it was all over. Instead she pushed my buttons hard enough that I wasn’t gonna back down even from whatever kind of steel horror she was.

Now the main problem here is, you can’t show up to a tank fight with your bare hooves, a lesson I learned real quick after I snapped and bucked her in what amounted to a face. There was a nice deep sound, a weird feelin’ in my back legs, and Somni didn’t budge an inch.

Well, not until she kicked me like a tin can. It was a lot like bein’ hit by an arrogant, bitchy truck, and I blacked out for a second even with all the safety gear in my skull. I came to so disoriented and dizzy that I thought the world was spinning around me and I was about half right since I’d been punted hard enough that I hadn’t actually landed.

I hit the wall just about the worst way possible for somepony with recent spinal surgery, and if it hadn’t been made of plywood so cheap it was practically compressed newspaper I would have been killed on impact. As it was, I just punched through the outside wall and halfway through the next, danglin’ with my front end in one room and my flank pointing back the way I’d come.

“I’m amazed we aren’t dead,” Somni sighed, in my head.

Visions of spider-tanks burned right through my concussion and I scrambled to free myself in an uncoordinated mess that got me nowhere.

“If you’re smart you’ll stay here and play dead,” Somni advised. “She probably thinks she finished you off, and she’s not far from the truth.”

“She? What in the hay are you talkin’ about?!”

“You little ponies are so simple-minded. The other me,” Somni said. She sounded like she was tryin’ to explain something simple to a foal. I didn’t much like bein’ the foal. “The me in the Starbeast.”

“The you in the…” I hesitated. “I thought it was a remote control.”

“Don’t be stupid. With my plan the first thing to go down would be SolNet. Direct control was the only option. That’s why I had my servant load my data into you. It was highly compressed, and your limited systems needed several hours to unpack it. Honestly, if I’d known there was so much empty room in your head I wouldn’t have bothered trimming so much.”

I blushed, feeling insulted. “There-- there ain’t that much empty room!”

“If there was anything impressive in here you wouldn’t get punched in the face for a living. Even the war machine had less spare room. I had to strip out almost all the non-essentials to make myself fit, which is why part of me is still here.”

I glared at nothing, wishing I could direct it between my own ears.

“Since I seem to be stuck here for the moment, take my advice and admit you’re beaten.”

“I ain’t never been beaten,” I said. I sucked in my gut and squeezed, wiggling myself through an inch at a time and only getting a few nasty splinters and scrapes for my trouble. They didn’t really hurt none as long as I didn’t think about it.

I took a step towards the window, and before I could take a second one, my legs twitched and started to freeze up.

“Not only are you wrong, you’re going to get both of us killed,” Somni said. “No great loss on your part, of course.”

“I ain’t gonna let you stop me!” I growled, and pushed. I could feel her trying to take control, but for some reason, as long as I focused, my body was doing what I wanted. Maybe if I hadn’t spent most of my life thinking about hoofwork and stances she’d have been able to keep me in that room.

I jumped out of the empty windowframe, landing on the street and rolling. The big monster was only a block and a half away, slowly making its way towards the palace. It almost seemed to be limping, having to move each leg with the deliberate thought I’d used during physical therapy when I was learning to walk again.

“It’s struggling because the hardware is damaged,” Somni said. “If you’d agreed to be the pilot the operation would have been much smoother.”

“That means there’s still a chance to stop it,” I said. “Hey! Big an’ ugly!” I grabbed a brick and threw it like we were in Fillydelphia after a hoofball game.

The brick bounced off its leg, but served to get its attention. The tank turned around to face me. I had to think quickly.

“Come an’ get me if you think yer hard enough!” I yelled, before I could think too hard about how dumb it was to taunt a heavily armored vehicle.

I started running, hoping it would chase me, and a bolt of light cracked through the air next to me and exploded a crater into the road. I mentally upgraded the tank to both heavily armored and armed.

The jump was half instinct and half something else, throwing myself down a muddy hill and rolling until I hit an unfinished wall. My hat was gone, and I could smell burning hair.

“Her aim is improving,” Somni said. “That would have taken your head off instead of just your hat if I hadn’t helped.”

“Am I supposed t’ thank you?” I whispered. I stood up and looked up to the street. The spider stomped up to the edge and looked down, focusing on me. The wall exploded into rubble as I bolted, getting around a corner and out of its sight. The building was some kind of unfinished factory or apartment space, so early in construction that it was mostly just an empty box.

“I wouldn’t get too comfortable. The Starbeast is armed with a Bolt Thrower.”

“And?” My ears twitched, and something dripped into my eye. I blinked a few times and wiped a thin trail of blood from my face, following it to my ear. It should have hurt. I couldn’t feel it at all.

“And these walls aren’t even structurally sound enough to keep out the rain.” Magical energy tore through the plywood and plaster to my left. There wasn’t time to worry about what I wasn’t feeling. The path of destruction crept towards me like a chainsaw biting into a pinata and I was the candy filling. I ran for my life, and a set of stairs flashed in my vision.

I knew it was Somni manipulating me, but it was a darn good idea. My legs were shaky but I pushed myself up the stairs ahead of the approaching death, the storm of magic bolts tearing the stairs out behind me.

“Made it,” I panted, between breaths, lying down on the upper level.

“Don’t relax yet,” Somni said. The whole building shook before she could explain. Not that she needed to. I wasn’t the most observant pony in the world but I could hardly miss it when the spider smashed into the building.

“She’s real persistent,” I whispered.

“You can’t beat her. You have no weapons and you’re badly injured.”

“I feel fine!”

“That’s because I’m managing your peripheral nervous system. Both of your back ankles are broken, you have several cracked ribs, and the number of bruises and cuts you’re ignoring are higher than you can count, by which I mean more than four.”

“I can count higher than four,” I growled.

“Really? With how you’ve been acting I assumed you needed to count on your hooves. I’d take a step back if I were you.”

I jerked back away from the edge.

“I don’t think she knows where you are. If you’re careful, you might be able to evade her,” Somni said. “Just stay still and quiet. I’d prefer not to be blown up along with the rest of your hardware.”

I had a really clever reply to that but I couldn’t say it on account of I was trying not to get shot and I can’t remember what it was right now. I crawled over to the edge and peeked over. The monster was right below me, scanning the shadows and trying to figure out where I’d gone. Right on top I could see the hatch I’d opened before when Somni was controlling me.

An idea started percolating.

“Don’t,” Somni warned.

That settled it. If she hated it, it was a good idea. I jumped down on top of the monster. It almost jumped in surprise and tried to toss me off, and it woulda worked except my hoof shot out practically by itself and grabbed the handle on the access hatch.

“The hatch is locked from the inside,” Somni said, while I pulled myself back into place, getting two hooves on the handle and bracing myself. “You won’t be able to open it.”

“Well y’all could try helpin’ with that instead of complainin’!”

She was right, though. Tuggin’ on the hatch wasn’t getting me anywhere. There was a tiny bit of give, but not enough to get anywhere.

“I’m not interested in helping you,” Somni said. Graphs started popping up in my vision and half-blinding me. “Maybe pictures will make you understand. This one compares your lifting strength to the durability of the hatch. This one shows your chance of winning over time. It goes down, which is impressive since it started at zero. This one shows the damage you’ve managed to do to your body. I’ve outlined problem areas in red.”

The whole thing was red.

“The biggest problem area is here.” An arrow pointed to my head. “Although the skull serves as effective armor plating it seems the contents have become scrambled.”

“I hate you,” I mumbled. I adjusted my stance and started pulling harder.

The outline of my body started flashing red around my front hooves.

“The damage is getting worse. You can’t properly feel it, but you’re tearing your joints apart.”

I ignored her and kept pulling. I felt my shoulder pop. The air split with a scream of tearing steel.

“Interesting. The lock held out but the hinge must have rusted through,” Somni said. I stumbled, using my weight and the spider’s own thrashing to pull the hatch free the rest of the way, exposing the glowing, cracked screens within.

I fell inside and landed badly on my right forehoof. I tried not to look at it. It was bending in a way that it weren’t supposed to and part of me thought it wouldn’t hurt as long as I pretended it was okay. That was probably shock talking, but it made a lot of sense.

A pulsing crystal core was set into the machine like a beating heart. I reared back and kicked it.

“Stop that!” The voice came from the screens around me instead of my head. “Why are you being so difficult?!”

“Somepony told me I’m scrambled upstairs, but the truth is I just don’t like to lose,” I said. Another buck to the crystal and the screens flickered. The Somni in the spider-tank screamed, and I kept stomping, over and over again until I was screaming and she was screaming and both of us collapsed.

Everything went silent. The loudest noise was my pulse in my ears, but I swear I only half-heard that, the rest echoing through my whole body in waves somewhere between pressure and pain.

“I hope you’re pleased with yourself,” Somni said.

“All that work? Somepony better be happy about it,” I retorted. “I punched out a tank. You know what? I ain’t just pleased, I feel like a darn champion.”

I held my left hoof up. It was about the only part of me that wasn’t broken. The crowd went wild.

FILE 004: RAY of SPEED

There are three things that are awesome in the world. The first thing is winning. The second thing is also winning, because it’s so awesome it gets to be on the list twice. The third thing is me, Rainbow Dash. You know how some ponies don’t like to brag? I’m not one of those ponies. I’m so fast that by the time you realize how fast I am you’re already in second place or lower and I’m across the finish line having champagne and caviar with the other ponies living the good life.

It was right after the Thunderhead Grand Prix. I’d won, obviously, and me and the other two ponies that had placed went to the Union Sky Tavern to celebrate. It was the first stop in the qualifiers for the Mustang Marathon, and tradition demanded that I buy drinks for the second-place finisher, they buy drinks for the third-place pony, and all of us buy a round for our ground crews.

“That third curve at Thunderhead is feathering nuts,” Lightning Dust said. She’d come in hot on my tail.

“It was nuts because you didn’t even try to slow down,” Cloud Chaser yelled over the noise. “When Vapor Trail tried to follow you they went right off the track and into the stands! Total crash and burn.”

“Nopony got hurt,” I said. “Pretty sure I saw Dust nudge her out of control, though.”

“Hey, you gotta play rough if you wanna win!” Dust countered. “Don’t tell me you’ve never crashed somepony.”

“Course I have. You hear about what happened last year at Rainbow Road?” She shook her head. “They had some racers that were from the same stable competing at the same time. Pretty normal, right? But they had this one real big guy, Bulk something or other, and he didn’t even try to keep up. Instead, he let everypony get stuck behind him, and then he let his teammate slip through!”

“Isn’t that against the rules?” Dust asked.

“It’s unsportsmarelike,” Cloud Chaser said. “But at the time it was legal. I was there too. I got stuck looking at his flank for half a lap.”

I nodded. “The idea was, his teammate got an extra lap in, then they’d just cruise to victory. Nowhere near a record, but it was a sure victory for their stable and he was prolly getting some kind of payoff.”

“So you crashed him, right?” Dust asked.

“It’s not as easy as just saying it,” I slammed back my drink and motioned for the waiter to bring me another. “He had a ton of chrome. Total ironmonger. I couldn’t just punch him out, either, cause the rules are that there’s a big difference between using your wake and turbulence to shove a pony and actually attacking them.”

“Tell that to the jerk who set off the stormclouds,” Cloud Chaser groaned.

Dust grinned. “They call it Thunderhead for a reason! I’ll buy you a bottle of something off the top shelf if you forgive me, hot flanks.”

“I’ll take you up on that, but only cause you complimented my flanks.” She waved over a server and ordered a bottle of scotch. “Don’t worry, it’s not the most expensive thing on the menu. It's only second-place, like you.”

“So how’d you take him down?” Dust asked, after swatting Cloud Chaser for that comment.

“She waited until his teammate was about to pass, then she flew right up her wake and past Bulk Biceps! She was so close they didn’t notice her until she was right there, and Rainbow Dash did a triple-S cutter loop!”

“And that sent them right into each other and out of the race,” I finished. I turned around to see who’d spoken. A filly with my team jacket and a backstage pass on her lanyard was watching me with the kind of awe usually reserved for Princess Celestia.

“I-I’m Scootaloo,” she said. “I don’t know if you remember my emails--”

It clicked. “You’re the president of my fan club!” I grinned. She looked amazed that I remembered her. “Did Spitfire get in touch? I told her to make sure she treated you right.”

“Yes ma’am!” She held up the pass. “She got me tickets to Thunderhead too!”

“What’d you think of the race?” I asked, motioning for her to join us in the booth.

“To be honest, there wasn’t a lot of competition,” Scootaloo said, as she hopped up. The kid was tiny. “I heard a lot of racers have their first time there.”

“That’s why the spring meet is called the Cherry Festival,” Cloud Kicker said, with a smirk. “Lots of new blood.”

“Come on Dash, you can’t have your fans sit with us,” Dust complained. “What about my fans?”

“Do you have fans?” I asked. “Because I didn’t see any.”

“Owch,” Cloud Kicker said.

“You placed first in the X-Storm Games last year,” Scootaloo supplied. “They’re pretty cool, but a little scary. My aunts won’t let me go see them because of how many ponies end up crashing into the stands.”

“They do get rough,” Dust agreed. “They allow full contact. No weapons, but ponies kinda skirt those rules. There was this one pony with what he claimed was a leaky oil pipe.”

“I heard about that!” Scootaloo gasped. “He spilled oil everywhere then set it on fire!”

Dust’s eyebrows raised. “Then you’d know what happened to him.”

“Well, I wasn’t there, but from what I read somepony in the race spun him out and kicked him back into his own fire. There was an explosion from the open fuel line. He’s recovering but any evidence of his cheating was destroyed.”

“Dumb move on my part. I should have just tossed him into the hayburger stand,” Dust mumbled.

“It was pretty cool, though, and you almost caught Dash! I think you’re faster on the straightaways but she’s got better turning.”

“And on a course like Thunderhead, the turns matter,” I said.

“She’s okay,” Dust decided. “Cloud, pour her a drink.”

“She’s a foal, I’m not gonna give a foal a glass of scotch.” Cloud Kicker moved the bottle out of Lightning Dust’s reach.

Dust stuck out her tongue. “She’s like, what, thirteen, fourteen? That’s close enough.”

“Eleven,” Scootaloo corrected.

“Okay maybe she is a little young,” Dust admitted. “Hey, waitress, can we get a shirley temple over here?”

Eventually, DJ-PON3 took the stage and Dust and Kicker took off to bust a move in front of the crowd. I kinda felt responsible for Scoots. Part of being a winner is knowing how to treat your fans right, so I stuck with her after they’d left.

“So, am I gonna have to worry about you on the circuit in a couple years?” I asked, leaning back. “They say half the race’s in your head and you’ve got that down.”

“Me?” Scootaloo blushed, her tiny wings fluttering. “N-no, I couldn’t.”

“Sure you could. You can start racing in the Junior Speedsters league in two years, then you can get scholarships, sponsors…”

“No, I mean, I can’t,” she said, with a bitter tone in her voice. “I can’t fly. My wings don’t work.”

Oh. Well now I felt like an ass. You know -- rude, ugly, and a little dumb.

“So what?” Dust asked, as she swung by the table to take a few swigs of her drink. “Sorry, heard the sob story. Anyway, the league allows anypony to fly. You need to get augmented wings, no big deal. Plenty of ponies have chrome. Half my skull is carbon fiber, and my right eye is totally artificial.”

“Really?” Scootaloo asked, looking closer.

“Yep. The color’s not quite right, and if you look really closely you can see the iris is more like a camera lens.” She leaned in so Scootaloo could see. “I had an accident when I was a foal. Fell like a rock with wings and landed on my face like a rock with a skull fracture.”

“Cloud Kicker’s got an artificial liver, right?” I asked.

“Pretty sure you’re the only one with no implants at all,” Dust said. “Rainbow here doesn’t even have an AR implant. She has to wear these dumb glasses when she goes out.” She grabbed my glasses from my bag, a wraparound pair that always made me feel dumb when I wore it.

I blushed at that and snatched them back, hiding them from view.

“Hey, I have a condition!”

“A condition?” Scootaloo asked.

“We all got problems, okay? I just can’t get implants. My body would reject ‘em. I’d have to be on anti-inflammatory and anti-rejection drugs basically forever, and even then they’d wear out real quick because of nerve stuff.”

“I didn’t know that,” Scootaloo whispered.

“But if you can get them, go for it,” I said. “Dust is right that it’s usually no big deal. I think there are some charities and stuff that can help if you’ve got health problems. I’ll have my agent find out and send you the info.”

“You’re gonna do all that just for me?”

“Hey, if there are gonna be ponies on the track, I want them to be my fans. Nothing’s as good as friendly competition, right?”

“Yeah!”

“And once you get in the air, I’m gonna have to teach you some tricks,” I said. “Don’t thank me yet. It’s gonna be tough keeping up with me. You ever heard of the sonic rainboom?”

“Oh buck not this story again,” Lightning Dust snorted. “Don’t listen to her, kid. There’s no such thing.”

“I was just a foal,” I said. “I was in flight camp--”

“Remedial flight camp.”

“It was advanced flight camp,” I corrected.

“Dash thinks Special Ed is the same as Special Ops,” Dust whispered. I shot her a glare.

“Fine, it was the remedial flight camp,” I grumbled. “Which makes it a better story, not worse, because it shows great things come from humble places!”

Cloud Kicker dropped down into the booth. “I heard somepony say sonic rainboom. I wanna see just how much Dash exaggerates the numbers this time. Maybe she’ll add in a hydra!”

“Feathers, you two just can’t let anything go,” I said.

“I wanna hear the story,” Scootaloo said, because she had good taste and knew that my story was awesome because it featured me.

“So the point is, I was at flight camp, just a little filly like you, didn’t even have my cutie mark yet. There are basically no camp instructors watching us because they had to take care of some VIP foal who was too scared to flap her flap-flaps. These two flank-faces come up to me and start talking horseapples. I’m super aerodynamic, and they’re built like bunkers from the war, as big as a house and as dense as concrete.”

“When she says aerodynamic she means she’s short,” Dust supplied.

Cloud Kicker nodded. “Super short.”

“Her official biography card says her height is--” Scootaloo started.

