Spark Wars - New Change

Chapters

Chapter II - The Windy Skies Of Kitein
Chapter III - Tales Of A Gray Mare
Chapter IV - Airspeeder Drift
Prologue
Chapter I - The Hors Homestead

Chapter II - The Windy Skies Of Kitein

I was speeding through the Thunderhead’s streets once more, with the neon-decorated punk already out of my mind.

Getting back to N didn’t take long at all, and I already flew my airspeeder towards the same pillar, only from the other side. There, an already open hangar door was waiting for me, with only a transparent field isolating the place from the outside wind.

I steered towards the opening and flew inside. The field didn’t hinder my progress in any way, and only projected a blue stripe on top of my hull as I passed through.

It was an empty hangar, and definitely much cleaner than the storage hall N showed me earlier. There of course were some thick fueling tubes and a pile of crates in the process of being hauled away by a single DUM droid.

There were plenty of docking places to settle in, so I picked one at the furthest side and hovered over a white grid of lines marking the docking spot. The onboard computer of my speeder had then no problem deciphering the grid into a set of docking coordinates and automatically landed the speeder in a perfect orientation after a single button press.

The windshield popped open and I jumped out, while at the same time looking around for the striped merchant. It wasn’t hard to spot her. N was walking right up to me with murder in her eyes and a duo of bulky security droids. Reassuringly, one droid pushed a hovertable before it, on top of which was seated the black robo-bug, and right next to it the compacted Mr Handy with its three eyes and arms hidden in its shell.

I couldn’t help but to step back a bit as she approached, “Uhh… No hard feelings?” I gave her a nervous grin. I had no idea what she was up to, but she couldn’t plan on stuffing me into a recycler, right? Why else would she bring along the two droids on the hovertable as well? The ‘murder’ on her mind, however, did not reassure me at all…

N stepped towards me with a stern look, and poked my chest with the tip of her wing, “You really pissed me off today, kid.”

There was a tense second before N glanced at the hulking mech by her left side and nodded towards me. I tensed up as the thing whipped out…

...a briefcase? I expected a weapon, but I won’t shed a tear if I don’t get to stare down a blaster barrel. Thankfully the machine opened the lid and revealed a small golden disc as the contents of the briefcase, placed right in the middle inside a black filling. She wanted me to pay.

I took the credit bank in my magic, trying hard to not look like I almost shit myself.

“That said, you were right.” N continued. I didn’t need to feel her ‘shit-eating-grin’ to know she was enjoying me having a taste of my own medicine. But then again, I kinda did the same to her earlier so... fair enough, I guess.

“Huh?” I just registered her words. I was right about something?

N rolled her eyes, “After thinking on it for a while, I would rather you have the droid than some smug bastard from the Exo.”

I couldn't help but to be suspicious of her. N was never 'genuinely nice', "Uhh, thanks?"

I proceeded to slide the disc into my HoloPone credit bank slot, before using my newly acquired family account privileges to transfer fifteen thousand credit units the credit bank asked from me. I of course double checked with my anti-slicer software and the amount of credits. Then I typed yes to everything and off my credits went into the bank’s credit storage to be used by N in whatever she’s up to these days.

I hope whatever she's up to doesn't involve the Homestead, but considering her unusual interest in our Masterclass, I don't think we will be so fortunate.

I'm better off leaving and consulting my family first though. We can deal with N's scheming later.

I finished with the credit bank which popped up from my HoloPone and I levitated it back into the briefcase. N then nodded towards the other droid by her right and it then pulled the hovertable towards the back of my speeder.

*beeb*

A quiet chirp came from N's HoloPone which caught the zebra's attention. “Alright, I have a customer to get to. If it’s everything, you better get going.”

I nodded and walked off towards my airspeeder. Just in time, as N’s droid closed the cargo holder and walked back to its spot next to the zebra, “See you sometime then.” I nodded to her.

“Don’t tell anyone you have it, Violet.” N said, her 'serious-now' gave me a stop.

"Uh, sure?" I lifted an eyebrow.

“As you yourself said, it’s painting a target on your back.” And with that the Zebra merchant walked away. Leaving me to board my speeder and head on home as well.

```

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```

Forty minutes later I was already in my airspeeder speeding once again across the dark Kitein skies. Liara already set a random course towards the homestead and the Thunderhead was long out of sight. I was flying at a much higher altitude than usual, as this time I wasn’t about to sleep through the journey and was in need of some entertainment.

I briefly thought about skipping the random trajectory and making a beeline towards the homestead since nothing ever happens anyway, and with a cargo like this I would really like to be home hours earlier than risk someone snatches me on the way.

But in the end, I decided against it. I like to think I never met anyone because I never flew in a straight line or otherwise predictable pattern, and I definitely shouldn't stop with it now. Especially not at this altitude.

I was playing something called 'Dejarik'. It caught my eye a moment ago on the Scale, and I decided to download a copy. It took a while to get it this far from the city, but the higher altitude helped with that.

So far, I had absolutely no idea what was going on. All I knew was that there were monsters, and they beat the shit out of each other.

My mind was not entirely in it either. I only mustered to tap on the holo-screen without any thought or drive to learn how the game works.

No. My mind was currently bringing to focus N's earlier warning.

That droid is painting target on your back.

I knew those were my own bullshit words, but for some reason hearing someone else say it finally snapped together something in my brain.

Maybe I should have put some serious thought into it before buying a sketchy droid of sketchy origins from a sketchy merchant. But can anyone fault me? The thing was just sitting there, all depressed-like! I could almost hear the Take me, Violet! You are my only hope!

No way was I going to leave my robo-bug-buddy to spend the rest of its robo-life scrubbing toilets or being torn apart for being a rare curiosity. I was really looking forward to learning something about myself from its databanks!

Now that I had the time to think about my actions though... I can't help but think who else would be interested in the droid.

The droid's previous owners might be one, and since they have 'Empire' in their name, there are only two scenarios I can come up with. Either they might not even care for one lost utility droid, or they might really not be into some idiot parading around with a piece of their technology.

I laid back and looked out at the stars outside. The game already forgotten.

Thankfully no-one knows I have the droid... yet. And if I am lucky, I bought it before the news of its existence spread around.

I'll have to keep a lookout for anything suspicious either way, when I am headed into the city tomorrow again... Suspicious stuff like, friends informing me there was someone asking about me, or stuff like people following me around the city.

...

Waiting around my speeder for me to get back to...

…

People thinking for example, 'there-she-is'...

"Shit."

That drake I saw was a massive red flag if I ever saw one. Damnit, his brain was literally broadcasting he was waiting for me specifically!

He was probably a lookout, checking which speeder I'll get into. Then sending that message along to other thugs so they knew who to follow...

"Liara?"

"Yes, user Violet?" The VI responded.

I gave a glance outside. "Are there any other vehicles in range besides me?" The starry night sky would definitely make it harder to spot anything, but if I had stalkers, they would be ten miles away anyway, if not further.

There was a moment of silence, before Liara replied. "Negative. No vehicles detected within a fifteen mile radius."

At least not the obvious. There are ways to avoid rudimentary detection systems. Anyone could just turn off their repulsor lifts and be practically invisible on the radar, buuuut since there is the whole gas planet thing...

Then again… following anyone across Kitein was not the only option to find out where they are headed. There is one, much easier and reliable method.

Suddenly, I had the feeling that the drake added something extra to my speeder.

Unfortunately, I couldn't just hop out and look for any suspicious devices on the go. Getting face full of air at mach one is not a pleasurable experience.

My head whipped up. "Liara, stop the speeder!"

"Command accepted."

The vehicle started slowing down until it eventually stopped and the thrusters in the back went cold. Only the repulsor lift kept me steady, and was the only thing keeping me hovering above the depths of the abyss below.

"How far away are we from the homestead?" I asked while I rummaged through the side contrapment for my personal scanner.

"We are currently one-thousand and three-hundred miles away from the Hors Homestead, user Violet."

That was good. If my theory was correct, I realized it early enough that they wouldn’t be able to determine where exactly I was going. Especially since I wasn’t flying predictably, otherwise they would just feed my flight path to an algorithm and I'd be screwed either way.

I managed to find the device and levitated it towards me. A tiny black display was at its center, and when I turned it on, two antennas spread out from its sides, blinking and beeping sporadically.

“Wait, shit. That’s not it.” I threw the device away, and looked at the bottom of the compartment. “Aha!” I exclaimed and levitated out a small flat block with antennas. The scanner came with a HoloPone port as well, and so I didn’t waste time and detached a small cable from my foreleg and connected the two devices. Already I could easily read the reading of the scanner displayed on the holographic display of my foreleg.

All that remains is to go outside and scan every inch of my speeder.

"Alright. Liara, open the cockpit." I ordered and slid the purple windshades back down onto my eyes.

At once the cockpit opened and the Kitein wind quickly rushed past my face and got caught in my hoodie. The purple windshades covering my eyes did their job well, but the hoodie reminded me I’ll need my wings for what I was about to do.

Short struggle to get out of my white hoodie later and I stood up in my whole butt-naked glory.

All around me was nothing but darkness and air, with only stars and one of the two Kitein’s moons, Smoulder, visible on the horizon. Red never liked the sheer expanse of Kitein. The thought of a single floating island in a never-ending abyss of just straight up death still sometimes kept even her awake.

Not me though. I grew up on Hors Homestead. Blu always envied my ability to shrug off the abyss and even deliberately go out and yeet myself off the farm for a selfie.

I whipped out a pair of macrobinoculars sitting on top of the dashboard, and searched the horizon through them just in case. It was completely fruitless of course. If there truly was someone following me, they could be ten miles above me or twenty below and thirty away in any direction.

Still, I couldn’t help but to try, just to scratch that itch in the back of my mind. It was like a cold breeze went down my spine standing out there on top of the speeder’s hull, though that could have just been the wind moving through my white fur.

With resignation, I let the binoculars slide down and deposited them back on the dashboard. Then I lifted my left foreleg with the HoloPone and the still levitating scanner in my red magic.

"Let's do this." I commented and aimed the scanner downwards. Then I turned my gaze towards the HP and the data on it. Seeing nothing suspicious, I aimed the scanner elsewhere and repeated the process.