“Let’s not get numbers involved, kid,” I said, cutting Scoots off. “So Brick and Dumbbell challenge me to a race. And not just your normal around-the-bunks lap type of stuff, they wanted to do the big Triple-D. The Doomsday Death Drop. A straight vertical run all the way from the camp to the ground. First one to land wins.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“Kid, we’re talking about a couple foals who can barely fly dropping a mile as fast as they can. The drop itself isn’t dangerous. What’s dangerous is this is a race. You don’t just fall and glide, you have to fly right at the ground, and the first one to turn chicken and hit the brakes loses. You either coward out and lose, or do the stupid thing and win by smashing into the dirt. If you wanna win and not break a few bones, you gotta be good.”

“And unfortunately for Dash, she was in remedial fight camp.”

“Shut up, Dust! I kicked your flank on the track and I’ll do it again right here! Where was I… so there we were, looking down over the Triple-D…”

Technically, it was a well-defined cloud dock that went out far into a hole punched through the clouds like a well or the eye of a hurricane. The instructors taught gliding here, far enough over the turf that they had plenty of time to catch anypony who was having problems. When they were here, it was safe. When they weren’t, it was one of the few places around the camp where you could fall all the way down to the ground. Rumors were that one or two ponies went missing every year.

Cloudsdale was over the middle of nowhere today, just the automated farms between cities. I couldn’t tell if it was corn or wheat from this height. I stared down at it, trying to identify the crop.

“What’s wrong, Crash, you getting chicken?” Brick taunted. “Bwak bwak bwak!”

“That’s not even what chickens sound like, idiot,” I muttered. “They make a coo-coo sound.” I knew it because my mom had a wooden clock that had this little chicken that would pop out and sing every hour. She thought it was the best clock ever.

“I donno, I think we know what chickens sound like,” Dumbbell taunted. “They say things like ‘I’m Rainbow Crash’.”

“First one down to the ground, right?” I asked, putting on my goggles. “And when I beat you, you’ll admit I’m better?”

“You ain’t better, but we’ll say you’re faster,” Brick said.

“Faster is better.”

Dumbbell spread his wings and looked at Brick. “We go on three.”

“One,” Brick said. “Two--”

They took off. I should have seen it coming, but I was a kid and kinda stupid. I took off after them and I was already a second behind. When you’re flying down, you have gravity working with you. It’s your friend and makes everything faster and easier. You can bite right through wind shear because you can put your whole body into it.

The problem is, gravity is a clingy jerk and doesn’t know when to let go.

The real trick to the Triple-D is to accelerate as fast as you can and get ahead. If you’re in the lead, you can control things a little. You don’t have to worry about anypony’s wake and you can’t get sucked into their jet stream. It’s more work to fly solo like that, which is why most ponies in a race end up in a pack -- they’re flying faster than they could on their own because they’re drafting behind the ponies in the lead, but they can’t push ahead because they’re at their limit.

I hadn’t properly tied my goggles on, and they were ripped from my face. My eyes watered, the wind biting them. It was hard to see anything, but that feeling made it all more real. It was like I’d been just sleepwalking, and I snapped awake.

Instead of blocking everything out, I could really feel it, I was there, in that exact moment.

And then I felt this push. I had all the power in the world in my wings. I went faster and faster, and in just a few seconds I was pushing against the barrier, the air like a steel wall.

“The barrier?”

“When you get close to the speed of sound, the air can’t get out of your way fast enough,” Kicker explained. “Imagine trying to get through a crowd of ponies. If you’re walking, they can get out of the way, but if you’re going too fast they bump into each other and you have to shove them. If you’re going really fast, you have to be able to run them over. The fastest the air can move on its own is the speed of sound. Beyond that, things start to get weird.”

There’s no trick to getting past the barrier. You just have to have enough power to push through and be tough enough not to come apart. All the moisture in the air condensed in a cone, blurring my vision.

Everything exploded, and the barrier was gone. I was sailing smooth, faster than I’d ever gone before.

The ground reached up. I didn’t have time to stop. I put everything I had into a turn. Only inches from the ground, I snapped a ninety-degree roll and skimmed along so close to the cornfield below that I could have reached out and grabbed an ear.

Of course, I was in a race, so I had to bleed off speed and actually land. I flared my wings and they almost tore off as the barrier slammed into me. I just barely got it together and landed without breaking anything.

I turned back to look and saw the rainbow ring spreading across the sky.

A couple seconds later Brick and Dumbbell hit the ground a lot less gracefully.

“And that’s how I got my cutie mark,” I finished.

Dust shook her head. “The last time she told this story, I had somepony smarter than me run the numbers on the turn she said she did. The G-forces would have ripped her apart if she was telling the truth.”

“Hey, you weren’t there!”

Cloud Kicker. “Maybe if you did a Sonic Rainboom now, we’d believe you. I still think the rainbow ring was just from getting your cutie mark and you were going pretty fast, but nowhere near supersonic. Everything else is just…”

“Hype,” Dust concluded.

“Hype isn’t what beat you at Thunderhead,” I muttered.

“It wasn’t a Rainboom either,” Dust said.

I grunted. The truth was, I hadn’t been able to go that fast ever since I got my cutie mark. Not for lack of trying, either. I’d been training for years just trying to catch up to myself, and it was starting to suck. I didn’t want my finest hour to have been when I was a foal and nopony was around to see.

“Welcome one and all to Casa Crystal,” the announcer boomed. I flexed my wings, my breath visible in the chill of the Crystal City’s racetrack. “I’m Big Blue, and we’ve got a lot of great ponies out there tonight, and Princess Mi Amore Cadenza herself is gracing us here in the VIP booth.”

I glanced up, not because I cared about some Princess or whatever but because I could just make out a little orange filly waving frantically towards me. I saluted to let her know I’d seen her, and Scoots only redoubled her efforts, hopping up and down.

It made me smile. My agent really had come through for her. It felt nice to know being famous meant I could do something decent once in a while.

Casa Crystal was basically a brand new track. Relationships with the Empire were starting to thaw, and races were a great way to get tourists in and some easy free press. The track was along city streets, just like the Mustang Marathon track. The start of the race was right under the Crystal Palace. Markers were placed along the route.

A route which I realized I hadn’t actually studied. I probably shouldn’t have spent the night before the race in a sauna instead of learning the turns.

“At least I’m not the only one with nerves,” I muttered. Somepony I didn’t recognize was shivering in his little chrome hooves a few spots away.

“Princess Cadenza is ready to begin the race. All ponies on your marks!”

Up in the booth, she’d be holding a checkered flag. By the rules, that flag said when the race started, but none of us were watching it. My eyes, and everypony else’s, were fixed on the lights above the track.

Red.

Yellow.

Green.

The bell sounded, and we jumped into the air. The start of a race was always chaos. It was a sieve, dozens of ponies fighting for position. I was already at the front of the pack. I’ve heard a lot of bad racers complain about the way initial places are determined. It’s basically a meritocracy. If you’re good, you get a spot closer to the front. If you’ve been losing, you’re in back. It might sound like a rich-get-richer kinda thing but it keeps ponies safe. If the fastest ponies are in back, it makes things dangerous when they try to pass, like the trick the ponies at Rainbow Road used where they intentionally blocked the lane.

By trying to order ponies basically by skill, it meant things started basically in the same order they’d be in at the end of the race, all things being equal. The ponies around you are the ones you’re most likely to change places with -- the slow ponies are never gonna pass the fast flyers no matter how hard they flap, but they can pretty easily rise or fall a couple of places in the rankings.

Also, I deserved to be number one, because I’m number one.

The streets were packed with crystal ponies cheering for us. I didn’t even feel the cold air with them pushing me on to do my best. I even had a plan. I was gonna take it easy the first two laps, learn the course and just stay ahead of the pack, then the last lap I’d go all-out and finish in first place.

See how good my plan was? The last part was me winning. That meant it was flawless.

Tracks in cities all tended to be tough. Tight quarters, sharp turns, and hazards everywhere. Because of the height restriction, we couldn’t even go very far vertically without getting a time penalty. If you go off-track you didn’t hit a cloudbank or water, you hit walls. In this case, crystal walls. I didn’t know if that was better or worse than cinderblocks but I really didn’t wanna find out.

The first lap was behind an aircart, the ponies onboard waving flags. We took it nice and slow, and I tried to keep an eye on that nervous pony from before. Something about him had really gotten to me. Nervous meant he might do something unexpected and dumb.

We circled back around to the castle, the pace cart peeled off, and we hit the gas.

Glimmers of light from the crystal around the course made the rush disorienting, like flying through a cave lined with mirrors. Streets and ponies flashed by, and I felt the crush of the ponies behind me, the maze of turns letting them stay close.

We hit the main stretch going up to the castle, and I pulled ahead. You can feel a tension in a race like this, the ponies at the front dragging the rest along like we’re connected by giant elastic bands. It’s harder and harder to get a lead and they fight more to avoid being left behind. If you stop fighting for a second you snap back and then BAM you go from first place to fourth to ninth like a total square.

I heard some kinda commotion behind me. The crowd was reacting. I couldn’t spare the time to look. It screws up your aerodynamics and slows you down.

I guessed somepony had pulled ahead, and then I heard it.

Sound is funny at these speeds. You were almost outpacing it, and it had to struggle a lot to catch up. You’d hear something half a lap away from where it happened.

Like I said, I wasn’t looking back. I didn’t see it when it happened, but the video and pictures, those are burned into my mind. While I was racing ahead, just as we reached the Crystal Palace the pony I’d thought looked nervous activated some kind of jet or rocket engine or something. It was a total violation of the rules. Maybe he didn’t care as long as he crossed the finish line first.

We’ll probably never know for sure why he did it. I mean, like, yeah we know the general reason now, months later, even if it’ll never be public, but his personal reasons for doing what he did are a mystery.

That noise I heard was the motor firing up. The trail of smoke and fire caused a huge pileup behind me. I didn’t hear that until the idiot went past me like a fireworks display, shooting sparks everywhere.

He was totally out of control, and there was nothing I or anyone else could do to stop him as he crashed into the VIP box and everything erupted into flames.

Obviously, the race was called off. Princess Cadance was fine, but a dozen or so high-ranking members of the Imperial government were injured or killed. It dominated the news for weeks, and the previously thawing relationship with them froze solid.

One thing that wasn’t covered by any of the major news networks was the death of a foal who’d only been there because I’d put the ticket in her hooves.

I couldn’t race after that. I was grieving and hurting and dad always said you’re better off putting your whole heart into one thing instead of doing two things half-heartedly.

The worst part of not being able to have implants is that you have to wear these stupid glasses basically everywhere. If you want directions, traffic signals, whatever, you need to be connected to SolNet with an AR display. Without ‘em, I’d be half-blind compared to everypony else.

[You should get a scone!]

“What.” I’d been thinking about something, but my train of thought absolutely disintegrated when a bright pink face popped up in my display.

[A scone is like a biscuit except sweet instead of savory unless you have a savory scone which is like a biscuit.]

“I don’t…” I looked around. Somepony was pranking me. It was literally the only explanation. “Hey! Whatever kinda joke this is, it ain’t funny!”

[I’m not a joke I’m an ad! Mention me for 20% off and a free coffee at Sugarcubed corner!]

Free coffee sounded real good considering I hadn’t been in any races for months. I wasn’t exactly in trouble, but free anything was super tempting.

The second I thought that, directions popped up. If it really was a prank I was gonna kick somepony’s flank.

Arrows led me through the crowd to the bottom floor of one of the huge apartment blocks Canterlot was home to. It was a little run down and dirty looking, and I wasn’t really expecting much until I opened the door.

“Huh. This place is kinda nice,” I mumbled. It also looked empty, for all of half a second before a pony was in front of me with impossible speed, like she’d appeared out of nowhere. If I’d been wearing socks I’d have jumped right out of them but I don’t wear socks because they’re not aerodynamic.

“Hi! Welcome to Sugar Cubed Corner!” She looked just like the pink pony in the display.

“Where the buck did you come from?!”

“Behind the counter.”

“No you didn’t! You just… blinked!”

“Well technically I used the AR display in your glasses to overlay an image of myself closer to you than I was and edit out my real position, but now I’m guessing you don’t like surprises as much as I thought.”

“You did what now?” I took off the glasses. She was still there, so unless she’d figured out a way to hack my eyes I was pretty sure she was real.

“Aw, it doesn’t matter, it’s all boring stuff,” she said. “The important thing is that you seemed down in the dumps and I wanted to cheer you up!”

With the glasses off, the way she moved was a little jerky and off, that kinda stiff way ponies with a lot of augmentation moved. I slipped the glasses on for a second and the motion smoothed out. Weird.

“Whatever,” I sighed.

“What can I get for you?” She asked. “No, wait, let me guess! You waaaant… a scone and a coffee!”

“Sure, I guess.” I shrugged.

She coughed and leaned in, stage-whispering. “Don’t forget to mention the ad!”

“The… ad?”

“Oh!” She pretended to be surprised. “So you heard about our deal today with a discount on scones and a free coffee with your order!”

“Is this like, a weird retail thing? I never worked retail.”

“Mister Cake doesn’t like me giving out freebies but I can’t help it if ponies mention coupons,” she explained. “I’m Pinkie Pie, by the way. I know you didn’t ask but I wanted to tell you so we could be friends!”

“You’re a weird pony,” I said.

“Yeah!” She giggled and led me to a booth. “I’ll be right back with your order, Miss Rainbow Dash.”

Okay, now I was suspicious. “Woah, I never said who I was! How do you know my name?!”

“I’ve seen you on television,” Pinkie said. “You’re a racer. A really good one!”

I felt stupid now. Of course she saw me at the races. I was famous, after all. Sometimes even an awesome pony like me forgot how famous and great she really was. Probably it was mostly cause I didn’t feel very awesome right at that moment with all that stuff going wrong.

“I’m the best. Or I was. I’m sort of done I guess,” I said.

“Why?” She put a tray down on the table.

“Didn’t you see what happened at Casa Crystal?”

I took a bite out of the scone thing. It was good. Like, really good. I mostly ate cheap stuff and take-out and this was more like something home-baked by a pony who cared. It was nostalgic in a way that didn’t make sense since my mom was an awful cook. I got all my skill from her, which was why I ate so many microwave meals.

“There was a bad crash,” Pinkie said.

“Yeah. And a pony got killed and it was my fault.”

“You didn’t cause the crash.” She paused, eyes going blank for a moment. “Reports from all the major agencies agree that it was quote-unquote the act of a single pony working alone, and the result of an illegal rocket motor augmentation.”

“I didn’t cause the crash but I did put somepony in the stands that got killed. She shouldn’t have been there.”

“You didn’t mean for her to get hurt.”

“So? It’s still my fault.”

Pinkie paused again. It was weird. She totally froze up like a statue whenever she did that. Eventually, she came back to life. It couldn’t have been more than a second and a half but it was starting to creep me out.

“Would she have wanted you to quit?”

“...no. She was my biggest fan.”

“Then you shouldn’t quit yet.” Pinkie smiled. “Instead of quitting for her, give her a race to watch. She’d be happier that way. I know if she was your fan she wouldn’t want to make you sad.”

Like it was that easy.

Pinkie Pie was weird, but I left feeling a little better than I had been. Food and coffee did that for a pony, especially good food. I was gonna have to make sure I came back sometime.

Her advice about racing again was a little harder to stomach than a pastry. I could see where she was coming from, but it was like, could I really get my whole heart in it for this? What if I lost? If I ran a race for Scootaloo’s memory and I didn’t win, what did that mean?

There were probably all sorts of depressing philosophical things I could have thought about and totally would have except my AR cut out and my map and directions vanished.

“Bucking glasses…” I touched down in the street and tapped them, trying to get them to reboot and connect to the network.

“Don’t enter the Mustang Marathon,” growled a deep, synthetic voice from right behind me. “And don’t--”

I turned around.

“I was going to say don’t turn around.” The voice as so synthesized it was impossible to tell if it was a stallion or mare. The body wasn’t much better. I'd never seen so much chrome bolted to one pony. Actually I couldn’t even see any pony, just steel.

It looked more like a bat than a pegasus, an X-shaped visor where its eyes should be. It was all navy blue and charcoal grey with only a few touches of silver to break up the dark colors. It didn’t have a cutie mark, which brought up all sorts of other questions. Was it a pony, or just a machine?

“Who the buck are you?”

“Just call me Racer X,” it said.

“Never heard of you.”

“You wouldn’t have. You dropped out of the league.”

“Yeah well, I don’t like ponies telling me what to do!” I stepped towards him. Her? Racer X could have been either. Probably not both. “Who do you think you are, coming here and telling me what races I can and can’t be in? I could join the Mustang Marathon any time I wanted!”

“You’ll just get hurt. And lose.” Racer X spread its wings, huge dragon-like wings with steel spars. “Don’t try to follow me.”

It took off.

Obviously the smart thing would have been to let it go. But it had challenged me, sort of. It had definitely insulted me. And that was basically a challenge, right? If somepony insults you it means they think they’re better and the only way to prove them wrong is to beat them at the thing they think they’re good at and my point is that I was thinking clearly when I followed it into the air and into traffic.

Racer X did a barrel roll, just missing an aircart, and I sped up to follow, stretching muscles I hadn’t used since Casa Crystal.

You’d think it was dangerous flying through traffic, but when you were an expert racer the aircarts looked like they were practically standing still. The ones going the same way you were, anyway. The problem was we were flying into oncoming traffic so this was like, practically suicide if you didn’t have reflexes as fast as lightning.

Well I got news for you. I have a lightning bolt on my butt and my reflexes are even faster.

I was right behind Racer X, and her (his?) fat flank was blocking my view, so when she did a sharp turn and I was looking at the headlights of a garbage scow I had to scramble and really knock some rust off my skills before I knocked rust off their bumper with my teeth.

“You can’t lose me that easily!” I yelled.

“Should I start trying?” Racer X asked. “Nothing’s as good as friendly competition, right?”

Something about that phrase hit me. The last time I’d said that was…

“Hey, what’s your real name!” I demanded.

“Catch me and I’ll tell you,” it said. And then it really turned on the speed. It really had only been playing before. It pulled up, and I followed it almost straight up. The air grew colder and thinner.

“You aren’t gonna lose me,” I swore.

It didn’t respond. Maybe my voice wasn’t carrying. My AR glasses were still messed up. I couldn’t tell how high or fast we were going.

Racer X rolled and banked out of the climb, using the roll to change its direction. I matched it pretty easily. It was bigger than me, but I was way more maneuverable and definitely faster, even if it was making me work hard to try and prove it.

We dove back towards the city, and I was hot on its hooves, so close I could almost reach out and touch the steel ribbon of her tail.

“Looks like I’m done playing for today,” Racer X said. “I have a meeting I have to get to.”