```

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```

It went like that for a while. The scanner was beeping, my HP found nothing, and I balanced on top of the speeder and slowly made my way across its surface, until eventually I covered even the cargo holder and the two passengers inside.

I even checked the loudspeakers. A system I hooked up to blast music on the outside. I once scared the living daylights out of Red with that one. That was fun... Still reaping the punishment, though.

Right now I inched forward on my belly towards the very front of the blue M31 on top of the one intact pike and next to the missing one, scanner levitating and scanning. Yet still nothing showed up on my HoloPone.

I sat up in a huff, with my hindlegs dangling over the edge. Strangely, I did not feel reassured. Yet, if I found something, it would have been worse.

Still. I had to check the underside.

*WHOOSH*

I transformed and black exoskeleton covered my body once more. I looked over my back and watched my elytra open. Then I started pumping my wings.

VRRRRRR

My two sets of wings turned into a blur with the sound of a rotocopter drone and lifted me into the air, and then the task of finding a bug in my speeder continued.

The wind was no problem for me. Being in a family of pegasi, I quickly learned that twenty miles is fine, ten on Kitein is unheard of, thirty is a work out, and with forty don't expect a journey back.

Thirty minutes of zipping around the speeder later, I was back in the cockpit. Thinking. Yet again I found nothing.

There was only one more thing I could do, but then I am giving up and going home. Honestly? I should have done this first.

"Liara?” I exclaimed, “Has there been any irregularities when I was absent? Any weight changes? Interference? Anything?"

"Negative." Liara unfortunately replied. "There have been no detectable changes to this vehicle to my knowledge during your absence."

Welp. That's it I—

"Any recorded irregularities started after your return." Liara continued.

That made me raise an eyebrow. He definitely did not plant anything in front of me, he was way too far and I would notice. It could be some kind of dart tracker when I was taking off... No, I would definitely find something like that just now.

"Liara. What was the irregularity?" I asked.

"Repulsor lift, channel two has been zero-point-seven percent less efficient during the flight to the Hors Homestead than the flight to the Thunderhead."

My eyes widened. "You smart son of a Beldon."

Of course the sensor wouldn't find anything you big dummy! The bastard stuffed it into the repulsor lift exhaust port. Sensors have trouble detecting any electronics this close to a repulsor lift's gravity knot.

Immediately I sprung up again and leaped out of the still open cockpit with a buzz of my wings.

I flew under the speeder and hovered in front of a small grid of slits from where a faint glow and a gust of hot air was coming from. Then I lit my horn and made it glow white, illuminating the insides.

There it was.

A small grey cylindrical device was latched inside the narrow slit of the repulsor lift's exhaust port. Carefully, I enveloped it in my red magical field and the thing popped off without any resistance. Then I levitated it out and flew back to the top where I sat on the speeder’s hull to take a better look.

It was a tracker alright. I am a tech geek and these things are the first thing little-me looked up when I learned about them. Now that I found it though, I pondered what to do with it. I could disable it, take it home, take it apart, and maybe even figure out who used it if I was lucky. Though... I already had a decent idea.

First, I took a picture and saved it into my HoloPone. Then I dropped it and watched as the device disappeared into the abyss below.

Wind Raiders. The scum of Kitein. Bunch of bandit groups banned from every city, flying around and causing trouble. I really dodged a bullet. Lately I heard stories about them scavenging gas farms like the Hors Homestead to keep their own ships afloat. They have to, as hardly any merchant would deal with them if they themselves don't want to become an exile.

Yet... The one thing that didn't entirely make sense, is why me?

No way anyone found interest in me because of that droid. Not this early. That tracker was planted there sometime when I was only going to N's. As in, before I even knew I was going to buy it!

Honestly? I almost wanted to write this whole ordeal as a coincidence, and assume I just got unlucky and someone noticed a certain luxury speeder was regularly going from and to the city and probably carrying someone rich.

They probably wanted to grab me on my way home for ransom...

"Liara." Yeah... I should probably move on. Liara would set off a proximity alert if anyone came, but by then they would have me alone as well.

"Yes, user Violet?" Liara replied when I didn't follow with a command.

"Set course for the Homestead. Lowest safe level." I said. Flying this low was definitely one more layer of protection, as the effective range of sensors was lowered.

"Command accepted." Liara obediently announced and the M31 started once more with a downward trajectory, vaguely in the direction of the homestead.

Unfortunately the connection to the Scale network would be handicapped as well, and I was still about two hours away from the Homestead which would extend into four due to the higher pressure of air in the lower layers through which Liara would fly in a zigzag pattern on a spiral path.

I really didn’t look forward to spending that time counting stars and worrying about what have I gotten us into by buying that droid.

...

I should probably call auntie too, before that option is taken from me...

...

One hesitant sigh later, I lifted my HoloPone and brought up my usual messaging app.

Just when I was about to start typing, I hesitated.

What should I even tell her? That I almost brought a raid upon us? That I bought everything but the server auntie sent me out for? That I instead bought a droid which would bring unwanted attention to our farm? An attention that even the winged zebra herself was scared shitless about?

*ping*

Suddenly my HoloPone let out a sound of an incoming message.

I blinked and there was another message.

I went red-faced.

I could feel the presence of Red's lifted eyebrow all the way over here.

Pffft. As if anyone cares about grammar when texting.

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Two additional hours later, the Hors Homestead finally showed up on the horizon.

The farm's Halo, a single large perimeter ring surrounding the whole homestead was what immediately stood out, as it shined and illuminated the two bulbous buildings in the otherwise dark skies like a, well, a Halo.

There was the Dome, which was the homestead's mainhouse with rooms layered on top of each other, with several extensions hanging from the bottom, which contained a lot of the machinery keeping everything running.

Then there was a much taller and oval structure right on the other side of the ring. The Plant was where the storage and the distillery was, alongside the docks of the army of drones the farm had diving daily into the depths below for Tibanna. It is also where auntie Red grew algae in the water reservoir for her famous algae bread.

Then there was the short transparent bridge connecting the two, but also leading to a landing platform in the middle. The farm came with it, but it hasn't seen much of use as we never had many visitors all the way out here. And if we used it for storage or a dock, the wind would push anything we placed there off to either cause damage, or to be claimed by the abyss. Seriously! Kitein wind is no joke!

The speeder steered towards the main house and towards the garage door I left earlier in the Tenebris Hours. I passed right over the farm's Halo, where blinking lights marked the hazard railing of a narrow walkway leading atop throughout the ring.

Immediately behind the ring was the landing platform, and to my surprise I spotted Auntie Red standing there waiting for me, and she wasn't alone. Another pony stood right next to her, and since there was only one other pony living on the farm, I could safely assume it was Uncle Blu.

I could see their jackets flapping in the wind, though ponies had pretty thick fur, and pegasi doubly so. Yet for some reason auntie still tries convincing me to stay in my natural form. I am cold-blooded!

I guess clothes can have a point for this one. But they still bite me in the ass even now when I am back in my pony disguise.

"Liara, switch to manual." I said.

"Command accepted."

I turned the speeder around and aimed for the landing platform. No idea why they decided for the confrontation to take hold there, but I can't deny it's more dramatic.

The airspeeder slowed down directly in the middle of a circle of landing lights and the on-board computer began its landing sequence once more. Already I could see the two coming up just as I landed, with Red in the lead and Blu just behind.

Uncle Blu would be a splitting image of Auntie Red, not there for the obvious coloring of his blue mane and tail, as he had the same bright white hide and wings poking from underneath his own jacket.

I was so not looking forward to explaining why I didn't return with the one thing I was set out to get. And how I spent fifteen thousand units. And was almost followed home... But got a sweet deal with a shady Zebra dealer! ...Which I hope will sound as good as it does in my head.

I did a short breathing exercise and mentally psyched myself up for the inevitable tongue lashing I was about to receive.

"Phew. Alright. Let's do this." I exclaimed. Hopefully Red will be lenient and understands my reasoning before ultimately prescribing blue milk to me for the rest of eternity.

With a last exhale I opened the cockpit which slid forward and allowed me to climb out. Then I jumped out on the metal platform and faced two concerned looking ponies.

Already I could see Red opening her muzzle, but I beat her to it.

“Before we start,” I interrupted her, “I’ve got some good news and bad news.”

“Bad news first.” Auntie Red exclaimed.

“Good ne---” Uncle Blu started, but immediately backtracked when Auntie gave him a look. “Er… Give us the bad news, Violet.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath, “The bad news is that I didn’t buy a server in any way, shape, or form.”

I gulped when Red started grinding her teeth, “How many credits...”

“Err…" I winced, "Fifteen thousand units.”

Thankfully, I felt 'not-too-bad' from her. Though I did not feel any safer from the blue nightmare, err... Not Blu. Blu was cool.

Blu then picked up the conversation, "I presume the good news is that you've found something better?" He pointed at the cargo holder attached to the M13.

At that I bit my lip, "Well... No. Maybe?"

"Violet, explain." Red said. I could feel her patience running dry.

"The good news..." I stepped along the blue airspeeder and towards the cargo holder at the back, "Is that I had a very good reason to spend the credits on it."

I lit my horn and after a few taps on my HoloPone the doors at the back opened. That's when I grabbed the black droid inside in my telekinetic grasp and levitated it out into the sight of my family.

They took in the familiar sight of black chitin and hole-y legs, and by the sight of their widened eyes I could safely assume I had their attention.

But just to be safe...

*WHOOSH*

I was enveloped in a green fire and transformed into my black hole-y self.

"Ta-dah!" I grinned, now with a maw full of fangs. Then I set the droid on the metallic platform so I could hug it and put our fanged muzzles next to each other, "It's a me-droid!"

Red was the one to first snap out of her stupor. She shook her head and gave me her stern face. "So you've spent fifteen thousand units on a droid, because it looks like you?" She looked at me questioningly.

"No." I shook my head, "I spent fifteen thousand units on a droid, made by people looking like me."

That shut her up. Red looked like she was about to argue more, though I already had another defense ready.

"And if I hadn't bought it the moment I saw it, I would have never had that opportunity again." I interrupted her. "Auntie, you know more than anyone just how much I always wanted to know more about what I am and where I came from." I shook the droid a little bit, "Who knows what I'll mine out of its memory!"

Red was quiet for a moment and shared a look with Blu. Then she sighed and covered her muzzle with a hoof, "Alright. I can see why you would—"

"Is that a limiter?" Uncle Blu of course pointed out the cylindrical device I was trying to hide behind my own hoof and failed miserably. Because my hooves were full of tiny holes now.

Red's hoof instantly dropped to the floor and her eyes snapped towards the device. The distraction of my wide strained smile, unfortunately also proved to be ineffective.

"Violet?!"

"I-I had to trim my expectations a bit..." I faltered underneath her glare, "There were a LOT of credits involved otherwise. But don't start worrying just yet, auntie!" I started reassuring her. "I plan on hooking it up with my HoloPone and see what's inside. If we are lucky, and the droid is what I think it is, we might still be able to let it juice something out of our server."

"And if not?" Red poked a hole in my argument. "It could be dangerous, Violet!"

I waved with my hoof, "Then I download its memory, wipe the droid, then see what I can do with it, or sell it. And I am telling you right now I will not go down cheap!"

At that, Red nodded approvingly, "I am going to trust you on this matter, Violet. Just be aware that no matter the outcome, our Tibanna output will take a hit from this."

I bit my lip, "Yeah... I'll get right on it. But I have only good feelings about this!"

With that the two pegasi turned away and made their way towards the airlock leading into the bridge. Meanwhile, I once again turned towards the cargo holder and levitated the droid back inside.

That's when I noticed the other droid in the cargo holder.

"Ah..." I exclaimed. My noise made the other two ponies stop and turn around at me. "Er... The droid might not have been the only thing I bought today..."

"Violet?"

I winced. Just her tone preceding the 'you-are-crossing-the-line' made me shiver.

"Don't worry! Everything is already in the price." I motioned with my hoof to calm her down. "Though I’ve got to admit, this one is a little bit in the grey zone."

Once again I reached for the machine and set the compacted Mr. Handy on the floor.

Both of the ponies of course immediately recognized it for what it was and audibly gasped while staring at me with varying expressions.

Red was the first to comment, "I... hope that's an empty Nebulan shell you've brought, Violet."

I steeled myself and I shook my head, "By the face N was making when I found it, I am pretty sure that isn't the case."

I was almost blasted back from Red’s sudden rush of 'How-supid-you-can-be?!', "And so the first thing you thought about, is buying it and bringing it home?! Violet, do you realize just how illegal that is? What were you thinking?!"

Fortunately I had an argument ready, "I was thinking we would wake it home!" When Red still looked like she was about to rip me apart, I pointed at the Mr. Handy, "Hey I couldn't just leave him there! Her... It? Whatever. I mean, you know N would probably delete them and say it's been empty all along!"

That shut her up. Though, I decided to omit that I spent two thousand units just to get them out.

Red was quiet for a while, thinking, and occasionally glancing towards the deactivated Nebulan. Eventually she sighed and conceded.

"Very well. I suppose we can find out if they are agreeable and talk them into work on the farm." Then she turned towards me.

"Provided that's everything?" Red looked at me, impatiently.

"Yeah." I began to say, "That should be..."

What about the tracker?

I entertained the thought of telling them that someone attempted to follow me to the Homestead. But since that ordeal was dealt with, I decided to not add Tibanna to the meltdown. Red already has a lot in mind with the two additions to the family after all.

...

Wait, what am I thinking?! Now, I might not be the same species, but Red and Blue have always treated me as a family. Maybe not as a daughter, but as a younger relative. And now, today, when they invite me to run this farm alongside them, my very first thought is to withhold crucial information about potential danger? Aw hell no! I might've foiled one attempt at raiding our farm, but my family deserves to at the very least know about it. It doesn’t matter if I get in trouble!

I bit my lip and made myself turn around at the two, once again retreating ponies.

"There... might be one other thing..." Already I could feel Red's annoyance skyrocketing with evaporating patience.

She only looked at me with tired eyes, "Violet..."

"I didn't want to worry anyone..." I interrupted her, "But this is pretty serious, so I think you should know about it."

Red and Blu looked at each other, while at the same time I felt both of them switch to a 'serious' mode.

"What is it, Violet?" Blu spoke up.

"I won't sugarcoat it." I bit my lip, "I found a tracker on my speeder."

Immediately I felt warning bells going off inside their heads.

"When?" Blu continued, stepping forward as if ready to take action.

"About half an hour after leaving the city." I informed them and felt few signs of relief, "And no, my trajectory at the time led nowhere close to the homestead's location."

There was a heavy silence in the air, only disturbed by the 'humm' of the two ponies' brainstorming.

"Well," Blu spoke up, "I suppose it's about time I checked up on the perimeter defenses."

Red looked at Blu, then at me, "In that case, I suppose we have our work cut out for us." she announced, "This new revelation does prop up the check of our perimeter defense systems up the list, which has been sitting there for a good long while, so Blu, you get right on that. Meanwhile I'll wake up our guest. Violet," She gave me a look, "Find a use for the droid. I don’t care what it is, we need to keep ahead of the schedule. The quota is still breathing on our necks."

I gave my salute and at that we split our separate ways, with Blu going left to the Plant to use a maintenance shaft to get into the Halo, Red to the right with our host following her on a hoverboard to the Dome, while I went backwards towards my blue airspeeder to safely dock it in the Dome's garage.

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Finally back in my workshop, I started my work on the droid.

I set up my usual workspace, as in, placed the black me-droid by the worktable in the corner of my room and booted up the in-built terminal which was by far the better and safer option than my HoloPone.

The process of getting into the droid's limiter was a straightforward ordeal. The limiter contained an internal databank of all the systems of the hardware it was jamming, which then was shown by a simple line of code ending in either True or False. Just connecting it to a device and controlling it through a command line would do the trick. Or through an user-friendly Caller app.

That said, I am not dumb and the very last thing I would do is to connect any of my devices with sketchy hardware just yet.

Instead, I reached into the drawer of the worktable with my magic and pulled out a DumPone. A simple replaceable piece of hardware I made as a filly when I was still going around the city collecting abandoned hardware.

When I was little, I learned the hard way not to trust any device I just happened to find around, but I also learned a lesson about the opposite. If you are smart enough to know the danger and leave the hardware alone, who is to say if the next person in line will know any better?

There is the obvious danger of someone finding an abandoned credit cartridge on the floor somewhere and only wanting to check out its balance, only to find out a few days later their bank account was sliced and cleaned empty.

But people should realize that there is a much more physical danger to it too. There really isn't anything your anti-slicer software can do when the device you are connecting it to is just a bunch of capacitors which charge and discharge as soon as you put power through them, frying everything on the other end.

That's what the DumPone was for. If it went boom, it went boom. Honestly? A reward off-of itself for my younger self to watch the fireworks with some friends.

Thankfully, the limiter proved to be safe for use and so I proceeded with an actual working terminal. But even then, after all my precautions and after my anti-slicer software cleared it, I still found a Scale link to a "reputable" Caller application.

I deleted it right away, and proceeded with a bare hooves-on command line communication.

<list

The list went on, with most of the droid's functions failing a rudimentary identification and so sat in a vague description 'IdentFailed.' and considering that everything was disabled by default, this really complicated things.

I sighed, already regretting my impulsive purchase of this secondhand droid. It seemed like I would need to do some serious debugging if I wanted to get it up and running safely.

At least, those that counted were identified.

"Alright, time to see what you can do." I murmured and entered the command to enable its power.

<PowerBarred -false

...

Nothing happened. The droid still sat there unmoving.