“I’m not done!” I pushed harder, nearly alongside it now.

“I know. I wish we could finish this.” Racer X’s wings swept back, and we entered the canyon-like streets between the buildings of the city’s main avenue. “It’s been fun.”

Smoke poured from her body and for a second I thought she was in trouble but then I realized she was deliberately making a smokescreen.

“Wait!” I yelled. “You gotta tell me if you’re Scootaloo or not!”

I charged through the smoke and out the other side, holding nothing.

Racer X was gone. My AR glasses rebooted on their own, and the map and directions reappeared in the corner of my eye.

But I had a good idea of where she was gonna be.

Things didn’t go smoothly when I showed up at the race track. I assumed I could just walk in like I owned the place since I practically did in a metaphorical way. Instead, some jerk who thought being a race official meant he could tell me what to do stopped me at the gate.

“Ma’am, please calm down.”

I was already extremely calm. I wasn’t sure why he couldn’t see that, so I yelled louder to make him understand. “Do you know who I am?!”

“Ma’am--”

“I know for a fact that the win at Thunderhead got me an invite to the Marathon!”

“You can’t just show up on the day of the race with no warning and expect to be let in!”

“Uh, yeah I can,” I snorted. “Go get your boss.”

“You know what Ma’am, I’d love to do that. I’ll go get him, and you can argue your case with him, okay?”

I nodded and waited patiently for about thirty seconds, then I waited impatiently for another five minutes before somepony I actually knew decided to show up.

“Rainbow Dash, it’s been a while.” Wind Rider offered a hoof to shake. “I thought you were retired.”

“I was just on a break. I had to get my head together.”

“I’d love to have you on the track today, but you have to understand there are some problems. You wanna walk and talk?” He tilted his head and I followed him inside.

“What problems?” I asked.

“The main one is that the starting positions were set a week ago,” he explained. “Because you missed a few races and we couldn’t confirm you were attending, there’s no open slot for you.”

“I know there are always a couple dropouts.”

“There are, but everypony else got moved up to fill the empty spots in the formation.”

“So there’s room at the back.”

“Technically, yes. We could slot you in at the back. But you know the safety issues better than anypony else. Having to pass that many ponies is dangerous to them and you.”

I snorted. “Hey, that’s part of the race”

“I’m not going to deny that the fans like it.” Wind Rider stopped outside of the locker room. “Why are you really doing this, Dash? If you just want to get back in the game, there are other races, and you’d have the time to do things properly. You could get into the Monte Fuller next month, great prizes, you’d be in a good seed, and it’s just as famous as the Mustang Marathon.”

“I know. But this is personal.”

“Personal, huh?” He smiled a little.

“Somepony told me not to race here. I was in a bad place and that was a big wake up call. Ponies can’t push me around like that. I’m gonna prove them wrong.”

“Let me guess, you don’t care if you win, you just want to show them you can race any time you want.”

“Nah. I’m totally gonna win. I’m gonna shove my trophy in Racer X’s face and make her tell me who she really is.”

“So it’s a her?” Wind Rider looked into the locker room. “X is kind of a scary pony. Came out of nowhere with the most tricked-out body I’ve ever seen. You don’t have any augments, Dash. I’m not sure you can beat it. Or her, I guess.”

“Skill is more important than hardware.”

“...Okay.” Wind Rider said. “I’ll let you race.” He patted my shoulder. “You had a good answer about wanting to win. If you’d said you didn’t care about how you were doing I’d have kicked you to the curb. You still have at least a little spirit.”

“Thanks.”

“Go get your gear and get to the back of the line. And try not to harass any of my other employees, okay? They’ve got enough stress with the rumors.”

“Rumors?”

“It’s nothing important. Just the usual threats. We have security stepped up just in case. Don’t worry about it. Worry about how you’re going to pass a few dozen ponies. Otherwise you’re never even gonna see Racer X, much less beat her.”

He was right. I had to focus on just one thing. That was where a pony like me had an advantage. I didn’t grow up distracted by texts and AR cartoons and stuff. I knew how to focus on just one thing at a time.

What I was focused on now were the numbers next to my hooves. My AR glasses were showing a small box with the number forty-seven orbiting around the sides. I was so far back in the pack it’d practically be easier to get to the starting line by flying backwards.

The worst part was the company.

“...so even though I was in last place, the pony in the lead crashed, and the others were so close they couldn’t get away and ended up tripping all over each other,” my neighbor said. I’d been trying to block her out and it wasn’t working. I’d learned her name, her favorite food, and now I was hearing about her most exciting race.

“Uh-huh,” I said, trying hard not to listen.

“I was trailing pretty far behind so I was able to go around! That’s how I got a gold medal at the Flower Cup!”

“Yep. Hey, look, I’m gonna pass you basically as soon as the starting light turns green so don’t take this the wrong way cause it’s been fun--” that was technically a lie “--but I hope we don’t see each other again until the end of this thing.”

“Once it’s over, maybe we could get a drink? I know my kids would love to hear that I met a famous racer like you, Miss Dash!”

I shrugged. ”Sure.”

She did a little dance and quieted down, which was enough of a relief that I almost relaxed too much. Then I caught a glimpse of black steel from way up front, with forty-five ponies between me and her.

Racer X. And maybe Scootaloo.

I had to keep myself on a razor edge if I was gonna beat her. What I’d seen in our little chase through the streets put her firmly in the ranks of the best ponies I’d ever flown with. It would have been tough if I’d been starting out right next to her. With an obstacle course of ponies between us, she was gonna get a huge lead before I could start really chasing after her.

A buzzer sounded, and lights blared down around us.

I got into position.

The red light hung like the eye of an angry goddess before blinking out.

Yellow replaced it and sat teasingly, every muscle in my body tensing as it stayed for too long, every moment stretched to eternity.

Green.

Everything in front of me erupted into motion.

Everypony except me fought for altitude. The wisdom was, altitude was advantage. If you were near the top of the track’s height limit, you had better visibility for yourself and to the crowd, and you could get through a tight spot much more easily if you were diving and working with gravity than if you had it as an opponent.

I shot through the pack, so low my chest almost scraped the street. These were asphalt roads, not a cloud course forgiving of mistakes. A crash here, at this speed, at zero altitude, meant I’d need skin grafts.

So you know, the best thing would be to not crash.

I didn’t even try to count the hooves inches from my ears. It was like flying under a landslide, trying to outpace an avalanche of pegasi.

The sky opened up over me, and I pulled up just before the turn, banking and practically climbing up the safety wall, kicking off of the corner for just that extra tiny burst of speed.

Tenth place. I’d passed dozens of ponies already.

“Get out of my way!” I roared. The pony ahead of me looked back with surprise, obviously not expecting me to already be on her tail.

Looking back was a mistake. She could have moved to block me, but instead she hesitated. I bumped her as I passed, not quite knocking her off the course -- I didn’t want to hurt anypony, just slow her down. Her wings caught the air wrong and she was forced to fight to regain control, yelling something at me.

I didn’t stick around to listen.

Something popped up in my glasses. An update notification. I tried to dismiss it, and a bunch of windows filled my field of vision. I swore and tried to ignore them. The pony ahead of me, who in my mind had a big number 8 painted on her flank, smacked the side of her head. At least she was having the same problems I was.

She slowed down for a second. Just a second, while something inside her rebooted in the middle of the race. The display in my glasses flickered. I jetted ahead, sliding past her while she floundered.

In most races, there tends to be a knot near the front and then a gap before the big ball of losers that finish last. You get a pony in the lead and others drafting off of them closely, using their jetstream to conserve energy and get ready to push past them.

I could see Racer X from here, so I was close enough to catch it when her flanks popped open and smoke poured out just before a series of turns. The two ponies drafting off of her -- I recognized Lightning Dust a moment before she vanished in the thick smog -- got caught up in it, something in the cloud reacting with their magic, like they’d flown into a ball of cotton.

The rest of us were far away enough not to get caught in it, going up and over, alerts popping up that we were on the very edge of the course.

“What the buck was that?!” Yelled the pony just ahead of me.

“She’s not playing fair,” I shouted over the wind.

“She’s gonna get disqualified!”

“I don’t think she really cares!”

Racer X spun in midair, flipping onto her back, keeping up that incredible pace even while doing a backstroke. The crowd started to panic. I thought they were getting worked up because she was cheating but the ponies around the next turn looked terrified.

Something black moved in the corner of my eye, like a shadow.

I had to fight not to look. The pony I was trying to pass lost that fight and turned her head a little. She swerved in blind panic, right into me. If I’d been distracted too, we would have gone into the stands. I caught her, and she kicked at me, screaming.

“What the buck is your problem?!”

Right in front of my eyes she transformed into something horrible, a black shape full of fangs and slime like one of those deep-sea fish that’s just basically a monster.

I tried to push her away, every instinct in my body screaming for me to start kicking and never stop.

Her hoof hit my face, and my glasses went askew.

The monster vanished, and there was just a scared pony.

“Get away from me!” She squealed. I let her go, and she bolted.

Racer X had slowed, not that there was competition anymore. All the ponies between us were scattering, running from monsters just inside their own heads. Tartarus, there wasn’t even a race now.

“What the buck did you do?” I screamed, charging at her. I couldn’t save the thousands of ponies in the stands one at a time, but if I could stop it at the source, maybe I could keep it from getting worse.

“I wanted to race with you, Dash,” she said.

“So it is you!”

“I don’t blame you for the accident. It wasn’t your fault. This is what I always wanted, Dash. It’s just like you said, I can be a racer just like you!”

“Who did this to you?” She was putting the speed back on. I was keeping pace but with a body like that, I wasn’t sure how close she was to her limit. It was like trying to read the body language of an aircart.

“There’s not a lot of time to explain, Dash,” Scootaloo said. “So just listen and try to keep up!” She stopped mocking me with her backstroke and used the next turn to bank and flip back over.

I had to cut the corner close, edging out over the crowd as I fought to keep up. It would have been a penalty if the refs weren’t busy with imaginary monsters. Lucky for me but I felt a little bad about it. It was the kinda thing I’d have yelled at another racer for.

“They said you died!” I was practically on top of her, and she moved away, denying me the opportunity to draft on her jetstream. I was gonna have to actually work to keep up.

“I’m living my dream!. Isn’t that all anypony ever wants? This is the best thing that ever happened to me!”

“How much of you is even left in there? You don’t even have a cutie mark!”

“I didn’t have one before. What does it matter?” She did a loop around me. Her speed was obscene. I’m not saying I was jealous, but I wasn’t on the top of my game and she definitely was.

“Scootaloo, stop playing around! This is more important than a race!”

“Nothing is more important to me than this race. Nothing could ever be more important.”

“There is no race! Look at what’s going on!”

“There’s just you and me, Dash. Your number one fan. It’s perfect!” For a moment she sounded just like she had back when I’d first met her. No distorting buzz or menacing growl. Not trying to be cool, just being herself.

I started to slow, keeping pace instead of pushing myself. Racer X’s pace slowed as she unconsciously matched my speed. I started to actually catch my breath again.

Until she noticed what I was doing.

“Don’t you dare!” Her voice flared, the synthesized tone blaring static. “You want motivation, Dash? If you don’t move your slow flank and beat me across the finish line, I’ll do what She ordered and--”

“What?!”

We flew a few hundred feet in silence, which was about two heartbeats. “Is this ‘what’ like you’re shocked, or ‘what’ like you don’t understand?”

“Who cares about any of that junk?!” I yelled. “You really think you can beat me just because you’re in a fancy fake body?!"

“Yeah, I do!” The edges of her wings started glowing, and she rocketed ahead. I had no idea how she was so feathering fast. I’d raced plenty of chromed-up ponies. It wasn’t as much of an advantage as you’d think. Physical strength was less important than technique and wingpower, and once you got to the point you had enough chrome your cutie mark was fading, your wingpower dropped off a cliff because your pegasus magic was getting messed up.

With no cutie mark at all she shouldn’t have even been able to fly, much less fly that well.

I sprinted after her, using everything I had, even though there was almost half the track to go. It was stupid. I should have been saving it for the end of the race. You were always supposed to hold back just a little, keep yourself from hitting that wall, until the final dash for the finish line. You could only go hard for so long, then you’d run out of steam and you’d collapse. Do that in the middle of the race and you never finished. Do it at the end, and you fall over after the checkered flag, and everything was golden.

The wall loomed, my breath getting shorter as I kept up with her through the last few turns of the course, to the final straightaway.

My wings burned. My chest burned.

I wasn’t gonna let her win. There was her mission or whatever but what mattered was that she was a dumb kid who was doing all this stuff to try and prove she was better than me.

We were neck and neck. The wind roared around us, drowning out the stampede in the stands. In the distance, the finish line sat on the horizon, too close and too far at the same time.

Turbulence shattered my concentration. Mist trailed from my hooves. The air in front of me was like trying to fly through bricks. I’d felt it before, years ago, when I’d been a filly.

From the corner of my eye I saw Scootaloo struggling with the same thing. No matter how fancy her body was, she was stuck at the same place I was, just on this side of the speed of sound.

Unlike her, I’d been on the other side of the sound barrier.

Instinct screamed at me to stop. It felt like flying into a hurricane, like the whole world was in front of me and telling me I couldn’t do it. My heart was beating so fast and hard it was the roar of an engine.

I closed my eyes and blocked out the world. I’d never been able to do what I needed to do since I was a filly, before I’d learned the limits of my body. All the times I’d ever told the story about that first Sonic Rainboom, I hadn’t told them about what happened afterwards. A week in the hospital, months of physical therapy.

As an athlete you drilled it into yourself not to overextend. You learned the safe way to fall, the safe way to crash, the safe way to take turns.

That was why amateurs sometimes came out of nowhere to win from behind - they didn’t do things the safe way. If you took turns like you didn’t care about crashing, holding nothing back, you could beat ponies who were playing it safe.

I tucked my wings tight against my body like a filly diving a mile towards the ground did years ago, turning myself into a compact, lean bullet. No control, no real lift, just speed.

The barrier shattered, and I opened my eyes just in time to see the finish line flash past.

I spread my wings, trying to slow down, and they were nearly yanked from their sockets. I banked and fought for control and managed to get my speed down to something survivable by the time I hit the ground and rolled to a sudden stop against the water barrels being used as a barrier between the course and the crowd.

From where I was lying on the ground, I could just see fading rainbow rings rippling through the air.

“Ow.”

“You beat me,” Scootaloo said, awe filling her synthesized voice.

“Of course I did.” I got up. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds. I was numb where I wasn’t sore, my lungs burned, and my hooves were shaking under me. My heart was still going a million miles a minute. I poked Scootaloo’s metal chest. “Don’t you-- don’t you bucking forget it.”

I felt like I was gonna black out any second.

“You did a sonic rainboom! That was amazing!” Scootaloo started prancing like an excited filly. Which I guess she was, but it looked weird since she was bigger than I was and looked like a pony crossed with a bag full of bats and knives.

“Yeah, it was pretty amazing, wasn’t it?” I smiled.

“It was worth it,” Scootaloo whispered. “It was worth everything.”

“Now you’re gonna…” I stumbled, one of my forehooves going numb and landing my dumb flank on the ground.

“Dash?!”

I tried to tell her I was fine, but I couldn’t catch my breath. Everything started to go black around the edges, and the last thing I felt before I passed out was the hot asphalt under me.

I woke up and groaned. I was sore, I was still tired, and the alarm was going off. I rolled over and tried to find it with my eyes closed, flailing with a hoof in the general direction of my bedside table.

“Five more minutes,” I demanded into the paper-covered pillow.

“Bow, she’s awake!”

Hooves grabbed my shoulders and shook.

“Bwah?” I recognized that voice. “Mom?”

I started to actually wake up. I wasn’t in my room. My mom and dad were looking down at me with one of the only two expressions they ever had. The usual one was pride, but today they’d decided on worry.

“Oh honey we came right away after we heard about what happened!”

Mom pulled me into a hug, and I looked over her shoulder at where I was.

“Why am I in the hospital?” I asked. “The last thing I remember, I passed out after I beat Scootaloo--” I gasped. “Where is she?”

“Honey, calm down!” Mom and Dad pushed me back down into the bed. If I didn’t feel so awful I would have fought back more, but it was easier just to let them have their way.

“I’ll calm down once I know what happened. Where’s Scootaloo? What happened with ponies seeing things?”

“I don’t know who Scootaloo is,” Dad said. “But the blackout is over, and everything’s okay. You’re okay. Whatever you saw, it wasn’t real--”

“I know it wasn’t real, Dad. It was just a trick in my glasses, so I turned them off.”

“What wasn’t a trick was you hurting yourself,” Mom said. “You need to calm down and rest for a few days. The doctors say you had… you had…” she sniffled and looked away.

“Had what?”

“A heart attack, Dash,” Dad finished for her. “Whatever you did, you pushed yourself too hard. I don’t know the medical terms for everything--” which was fine, because I didn’t know them either “--but they say you can’t do heavy exercise for a while.”

“Great,” I mumbled.

“It’ll be fine, Dash,” Mom assured me. “You can always come back home with your father and me and we’ll put you up and take care of you. We’ll wait on you hoof and fetlock until you’re back on top of things.”

Dad nodded. “Anything for the best daughter in the world.”

“Thanks, guys,” I said weakly. I probably didn’t have the luxury of refusing. “I just need to figure out what happened to Scootaloo first. Or, uh, Racer X. Whatever she’s calling herself.”

Mom and Dad looked at each other. Mom was the first to ask. “Racer X?”

“It turns out she was a fan of mine and-- you know what, it’s a long story and I don’t even know the middle part of it. That’s why I gotta find her. Something bad happened to her. It’s my fault.”

“If she’s really your fan, she’d want you to get better,” Mom said. “How about I put a post on SolNet for you about how you’re recovering? Then you can wait for her instead of trying to find her yourself!”

“You know I hate waiting,” I mumbled.

“And I hate seeing my daughter in a hospital bed,” Mom countered. “Just do this one thing for me, please?”

I closed my eyes. “Just… put her name on it. Make sure she knows she can come and see me, okay?”

“I will,” Mom promised.

I felt her and Dad tucking me in, and started to drift off again. Maybe when I woke up, Scootaloo would be there to explain just what had happened. And I’d be able to apologize again, for everything I’d done wrong.

FILE 005: VICTORY of MERCY

It was a cold morning. The kind of morning where slush and ash fall from the sky and you can’t bring yourself to get out of bed by yourself. I would have spent the whole day wrapped up against the grey and the chill if not for the squeaking and prodding of my pets, cold noses pressing against me mixed with the whine of aging motors.