"Nghhh... come on." I groaned in distress. "Why can't everything work on the first try?"

And so proceeded a long session of my attempts to get the droid working. Each less successful than the previous. At this point I attempted everything, save for flipping everything to ON and hoping for the best. Though, that would also include the limiting part of the limiter, and knowing my luck, that droid would jump me the instant I let it out.

It is the same exact reason why I left the limiter in its default settings as I disconnected the terminal.

"Welp, so much for 'working flawlessly'." I sighed.

I wouldn't be surprised if the device got fried when someone fired it from a launcher. Unfortunately, there wasn't much I could do around a busted limiter.

The only thing remaining to try is to connect to it directly through my terminal. I was so not looking forward to trying to navigate its potentially alien code matrices. I may be fluent in thirty-six different machine languages, but I have a sneaking suspicion this droid won't be in any of those.

One tiny issue occurred to me though. How exactly do I connect my terminal to it?

My eyes immediately drew towards the black horn on top of its head and I remembered N's word about how it was supposed to be compatible with anything.

Slowly, I levitated up the terminal cord and looked between it and the horn. Then I shrugged and brought the two together.

*clink*

Nothing happened.

"Figures," I sighed.

And of course that's the moment Auntie Red barged into the room.

"Violet, could y— ah." Red exclaimed as she beheld me trying to cram a male cord on top of a horn.

I turned my head towards her and contemplated how to explain my situation, but in the end I simply pointed at her with the cord in my telekinesis.

"This is still not the weirdest thing you've walked into in my room." I smirked.

I watched her do a short breathing exercise before she rewarded my joke with a small smile. “I am quite certain this is not how connectors work, Violet.”

I retracted the terminal cord back into the workbench and turned back towards the drone, contemplating.

“N said its horn is actually an access point, though I suppose the droid has to be running for it to work. Which, I actually have a bit of a problem getting it to do.” I waved the hurdle off though, "I am sure it's something stupid."

Red mused, while taking a walk around it, "Have you tried the limiter port?"

"Yeah, that's the first thing I did." I nodded, "But for some reason the port says it is already on. Unfortunately, the limiter doesn't seem to have any deeper access and most of the functions failed identification, so I can't really look into it."

"Well... It is called a limiter, not a controller. All it's good for is limiting the droid to direct commands." Red noted, “Well, I hope you crack it soon. I myself had a little bit of more luck.” she stopped and nodded towards the door, “The shell truly had a living Nebulan inside.”

“Oh?” I exclaimed, “Is he- er they alright?”

“He. And yes.” Red nodded, “Mr. TL-6 Cogsworth calls us his saviors, and as a sign of goodwill I took off his limiter.” She smiled. “He is now helping me prepare the Moonmeal. Which reminds me why I interrupted.” Red rolled her eyes, “Blu is outside checking the ring and once again forgot his HoloPone inside, so I can't call him in for the Moonmeal. Would you be a dear and fetch him?”

"Ah." I nodded, "Yeah I'll get him."

Red then left my room with my confirmation, leaving me behind to deactivate the droid completely, cus with my luck, the thing would decide to start walking when I was away.

```

\ /

```

The Halo ring platform surrounding our homestead was probably the most important part of the structure. It acted as a first line of protection against anything Kitein could throw at us. Including gravity.

This is where the majority of repulsor-lifts were integrated which were the only thing keeping things on Kitein from plummeting down towards the gas giant's core to be crushed by the insane pressure.

In the event of more extreme weather, there are several shield generators which we can turn on at any time and cover the whole perimeter with a barrier that can withstand most of the Kitein's extreme weather. However, as with most shields, ships and speeders can pass right through. Not very useful against an actual organized raid.

But that's what the turrets were for. Provided they worked...

Eight turret towers guarded the horizon at all times. More for scaring away the occasional flock of Beldons than fighting raids.

I was walking throughout the ring, looking for uncle Blu. The wind was once again making a mess of my mane as I occasionally passed by one of the towers.

The towers stood attached to the outer side of the ring, facing the horizon. Each reached about a meter both above and below the ring's level, and had one laser turret on each end. One at the top guarding the nightsky while the other watched over the abyss.

The turrets themselves were then these single barrelled bulbous things, able to of course turn and aim in the full half sphere.

They looked awesome and intimidating, but unfortunately half of them didn't work and their firepower amounts to the same level of my peashooter. They do fire fast, but I don't think we could do anything about an actual armored vehicle.

No. The homestead's secret weapon lies in its durability. If worse comes, we can lock everything down and just plunge down into the Kitein's red zone and just run away.

Finally, I heard Blu's cursing near one of the turret towers. I leaned over the railing and found the pegasus laying on his back on top of a hoof-made cloud, working on an open panel on the bottom turret with a few different hoof attachments. Unfortunately, his cloud was being pushed around by the wind, which then was the source of cussing.

"You know, there is a very good reason why cloud building is a terrible idea." I announced myself. Then I lit my horn and made a red forcefield around him and his cloud.

One of the cooler spells I've learned! Couldn't stop a blaster fire, but was enough for simple isolation. Didn't even take that much out of me depending on how strong I needed it.

"Thanks, Violet." Blu responded while continuing his work, "What brings you all the way out here?"

"Red is annoyed that you forgot your HoloPone." I said.

"I have? Huh." Uncle Blu noted.

I rolled my eyes when he didn't even pause, "And also the Moonmeal is ready."

"Oh? Excellent. Let me just calibrate this one here real quick and I'll be on my way."

And so I made myself comfortable in the meantime, just casually leaned back against the railing, while observing the top half of the turret tower Uncle was currently working on. This one looked more battered than the rest, with its barrel scorched.

"Are these turrets even up to the task of defending us?" I voiced my doubts. "Two of the east towers look ready to fall apart."

"Sure they are!" He exclaimed, "Have I never told you about how we were attacked by a huge swarm of Rawwks?"

I rolled my eyes, "Only about a hundred times."

"Oh..." He paused while continuing fiddling with the lower turret, "Well, would you like to hear it a hundred and first time?" He looked up to me with a grin.

I involuntarily blushed. He knew I loved that story no matter how many times he told it, "Sure...."

"Alright. So no shit, there we were, on a Sky-Fort Type Cloud Farm lent to us by none other than the Dragon Lord himself, because we were the only ponies crazy enough for looking settling down on a dragon homeworld. The farm was in a bad shape, but functional. A daunting task was before us, as we didn’t have much to start with and we not only had to produce enough monthly Tibanna to the Thunderhead, but also pay the debt to the Dragon Lord.”

"Thankfully, everything went swimmingly. Between your aunt's talent for numbers and software, and my know-how with hardware and engineering, we beat every major problem on the farm into submission!"

"And that's when the news hit. An enormous swarm of Rawwks was seen migrating across Kitein, and wouldn't you know it, we were directly in their path! Now, the thing about Rawwks is that Rawwks are the only egg-laying species native to Kitein, where other critters depend on live birth. This allows them for rapid reproduction, though only thanks to their symbiotic relationship with Beldons on which they nest. Landmass, consequently, is what for the longest time moderated their numbers." Blu gave me a look, "Today though? Rawwks go into a breeding frenzy the moment they see a landable surface."

Blu closed the panel he's been working on. He abandoned the cloud and I finally let off of my shield and watched the cloud drift away.

Blu then lifted off to begin his work on the upper turret, "So no shit. Here we were, on a crappy slow farm armed with only turr—"

Everything stopped.

As if the world itself turned into focus around the top turret Uncle Blu was just about to begin his work on, and I didn't have to wonder long as the barrel of the machine began to turn away from the horizon and towards us.

No. Towards Blu, whose head just passed the threshold the turret was able to fire upon.

I jumped. Somehow doing the calculation in my head that no magic I could throw at it would be faster than that thing turning ninety degrees and shooting him squarely between his eyes.

Even though already in the air, I contemplated transforming back to my original form and using my wings to boost myself. It certainly would boost my speed, but the transformation itself would take too long.

So I was hanging there, in one single instant. Hopelessly floating and watching as the barrel turned degree after degree at my unsuspecting uncle who was frozen in place in the middle of his tale.

My air travel gave me enough time to contemplate all these various solutions to make my travel just a bit more efficient, while simultaneously watching the turret's progress and calculating who is gonna get to him first.

The math didn't add up.

Finally after an instant had passed, I reached Blu's hindlegs. Unfortunately, so did the barrel of the turret reach his face. The mechanical *clank* of its internal metal gears making it stop in place was a thunder for my ears for how loud it rang inside my head.

Only now did my uncle notice the movement.

In a flash of inspiration, I let myself drift an instant longer instead of just pulling his legs straight down. Maybe I could angle him just so that the turret would miss.

Finally my horn managed to light up, I immediately put it to work and envelo—

PEW

...too late.

Everything resumed.

I tumbled with Blu's body to the ground, the catwalk vibrating underneath like thunder.

I looked up at the still smoking barrel of the turret, before steeling myself and finally looking down on the head of my uncle... still attached to the rest of his body.

“You okay?” I exclaimed after a moment of silence.

“I-I…" Blu stuttered, still laying on the floor slowly starting to emit a stench of 'fear'. I myself tried my best to shake off my own adrenaline and walked off towards the tower's base where the turret’s controls sat.

"H-How did you know it was going to fire?” He stared after me.

“I saw it turning?” I exclaimed as I reached the control panel and opened it. Still wary of the deadly mechanism just a meter above my head pretending to be asleep. We were well within its blind spot, but a couple of steps away and I bet it would fire again.

“Violet… That turret is a Rawwk hunter. When it last saw action, it turned between targets and fired in less than a millisecond." He watched me with confusion, "I… I should have been dead!”

All the switches on the bastard thing were off, I even flipped a few switches several times, but only when I kicked it the turret tower finally de-powered. “...good thing I have such good reflexes, eh?”

Blu looked ready to say something, but instead just exhaled in relief. "Yes. That's a good thing." He said and finally stood up from the walkway.

“Come on," I exclaimed and motioned towards the homestead, "We better go inside before Red thinks we got teared to smithereens by our own defense systems.”

"Right." He noted. "And... let's omit that part as well, shall we?" Still a bit shaken from the near-death experience, we both then made our way home at a leisurely pace.

Still, I gave the turret one final look.

A millisecond? Felt like an eternity to me...

```

\ /

```

Blu and I arrived in the dining room without any further death-threatening complications, and we unceremoniously planted ourselves at two of the four pillows around the dining table in silence.

We were also witnesses of one of the stranger events that sometimes happen on the Homestead, and that is someone else manning the kitchen than Red herself.

It's no secret that Blu and I were culinary illiterates, and last time Blu tried to cook, Red confined him to a blue milk diet after catching him trying to order an automatic kitchen. This time it was a Mr. Handy manning the kitchen, and by the faces Auntie Red standing by the side was making, I think she started to warm up to the idea of automated cooking.

Now that the Mr. Handy was active, the thruster below its spherical body turned on, allowing it to float in front of the kitchen counter, where in a flurry of movement, it was preparing food for the Moonmeal.

The three arms were moving in perfect synchronization, chopping vegetables, mixing ingredients, and stirring pots on the energy stove. While its arms could only grab things with their claws, a compartment on the front of the machine's chest contained an assortment of tools and utensils allowing the machine to carry out its culinary tasks with ease.

"You have quite a way with tools," Red commented on the robot's skill, not noticing our arrival, "Is a cook your main profession?"

"Not quite!" The robot turned one of its stalks to face Red and us, its tools still preparing food. "My form is a multi-functional machine fit for the perfect servitor. Cooking is just one of my many talents," it replied in a cheerful tone. "I am fluent in six million forms of cuisine and etiquette, and am a capable creator of over twice as many meals and other culinary delights. I am, of course, capable of customizing these dishes depending on the master's race, available resources, and so forth."

"I can also do cleaning, gardening, care for the young, and even assist in medical procedures!" he continued, pointing towards the compartment on his chest, “Provided I have access to the proper equipment, of course.”

Blu and I exchanged surprised glances, and out of the two of us, Blu was the one to finally speak up, “It sounds that you are someone who could be incredibly helpful around the Homestead Mr…”

"Ah!" Red exclaimed when she heard us and noticed us sitting around the dining table. Her eyes sparkled as she gestured towards the floating robot, "Meet Cogsworth, everyone!"

At that, the Mr. Handy fully turned around, leaving the pot unattended and made a motion to bow, though I noticed his thruster stayed pointed to the floor, ensuring that he didn't barrel towards us like a heat-seeking missile, "My full designation is TL-6 Cogsworth, and it is the greatest pleasure to meet my rescuer!"

"Rescuer?" I exclaimed, raising an eyebrow.

“Of course!” Cogsworth chimed in, “Was it not you who single-handedly liberated me from the clutches of the menacing scavengers?”

“Hooves, not hands.” I immediately pointed out and lifted my two forelegs ending in hooves, “But… Yeah. I guess I did!”

I kind of just laid back then with a shit-eating grin and started recounting my heroic actions, “So no shit, there I was, you know? Blaster bolts zooming by, hitting people left and right and everything! Almost didn’t make it out!” I boasted, I admit the sudden surge of attention got into my head, but the need to brag just couldn’t be stopped! “I mean, one of them got a good hit on me, and I’ll def feel that scar for the rest of my life!”

That is, until Red put a stop to it.

“Oh quit your yapping, Violet!” She exclaimed, to which I crossed my forelegs and pouted.

“Oh my… Is that true?” Cogsworth asked, “Madam Red has explained the situation as far less… dramatic.”

Red shook her head, “Don’t listen to her. She has a tendency to make up stories.” She then gave a glance towards Blu, “Can’t imagine whose fault is that.”

Blu raised his hooves in mock surrender.

At that Cogsworth returned to cooking, not a while longer and all of us congregated around the dining table to taste test his cooking, but from the look of it Red had some serious competition. When the food was placed before me in a steaming bowl, I couldn’t help but to salivate at the sight.

The bowl was filled with a colorful mix of stir-fried vegetables, and some exotic-looking glowy bits, floating in a mixed up sauce that smelled divine.

Without another moment of hesitation, I levitated the bowl towards my muzzle.

“Tfis is sooo goofp!” I exclaimed with the meal muffling most of my words, “Waf is fis?”

“Violet!” Red scolded me.

I gulped down the food, “There is no way you made this from the stuff we have laying around.”

"Ah, my dear, this masterpiece before you is none other than 'Trotth's Harvest Stew,'" Cogsworth proudly announced, "From where I come from, it is quite a common highly versatile meal!”

Red sighed in defeat after hearing that and taking another bite, “And I thought using algae as a baking supplement was clever. But this is something else." I could feel her bruised ego speaking, "I-Is this truly a common meal?” Auntie tentatively asked.

“Quite so.” Cogsworth confirmed, “However, your algae bread is nothing to frown upon either, madam!” he quickly added, “And speaking as a royal aide, that means a lot!”

There was silence.

Me, Red and even Blue looked up from our soups, "Royalty?" I was the one who finally spoke up.

"Er..." Cogsworth made a noise, "Yes, quite... However," Suddenly he straightened up, "Oh! Speaking of, while I do not intend to be overly ungrateful for my rescue..." He shifted his eye stalks, "I still have to ask. Have you perhaps seen another with me?" Cogsworth stared at us hopefully.

Red and Blu looked at me curiously, though I shook my head slowly, "Sorry, but I haven't seen any other Nebulan shell anywhere."

"Ah!" Cogsworth exclaimed, "B3-Z3 is not like me, he's... Er. Small and black, with holes in his legs. He has the shape of a pony and the heart of a devil that takes every opportunity to get into trouble, I say!" He motioned half-heartedly with one of his metallic claws.

Huh.

Red, Blu and I shared a look. I shrugged and nodded, to which Red spoke up, "I suppose you are in luck. Violet bought a droid of that description alongside you."

I could see the lenses in his eye-stalks widening in surprise, "Truly? Thank goodness for the convenience!"

"Yeah, though..." I paused, "I've been trying to turn him on in my room for a while without success."

"Perhaps I can assist?" He insisted, "While I could never dare to fathom what makes that daredevil tick, I might still be of use."

"Sounds like a deal." I shrugged and stood up from my pillow, "Come on, I even have an oil bath upstairs."

"An oil bath?! Thank the maker! In the decades of my service I have never been in such a dire need of proper lubrication. Truly, I can barely move!"

```

\ /

```

"Well, there he is."

We arrived at my workshop, where the scent of an open oil bath and machinery filled the air. I welcomed Cogsworth inside, pointing out the black droid next to my workbench.

"Feel free to take a look." I added and leaned on the metal support beam of the bath's cover lift.

“Ah, duty before pleasure." The floating mechanism exclaimed with a longing glance towards the bath, "Very well, let me just quickly take a look and I'll have him up in a jiffy.” He said and then floated towards the droid.

“So Cogsworth… royalty, eh?” I started a small talk, watching the floating machine poke the black droid.

Cogsworth paused, “Er… Quite.” he made a noise, "I like to think I served my mistress Lavender well. Now if you'll excuse me, it is quite a personal matter."

"Suuure..." I squinted at him in suspicion, but eventually shrugged,

I wanted to know more. Now that he mentioned this royal character, I seriously considered just calling them up and collecting a reward for the droids. I had yet to ask how these two even got on N's scrapyard, and whether it would be worth it announcing into the world I got my hooves on two royal servitors. But that kind of conversation had a time and place. I'll give them a day or two to adjust to their new surroundings before really putting them both through the QnA grinder.

“Hmm… Yes I see. Ah! Yes. Of course!” Cogsworth mumbled out loud, throwing me out of my thoughts.

I lifted an eyebrow and stepped closer, "Oh? You found out what's wrong with him?"

"Indeed! As a matter of fact, there is nothing wrong with him!" Cogsworth exclaimed, then he punched the black droid on the forehead.

Suddenly, the black droid came to life. The whole thing just lit up with gentle cyan lights and stood up on all four of its legs.

Cogs looked at me excitedly, “He was pretending!” he exclaimed.

At that, my usually upbeat attitude and curiosity, rapidly changed into a death-glare. That little bastard! He's so lucky I didn't blew my identity in front of him on accident, otherwise I would have also found out whether the thing could fly.

"Uh-huh. Did he now?" I mused. The thing was smarter than it looked. Clever thing. Too clever. I'll have to keep an eye out, and make my instructions tamper-proof.