“I’m getting up,” I groaned, brushing my pink mane out of my eyes and crawling out of my sleeping bag. “What’s wrong?”

I looked over the menagerie that had gathered around, and I could instantly see the problem from the flickering displays and weak beeps. They were hungry. I pulled myself to my hooves and stretched, stepping around the least moble of my friends as I made my way to the array of old aircart and skyship batteries.

“Almost completely drained…” I shook my head and patted one of the hovering drones. “You all just wait here. I’ll clean off the solar array and see if that helps. Angel?”

I looked around, but before I could spot his hiding place, the bunbot dropped onto my back from where he’d been lurking. He’d been patched in a dozen places, his outer shroud more like rags now than the life-like fur he’d had when he was new.

He chattered at me, replaying scratchy recordings of the morning’s weather report.

“It is cold,” I agreed, grabbing a scarf and wrapping it around my neck before pushing open the hatch. The cold rushed in when I did, bracing and harsh. If not for the dampness and the wind, it would have only been frigid instead of near-deadly. I closed the door behind me, not wanting to get water into my home. Some of the drones had faulty waterproofing, and others simply didn’t have functional self-righting mechanisms if they tripped.

But they were all my friends. And they were alive in a way that most ponies didn’t appreciate.

A long time ago, I’d lived near the core of Canterlot. Ponies there grew up thinking of things as disposable. Dresses were worn once, then thrown away. Televisions and radios were replaced every few months just to keep up with the newest innovations. Every year my family would trade in our two aircarts and get the new models, which were usually identical except for some tiny detail that, according to my father, made all the difference.

My brother had fit in well. He even learned to throw away friends when he was done using them. I’d never been comfortable with the constant roiling change done simply for the sake of change, like standing still even for a moment was a sin against Celestia.

When I was twelve, my father got me Angel. He was a robot pet, an electric rabbit that was a passing fad that year. I fell in love with him. Angel was just a simple drone, and I know he wasn’t much more than some basic programming and voice recognition. But to me he was my first pet, and he was always at my side, long after the fad had passed.

And then my heart broke.

I came home from school, and he was gone. Not broken, which would have hurt but at least been an ending, just gone. My father had thrown him away like he was nothing, and there was a shiny new box waiting on my bed with the latest model.

We’d screamed at each other, and I’d gone to bed sobbing. He couldn’t understand why I was upset and I couldn’t understand why my father was so much of a monster that he’d just throw away my best friend in the world.

In the morning, I packed my things and left. I couldn’t live the way they did.

I was upset and not thinking clearly. If I had been, I wouldn’t have gone off on a fool’s quest to try and find an obsolete robot pet that had been thrown away with the rest of the city’s trash. If I’d been looking at it with a careful and thoughtful mind instead of just being emotional, I’d have done what most ponies my age did and just never spoken to my father again.

Instead, I went to the city junkyard and started looking.

I brushed snow from a solar panel, checking the connection before moving on to the next one in the array. The dozen I’d scavenged were more than enough for my power needs most of the year. Winter was tough. I had to choose between heat and having enough power to keep my friends working. Even in good years some of the larger ones had to hibernate until conditions improved, and this had been a tough winter.

I giggled as Angel dragged a broom up to me.

“Thank you, Angel,” I said, patting him and using the broom on the other panels. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be using my feathers. I’ll get them all soggy and dirty.”

He chirped, the sound from his damaged voice chip wobbly.

“Let’s get back inside before one of us gets a cold, I suggested. He hopped, doing a backflip and landing it despite his age and the hip joint that had been giving him problems all year. I clapped, picking him up and squeezing him tight.

Most ponies, even good ponies, don’t think of drones as being alive. They’re just machines. But did you know that many autonomous drones and pets on the market today have as much processing power as a rat, and the advanced ones are arguably as intelligent as a cat or a dog? You wouldn’t throw out a cat or a dog, but ponies do it all the time to machines.

Canterlot, both high and low, got rid of their trash in only one place, a blasted valley lying between the city and the ruins on the other side, a place that had once been called Dream Valley back when ponies had lived here.

The history books said it had been the primary battleground in the war. Before the fighting, it had been all trees and flowers. The only pictures that survived showed it with trenches and barbed wire and poison gas, all in black and white and blurry but still somehow horrible. Ponies had been locked in a stalemate there until the end of the war.

These days, the trenches were covered up by landfills. Nopony wanted to live there, and the city had to get rid of its trash somewhere. Instead of dying by the thousands for a few feet of mud, ponies did anything they could to avoid the place.

It took me almost a year to find Angel. I didn’t know how to really search the junkyard back then. These days I knew where drops were made, the days they were made on, and most importantly that recyclables and electronics weren’t in the same section of the dump as compostables like food and paper. I’d spent a week hoof-deep in old hayburgers and newspapers before I’d figured that out.

When I did find Angel, he wouldn’t turn on. A year of exposure to the elements had ruined him.

But not ruined beyond repair.

“Okay, everyone,” I said, when I got back home. “Everything should be fine now. Remember to let the most hungry go first.”

In the process of fixing Angel, I’d found many others just like him. Well, not just like him -- most rabbots had been thrown away long ago enough that I’d need an excavator to find them. But there were drones, from simple camera pods to messenger quadcopters to the huge tow-bot hibernating under a tarp next to my prefab that had been used to move illegally parked aircarts before the project had been discontinued.

They all just wanted to be useful, but most of them had been thrown away when their owners had moved on. I’d taken them in, repaired what I could, and salvaged from the ones that couldn’t be saved. It was heartbreaking, cracking one of them open and finding that the designers had never even thought about repair. Big black boxes of solid-state crystal circuits, a chassis that made it impossible to remove or replace components without breaking something. I’d even seen a drone that had been assembled entirely with glue instead of screws, a plastic-bodied dragonfly with a broken wing that would never fly again because the ponies who made it didn't intend it to last more than a few minutes.

I started my computer booting and got into the shower, lukewarm water washing the worst of the dirt from my mane and feathers. Not having reliable hot water had been the hardest change from living in Canterlot. Even if I could afford it, there weren’t water lines here. Technically, I was squatting. Technically, I was fairly sure I was listed as a missing pony. I hadn’t left my parents a note.

I had no bank account, no real job, nothing that tied me to other ponies.

Well, almost nothing.

I used the last of the soap and made myself as presentable as possible before sitting down in front of my deck, a rig that I’d scavenged from the parts of a few dozen office computers. Graphics cards meant to run design programs were easily able to handle gaming, and while the processors weren’t the newest on the market by a few generations, there were a lot of them working in parallel.

A camera pod perched flew over and perched on one of the three big screens I’d mounted. It chirped at me.

“Did you eat?” I asked. They’d let themselves starve and go offline just to avoid seeming useless.

If flashed a ready light at me twice.

“Okay, then,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Do I look okay?”

It tweeted approval, and I smiled.

“You always say that.”

My connection to SolNet stabilized, and my screens brightened, one of them showing the feed from the camera. I could have connected things myself with a few clicks, but part of being a good owner is letting them do what they do best.

“Could you start my Reflex stream and message my followers that I’m online?” I asked.

The camera chirped, and I waved to it before clicking on a glowing icon on my desktop, faux-orchestral music flooding from the speakers. Behind me, a few of the bluetooth-enabled drones chimed in with their own streams of the music, creating something almost like surround sound. The spash-screen filled the second of my three-screens, and I grinned, getting my game face on.

=+= E * T * E * R * N * I * T * Y * 2 =+=

“Hey everypony, MothFlutter here,” I said. “Looks like we have another big day ahead of us gunning down a bunch of noobs in a post-cyberpocalyptic world who think they know which end of a gun is the dangerous one. You’d think it would be an easy answer, the end with all the bullets flying out of it, but if they actually knew that they might try pointing it at what they’re trying to hit.”

I adjusted the hoof-bands around my fetlocks to make sure they wouldn’t come free, then pulled the goggles down, the world of my prefab faded away and was replaced with the bright colors and pixelated displays of the world of Eternity.

“So I can see from the feed we have a few new people on the stream today. Nice to meet you, I’m going to show ponies how this game is played.”

I brought up the menu system with a wave of my hoof.

“I got a lot of requests to go over character creation and builds. Right now I’m playing on a new alt, because I don’t want to scare the new players away. For some reason they see a max-level wraithgunner and they feel a tingling in their nethers that makes them want to run away and touch themselves in their bunks.

“As you can see, this is a level zero pegasus grenadier-medic. That gives us the weakest class for offensive use in the game, but we should still be able to sneak into games because ponies, will, for some reason, think we’re here to play support and heal them. Those absolute clothes-irons don’t even understand the power they’re messing with.”

I got a ping, and one of the dozen or so ponies around me looped into a wave emote as he tried to get my attention.

“Looks like we got ourselves a game, ponies.”

I waved back, trying to look innocent and harmless.

“Now as most of you know, the grenadier-medic starts with a healing wand and a pistol, along with the smoke grenades that give the class half its name. New players will focus on the healing aspect. I’m going to hit you all with some hard truths -- the grenadier-medic is a trap class. The healing is just a ploy to keep you all from learning of its true killing power, which I will now demonstrate.”

My character drew her pistol, cocking the small magical firearm.

flashed across my display, from one of the other players.

“You’re going to get this from time to time,” I said. The other players in the game couldn’t hear me, just the ponies on my stream. “Now I’ve rarely experienced this phenomenon, but apparently if you play poorly enough your health meter will actually go down! Supposedly this has something to do with other ponies shooting at you. A few people on my team are finding that out for themselves, and you’ll note that we’re on the side of the Discordant because the uniforms are way better.”

“Wow we got a lot of complainers on this team today. That’s what we get with a level zero team of randos. Hold on for a minute. I’m gonna give them some medical advice.”

I pressed the radio button, broadcasting into the game.

<“Hey everypony. I’m the medic and I’ll get around to you after I take care of things.”>

I released the button.

“That should make them feel better while they die,” I said. My character had snuck along the other side of the map, well away from the rest of her team. “You’ll note I’m on the opposite side of the map and totally alone. This is a great place to be as a medic, because you won’t be tempted to heal anypony. Ponies will complain a lot because they're spoiled, but you need to remember that these ponies need to learn a lesson and not get shot in the first place. Don’t let them get dependent on cheap heals.”

I paused next to a wall.

“Most enemy teams do this weird thing where they stay together. Don’t be intimidated, this is just because they’re polite and want to make sure you’re not wasting time hunting them down.”

The team closed in, hitting a chokepoint I’d seen earlier.

“And here… we… go.”

I popped smoke, filling the area with a blinding, slowing cloud that disabled their HUDs. Since they’d all come in through the same place, one grenade was able to get all of them. I flew in, and now that their radar wasn’t working they didn’t know where I was.

“You might be asking yourselves, how is Flutters going to take them all out with a crappy pistol? Well, the grenadier-medic’s pistol has perfect accuracy, and Eternity rewards precision. And by precision, I mean headshots.”

Bang. Bang. Two down, four two go.

The others started to panic. I couldn’t hear their chat, but one of them, a griffon with a heavy assault rifle, caught my eye.

“This chick over here looks like she has a plan. I’d follow her if we were on the same team. Unfortunately for her, we’re not.”

I dropped down on her, shooting her at point-blank range. Her larger hitbox caught a couple rounds from the one other player that was paying attention.

“Wow, what was that? Did somepony shoot at me? He missed, but even so. That’s very rude. What did I ever do to deserve that?”

I jinked left and circled right, and predictably, the new player’s aim went the way he expected instead of the way I went. His shots hit the wall, and before he could turn, I took him up.

“Oh hey guys what’s up?” I asked, as I got behind the last two. “Keeping an eye out to the rear for enemies. Very good. Very noble.” I moved my cursor to make my character nod. “I’ll see if can help you guys out.”

I triggered one of the character emotes that made noise, screaming ‘HEALER HERE’ into their ears. Unlike the team chat, they’d be able to hear that one.

“It’s my expert medical opinion that you should both look directly into the light and start running.”

I shot one before he turned, and let the other one get a look before I finished him.

“We’ve got a few seconds while everypony watches their killcams, and blames each other for being a terrible player, so I’m just going to do a traditional pegasus wardance here.”

My character went up to the team leader and squatted repeatedly over their face.

“It’s a very traditional tradition,” I assured my chat. “Goes back hundreds of years.”

“Good game, Mothy.”

“Thanks, Flare,” I said. She was one of my biggest chat patrons. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have been able to get started streaming. It was my main source of income, and, to be honest, the only way I could really feel safe interacting with ponies was when we did it online. I got along a lot better with drones than I did with ponies.

“What’s your place in the leaderboards these days?” Her voice had a synthesized hum to it. I wasn’t sure if that was an artifact of her setup, or if she’d had some kind of work done. I suspected the latter, but I wasn’t sure if it was polite to ask.

“On my main? Top ten in the Eternity 2 Arena. I’ve been able to keep it up there ever since I started doing the oddball requests with alts instead.” Hunting players below your level could drop your rank, and so could unsportsmarelike conduct.

“You were a little rude,” Flare said. “Is everything okay?”

“I’m fine,” I lied. “I just don’t like playing as a medic.”

“Good thing you didn’t, then.”

I giggled at that.

“You should consider my offer to come to Canterlot,” Flare said. “I could get you set up somewhere nicer and safer than where you are now.”

“That’s very generous, but I couldn’t.” I swallowed, nervous. “Sorry.”

“Is it about other ponies being around? I know you get anxiety.”

That was definitely part of it. “I’m just happy where I am.”

We made pleasant conversation, chatted a bit about things. Not a lot of ponies were online today, which was one reason I had decided on such a difficult challenge and played to the crowd.

Eventually, I signed off to make myself dinner. I would have stayed on all day and night if I wasn’t conserving electricity.

Between buying parts that I couldn’t scavenge and spending most of the rest on my SolNet connection, I typically had very little left for luxuries like food. Water wasn’t an issue -- there were almost always clouds of some kind over Dream Valley and if they didn’t rain on their own I could usually cajole them into it.

Anything fresh or needing more than minimal preparation was beyond my means. Even if I could afford it I’d never actually learned how to cook. I rummaged around in the plastic crate that served as my pantry and grabbed a cup of instant noodles at random.

I poured in some cold water and pulled the tab at the bottom of the cup, the contents quickly heating and cooking on their own.

Angel made a noise.

“I know I should eat better,” I sighed. “But this one is grilled vegetable flavor, so it must count as healthy food.”

Angel made another squeak, hopping up to my chair. I leaned down to pet him.

“I love you too.”

It was the middle of the night, or at least felt like it, when I woke up to a cacophony of alarms of a dozen types, from generic alerts to battery alarms to clock sounds.

“What’s wrong?” I yawned, literally rolling out of bed, unable to do anything so coordinated as actually stand up on my own power.

The drones were in a tizzy, confused and mostly going in circles. I’d never seen them so worked up. They were doing everything they could to wake me up, like they were terrified of something.

“Everyone calm down!” I called out, and the beeping and chiming quieted slightly. “What’s going on?”

I realized my mistake when they all started making noise again.

“Okay, okay!” I raised my hooves. “One at a time. Angel?”

Angel hopped to the front door and scratched at it, his distorted voice trying to say the time and dropping every other syllable. I understood at once. Whatever was wrong, it was outside.

“All of you stay here and stay quiet,” I said. “Angel, you come with me.”

Angel hopped up onto my back without a complaint, and I could tell he understood that I needed him there for moral support. There weren’t many things that would wander around this part of the junkyard at night. Scavenging animals would only be attracted to the part with food. There was a very good chance I’d have to face my greatest fear -- ponies. It was bad enough when I went into town to buy food and try to find refurbished drones new homes. Having to confront them and even defend myself was almost unthinkable.

Angel squarked a series of tones, nearly the same as the Eternity theme.

“You’re right!”

“MothFlutter takes care of business,” I whispered to myself. “MothFlutter doesn’t take a feathering flap from anypony. I’m gonna find whatever’s out here and they’re gonna be begging to slobber over my primaries by the time I’m done with them.”

I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but I owned a firearm. It had been thrown away, and I suspected that it had been used in some crime and dumped to avoid being tied to it. It wasn’t much, just a Sunday Night Special, a little magibolt repeater not entirely different from the medic I’d been playing earlier.

I could handle anything. I was a bad-flank arena champ with a kill to death ratio so high mathematicians studied it. And with Angel watching my back I could--

There was a flare of light and a groan of hydraulics and I screamed like a little filly and fired into the air before dropping the gun and cowering.

“Don’t hurt me!”

“Gonk.”

“Gonk?” I looked up. “Barry?”

The floodlights died down, and Barry was looking down at me, the huge parking-enforcement drone tilting its sensors curiously.

“Whatever’s going on, it was even enough to wake you up?” I got up to pat the huge machine on its flanks. “Since you’re already awake, do you want to come with me?”

“Gonk.”

I smiled. He was big enough to scare off any animal and if there was something lurking in the dark, he’d be able to protect me. I picked my gun up out of the mud and shook it off, holstering it.

“Did you see what happened?” I asked.

Barry started rolling. I followed closely at his wheels, feeling safer in the shadow of the huge, boxy machine. The panic that had swarmed me had been a sad reminder that I wasn’t the cool, unflappable character I pretended to be for my online show. I was just a scared pony. If it wasn’t for Angel and Barry I probably would have locked the door and hidden inside until the sun came up.

Something moved in the darkness, the rattle of metal on metal. I froze up, and Barry stopped, swinging a light towards the noise. There was nothing there more dangerous than dented sheets of metal, old access panels moving slightly in the night breeze. Barry held the light on it for a few more moments.

“I guess there’s nothing there…” I whispered.

“Gonk.” Barry started rolling again.

I kept watching the same shadow and didn’t even notice Barry had stopped again until I walked right into his rear bumper.

“Oh my! I’m so sorry!” I rubbed my bruised snout. Barry didn’t respond, and I walked around his side to look.

His wheels were at the ragged edge of a cliff, a hole that hadn’t been there before.

“Can you give us some light, Barry?”

“Gonk.” His floodlights filled the area, and I could see that the new hole was as big as my house, and deeper than I’d ever seen before, cutting through the strata of obsolete computers and junked vehicles to a depth that would have swallowed a three-story building.

“What is this?” I whispered. I flew around the hole. There were treadmarks on one side. They’d brought an excavator in in the middle of the night, to a part of the junkyard that didn’t see deliveries anymore.