Now that the droid was up and running, I took another look at him. B3-Z3 was of course completely black, covered by an unusual alloy that looked rigid, but since there were no visible hinges on its legs it had to be one of those fancy flexible metals. However all the black glassy surfaces I observed on it earlier in the scrapyard, were now all lit up with a cyan color.

Its small sleek horn now had two stripes of cyan, along with its back which I now recognized as an elytra similar to my own. Though, Idunno if it opened up to show wings, or if it was just decoration. Then there were its eyes, which caught my attention the most. Like everything else, they were now brightly lit with a cyan color, only with a slightly lighter hexagonal pattern on top of it.

Overall, I approved. Looked kinda cute with those tiny fangs of its too. The name was a mouthful though.

"One request, can I call him something else? Pronouncing 'B-Three, Z-Three' every time is kinda pain."

"Hsssst." The droid in question opened up its fanged muzzle and let out a piercing hiss. It sounded more like an electric buzz than anything organic or gas related.

Cogsworth glanced at him, "Usually, asking a droid to abbreviate their name is akin to an insult..." He noted, and I rolled my eyes, "Thankfully, 'Bee-Zee's opinion does not matter."

'Bee-Zee' huh? Yeah I can work with that -wait huh?

"I… see?" I said, glancing between the two in confusion. I couldn't quite make out what was going on between the two, but it was clear that there was some kind of history there. Cogsworth was slowly bobbing up and down, playing with his claw, while Bee-Zee remained completely stoic. Other than the occasional hiss, he didn't seem to be reacting to anything.

I shook my head. I'd seen weirder relationships, and this one is nowhere near the number one on my list.

"Right... You said you two know each other?" I asked again.

"Er..." Cogsworth motioned with one of his claws. "More of acco— colleagues more than anything."

His hickup made me squint. Accomplices? What the hay are these guys in?

I seriously considered calling him out on it, but thought better. The last thing we wanted was one of them feeling cornered and trying their luck with the Abyss. Predictably, Cogsworth was a machine, so I couldn't read what he was thinking about, so it was better to play it safe.

"I suppose since the two of you have worked alongside each other, you'll insist I can take this thing off?" I pointed towards the limiter still embedded in the droid's side.

"About that...," Cogs hesitated, looking a bit uneasy. "I propose that Bee-Zee remains on a restraining bolt for a while longer."

That made me raise an eyebrow. "Oh-kay? Something I should know about? Did he do something?"

"Oh, it's nothing to worry about," Cogsworth said quickly. "Bee-Zee is usually well-behaved. It's just that recently he has been having a minor case of... murderous tendencies."

That's when the thing hissed, not helping its crazy killer bot allegations.

"Noted..." I noted.

"We'll keep him restrained then," I exclaimed, already regretting all the new hassle this droid is bringing to the homestead, "And under additional oversight."

Cogsworth nodded solemnly. "A splendid idea."

I looked up at Cogsworth, "What's up with the hissing anyway?"

"Oh! That is a binary dialect I'm afraid," He waved with one of his claws dismissively, "Please don't take his noises as a display of hostility, Bee-Zee cannot speak in any other language."

I raised an eyebrow at Cogsworth's explanation. Binary language? Really? That was a bit of a setback, especially since I was planning on interrogating Bee-Zee later. In private.

"Damn." I bit my lip, "But he can understand me, right?"

"I don't see how he couldn't. Why don’t you command him yourself?" Cogsworth suggested, gesturing towards Bee-Zee.

A command? I turned towards the droid in question and pursed my lips in thought.

"Bee-Zee, sit down!" I commanded, and not a moment later, the black, insectoid droid folded its hind legs and sat down in a graceful, low crouch, its antennae twitching curiously, or maybe in resentment?

"Lay down!" I ordered next, and the droid simply laid down on its belly, its slender holey legs and segmented torso spread against the floor.

"Roll on your back!" I challenged, and the droid immediately complied, flipping over onto its back with a surprising feat of agility that belied its metallic form. Its antennae twitched out of the way as it settled upside down, and I couldn't help but smile. Despite his creepy hissing and murderous tendencies, Bee-Zee was actually kind of cute.

"Well, isn't that something," I murmuredy, "You're a surprisingly dexterous little bugger, aren't you?"

"Indeed," Cogsworth nodded, "Bee-Zee is a very capable droid, despite his... quirks."

I couldn't argue with that. Bee-Zee seems to be quite agile, and his ability to understand and follow my commands was sufficient. Even if I couldn't understand his language, I was confident that Red and I could still get him to do what we needed him to do.

"Glad to know I don't need to worry about him getting stuck on his back or something." I noted.

Aaaand that's when Red walked into the room. I felt her approaching all the way from the hallway, and I gave her my sheepish smile before the door even opened.

Red took a single glance at my silly smile, then at the mechanical buttler, and then at the insectoid droid laying on the floor with its hooves in the air.

Auntie Red sighed, "I am not even going to ask."

All I did was grin ear to ear.

"Please tell me you finally have some good news." Red murmured.

"There is no need for distress, Miss Red," Cogsworth chimed in, "All we've done is come to a conclusion that 'Bee-Zee' here is to remain on a restraining bolt and supervision so that there is no chance of further injury."

Red paused. Then her eyes darted to me.

"Violet—?"

"Oh look at the time!" I quickly pointed at my HoloP, already retreating towards my room, "It's so late I better get some shuteye!"

"Violet?!" Red did not take kindly to me ignoring her, but then turned away from me, "Cogsworth? Explain."

"Ah..." If the mechanical butler could gulp anxiously, that is exactly what he would have done.

Before the door behind me closed, sealing Cogsworth behind to his fate, I caught the sight of him lifting a claw and preparing an already insufficient explanation.

SHUT

The doors shut close, sealing me alone within the same bedroom I woke up in tonight. My room was a repurposed storage similarly to how our kitchen had its own storage. Actually, every room within the dome had its own side room for storage, even Red and Blu have their own storages in their separated bedrooms.

It's just my bedroom that is the storage room of the workshop. I don't mind, I only ever use it to sleep anyway, and occasional gaming session on the Scale with my personal terminal. The workshop is more than enough space for my musical experiments.

Inside of my bedroom, everything was pretty much where I left it.

The alarm clock within the bunk was proudly displaying 6:32NH, a whole half an hour past my bed time, meaning that I'll once more have less than ideal amount of hours of sleep, though my sleeping schedule was in disarray for a long time anyway.

My Scale terminal was still on, showing some of the mixing apps I let open. I walked over, lit my horn and saved my projects before closing everything. In doing so, the terminal's background showed, a photograph of me, Auntie Red and Uncle Blu, standing in front of a busted M31 Airspeeder.

Little me was grinning from eye to eye, Red was not thrilled as in her eyes I bought a wreck, however Blu was proud and let me fix and learn from it.

We had another picture, where I finally managed to turn on the engines, however I liked this picture of my family the most.

It was actually the only picture ever taken which had me in my natural form. Looking at it, I couldn't help but notice my difference from Bee-Zee. Sure, his chitin was made from metal, but what about the eyes, or the leg holes? Does it mean anything that his are three times as large as mine?

Are we even the same species?

Damn. I was really, really, REALLY looking forward to having some alone time with that droid. I didn't expect to have so much trouble turning him on, and I didn't expect Cogsworth to know him either.

I sighed and finally turned back towards my bed and settled under my blue bedsheets, staring out towards the door.

My plan was to simply copy everything that droid had on it into my terminal and go through it, but that idea goes out of the window with Bee-Zee's alien structure. My backup was an interrogation, however now it turns out Bee-Zee can't even speak equish, and Cogsworth is the only translator around.

I would love to just say 'Hey we are the same species! Tell me about us!' The problem is, I just don't know how they would react. It could be fine, but we could also wake up to a missing speeder and Scale headline 'Local DJ turns up as a shape-shifter'.

Me being a member of shape-shifting species was understandably the biggest secret of the Hors family. If this got out, it would spell disaster to me as a DJ, and the safety of the Homestead at large.

Counterintuitively, if I revealed myself as a bug-pony during one of my performances, the people wouldn't give a damn. Sure there would be some initial shock and headlines, but they would still come for the music, and even more would come to see the famous DJ 8ug!

The problem is, Thunderhead is a place where rare species go missing.

Me being one, would immediately make me a target of all sorts of attention. Powerful attention. Attention with pockets deep enough to bypass our quantum-encryption providers, and get the Homestead's geological location. To be even considered safe, we would have to completely cut ourselves from Scale, and I would have to change identity.

My life as DJ Pony would be over, and I would have to risk my neck out there every day, or leave the Homestead completely.

As much as I would love to say it's to heroically take the interest for the Homestead with me, no. I can get dangerous when I am hungry.

When I get hungry, all of my instincts go haywire, and become harder to ignore. I already have little to no control over what I can feel, but when I am hungry, I have less control over what I feed on.

While I've never gone completely feral from hunger before, Red has plenty of stories about how I behaved when I was little and it doesn't take a genius to guess what would happen as I get progressively closer to starvation.

Nothing good.

Speaking of hunger, I haven't noticed during the Moonmeal, but now that I pointed it out, my emphatic senses seem a lot more stronger. I could still feel Red's frustration halfway across the dome.

I'm running low on steam sooner than I expected. Has my stunt with Blu really drained me so much? Or is it just natural? In any case, it seems I'll have to visit the city again. Thankfully, my gig at Tropo club is coming up.

"Damn." I sighed and turned in my bed towards the wall. The events of the night already weighting me down.

Things certainly are going to be a lot more interesting around the farm with the two new additions to the family.

Only time will tell whether it would be the good kind of interesting, or the bad kind.

Chapter III - Tales Of A Gray Mare

BEEB BEEB BEEB

"Nghhh... Too early..."

It was a new day on Kitein, and the digital display in the wall of my bed-hole couldn't help but to announce with a loud siren the arrival of the Aurora Hours.

If it was just a little bit smarter, I bet I would feel the smugness of that little bastard.

My usual waking routine consisting of a shower, attempt at mane grooming, and some lazy transformation once that failed, always started at both sunrise and moonrise. It was pretty much how the whole household operated.

A forty-eight-hour day-night cycle is a serious step up for quite a lot of races. For that reason, the days and nights were split into two quarters. Aurora and Meridiem for the day, and Tenebris and Nocte for the night.

With twelve hours to burn each quarter, we started our day at the beginning of Aurora Hours at 0:00, doing whatever was needed to do throughout the day. Lunch break was at noon at 11:59, which is when Aurora gave to Meridiem Hours, and continued until dinner at sunset. We went to sleep with the arrival of Tenebris Hours at 23:59.

In the middle of the night, during Tenebris Hours, we woke up at 30:00, and kind of took a break. We did our hobbies, had a Nightbite, relaxed and what not. We resumed work at midnight with the start of Nocte Hours at 36:00, continuing until halfway through Nocte at 42:00. At this point, we had a Moonmeal before going back to sleep, where we woke up the next day with the sunrise at 0:00.

I quickly finished my routine and immediately made my way down to the kitchen.

Auntie Red was already inside, she sat quietly by the table, looking lost in thought. Her 'I-don't-know-what-to-think' had me puzzled, and a bit worried.

Something happened while I was asleep, though I couldn't determine whether it was good, or bad by my senses alone.

So I approached the table and sat down right across from her. Then I used my confusion to non-verbally ask for an explanation.

Auntie saw me and bit her lip, then lifted her HoloPone, “Could you give me your thoughts on these readings?”

Right on clue, my own HP pinged and after a few taps with my magic, I had a sheet of holographic data before me. I immediately noticed a graph which showcased the performance of our Master-Class M1-X Server. The graph started as it usually did, kinda low, but relatively stable.

And that’s when the graph went vertical. And what's even more surprising is that it went upwards and stayed there.

Short text at the bottom showed a simple math which undoubtedly Red herself made. It read: ‘415% Increase in raw processing power’ and today's date.

I lifted an eyebrow. “I… have no idea. Did you find a new server stashed somewhere inside a wall?”

Red smiled, “No. All this is still our old Masterclass.”

"Whoa..." I helpfully added, then my sleepy brain caught up with the new information, "Whoa whoa whoa, wait what?! Wha… What happened?”

“The droid happened.” She noted, “Last night I told it to go haywire on the M1-X and see what it can do. When I woke up, the B3-Z3 unit had a set of data ready for me.”

“But this is huge!" I exclaimed, pointing towards my HoloPone, "You sure it didn't have a seizure, or fixed the results a bit?"

"My thoughts exactly, and no." Red shook her head, "Measured it myself. Five times just to be sure. What the droid did, these are the results."

Still in denial, I held my head in disbelief, "Well, what did it do?”

“Well..." This time Red let out a worried sigh, "That’s another thing. It actually didn’t do much. Turns out, our server has never been overclocked. Contrary, it’s been underclocked this whole time.”

I frowned at the news, “Are we really that stupid?”

“No. It has been sabotaged.” Red dropped the bombshell, “The droid simply found a mechanical block inside the processors.”

“Who...?” I began, but an answer already formed in my head, “N”

Red simply nodded. “Our dear zebra friend sold us for one reason or another an underclocked military grade server.”

“But— Ts— Why?!” I stumbled over my own tongue. None of this made any sense!

Red continued, "I don't dare to try and guess what that zebra's deal is, but it had to be something highly profitable."

I shrugged, "Smuggling? It would explain why N looked so aroused about the prospect of me looking for a buyer."

Red nodded. “Could be the case. Though, I don't think we have to worry that much about her yet."

Her calmness about the situation made me raise an eyebrow.

"We bought that server almost a decade ago, Violet." Auntie elaborated, "Whatever scheme that winged zebra was up to, it had to run its case already.”

Hesitantly I nodded.

A moment of silence passed, before I spoke up again, “So…” I grinned, “We are set for life then?”

“Well, not for life," Auntie shrugged, "But this new revelation does give us the space to grow our business.”

“By how much?” I kept my grin.

“Well…" At this point, even Red couldn’t help but grin, "With all eight of our drones running simultaneously, and if I also count in your scheduling software, we are currently running at twelve-point-five-percent of our new maximum capacity.”

PFFFFFT

I did a spit-take with my drink.

“Violet, please mind your table manners.” Red exclaimed, though her 'do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do' clued me that that was her exact same reaction when the droid brought Red its data.

There was a moment of silence where I returned to my food. Red tried to hide her excitement, but it was delicious.

Slowly though, it turned sour.

“Are you heading into the city today?” Auntie spoke up after a moment.

"Yeah...?" I carefully voiced, "I have a gig in the Tropo Club.”

“I…" She paused, and her 'bad-news' immediately gave me chills, "I don’t want you to go. Not today.”

“What?!” My eyes widened and started to immediately complain, "People are counting on me!"

"You’ve brought strange droids with ties to royalty to the homestead, someone has already bugged your speeder over it, and now we have a highly valuable server, Violet." She shook her head, “There is just far too much strangeness going on all at once, and I don’t like it.”

“I mean, I see your point. But—”

"Violet, who is to say someone won't go directly after you next time?” Red butted in, ”I am worried about your safety, people will understand."

"They will boo the next guy and then demand a refund.” I deadpanned.

"Violet—"

But I wasn’t done, as my social fix wasn’t the only reason why I had to visit the big city today.

"And..." I started, but shyly looked to the side, "I am kinda low on... you know."

Auntie thought for a moment, before exclaiming, "Love?"

"Don't call it that." I retorted, and pouted, "...It's uncool."

Auntie only rolled her eyes, but then looked at me confused, “I thought you only needed to go once a month or so...” She bit her lip, "Are we... not enough?"

"No, No!" I lifted my hooves in reassurement, "You guys are cool, I just..." Damn, what do I say? This couldn't have been a worse timing to tell Red about the turret incident, which I suspect being the prime reason I got juiced out, "I just learned a new trick yesterday, and overdid it a bit." I settled down on a half truth.

"Oh." Red noted. An assortment of emotions went through Red's head. First worry, then indecisiveness, but eventually everything cleared out into a concession.

I didn't wait a moment and jumped up from the pillow, and across the table between us, "Thank you!" I threw my forelegs around her in a hug.

"Violet!" Red exclaimed at the taste of her own medicine, "I didn't say anything yet!"

"But you were gonna~!" I grinned and let go of her.

Red rolled her eyes and sighed. "I suppose I deserved that..." she crossed her forelegs. "You may go do whatever you need to do, just..." she trailed off, glancing away. “Be extra careful, now more than ever.”

"Auntie, I'll know about any ill intents long before anyone tries anything funny." I shrugged and tapped at my horn, "And even if something does come up, I've got a Blaster Pistol and a horn full of nasty surprises!"

"What about your speeder?" Red gave me a look. "I know you are turning the alarm off, otherwise it never would have been such a close call yesterday."

Ah. Right. The proximity alarm that my speeder is equipped with. Completely forgot about that one. I turned that thing off cuz it was firing off false alarms during my performance as a DJ. Super annoying.

"Right." I stood up from the table and saluted, "No worries, I'll keep it on every day from now until things settle down."

With a nod from Red, I finally made my way towards the exit.

“And Violet?” Red continued, “Do not brag about our Masterclass server. I mean it, Violet. No one has to know.”

I sucked in air in audible pain. “Ah… right." Dejected, I left the kitchen. "Yeah. Alright I can do that.”

```

\ /

```

📺Soda City Funk

Rhythm. Movement. Beats. Music.

Those were the only things on the minds of the dancing landscape before me. Love for the music, passion for the rhythm, and sync with the beats, all merging together in perfect harmony.

I came to call this energy that sustains me the 'Source', as… well, it is the source of everything I can do. 'Fuel' is then the stuff I need for the Source, and I am not calling it love, or affection. That's just... uncool.

I don't exactly know how all of this works, but I imagine this Source as an infinite dance floor, whose crowd jumps up and down sporadically and randomly. This crowd can then tire out and settle whenever I am low on Fuel for this Source.

If I keep this crowd alone, it’s doing its own thing. Dancing to the rhythm, waving sporadically, or rising and falling in random intervals. However when I use the Source, inserting my own tempo and cadence, it kind of just stops being random. Instead, this infinite plane rises up or falls down on my command to create a pattern. This pattern then mimics whatever Magical effect I desire.

As far as I can tell, Magic and Source aren't exactly the same, it's as if Source was the binary, and Magic itself was just the language interpreting it. It's how I am able to not only wear a disguise, but can also mimic the magic of whatever I disguise as.

It sucks that I still need to learn the spells though.