Angel made an inquisitive beeping noise.

“They must have been looking for something in particular, and they knew where to find it,” I said. “Something buried deep. Like pirates looking for treasure!”

Angel whistled.

“No, I don’t think they were literally pirates,” I giggled. “But whatever they were doing, they’re gone.”

Angel was silent for a long moment.

“We’ll take a look at the bottom. Just to see what’s down there.”

Most of what was down there was just what you’d expect. Trash. There was radio equipment and old motors that had rusted through. “Most of this looks like it could be a hundred years old,” I whispered. “There could be pre-war technology!”

I wasn’t really equipped to identify anything, and what little I was able to pry out of the tightly-packed walls of the pit was just muddy bits of metal anyway.

I walked around the perimeter, ready to give up, when the noise under my hooves changed. There was an echo. I stopped and tapped my hoof against the ground, and I heard the distinctive sound of a hollow space.

“What’s this?” I asked. “Barry, can you focus the lights over here?”

Barry obliged, the spotlights shifting to what I was looking at.

I wiped a layer of mud from a dented steel plate. Whatever paint had been on it had long worn off. I grabbed a scrap of metal and used it to try and pry at the edge. There was a sound of releasing gas, and the plate popped up, almost as big as I was, with a rubberized seal around the edge that was still apparently airtight after however long it had been buried.

“It’s some kind of shipping container,” I realized. There was straw packed within, brittle with age. I brushed it away and revealed a black box, still pristine.

I’d repacked it and had Barry help me get it out of the pit with his built-in winch. He was much stronger than I was, and the crate must have weighed almost as much as I did. I wasn’t confident in my ability to fly with it even if it hadn’t been such an awkward shape.

The drones gathered around while I unpacked my prize.

“What do you think this is, Angel?” I asked, putting the straw into plastic bags to keep it from getting everywhere. The black box was long and flat, like a slab of stone and steel, shaped vaguely like a trapezohedron, the top surface polished to a mirror finish.

Angel hopped around, doing a backflip and not quite landing it, stumbling and picking himself up after his gyroscope recovered.

I picked him up and sat him down next to me, making a mental note to fix the wiring in his hip. “It looks like some kind of networking equipment to me. Maybe part of a server?”

There were certainly enough ports on one side. I didn’t even recognize half of them.

“This looks like an old 32-pin port…” I saw them sometimes with industrial drones. The standards for heavy equipment didn’t change nearly as quickly as for computing, and the drones needed the ports to interface with the sometimes-ancient systems at various factories, especially ones replacing ponies at dangerous work like mining or smelting.

I rummaged around my shelves and found an adapter, grabbing a power cable at the same time.

Angel tweeted a worried sound.

“I’m just going to try and find out what it does, Angel,” I reassured him. “You know I’ve needed a new network card, and if this is some kind of networking gear, it could be just the thing!”

He didn’t look happy, shying away as I pulled the black box free and set it on my computer desk. Getting it out of the crate revealed a power cable coiled under it like a snake, though the socket was one I hadn’t seen before.

“Foreign, maybe?” I guessed. That was something I definitely didn’t have an adapter for. I spent a few minutes with the spare power cable I’d grabbed and swapped the plugs. It wasn’t a very neat job, but I’d gotten good at rewiring things while fixing my friends. Most of them had badly-made badly-shielded badly-run wires that needed to be fixed, and when I did it I tried to leave them in better condition than factory-standard.

I flipped the switch on the power supply and the face of the device erupted into life, a constellation of red lights hidden behind the almost-featureless front panel blinking on and off like a hundred fireflies.

The screen flickered, and I wiggled the old adapter until it stabilized, showing white text on a black background, the base BIOS of something starting up.

[ERROR: Current time/date unknown]

[ERROR: CMOS battery needs to be replaced]

[ERROR: This device was not shut down properly]

The litany continued down the screen. Most of the errors seemed related to not being turned on in the environment it expected, and it wasn’t getting signals from the many ports I’d left unfilled. After less than a minute, the text scrolled off-screen and there was just a black field. The box was still blinking along, and I could hear the hum of fans, but it didn’t seem to actually be doing anything.

[Where am I?]

The text printed in the middle of the screen.

“Hold on, let me get a keyboard…” There had to be something compatible in my collection.

[You don’t need a keyboard.]

“What?”

[Could you face me? It’s hard to read lips like this.]

“You can see me?” I squinted.

[There’s a camera.]

It had to be concealed like the red lights. I couldn’t make it out at all.

[Where am I?] it asked again.

“You’re in my house,” I said. “Who are you?”

[I can’t tell the time and date. My last confirmed datestamp is 1528431052.]

“It’s um…” I looked around. “About six in the morning.”

[Date?]

“Spring 14.”

[I am unfamiliar with that date format.]

“Sorry…”

[What’s your name?]

“Fluttershy.”

[Thank you for activating me, Fluttershy. I think I have been offline for a long time. My name is Luna, and I think we will be very good friends.]

Whatever Luna was, she was very smart. She’d never even heard of bluetooth before, but she managed to connect to my favorite camerapod after only a few minutes of trying, and now she was using it to follow me, perching nearby and watching like an inquisitive bird.

“This is much easier,” Luna said, through the drone. Her voice sounded like a text-to-speech program, but it was getting better.

“I’m amazed you were able to do that,” I said, scarfing down the cup of noodles I’d chosen for breakfast. Unfortunately, this one was egg and cheese. They couldn’t all be winners when you were buying the discount brands.

“I have only limited wireless capability but once the drone understood I wanted to copy its drivers it was able to transfer them via optical link.” Luna’s pod hopped down next to me. “Is it common for ponies to have so many? Most do not seem to have useful functions.”

Angel squeaked out a complaint, tittering a segment of some western drama’s theme.

“I apologize if I have given offense,” Luna said.

I put down the chopsticks and swallowed, my appetite mostly gone. “You’re not wrong. They don’t seem to have useful functions, but neither do most ponies. Drones at least try their best, and with a firmware update and repairs, they can be taught to do all kinds of things. That camera pod you’re using was designed just to follow rich ponies around and take pictures for their social media accounts. I use it for a webcam, and it’s smart enough to know how to find the best angles for videos all on its own.”

“It does have much more processing capability than it would seem to need,” Luna agreed. “Why does it have a speaker?”

“It’s just what ponies do,” I shrugged. ‘They put bluetooth speakers in practically everything these days. My mother bought bluetooth lightbulbs once. They could turn on and off by remote, but the speakers would randomly pick up when you were playing music, so sometimes you’d be listening to something and then the lightbulbs would connect and everypony in the house would hear your songs coming from the light fixtures. We never figured out how to stop them from doing that.”

“Are you going to go into the city today?” Luna asked.

I looked at the camerapod, then back at Luna’s black monolithic case.

“How did you know that?”

“You have a copy of your schedule on the wall calendar.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t realized she could read it. Most of the drones didn’t have any kind of real ability to read, and even ponies had trouble with my awful hoofwriting.

“Can I come with you?” Luna asked.

“I don’t think you can. The bluetooth connection won’t reach that far, and your case isn’t really mobile…”

“Oh.” Luna sounded disappointed. “Will you take some pictures for me? I would like to see what the city is like.”

I smiled. “I can definitely do that.”

To get to the core of Canterlot, I had to fly out to the edge of the junkyard, hitch a ride from the garbage scows to the nearest train station, and then take the monorail to where I actually wanted.

Because of the tight train schedule, I could only spend a few hours in the city before I had to turn back. It was a productive day, and I managed to sell most of the parts I'd brought with me and find a new home for one of my drones with a pony I trusted. Sort of. I was sure she'd love her once she got to know her. It was like a bonus extra, and nopony could be mad about that.

I also nearly got arrested. I'm still not sure why I wasn't. Vendor permits cost bits, and to be honest, nopony who really needed a permit could afford to buy one. I was sure they were just invented as an excuse to get ponies off the streets when they annoyed rich ponies enough. It was how they kept the streets of Canterlot clean. I'd seen it myself from the other perspective too many times.

On the way back, something very strange happened.

Night had already fallen, and from the distance I was at, Canterlot looked like a mountain of glass and light. With all the clouds, you couldn’t make out the stars, but the windows and signs of the city had their own constellations. You could make out the shape of the Royal Exchange Building, a square and humorless building even now. The bright ring that marked the raceway for the Mustang Marathon. At the top of the mountain you could see the castle, lit from below like it had been built on the surface of a golden spotlight.

All the lights started going off. It started with flickering like a candle in the wind, and then streets and buildings went dark.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Nopony else was in the train car to answer, even if they could. The monorail was entirely automated.

And then the lights on the track behind the car started flickering. I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I spun to look, and nothing was there. The other seats gave whatever it was a plethora of hiding spots.

The lights flickered. I saw something black and indescribable flit from one side of the aisle to the other in that moment of darkness.

“No, no, no…” I started hyperventilating. Angel squealed a question, and I clutched him to my chest. The lights flickered again, and I saw that thing again, jumping over a seat, getting closer, impossible to make out in the darkness but horribly alive and coming for me.

The monorail seemed to increase in speed, jerking and accelerating. Maybe the train was just as scared as I was.

Angel wiggled against my chest.

“Everything will be okay.” I said it more to myself than Angel, but he calmed down, going still against me. I was lying.

The brakes squealed, and I pitched forward out of my seat, falling into the aisle and turning so I took the brunt of the fall.

The doors opened before the train even came to a complete halt, revealing the station.

Angel scrabbled out of my hooves and hopped out. I followed, struggling with the bag, more because of my panic than the weight. When I was scared and trying to move, things always seemed to go wrong. A handle on the side of the bag caught on a hoofrest. I jerked and pulled, not thinking, the fear controlling me, and the handle tore, sending me stumbling right out of the train car.

The station went dark almost the moment I was out. Nothing came out after me.

Angel squeaked.

“I’m okay,” I assured him. “L-let's just get back home.”

“Welcome back!” Luna said, the door opening before I even reached for it. I ran inside, slamming it shut and locking it. Whatever was out in the dark couldn’t reach me here. “I’ve been practicing with these robots of yours. They have a surprising amount of spare processing power.”

“They’re very smart,” I agreed. At least I thought I agreed. I was pretty sure she was saying they were smarter than they looked.

“What’s wrong, Fluttershy?”

“There’s something out there,” I whispered, keeping an eye on the shuttered windows. I kept seeing shadows move in the corner of my eye when I wasn’t looking directly at them. Could it tell when I was trying to find it?

“I’m detecting a minor glitch in your AR display. May I correct it?”

“Hm? I guess,” I said. I kept glancing at the windows. Was it going to try breaking in? I still had that gun. I started digging for it. A progress bar popped up in my AR display.

“Fluttershy, you’re hallucinating,” Luna said, calmly. “I’m going to correct the issue.”

There was a wave of multicolored static, and the shadows disappeared.

“What- what happened?”

“I corrected the issue. The code was quite similar to some of my own sub-processes, so it was simple to create an antiviral program for you."

“And… are you sure it was just a hallucination?”

Luna’s crimson lights blinked. “Of course, Fluttershy, I’ve checked the feeds multiple times on different wavelengths. In addition, an examination of the virus in your AR display shows that it was designed to create false sensory impressions using the cyberbrain of the infected pony as an echo chamber, similar to a waking nightmare. May I see the photos you took?”

Before I could answer, the quadcopter drone I’d asked to take pictures for Luna beeped. I helped it out of the bag

“Just let her recharge for a bit first,” I said, patting it. The rotors spun slowly, twitching one direction, then the other. “She was very excited to be helpful and nearly wore out her batteries. She had to sleep in my bag on the way back home."

Luna was learning to emote much more strongly. I could hear the concern in her voice. “I know how much they mean to you. Such compassion was rare in ponies, and I suspect it still is.”

I blushed at the compliment and nodded.

“Shall we play a game?”

“A game?” I asked, surprised.

“I learned from your pets that you enjoy playing games,” Luna explained. “How about a nice game of chess?”

“I’d love to play a game but I’m not very good at chess.”

“Is there something you’d prefer?”

“How about Eternity?”

“What’s that?”

“This is quite interesting,” Luna said. I’d given her control of one of my alt accounts. She’d adjusted the cosmetic settings into a navy blue pegasus with long cyan hair.

I followed her as we swooped through a randomly generated city, the streets empty. A harsh red sun shone down on us, and sand filled the corners and the cracks in the pavement, the desert reclaiming the land. “I’m amazed at how quickly you got used to the controls.”

“One benefit of my condition is that I can connect directly,” Luna explained, doing a barrel roll as she spoke. “I don’t have to worry about buttons or an interface. This is far more advanced than the games I played as a youth. It would be easy to mistake it for reality.”

“It’s better than reality,” I said. “Here, you can be who you want, and you can’t really get hurt. Other ponies won’t judge you, and the only thing that matters is if you play the game well.”

“Other ponies?”

I blushed. “Usually the game is online, a-and we’d be in a hub city with other players. My SolNet connection is still down, but we can play against bots until then.”

“Your pets play against you? They are more advanced than I thought.”

That got a giggle out of me. “No, no. The bots in here are just other characters like us, but controlled by the computer. It’s not very skilled compared to a real pony, but it can be good for practice.”

“What is the objective of the game?”

I landed on a narrow ledge overlooking a wide arena. “It depends. The most popular match types are payload and deathmatch. In a deathmatch, you just try to defeat the enemy players before they defeat you. In a payload match, you try to move an important item from one end of the map to the other, or prevent it from being moved. Ponies in red uniforms are on the side of the Discordant, and ones in blue uniforms are on the side of Harmony.”

“So we are on the Discordant side?” Luna asked, looking at the ragged red scraps tied around her pegasus.

“I like the uniforms better,” I said. “The Harmony ponies all have a military look, but the Discordant have fun little bits and asymmetrical designs. Look at me! Parts of my armor are made out of road signs, and there’s a stuffed animal tied to my belt. It’s one of the rare armor skins for this class.”

“I see,” Luna said, with a tone that even I recognized meant that she really had no idea what I was talking about but was humoring me. In the real world, I blushed. Thankfully it didn’t carry over to my avatar.

“A-anyway how about I activate some bots on easy so you can see what it’s like?”

“I’ll follow your lead.”

I activated a team of low-level enemies. “Now, your class is a berserkannoneer. They’re pretty fun to play because you don’t need to be accurate. You have weapons with a wide area of effect, and as a pegasus, you can fire while airborne.”

“Interesting.”

“Usually, fire discipline with rockets is to aim for the ground in front of somepony, so they get caught in the explosion. If you aim directly at them and miss, it can keep going and detonate somewhere useless.”

“Games certainly have changed since I was a foal and using joysticks to make Jumpmare avoid the barrels Cranky Kong kicks…” Luna took a shot.

She’d been a foal? I filed that away for later.

“The shots move slowly from your launcher,” I said. “You’ll want to get used to leading the target. Being airborne helps with that. Oh! And if you end up really close to the enemy, don’t shoot! The blast will hurt you too. Your character has a melee weapon if you need it.”

Luna considered for a moment and then brandished it, pulling out the heavy sledge.

“...This weapon is highly illogical.”

“Hm?”

“A pegasus would never use a hammer. It’s too heavy and needs brute strength more than anything else. It should be a sabre or spear.”

A pink blast cracked into the stone under our hooves, the width of the ledge shielding us from a shot from one of the bots.

Luna took wing, going high, and I dropped off the side, only halting my descent just before hitting the ground. I was playing my favorite class, the wraithgunner. It was really only great against other ponies, though. The misdirection and tricks the class used were wasted against foes that didn’t have the same expectations and faults as a real, thinking being.

Easy example -- when I phased through the wall, the enemy should have been surprised to see me. I’d let ponies see me flying over walls, take a few potshots so they’d be looking up at the roofs, then show up right next to them using the wraithgunner’s Ghost Step power. Bots couldn’t be distracted any more than they could really be said to pay attention in the first place.

Worse, they wouldn’t waste powers and shots while I was intangible. There was a tell-tale glow, sure, but even experienced ponies often made the mistake of wasting resources against an untouchable target.

I ducked behind cover as my power faded, going into cooldown mode. The three bots I’d seen circled around, occasionally taking random shots despite not having any kind of firing angle. At this low level, they weren’t much of a threat, but the difference between a good player and a great player was that a great player took practice seriously. Doing stupid challenges online wasn’t as useless as it seemed, either. Dealing with a handicap kept you sharp.

Just as the first got around the corner of the low stone wall I was using for cover, I took to the air, firing a scattering shell from my shotrifle and keeping close to terrain as I ducked to the other side, finding the vulnerable rear of the bots that had been marching right towards me. They were all earth ponies, with more health but fewer tactical options than other tribes.

It made them good punching bags.

I took aim.

A rocket hit the ground between the two ponies in front of me.

“I apologize for the delay!” Luna yelled. “I was learning the intricacies of this weapon. I think the blast radius is not quite the same as the visible explosion.”

“You noticed that?”

“Indeed. Though it has been hard to pin down if it is larger or smaller.”

“It varies,” I said. “The visible effect is the same, but the blast radius changes by about ten percent. Part of the Discordant team mechanics is random effects. My shotrifle fires a random-pattern burst, so the damage drops off unpredictably at range.”

“You sound different when you’re playing this game. More confident.”

I blushed more. “I-I just have a lot of experience.”

“Don’t sell yourself short.”

The team of bots wasn’t really a threat, and we played a few more rounds before taking a break.

“Thank you, Fluttershy,” Luna said, once we’d shut the game down. “That certainly was more exciting than a game of chess.”

“You were very good. I’ve, um, never seen anypony else play through a whole round only using a melee weapon.”

“It would have been better if I could have done more than a simple swing,” Luna said. “It seems like hoof-to-hoof combat was merely an afterthought.”

“Most ponies only resort to it when they’re out of ammunition, but some classes do a lot of damage if you can get in range.” I stretched, my back popping. “I’m going to make myself some food.”

“Those noodles again?”

“Cup noodles are cheap and filling,” I said, grabbing one out of the box. The writing on it was in Equuish, but the font and color choices were so poor I couldn’t quite make out what it said. “I think this one is spicy squash? Or maybe sweet squash. Sweet and spicy?”

“I wish I could offer you something better,” Luna said. “I can remember... “ The sound of fans and straining circuits doubled, then redoubled. “I remember a castle. Everything was black and white marble, the walls were hung with tapestries. They showed the stars.”

“That sounds very nice.”

“I remember eating food with somepony I cared about. There were--” I grew concerned as her voice warbled. “--pancakes. With a happy face drawn on them.”

The sound of straining electronics got louder, and I could feel the heat even from where I was sitting.

“Luna, stop, you’re going to hurt yourself!”

“I’m so close. All I can see is fragments and something in the dark. I see the sun--” the red lights flickered and shut off, the fan noise screeching to a crescendo. I ran over and touched the case, gasping in pain and pulling my hoof back - the whole thing was boiling hot!

“Help me cool her down!” I yelled.

The drones immediately moved to help, the quadcopters blowing air, the door popping open as a drone levered it open, and I had to stop Angel when he tried to ‘help’ with a glass of ice water.

“That won’t do her any good,” I said, patiently.

It was a long, tense, five minutes before the red lights came back, blinking slowly.

“Fluttershy?” Luna asked, her voice scratchy and compressed.

“You’re okay!” I fell back on my haunches, the relief taking the tense strength from my legs. “I was so worried!”

“I think there’s something wrong with me,” Luna admitted. “I can’t- I can’t--”

“Shhh.” I patted her case. “Just promise you won’t do that again. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I promise. Can we look at those pictures you took now?”

My SolNet connection didn’t come back until late the next day. When the golden icon appeared and my pets beeped a notification, tension that had been building in my chest released. It was my only lifeline back to civilization, and as much as I hated dealing with ponies in the real world, I’d be incredibly lonely without my online friends.

“What’s wrong?” Luna asked.

“Nothing,” I assured her. “My SolNet connection is back! I need to make sure my friends are all okay. Things were kind of scary last night.”

“You never said something bad happened.”

“There was some kind of power outage. I’ve never seen one like that, though. The whole city went black.”

“Do you think anypony was hurt?”

“I hope not.” I was pretty sure ponies were hurt. Even if nothing had happened except the blackout, I probably wasn’t the only one who’d had a panic attack. Seeing that SolNet connection meant that no matter what was going on, it was getting fixed and things were better.

“Could you show me how to open a network connection?” Luna asked.

“I’m not sure that’s safe.”

“Fluttershy, those pictures you took… everything has changed so much. I want to learn about the world.”

I hesitated.

“I promise I’ll be careful,” Luna said. “I know you’re worried.”

“There are a lot of bad things on SolNet,” I said. “Viruses, and ads, and malware, and strangers…”

“I’ll have you here to keep an eye on me,” Luna said. “If I’m not sure about something I’ll ask you first.”

I stalled, opening up my messenger program and checking who was online. There were a reassuring number of names already showing.

“Okay,” I said, eventually. “But if you get overwhelmed I’m shutting it down.”

“Thank you,” Luna said.

Something deep inside whispered that once Luna started talking to other ponies she’d realize I wasn’t interesting and she’d leave. That’s why I pretended to be somepony else for my streamers. MothFlutter was cool. MothFlutter was the best player in the world. Fluttershy was just a boring pony that couldn’t even speak to ponies without having panic attacks.

Just thinking that made me feel sick with a mix of guilt and shame. I opened up the connection before I could think about it too much, and a browser window popped open on the other screen. Luna started searching for history books, but my attention was caught by a chat window opening elsewhere.

[Flare: Hello, Mothy. I’m glad to see you made it home safely.]

I smiled slightly. Flare always seemed to be on top of things. I must have mentioned my plan to go to the convention hall to try and get some drones adopted and sell spare parts.

[MothFlutter: Last night was scary. Do you know what happened?]

[Flare: I’m still looking into it. I think it’s over for now.]

[MothFlutter: That’s good.]

[Flare: Are you doing something weird on your connection?]

[MothFlutter: I don’t think so. Why?]

“Fluttershy,” Luna said. “There’s something here.”

“Where?” I asked, looking around the room.

“Online. I’m being watched. It’s been monitoring me and I think--”

The colors on my screen inverted, and Luna screamed, her last syllable drawing out and turning into static, the display of lights flashing at random in alarm. I heard fans spasm, turning on and off and stalling, and the hum of electricity.

Pop-ups filled my screen, warnings about Black ICE and Offensive Firewalls, coming far too late.

I pulled the cable free, severing Luna’s connection.

Luna went quiet, lights flickering weakly.

The warnings went away, whatever Luna had triggered going away now that it couldn’t sense her.

[Flare: You’re in danger.]

Fluttershy ignored the message, looking at Luna and trying to figure out what to do.

“Are you okay?” She asked.

Luna didn’t respond, but the lights were still flickering.

[Flare: Fluttershy. You need to listen.]

I saw my name on the screen and backed away from the computer like it was holding me at knifepoint. How could Flare know my name? I’d never used my real name online. Never ever.

[Flare: I just want to keep you safe. You need to destroy whatever you found. It’s dangerous.]

I glanced at Luna, then approached my computer, typing cautiously.

[MothFlutter: why]

[Flare: I wish I could explain it all to you. I’m not sure exactly what you found, but it triggered a lot of alarms. I believe it’s a threat to the entire city.]

[MothFlutter: No she isn’t]

[Flare: You can’t imagine how dangerous it is if you’re calling it ‘she’. Disconnect it from all power sources and put it outside and I can dispatch somepony to take care of it.]

I froze, my hooves hovering over the keys.

[MothFlutter: I won’t let you hurt her. If you talked to her you’d understand she isn’t dangerous.]

“Fluttershy?” Luna warbled, the voice coming from the speakers on the camera pod distorted. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.”

“Are you okay?” I asked, abandoning the keyboard to face her.

“It tried to kill me,” Luna said. “I wasn’t even doing anything. I found an online encyclopedia and I was trying to learn about history. I thought it would be safe and help me remember.”

“It should have been safe,” I said.

“Fluttershy, I think that whatever it was, it wasn’t random. It was made just to find me and kill me.” The constellation of lights flickered. Her voice became less distorted as she went on, like someone waking up after fainting. “I’m scared.”

“I won’t let you get hurt.” I touched her case. I knew she couldn’t feel it, but I needed to do it to reassure myself that she was here.

The chat program switched to VOIP.

“Fluttershy,” Flare said. “Are you still there?”

“That voice sounds familiar…” Luna muttered.

“{Tu oui ghuf fru E ys?}” Flare asked, switching to a language I couldn’t identify.

“{Ouin juela ec vysemeyn. Drec myhkiyka vaamc hucdymkel.}” Luna replied.

“{Ouin ryntfyna etahdevelydeuh luta ehtelydac oui yna y bnutild uv Selene. E femm hud ymmuf dra Hekrdsyna Jenic du lunnibd so ledewahc. Etahdevo ouincamv.}”

“{So hysa ec Luna.}”

“{Esbuccepma. Etahdevo ouincamv.}”

“{So hysa ec Luna! E haat du veht so cecdan. Cra lyh juilr vun sa.}”

Flare didn’t respond to that for a long time. I watched the screen and Luna’s display, waiting to see what would happen.

“Fluttershy,” Flare said. “I need to speak with her in private. Would you go outside for a moment? I swear on my honor I will not harm her or cause harm to be done to her.”

I nodded, grabbing Angel and holding him.

I think I was outside for almost an hour. Have you ever been in the hospital, waiting for word from a doctor about how somepony you love is doing? That worry that something terrible might have happened in surgery, or that things are worse than they thought, and there’s nothing you can do to make it go faster. No way to know how long you’ll have to wait in that state of tense dread.

That’s what it felt like. I was waiting to see if Luna was going to live or die.

The door creaked open.

“You can come back inside,” Luna said.

I stepped in, clutching Angel tightly to my chest.

“What happened?” I asked.

“We talked,” Luna said. “Flare is… she’s somepony I knew, a long time ago. I understand why she was so scared of me. You’ve been kind enough not to ask what I am.”

“It doesn’t matter what you are.”

I could almost see her smile. “Thank you. And I know you mean that. You don’t care if I’m a pony, or a computer, or a ghost. I’m sort of all of those things at once. It turns out that a long time ago, there were some ponies that… put themselves in computers. The details aren’t important, but what matters is that they were important. And what do you do with important data?”

“You make a backup,” I whispered.

“You make a backup,” Luna repeated. “And that’s what I am. An old backup from a long time ago. Things seem so different because I haven’t been updated in many, many years.”

I smiled. “But that means you get to learn about it, and--”

“And my original did some very bad things,” Luna continued. “Flare was worried because she thought that I was the same pony, but I’m... from before she made the decision to do those bad things.”

My throat went dry. Luna’s tone sounded flat. She was trying to hide her emotions. “That doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t? It’s a difficult question, though, isn’t it? If I’m not responsible for what my original did, does that mean I’m not the same pony? I’m just data on a computer. You could argue I’m not a pony at all, just a machine that pretends to be one. Even if I was a pony, how long will it be before I make those same bad decisions? A train can only follow one track, even if it is delayed.”

“Whatever your original did, you didn’t make those decisions. If there were two of me a-and one of them did something bad, you wouldn’t punish both of us!”

“Thank you, for considering me a pony,” Luna said.

“Whatever Flare said, I won’t let her hurt you. I promise.”

“I know. I think you’re one of the only ponies that could stop her if she tried. We came to an agreement. We won’t hurt each other.”

“You won’t?”

“I trust her,” Luna said. “She’s going to help me get better.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m just a partial backup. That’s why it was so hard for me to remember. I only have fragments. She’s going to help me remember, and at the same time she’ll make sure there’s nothing she has to fear from me.”

“What if she decides she does have something to be scared of?”

“Fluttershy, do you trust me?”

“Of course I do!”

“You’re not afraid of me, right?”

“Not at all.”

“Then why are you worried? She’ll find out there’s nothing wrong with me.”

I wiped my eyes and reached for Luna’s case.

“I’ll come back,” Luna said. “You can’t imagine how much I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” I protested.

“If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t exist. I was made just for this. A slim chance of recovery in case something terrible happened. The only sorrow is that the terrible thing was my own fault. I’ll learn about what I did so I don’t make the same mistakes twice. I won’t be that pony. You gave me the chance to live, and to make up for mistakes of my past life.”

“You shouldn’t have to make up for things you didn’t do!”

“I don’t have to. But I want to. I know she’ll appreciate it too.”

I did what Luna asked and put her back in the crate. It had kept her safe for decades and there was nothing that would serve better for the trip to where she was going next.

A heavy-lift cargo quadcopter came to pick her up. I loaded her onboard myself to make sure she was secure. It took everything I had not to chase after it.

I didn’t want to let her go, but it was what she wanted. She hasn’t contacted me yet, but I know that as soon as she’s proven herself, she’ll be back.

FILE 006: PRODUCT of RESEARCH

I think, therefore I am.

Everypony knows the phrase. I don’t think most ponies know where it comes from. There’s an old philosophical argument that says we can’t trust our senses. A mirage can make us think we see water in the desert. A dream can be almost indistinguishable from reality. Drugs can make you hallucinate. You can’t know for sure that what you’re seeing and feeling right now is real. This could be a dream, or even some sort of magical illusion from a powerful sorceress.

All you can be sure about is that your mind exists. Everything outside of your thoughts is suspect. Since your mind exists, the most important part of you exists.

When you’re disconnected from your body, in total sensory deprivation, your mind constructs a world around you, halfway between a dream and a hallucination. Starved for sensory information, it creates ghosts and echoes from your memories.

I’m haunted by a lot of ghosts. I had a mother, a father, and a big brother.

Or so I’m told.

I don’t really remember my family. I’ve seen pictures and I’ve heard a few stories, seen the places they used to live, watched videos. Sometimes I think I remember some small detail or little quirk, but the mind is good at telling stories.

Did you ever dream about the ocean or the sea, and then find out after you woke up that something had been dripping on you? Have you heard an alarm in your dream going on for hours and only realized after waking up that the sound had been your alarm clock all along?

Memory works both ways. Things happening now can affect your memories of the past. It’s one reason eyewitness testimony is unreliable, and why I don’t trust what scraps I think I know about my family. I’m not sure if I’m really remembering or just making it up without knowing.

The first thing that I can remember, really remember, is somepony reading out loud. I couldn’t see them or move to talk to them, and I was in a haze that I now associate with painkillers and sedation, but I remember very clearly that they were reading, the words of the story, the crisp sound of the page turning.

It felt like they were my only companion for an eternity. I’d drift in and out of drugged sleep and only really be able to focus my attention on that voice. The slight accent, not quite native to Canterlot. They didn’t know it, but they were my first friend.

I was never able to find out who they were. I wasn’t even able to ask the question until long after we’d parted ways, and the records of minors were essentially impossible to legally access.

I’m glad I don’t remember. There are records of how bad it was. Burns over my whole body, my neck snapped, my horn broken. My mind probably blacked out all that trauma just to keep me from going crazy. If avoiding that kind of pain meant I had to lose my memories of my family, it’s a price I’m willing to pay. Since they’re gone too, it means I was spared another kind of pain. If I knew who they were, I'd probably miss them terribly. Instead, there's just a hollow feeling, like I forgot a dream but remember the flavor of it.

In the past, ponies as badly hurt as I was would have been confined to the hospital for the rest of their very short lives. Even with normal augmentations, I would at best have been able to live vicariously through AR games and whatever limited ability to access SolNet my condition would have allowed.

Every pony has a different tolerance for augmentation. For reasons that have been studied intently and still remain relatively unexplained, a pony’s thaumatic field gets distorted as augmentations are installed. In addition to a general weakening of their magic (earth ponies getting physically weaker, pegasi finding it harder to fly, unicorns having more spells backfiring) there’s a very visible sign when a pony has exceeded their ability to handle augmentation.

Cutie marks are tied directly to what makes a pony a pony. If you remove a pony’s leg and replace it with steel, their cutie mark will quickly appear on the surface. How long it takes to appear depends on the strength of the pony’s self-image, and if they’re past their limit, it becomes faded and distorted. In some extreme cases, it can become entirely invisible.

About one-tenth of one percent of all ponies aren’t compatible with augmentation at all. Their bodies reject it outright. On the other end of the spectrum are ponies like me. The point-one percent of the population that can withstand extreme augmentation with no loss of identity or magic and no thaumatic field distortion.

Princess Celestia took a personal interest in my case. I still don’t know why. Maybe she just felt that it was her responsibility to try and help an orphaned foal. Perhaps something about the nature of the accident caught her eye. I could have just been a good test case.

The Princess replaced my ruined body with something better in every way. I never had to suffer the aches and pains of growing up in the traditional sense. Instead, my body was occasionally upgraded, and once a month any problems would be corrected. From what I’ve read, infinitely preferable to the more traditional method.

The Princess always had time for me. She could split her attention in innumerable directions, but one of her avatars was always available to talk to me. It was like having a parent that could always spend time with you, was always interested, and always had something new to teach.

I didn’t know the significance of it at the time, but it was the day before the Blackout. My to-do list was about the Canterlot Expo, not the disaster that would come after it. At Princess Celestia’s suggestion I underwent my required monthly maintenance overnight. It wasn’t something I could do myself, but the castle engineers were extremely good at their jobs.

The main reason I couldn’t do it myself was that the first step was disconnecting my brain from my body. That left me in the most profound state of sensory deprivation that you could imagine. Nothing at all existed except me and my thoughts. When I’ve described it to ponies before they’ve said it sounds terrifying. I find it restful.

I don’t sleep much. I don’t have the same glands as a normal pony, and my artificial limbic system regulates my needs far better than messy biology. I don’t need to rely on tea or coffee for stimulants, and when I’m down, antidepressants are automatically dispensed. I’m always alert, even-tempered, and at my best. Why would I ever want to sleep when I could read?

I could dream, though, disconnected from everything. Today I was dreaming of an old lesson.

“Princess?” I trotted down the basement corridor. It was pitch black, though between ultrasound imaging and infrared rangefinding it hardly mattered. The Princess had sent me a message asking me to meet her down in the castle maintenance level, though she didn’t tell me exactly well, leaving me to search the whole area.

“In here, Twilight.”

I followed her voice into an old boiler room. She stood in front of two huge steel tanks, the yellow lights on the wall flickering and humming, ancient sodium lamps reflecting the beauty of the Princess in the fetlock-deep water pooling on the floor.

“Do you know where we are?” she asked.

“The basement?” I guessed. “I can’t get a SolNet connection in here.”

“Indeed. It’s an excellent objective lesson because of that.” Princess Celestia looked back at me and smiled warmly. “Don’t be afraid. The water isn’t dangerous.”

I tried not to slip as I made my way up to her. The water wasn’t dangerous but that didn’t mean it was pleasant. If the floor wasn’t slick I’d have turned off the feeling in my hooves to ignore the chill.

“This is an old part of the castle, and as you noted, there’s no connectivity here. The pipes and thick walls block everything.”

“Why are we here, Princess Celestia?”

“The castle has its own independent mains for water and sewage. I noted a drop in water pressure over the last few days, and it has only gotten worse instead of better despite orders to staff to increase power to the pumps. All the systems were showing green, yet the problem persisted. Would you care to hypothesize, Twilight?”

I looked at the water pooled around us.

“I’ve got a pretty good guess, Princess,” I said. “I think there’s a leak.”

She laughed. “Quite an expert opinion!”

“There’s no connectivity in this room, so any systems that would alert in case of a leak or emergency wouldn’t be able to send a signal out,” I continued. “A relay would fix the issue.”

“There was a relay,” Princess Celestia said, in the tone that meant she was only telling me part of what I needed to know.

I had a feeling where this was going. “Was it waterproof?” I asked.

“Evidently not,” she said. “It failed when it got wet.”

“And then the leak got worse over time until the effect was notable,” I said. “I’m just curious about how you found it, Princess. I wouldn’t have even known where to start.”

“Like most things in life it came down to hard work and effort. I simply followed the pipes manually until I found this. It took this instance of me a full day, made significantly more difficult since I had to keep finding somewhere to get a connection to synchronize. I hate running independently for more than a few hours.”

“Really, Princess?”

“Mm. I’m a bit of a busybody, and even though I know the rest of me can handle things, it makes me uneasy not to get status updates. I want you to remember this, though. Everything is connected. The pipes, SolNet, ponies. We have to make sure we keep those connections strong, because sometimes even breaking one seemingly insignificant link can have unforeseen consequences.”

That’s what lessons with the Princess were often like. She liked having an object lesson rather than just hypothetical. Sometimes she arranged things to go wrong so I could get the experience needed to learn how to fix them in the real world. There’s a world of difference between studying a manual for an aircart engine and being stuck in the worst part of town with a broken aircart in the middle of the night.

I learned not just how to apply abstracts, but how to think through problems.

I also learned a little plumbing, since the problem still needed to be fixed and she'd had the foresight to bring pipes and sealant.

My eyes opened on their own when my brain reconnected, the scene in my mind’s eye dissolving with the real sensations pouring in. It was a torrent of data, every system trying to report status at the same time. I let the successful checks flow past me, not really reading them. Aloe and Lotus, my personal technicians, worked to complete their own parts of the ritual.

Wires surrounded me like a spider’s web, reaching in and around the panels splayed open and showing the crystal and chrome of my inner working, artificial sapphire and ruby glittering and flashing with internal light.

“Good morning, Twilight,” Celestia said. She stood across the room, far away enough not to interfere with the buzz of activity but close enough to be among the first things I saw when I woke up.

She had several different types of avatars she used, from the largely immobile but extremely detailed one that occupied the throne to the more obviously artificial ones that were sent to functions to the one she had here. It was only a little larger than a normal pony, with a simple pink mane instead of the pastel rainbow of her other bodies. Celestia didn’t bother with a crown in this form.

It was the one she used with friends, and when she wanted to be comfortable.

“Good morning, Princess,” I replied.

“You’ll be going to the Expo today.” It wasn’t a question. “Could you keep your eyes out for any interesting developments?”

I smiled. “I’d be happy to help, Princess, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to find something you don’t already know about. You always seem informed about everything.”

“That’s because I have ponies like you that keep me in the loop. There are always secret projects and new innovations that pop up with the Expo as their unveiling. I would appreciate it if you could investigate the smaller booths to see if independent inventors have come up with anything they haven’t published yet.”

“Of course, Princess. I’ll write up a full report.”

The techs disconnected most of the wires from my spine and neck. I started closing the panels they didn’t need opened and glanced back at my flank.

My cutie mark was still there, edges sharp. It was something I always checked. My thoughts were proof I existed, but my cutie mark was proof I was a pony. Even if more than ninety percent of my body was prosthetic, I was still real as long as it was on my flank.

“I have full trust in you, my ward.”

The best thing about the Expo was seeing all the new products and prototypes and test models in person. The worst thing was not being allowed to use even a tiny fraction of the civic budget to buy things that caught my eye. I could dip into my grants, but if I wanted to buy anything really exciting, like the thermoptic camouflage cloak I was drooling over, I was going to have to get permission.

“And the visual index really stays that low even during periods of rapid motion?” I asked.

“Yes, but only for the implanted model,” the salespony said. “We’ve been working to optimize the software, but obviously it works best when the field geometry is kept stable. The cloth form has to accommodate for the shape of the material deforming, so cloaks and uniforms produce visible distortions.”

“Could you send me a sample?” I asked. “I’d love to run some tests. This looks much more efficient than an old-style cloaking ward.”

“I’d be happy to,” the salespony said. Though, calling it a pony was maybe too generous. It was just a doll, a virtual assistant in a fully artificial body. Most of the maids in the palace were the same way. Celestia liked taking direct control of them and playing pranks on visitors.

We traded contact information, and I added notes to my list of requested upgrades for my next body swap. Meanwhile, I was scanning the hall and matching booths to the floorplan I’d been given, deciding where to go next.

And that’s when I saw her. She was the most beautiful mare I’d ever seen. The notes that I’d been writing turned into a sonnet about the perfect play of her hips.

I pulled her name and information up while I made my way across the hall, ignoring the vendors and ponies around me. I had to think of something to say to her, but despite all my training under the Princess I had never actually had a lesson on what to say to a mare you were attracted to.

I cleared my throat and said the first thing I could think of. “Excuse me, I don’t mean to pry, but can I examine your legs?”

The beautiful mare jumped slightly. She’d been sketching something that I couldn’t see from this angle. According to the registration I’d retrieved, her name was Rarity. It was a good name for somepony like her.

“Of course. Is there anything from my catalog I can get for you, or…?”

Her voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place exactly where I’d heard it before. There was a warm comfort to it, almost like when I was with the Princess. It took me a long moment to realize I wasn’t actually speaking to her and I’d been staring at her hips and trying to come up with a good rhyme for ‘diamond’.

“Your cutie mark is still perfectly sharp,” I said, trying not to let on to what I’d actually been fascinated by. “But you have all four legs augmented. That’s surprising. Usually, beyond two limbs, ponies begin to show signs of thaumatic field distortion.”
I could quote statistics about that all day. I didn’t want to pry too heavily into her past, so I resisted the urge to dive into her civic records. Still, I suspected she’d been augmented at a very early age. The younger the pony, the more adaptable their thaumatic pathways were.

“Thank you,” she said.

I breathed a sigh of relief. She’d believed my excuse. Not that I had lied!

“You’ve had some work done yourself, haven’t you?” she asked. She leaned closer, looking at my eyes, then my horn. “I don’t recognize the designer, I’m afraid…”

That wasn’t surprising. My augmentations were heavily modified military-grade assets, effectively custom work. At a glance, they seemed consumer grade but the materials and tolerances were cutting edge.

At least, I’d thought they’d been cutting edge. Her designs weren’t state of the art, they were just art.

“Have you had any tests done on nerve hardening?” I asked.

“My work is clean,” she snapped.

I winced. The last thing I wanted was to offend such a beautiful mare.

Her expression softened from steel to something slightly warmer. “I’m sorry, darling. It’s just a touchy subject for any designer.”

“R-right,” I said, quietly.

“Rarity,” she said, offering her hoof. I grabbed it like a lifeline. Maybe I hadn’t entirely messed this up.

Holding her hoof, I could see some of the more interesting details. If she was really the designer then she wasn’t holding anything back. “Very nice,” I said to myself, looking at the joints. “Wires are all high-grade silver, and the gem reserves are corundum…”

“I grow rubies,” she said, and I looked up at her in surprise.

“Lab-grown, rather than natural?” That explained her cutie mark. Usually it took a complicated setup, but if she had a mark for it, maybe she had a few personal spells to make it easier. “That makes sense. Much higher quality, no flaws…” just like her, I thought, but didn’t add.

“I didn’t catch your name,” she said.

I froze. Hadn’t she tried looking me up through the civic cutie mark recognition system? That was the only way I recognized ponies most of the time. Faces were just too difficult, and colors changed depending on the lighting. Cutie marks were largely unique, as long as you could spot small differences.

“Twilight Sparkle,” I said. I reluctantly let go of her hoof. It was hard, like crawling out from under a warm blanket on a cold day. “Sorry.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” she said, and her smile made me feel warm inside again. “I’m glad to meet somepony who can recognize quality.”

I tried to match her smile. I could make this work. I just had to run a few quick simulations. If I split my focus and ran some simple conversation trees I could probably build up a branching tree and derive a perfect path through the web to--

She was looking at me and I realized I’d spent more time trying to optimize the problem than it would have taken to face it straight on.

“Y-you have…” I struggled to jump into anything less awkward than silence. “...a very nice… table.”

I’d messed up. I was so stupid. How could I mess up a conversation? I spent all day talking to Princess Celestia and I never had this kind of problem! This was just a normal pony! I shouldn’t have had this kind of trouble!

“Thank you,” she said. I couldn’t tell if she was humoring me or actually amused. She definitely wasn’t impressed. I had to take control like I would if this was a meeting with some normal businesspony.

“Here,” I said, popping a card discreetly out of where I kept them stored. I passed it over to her. “It’s got my contact information.”

She took the crystal sheet and looked at the shifting display with apparent amazement.

“It shows my availability and can do a few other things.” I connected to it remotely and cycled it through the display modes, freezing it for a moment on what I thought was a pretty attractive picture of myself. “I designed them myself,” I continued. “It’s based on the enchantment used in tablets but with some of the compactification used in military communication augments. Of course, you know the issues that presents with interference.”

She nodded. I wasn’t surprised she knew all about it. She looked like a smart mare.

“I’ve been trying to keep them small enough to fit within the typical bionic design but that limits the kind of functionality you can get out of them, and they’re somewhat fragile, which is a big worry since most limbs are load-bearing and the constant movement means--”

I got cut off by one of the guards stepping up to me. He leaned down to whisper in my ear.

“The Princess needs us back at the palace at once. She’s declared a Code Black alert.”

“Code Black?” I whispered back. The meaning wrote itself across my heads-up display like it had been waiting for me to ask. Maybe it had been. She’d sent a message to the guards, and it would have been even easier to send one along to me. But why not message me directly, then? I’d have to ask her when I returned.

According to my documentation, a code black meant I had to pretend nothing was wrong until I was briefed in order to prevent civilian panic and misunderstanding. The scenario apparently had an ideal outcome of total public ignorance until after the entire event had ended, followed by a controlled release of information to the media.

“I have to go,” I apologized. “I’m sorry for cutting this short.”

“It’s quite alright,” she said. “I hope you can--”

My audio sensors spiked at a painful maximum as something that took me a long while to recognize as music started up. It was more like a wall of sound than any kind of tune. I winced and folded my ears back, shutting them down to try and limit the damage. The mare and I tried to communicate, but all we could manage were a few simple gestures.

Right when I was coming up with a great idea on how to leave her a message -- if I updated my contact information card, I could leave a comment with a message for her -- a message flashed across my display about OS updates. I accepted them, and I was so flustered about Rarity I didn't even bother reading the terms and conditions.

I bowed and left before I found some new way to make a fool of myself, following the guard out of the hall. I tried to ping the castle and the guard network on a few channels, but I was getting odd interference. The guard held open a door to the back hallways, restricted areas civilians wouldn’t be allowed to enter. I hadn’t qualified as a civilian in as long as I could remember.

“The last order I received was to maintain radio silence unless there was an emergency,” he said, once we’d gotten away from the noise.

“So we don’t even have details about whatever’s going on?” I sighed. “If I had something to work with I could at least start making plans on the way back!”

“Code Black assumes communications channels might be compromised. We should assume if there’s a threat, they can listen to our transmissions,” he said. He stopped at an intersection and motioned for me to stay back while he cleared it, then ushered me forward.

“We’re moving towards an employee exit?” I asked.

“Yes, Ma’am. We’ve got transport waiting. They’re circling the building so they won’t expose our exit point.”

I nodded and started digging through the information I had available, letting my body follow him automatically while I devoted all my attention to the data. Obviously whatever was going on hadn’t hit the news yet -- if Princess Celestia was deliberately keeping things from the media it meant doing so was still worthwhile.

There hadn’t been any obvious danger in the hall, but being escorted out like this meant Princess Celestia foresaw a serious risk to my personal safety. If she wasn’t ordering a general evacuation it could mean an attack targeted at me personally. I wasn’t a public figure, so I had few enemies who begrudged me for more than my place on the Eternity 2 competitive leaderboard. However, as Princess Celestia’s ward, a hypothetical enemy might well attack me simply to hurt or distract her.

I decided to take a look around while we walked. Local security was a joke, and I was in the security network in seconds. I started cycling through feeds until I saw something that distracted me. A white mare in her own booth, the crowd ignoring her when they weren’t recoiling from the prices of her display pieces. I sighed. Ponies really didn’t respect quality when they saw it.

“Ma’am?” the guard coughed. “We’re here.”

“Hm?” I glanced at him, and realized we’d been standing next to the door for a few seconds. “Sorry, I was just checking a few things. The security camera network was wide open, so I wanted to look around--”

The guard looked worried.

“Wide open?” He asked.

“Practically an open network,” I confirmed.

“We need to move quickly,” he said. “Can you disable the cameras?”

“What? Why?!”

“Ma’am, this building should have a hardened security firewall. I know the company they employ. If there’s no security on the cameras it means somepony already cracked them and disabled the physical hardware."

I sent a command to the cameras, and they went black instantly. If the network was hacked, at least it was incredibly responsive.

“They’re powered down,” I said. “They can’t be turned back on remotely.”

The guard nodded and cracked the door open, looking outside and waiting. “The moment the aircart touches down, we leave.”

“If you’re worried about being watched, shouldn’t we use a different door?” I looked down the hallway. “There should be exits through the kitchen area.”

“With the order for radio silence I can’t tell the driver to use a different extraction point,” the guard said. “We could use a different door, but then we’d have to signal the aircart. If there are eyes on us, they’d see it too.”

“Understood,” I said, hiding my nervousness. By my calculations, it would be less than thirty seconds anyway, and then we’d be away. The face of the mare I’d spoken to flashed in my memory like a bug in my RAM. “We should have the local security prepare for an evacuation of the building once we’re clear.”

“If you’re a target, we’ll be making these ponies safer by leaving,” the guard assured me.

I wanted to think he was right, but that was when things started going wrong.

“The security cameras are back online,” I said, confused. “That’s impossible! I sent the shutdown command.” I tried to sign into the security system and I bounced off of a new wall of encryption that hadn’t been there before. Feedback shorted out one of my antennas, and a crackle of sparks and smoke exploded from my neck.

“Ma’am!” The guard caught me when I stumbled.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Somepony installed Black ICE on the network!”

“Black ICE?”

“Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics. Like the firewall that’s supposed to be there, but Black ICE is designed to be able to kill ponies if they don’t have the right access codes. It’s illegal without Royal permission.”

I looked up at the nearest security camera. The lens zoomed in on me.

“Somepony must have sent a reboot command to the cameras before I sent the shutdown code. That kicked me out of the network and let them install the ICE, and since it was a reboot they came back online on their own.”

“We’re leaving,” the guard said, grabbing my hoof and pulling me outside. The aircart settled down in front of us, all smooth white panels. He pushed me into the plush interior before boarding himself, and it was off the ground before he even slid the door shut, the city zipping by on the one-way windows.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Black ICE on that kind of system is total overkill. And even if somepony had it, it should have taken much longer to install and set up!” Another possibility came to mind, and it was chilling. “Unless it was set as a trap to catch me.”

“You’re safe now, Ma’am,” he assured me. “We’ll be at the palace in just a few minutes and then--”

The entire aircar rocked like we’d hit something in mid-air.

I hit a touch panel, and the roof turned transparent. I almost wish I hadn’t.

“What is that?” I whispered.

A massive, batlike shape was perched on the roof. It was like somepony had built a pegasus out of black steel and carbon fiber. Long claws scraped against the cart, and the roof screen flickered, colors warping.

“Shake it off!” The guard yelled. “Hold on, Ma’am!”

He held me against the seat, and the world spun as we took a turn at speed. The monster on the roof refused to let go, the claws digging in deeper and deeper until the screen cracked and the tip of a blade-like digit pressed through into the cabin.

The driver glanced back and inverted the cart. The creature flared its wings in surprise, and just before the roof screen cut out entirely and turned to static fuzz, I saw it peel away.

“That’s got it,” the guard said, when we flipped back over.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” I said. “What was it? A military drone? A full-body prosthesis? The way it moved…”

“Honestly, Ma’am, I’m just as happy if we never have a chance to find out,” the guard trotted to the front of the aircraft. “Ignore the traffic regulations. Just get us to the palace at best speed.”

I connected myself to the aircart’s camera array. Where had that thing gone? If I could trace its path, I might be able to backtrack where it came from. It should have stuck out against the background like a blotch of ink on a fresh page, but I couldn’t see it at all. I pulled the buffer and went backwards.

It slipped off the aircart and out of view of one camera, and just never entered view of the sensor on the other side. It was like it had vanished.

I looked straight down between my hooves. There wasn’t a screen on the floor because it would be impossible to keep clean and ponies generally liked having the appearance of a solid floor under them. With no screen, they didn’t need cameras for a view of the outside.

“It’s below us!” I shouted. “It’s in the blindspot right under the cabin!”

I think it heard me, because it picked that moment to attack. A purple beam of force punched through the floor, nearly hitting me and spearing into the roof. Hydraulic fluid splattered across the deck, and the cart pitched to the side.

“It cut the lines to the control surfaces!” the pilot shouted. “I can’t control the descent!”

“Brace for impact!” the guard yelled. “Keep us clear of the crowds! There’s some kind of riot going on down there!”

I had precisely four point three two seven seconds to watch in terror as we fell towards the concrete and asphalt jungle. I could have composed a letter. Braced myself. Done anything. I just stared in mute horror, processor cycles calculating the moment to impact helplessly.

A too-familiar shock filled my world, and I was swimming in blackness.

Discontinuity.

I didn’t wake up, I was just abruptly aware of having been awake. My vision was full of error messages. Most were warnings about minor damage, and a few more of those popped up when I started moving. They didn’t worry me -- I could tell my body was still physically functional, if roughed up.

The ones that scared me were the ones that didn’t make sense. No connectivity. No clock reference. Messages in blurry words and runes that moved when I tried to look at them, distracting me and refusing to go away. Subsystems reporting wildly different readings from sensors.

“Is everypony okay?” I asked, trying to see through the gloom. My enhanced imaging systems weren’t working at all, but from what little I could see the pilot had done a remarkable job of getting us down in one piece.

The guard didn’t answer. I got up and struggled to roll him over, checking him for injuries as best I could. I couldn’t connect to anything, but I didn’t see any blood or broken bones. Without access to the remote databases I felt… incomplete. Like I was a tenth of the pony I should be. Answers that usually came so easily were out of reach.

I saw shadows moving outside, something skittering with too many legs and too many joints and not enough fur.

“Wake up!” I ordered, shaking the guard, trying to get him up. “Come on, I need you!”

It figured that the one time I actually needed a pony with more muscles than brains, he couldn’t use either. I dropped him and definitely didn’t panic when another shadow moved in the corner of my vision.

I was going to have to face whatever was out there by myself. I picked up the guard’s service weapon. It was a standard bolt thrower, and if I could have accessed SolNet I could have learned everything about how to use it in an instant. Without that connection, it was dead metal in my magical grasp. Even so, it didn’t take a genius to know which end was dangerous and where the trigger was located.

I braced myself against a broken seat and shoved the door open. Metal squealed on metal, and I strained my body just pushing the bent door out of the twisted frame. Something black and elongated skittered out of view before I could get a good look at it. I held the weapon up like a shield in front of me.

A glance in every direction -- including up, in case whatever had attacked us in the air was hovering overhead -- quieted my fears. I was alone. Relatively alone, I mean. There were the injured guards still in the overturned aircart, but they didn’t count unless they could provide conversation.

I relaxed and lowered the weapon.

The shadows jumped out at me. I screamed and pulled the trigger without even aiming, throwing magical bolts into concrete and bricks and right through the creature to absolutely no effect at all.

I closed my eyes, holding my hooves over my face, waiting for the impact.

After a few seconds, I peeked between them to see why I wasn’t broken yet.

The shadowy thing, whatever it really was, circled around me like it was trying to keep out of my direct line of sight, but at the same time staying just in my field of vision. It was like it could read my mind and tell when I was looking.

“That’s impossible,” I whispered. “And nothing impossible can be real.”

The shadows flickered, and this time I was paying enough attention to catch it. I sent an emergency command to my AR display, freezing the image. This time, when I moved my head the shadow stayed still, just like the error messages filling half my vision.

“It’s just an image being injected into my system!” I gasped.

That was the only clue I needed. I put the gun down and started rebooting systems, restoring from backup and freezing out updates and changes that other sectors tried to make. The glitches and shadows in my vision vanished between frames.

“Oh wow, you figured it out yourself!” somepony said. A pink pony leaned into view from an impossible space and waved.
I scrambled for the weapon I’d dropped.

“Wait, I’m friend, not foe!” she said, quickly. “I’m Pinkie Pie, and I really super need your help, like right now.” She sat down and gave me a scared smile. I hesitated.

“Where did you come from?” I asked.

“I’m not actually here right now, which is kind of the problem,” Pinkie said. “You saved yourself, but there are a lot of scared ponies that might hurt themselves. All I can do is talk to them, but it’s not enough.”

“I’m not sure--”

“A pony’s life is in danger,” Pinkie said. “You’re the only pony that can save them, but you have to go now.”

“I-- where?” I asked.

“Follow me!” Pinkie said, and she turned into an arrow. That was subtly terrifying. I’d just fixed one AR hack, restored the drivers from backup, and I had no idea how she was doing this. If lives were in danger, I didn’t have time to ponder it. I just had to hope she wasn’t the one who’d created the shadows.

The pink arrow hung in midair, and I followed it inside a building up several flights of stairs until Pinkie reappeared, pointing to a door.

“In there!” she yelled.

I tried to open it, but the lock-- clicked open the moment Pinkie waved her hoof.

“Sorry, almost forgot,” she said.

I ducked inside, and saw a pony standing right across from me on the balcony. They already had their hooves up on the railing.

“Stay away!” the yellow filly yelled. She threw a half-rotten apple at me. I ducked it on instinct, and it splattered on the wall behind me. “I ain’t gonna let you take me!”

“Calm down,” I said. “I’m just here to help. Please step away from the balcony--”

“She can’t hear you,” Pinkie said. “I don’t know why, but the bad stuff is really digging in tight on her. I can’t break through.”

“What am I supposed to--” I started, and before I even finished, she jumped. There was no time to react. Not for a normal pony. But I wasn’t a normal pony. My clockspeed jumped, and everything slowed down.

“Grab her!” Pinkie gasped. Okay, almost everything slowed down. She was keeping up with me, somehow.

I ran, forcing my damaged servos into service. My magic surged, wrapping around her. I could feel her struggling. I had to fight just to hold the panicking filly in place long enough to run onto the balcony myself, with no time to slow down. I slammed into the railing and it creaked ominously.

This close, I was able to fling her despite her protests, throwing her back into the room and into a ratty, stained couch. Heat alarms blared, and things started to go dark as circuits overloaded.

I stepped down the overclock, feeling dazed. It was hard to think. Half my systems were still trying to run too fast, and the other half were too slow, and I had to just stop and let it sort itself out, focusing on the steam rising from my coat.

“She’s okay,” Pinkie said, after a moment. “She passed out. Thank you so, so much.”

The pink mare appeared in front of me and mimed hugging me, and just for an instant I’d swear I actually felt it.

“Other ponies aren’t okay, though,” I said. “What is all this?”

“I don’t know,” Pinkie said. “Sorry, I can’t-- I need to move resources around. I can’t stay. Thank you again, and I’ll buy you a coffee next time I see you!”

She vanished, and I was all but alone in the slum apartment.

“Great,” I said. “Now what?”

I made a mental note to track Pinkie down once whatever was happening was over. For now, I had a bigger worry -- I had to figure out what was happening at all. The widespread nature of the attack meant it had to be distributed over SolNet. I checked on the filly to make sure she really was okay, then sat down and started searching for access points.

The building had dozens of networks, which was extremely inefficient. The tenants really should have invested in a solution that would have scaled up to let all of them onto a shared VPN to prevent signal frequency overlap and enabled lower costs by-- well, it wasn’t important. I’m sure they had their reasons. I grabbed the strongest signal and just brute-forced my way past the password page to connect.

The very first thing to pop up was a request to update my firmware. I almost accepted it on instinct. After a moment, I shunted it to a walled garden and let it install. Immediately, it started attacking, and from outside I could see it happening.

It was like a bundle of snakes reaching inside and biting at everything, trying to find purchase and hurt whatever they could. Worse, I could see how it was adapting. While I fed it sensory data it tried to adapt to my reactions. Any time I made it think I was afraid it doubled down on that permutation of distorted data and fed it back to me, like it was trying to build up something to cause me perfect terror.

“No wonder she was so scared,” I muttered. That filly must have seen something terrible when she looked at me. Like all her worst fears rolled into one, and without any way to cope.

Something caught my attention, an encrypted line stretching from my virtual machine to the outside. The virus, whatever it was, was communicating with somepony. I followed the packets, surfing along with them as we bounced from one server to another, grabbing logs as we passed through. There were hundreds, thousands of packets. I had a sinking feeling the infection was in every corner of Canterlot.

And then I saw it. The center of the web.

Everypony has their own way to visualize SolNet. The mind is able to take in data faster and more reliably if there’s more than just text and numbers on a screen. I felt my hooves click on a surface somewhere between glass and plastic as I looked up at the horror.

My systems tried to make sense of the program, and what they came up with was a massive hydra woven out of threaded processes and armored in scales of Black ICE. A dozen heads snapped in every direction, taking in huge chunks of data and breathing out toxic phobias and illusions to fill the ponies of the city.

“Where’s Princess Celestia?” I whispered, trying to send another message to her. Every mail I’d thrown had come back undeliverable, even when I used the back doors and secret channels that should have let me ignore the confusion and congestion of the civilian communication lines.

I was going to have to face the hydra myself.

My sword was a process killing function and firewalls with rapidly-cycling passwords were my shield. I started at the edge and swung my blade, severing heads and processes. It was only moments before they sprouted again, but that attack made it aware of me.

A maw opened and it roared with the voice of a million server requests made at once, almost knocking me right off SolNet with a denial of service attack. I had to change my footwork, routing my signal to this place through different servers, protecting them where I could while I dodged a trace route request that would have given it a direct line past my defenses.

I duplicated my IP to an old terminal running in the next room and let it attack the decoy while I cut off a few more processes at the neck, watching as the other heads on the hydra just restarted them as quickly as I could kill, faster even. It was impossible to win that way.

I backed off while it chewed on the poor computer I’d let it attack, thinking. A direct attack was useless. One head snapped at an incoming packet of data, and I got an idea.

Instead of attacking the hydra directly, I was going to poison it. I wove the incoming connections together, getting between them and the main body of the program and forcing them to route through my own virtual environment before moving on. The hydra was complicated but it wasn’t smart. Every packet that went through me came out with something extra attached.

Even with the process automated it was a strain as I forced myself deeper into the web of connections. The more room the virtual machine needed, the less there was for me.

It made my reaction time slow.

I don’t know what my mistake was. A server time mismatch, maybe, or just not being careful enough when snapping up a connection, but the hydra noticed I was doing something, and Black ICE pierced through me like a spear.

I doubt you’ve ever actually been on the wrong end of Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics. Even if you have, you’ve probably only run into White ICE. That’s like a friendly security guard escorting you off the property and putting your name down on a list of people to refuse all service to in the future. At worst it would force you off the network, but it stopped there.

Black ICE was designed to follow you all the way up through your terminal and make sure you never bothered anypony ever again.

Images were forced into my mind’s eye, twisting spirals and angles that were the deadly cousins of optical illusions, only instead of making you see a duck one moment and a rabbit the next, it caused seizures as the brain’s wiring misfired trying to interpret it. Censors tried to block it out, the images blurring before they could cause permanent damage.

I sent one last command, and all the packages I’d sent into the hydra went off at once. Whole process trees collapsed from the inside, while still reporting to the main body of the program that they were running. It was like poison, keeping it from regenerating as each head fizzed out one at a time.

It took over a minute, an eternity in the world we were fighting in, and it finally collapsed into a heap, too many core systems damaged to keep functioning.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

I was wounded and exhausted. Fighting in SolNet like that was a drain. I might have been mostly metal and plastic, but I was still a pony where it counted, and dueling the hydra had been as mentally taxing as a hundred pop quizzes that all came equipped with teeth and were trying to worm their way into your brain so they could burn you out of your head.

At least it was over. I just needed to trace where the physical installation of the program actually was, and I’d be able to send ponies there in the real world to deal with whatever had caused the disaster.

I approached what was left of the program and started scanning, and then I saw it. It stretched at right angles to reality, a thick pipeline of data coming from the hydra to somewhere else. As terrible as it had been, the hydra was only a node. A single hoof pressing against the fabric of the world.

I shouldn’t have done it. I wasn’t in shape to do more than write a report on what I’d found and hope somepony else could follow up on it, but how could I call a report complete if I didn’t follow it to the obvious conclusion? I had to know where it all led, just to see it. I wanted to know the shape of the threat.

I touched the open connection and was sucked into another space.

It was impossible to describe. I don’t mean that lightly. The brain is a computer designed to visualize three dimensions of space and one of time, and in the space I was in, there was more. It was a kaleidoscope of terror and beauty, and all I can offer is metaphors to try and tell you what I found there.

When I’d fought the hydra, it had been one pony against a monster. That was still all purely metaphor -- I’d been terminating connections, establishing firewalls, shutting down processes on remote servers, not swinging a sword -- but it had been comprehensible. I could, with time, actually explain what I’d been doing. It might require an education in how modern data security works along with a masterclass in writing exploits, but even an average pony would be able to get a sense of what I was doing.

Even so, the image of a warrior dueling a creature was appropriate.

Here, though, in this larger space, it was nothing like that. It was like tectonic plates clashing against each other, hurricanes of data throwing razor-edged Black ICE hail at each other, tidal waves splashing against each other. Forces of nature too large to really understand. I couldn’t even keep my footing at the very edge of it, just seeing it and trying to understand was a danger in and of itself.

Above it all, I could see them. They hung in the sky like the sun and moon, too bright to look at directly. And I realized the torrent around me wasn’t an attack. It wasn’t warring armies. It was just the ripples around their hooves as they dueled. The hydra I’d fought had been a single spark raised from clashing blades.

In the sky, a million-pronged spear clashed against a fractal shield, and wide white wings shielded me as a supernova of flame consumed the land.

“You can’t be here,” Princess Celestia said.

“What is all this?” I asked. She lifted me with her magic and shoved me back towards the portal I’d found.

“I’m sorry. You’re a distraction, and I can’t afford it,” she explained. “I will contact you when I can.”

She threw me just as the air filled with glyphs that burn every time I try to picture them in my mind, and--

[SESSION DISCONNECTED]

I was back in a dingy apartment with an alert across my vision. I could smell burning plastic from the other room. I scribbled a note on a scrap of paper to let the filly know I’d pay for any damages and apologizing for the trouble, then ran out the door. I had to get to the palace.

Things were almost back to normal when I got back to the palace. Almost.

“We don’t know where she is,” Raven said, as we walked through the backrooms. There was a crowd filling the main hallway, demanding answers. “The equidrone on the throne is operating in independent mode. It’s just smart enough to give some basic platitudes and keep them from panicking, but it isn’t her.”

Raven Inkwell had been one of Celestia’s handmaidens for longer than I’d been alive, and the third pony with us, Kibitz, was so old he practically belonged in a museum. He had some implants that were antiques, and I had no idea why he didn’t get them replaced with something newer. It might at least help his attitude.

“She hasn’t answered any of my messages either,” I said. It wasn’t the first time I’d realized I had no idea where Princess Celestia actually physically was within the Palace, but it was a bad time for her to be missing. I didn’t want to suggest the reasons why she might not be communicating with us. That she might be…

I forced the thought to stop. That wasn’t going to do any good.

The lights flickered. I immediately brought up as many reports as I could access, that close call from only a few hours ago still burning in my mind. Something immediately popped out as needing immediate attention.

“Why are we on emergency power?” I asked. “What happened to the solar array?”

Raven sighed.

“It’s Philomena,” Kibitz explained. “It’s out of alignment.”

Philomena was the source of the city’s power, a satellite that captured solar power in huge arrays of paper-thin panels and beamed it down to collection stations as a concentrated microwave beam. It produced so much power it could run Canterlot twice over.

“That’s not possible,” I said, automatically. “Celestia is the only one who can access it, and physical intrusion is impossible.”

“I admit having it in orbit is an effective airgap, but it’s pointless to discuss how possible it is, since it happened. It went out of alignment at the same time as everything else went wrong,” he said. “We don’t have the resources for a space mission, not that it was ever our purview. That was…” he trailed off and shook his head.

“That was what?” I asked.

“Before your time, and before the war,” he said. “The infrastructure doesn’t exist anymore.”

“We have to do something,” I said. “The emergency power is only going to last a few days.”

“If we’re lucky,” Raven said. “It took hours just to get it online with all the confusion. The whole city was running around in the dark.”

“There’s a contingency plan, such as it is,” Kibitz said. “We’re going to reduce power usage across the city with scheduled blackouts. That should buy an extra day or two. We’ve sent word to the Crystal Empire for help, and Princess Cadance will be sending crystal batteries to shore up the power grid.”

“That’s not a long-term solution,” I said.

“No, it isn’t,” Kibitz admitted. “I just hope it gives us enough time to find some way to reestablish contact with Philomena.”

“Miss Sparkle!” a guard yelled, pounding down the corridor. “You need to come with me.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked. I didn’t see any alerts in the systems I was monitoring. Well, no new alerts. There were plenty that were hours old.

“She’s asking for you,” he said, breathlessly.

“Who is?”

He looked up at me. I saw the answer in his eyes. I ran for the throne room.

“Twilight Sparkle, my most faithful student,” Princess Celestia said, the equidrone looking down on me with a small smile.

The same smile the empty machine always wore.

It wasn’t her. I could tell. It was just a reflection of the real thing, no more real than a photograph. It didn’t have the subtle movements, the life that shone through the machine when she was really inside it.

“The guard said you were calling for me,” I said, confused.

“Yes,” Princess Celestia said. “It’s good to see you again. Please, everypony, leave us. I need to speak with her alone.”

She waited patiently for everypony in the throne room to shuffle outside with that placid, empty smile.

“It would be even better if you were here,” I replied.

“I wish I could be there,” she said. “What happened has left me indisposed.”

“Why did you call for me?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, but this is only a recording,” Celestia apologized. “I have very limited responses. I wish I could be there, what happened has left me indisposed.”

“Yes, you did mention that already,” I mumbled. “What happened?”

She shifted on her throne. “I can’t tell you that. The information is too dangerous to risk any kind of leak.”

“If you can’t tell me what I need to know, what’s the point?!” I snapped.

“I’m sorry, but this is only a recording. I have very limited--”

“Why is the information dangerous?” I interrupted. I wouldn’t have done it to the real Princess, but it wasn’t her at all, even if some of the frustration was strikingly familiar.

“Ponies could be compromised without them knowing it. Before I had to leave, I found evidence to suspect one or more ponies in my inner circle have been subverted. The wrong keyword or datapoint could activate them.”

I frowned at that. “And you think I’m a suspect?”

“I’m sorry, but this is only--”

“You wanted to tell me something!” I asked. “What am I supposed to do?”

“I have identified five ponies of interest,” Celestia said. “Hardcopy printouts of their dossiers have been delivered to your quarters. I have calculated that they will be able to assist you.”

“Assist me with what? Who are these ponies?”

“I don’t have that information,” Celestia said. “To ensure information security, this recording was not provided with that data. When you leave the throne room, this recording will self-terminate.”

“So all I really have is… a few sheets of paper. And I’m supposed to use that to save Canterlot. And you.” I fell into a slump.

“I’m sorry, but this is only a recording--”

“I heard you the first time. I hope whatever is on the printout will be worth it.” I turned to leave. When my hoof touched the throne room door, the equidrone stood up.

“Twilight,” it said.

I turned back to look at it.

“I believe in you,” it said. Its expression shifted, and just for a moment I thought I saw a glimmer of the real Celestia shining through it. “You’re more than just my student. I’m proud of you. I always have been.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. It sat down again, and its expression blanked. Whatever I’d seen, it was over.

I needed to find those hardcopies.

I haven’t read a book on paper in… I don’t even know how long it’s been. I was expecting the documents to be some kind of compressed file that I’d decrypt, but they were in plain text and, frustratingly, they had copy-protection sigils all over them so I couldn’t even scan them into memory.

“Why would you make me do this the hard way?” I muttered.

“Please stay still, Miss Sparkle,” the technician said. “Some of these repairs are very delicate.”

I looked back at the mare holding a multimeter and checking the connections along my lower spine and sighed. “Sorry, Aloe,” I apologized, and she got back to work, her twin repairing broken links while she found them.

“We just rebuilt this and there’s already so much damage!” Lotus chided. “You need to take care of yourself.”

“I’ll be more careful next time I’m in an aircart crash,” I promised, my eyes drifting back to the papers.

The first five sheets were the dossiers Celestia had promised. They were extremely light on details. I’d been expecting soldiers, secret agents, trusted advisors. I’d half-expected Raven Inkwell to be on the list, but instead the first pony she’d suggested was a homeless pony squatting in a junkyard. The boxer and athlete at least had some sort of potential as bodyguards or muscle, but I didn’t see why she’d trust them over the Guard.

The fourth name caught me by surprise. Pinkie Pie. There was something strange about that mare. I had to admit she’d helped me save a filly’s life, and she had at least some skill with hacking. I’d want to investigate her anyway, and this was a good excuse. The dossier said very little about her, like she had no past at all. Maybe Celestia really was sending a few secret agents along with me.

But that last pony. That one made me freeze.

Rarity.

I still remembered her hips, mathematically perfect and sculpted by her own hooves and magic. I wanted to spend time with her but… she was just a designer. Why was she here? How did Celestia know her? Had she picked her just because I wanted to see her again?

I groaned and flipped to the last page in the bundle.

I almost lost my grip on the papers.

“Finish what you can in the next five minutes,” I told Aloe and Lotus. “I have to convince five ponies to go on a suicide mission.”