I can tell how far away I am from starvation by 'feeling' the excitement of the crowd. If they dig the beats and jump high in excitement, I can function normally for about a month. If they are idle and completely still, I am probably dead. I’ve never really been that hungry in my life, so I can only hypothesize, but it doesn’t take a genius that low equals bad.

So far the only way that I know about how I can get this crowd excited again is by bringing in new music as a Fuel through 'eating' other people's feelings. It doesn't matter which I take, but the positive ones generally don't taste like shit.

No clue how that works, but it's the reason I come to this club once in a while.

To ‘eat people's brains’.

I love my family to bits, but what auntie Red and Blu are providing me with are just nibbles. It might have been enough when I was little and had nothing to do other than play games on the Scale and maybe help around the homestead. Nowadays though, my body just needs more. I probably wouldn’t starve, but if I want to work and do cool shit, I need Magic on top of all of that. And Source is literally Magic for me.

Very early in my life I've learned about three forms of feeding that my body was capable of. One is the passive stuff where someone else feels something for another, which I can tap into just by standing near, though it's like trying to drink mist. It does something, but not much.

Next there is deception, which is far more effective than only passive feeding as now I am dipping into running water. But it's also trickier as I have to impersonate someone who is the target of the emotions. I don't really have much experience with this one, and Red forbids me from trying something like that at the homestead. And I was never in a bad enough shape to employ this tactic in the Thunderhead.

And finally active feeding. Similarly to how I can sense other people's emotions, whenever someone feels something directly towards me, with or without a disguise, it is always clearer, and far more concentrated. In contrast to everything else, active feeding is like forcing a water pipe down my throat.

But in a good way!

Then there is what I found here in my very first time behind the DJ pult.

What little-me found out here in this Tropo Club, was bigger and more important than I could have ever imagined. The first time I came across this place, little-me immediately fell in love with the loud music and all the people moving into the rhythm. The DJ there was no one else than Riggle who I was introduced to, and when she saw my enthusiasm she put me behind the pult.

Riggle announced me as ‘Dj Pony’ and the crowd there d'awwed and roared in cheers. I, of course, had absolutely no clue what a Disc Jockey did. So of course little-me took it literally, and I rode that disc all the way into the sunset.

That was the first time I was exposed to the 'Ambience', and man. I was completely mesmerized.

It is a phenomenon I noticed which occurs when a crowd of people feels the same thing, the same way, towards the same thing, or at the same time. Man it was raw and there was so much of it.

It was as if I was using each type of feeding at once. It had the abundance of passive feeding, it felt indirect towards me like deception, however everything was perfectly accessible just like the active feeding. All with the added bonus of being a practically infinite food source. Like diving in a water reservoir, and all I need to do is open my maw to get full face of it.

In that single moment of the crowd’s cheers and laughter, when the Ambience was saturated with Fuel, I knew exactly what I wanted to do in my life, and when no one was looking, I sneaked in a cutie mark on my flanks so I had an excuse.

Fast forward to today and I have a full contract and a dedicated crowd of followers.

And my Fuel supply? Literally limitless. I felt like I could sip forever and I wouldn't make a dent.

One other fascinating thing I learned about my eating habits is that there isn't a limit to how much Fuel I can take in at once. Though there is still a technical limit. It's like, the more Fuel I store, the more Fuel I need to store it. I kind of… bleed it out if I have too much. I haven't experimented with the exact limits, cus the only place I can work with this much Fuel is here in the open. What if I start to spontaneously glow in the middle of performance? Or worse, transform back to my bug form?

As it stands, I am happy and content. Every so often I come here to play music to replenish my Source, and then come back to work on the Homestead.

Rhythm. Movement. Beats. Music.

*ping*

That, was my HoloPone. Letting me know that my airspeeder detected suspicious activity in proximity. And right at the unfortunate time as the beat of the song was leading into a drop.

With a flick of my horn I brought up a live holographic feed of the immediate surroundings and a small semi-transparent cyan hologram of the airspeeder projected on top of my foreleg. What I saw next almost made me drop all of my beats.

It was the same guy, alright. A green drake, with tail and a hoodie covered in neon. Only this time I saw the small holographic drake approaching my speeder with, instead of a tracker, a whole damned slicing gear.

I immediately slammed a repeat on the playing song and stepped away. Already I could see him in the hologram sitting down. Undoubtedly scanning the interior for a weak point, and true enough, the next time I looked I saw him pulling out a probe and preparing to penetrate the hull. I had to do something, else the bastard would drag something out of the speeder's flight terminal.

In a flash of inspiration, I remotely connected to the speeder's speakers. With a few tweaks and connecting some apps together, I then turned them all aaallll the way up.

"HEY SCALE-ASS, YOU WANNA SCREW WITH ME?"

He literally jumped up into the air and broke off the probe against the hull in the process, which I enjoyed immensely. He of course immediately turned around for my voice, which I don't doubt he wouldn’t take long to realize I wasn’t actually there and proceed to trash my speeder now that subtlety was out of the window.

"You better start running,” I informed him. Hooves shaking from the sudden rush of adrenaline, “Cus I already posted your face all over the Hunter blogs in a real, high volumetric definition!"

The wannabe slicer frantically scrambled for his gear and ran away. Amusingly enough, he tripped over his own neoned tail and dropped something from his slicing gear, damaging it even further. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care as he left it behind and disappeared out of the holo-recorder’s range.

“Oh wait! Please stay!” I yelled after him, “I changed my mind! I wanna see your face ground into the pavement! I'll record the audio and mix it into my next masterpiece!”

I allowed myself a brief moment of relief. I do trust my anti-slicing software to protect my speeder, or at the very least wipe my flight records as a last resort, and even then I am a single call away from Red in which case we can just pack our things and move the Homestead somewhere else.

Still, I made sure to be true to my word and actually send his pics to the Hunter-net. I opened their app on my HP and just quickly cropped the hologram to only include his face and his slicing kit. And for good measure, even included the pic of the tracker I acquired last night, along with a short explanation and the drake’s last known location.

“Ohhh~ You're gonna get trashed man!” I exclaimed, grinning like an idiot.

I pressed publish and then… then…

Then I realized the song I set on repeat was still playing. Still winding up for a drop. And all the people on the dance floor were looking at me with reeeal not nice expressions. Aaaand I still had the headset on my head, which of course picked up my voice so that everyone in the club could hear me chewing out a guy three blocks away.

“Oh crap!” I helpfully exclaimed as I scrambled back towards the DJ pult and immediately let the song down.

"Woo!" I heard a single voice, though it was probably sarcastic.

After a while I turned the volume down.

“Sorry everyone!” I made an attempt to salvage my reputation, “Some son-of-a-Beldon tried to slice my speeder.”

It seemed I was in the clear. I couldn’t really make out the specific mood of any single person, not in this packed crowd, but the Ambience only carried annoyance mixed with understandment.

Thankfully it didn’t take long for everyone to start enjoying themselves again, and even I got back into the swing as the adrenaline wore off. The dance floor was once again filled with moving bodies.

Rhythm. Movement. Beats– Oh god, that's my boss giving me a stink eye.

```

\ /

```

Half an hour and twelve songs later, I passed the Throne to another DJ.

As it often is with everyone on Kitein, the next DJ was some dragon with a cliche DJ name like, F1re Cl4w, or T3rri8le F4te.

Yeah... I wasn't sticking around. Not for that. And neither do I plan on staying in the city as a whole. Not when people are literally out to get me. I had no illusions that the deal with the drake punk was over. If nothing, the next thing whoever hired that guy would try, is to go directly after me.

So I made my way across the dance floor and towards the back rooms to pack my things.

Aaand that's my boss waving at me...

Now, my boss and I had a kind of laid-back relationship, so I doubt I was in some kind of serious trouble. Still, I hesitated before changing my direction to lead me towards her.

The entire Club consisted of a long tall hallway, pretty much identical to N's warehouse as these types of rooms were supposed to house adult dragons when they were built.

On one end was the DJ setup, or The Throne as we call it, as it is a higher placed platform with its own stairs and massive speakers below it. Then there was the dance floor, full of lights that lit up the floor with various shapes and colors. Except the paths immediately next to the walls of the room, which I used to get to the bar in the back, as no way I am going to try and force my comparatively tiny body through a crowd of giants that don’t pay attention to anything.

My journey brought me towards the club’s bar table where my boss already sat, waiting for me. The bar itself then was a long oval table halfway leading into the wall, with a shelf stacked with drinks in the center and a bartender serving drinks from inside. There, sipping on a brown cocktail and watching my arrival, was the owner of the Tropo Club and my boss.

My boss was a Wyvern. A breed of a dragon with no wings, an elongated body, and more fur than scales, with hers being yellow. Wyverns also had a muzzle as wide as their whole head and a horn on their foreheads. She could probably levitate me, open her maw and take my whole head off in a single bite. Which was probably my impending fate by the way she was looking at me.

I sat up next to her while trying to decipher what she was thinking, but unfortunately the Ambience still proved to be too... er, loud.

“So… What was all that about?” She began with her deeper voice.

I hesitated for a moment before replying cautiously, knowing that my words could be misconstrued and land me in trouble. The last thing I want her to think is that I pissed off some mob boss and will only bring them to her doorstep.

“Just some bastard thinking he'll grab my speeder. Nothing to worry about now,” I said with a small shrug. Though I couldn't help but to keep glancing towards her in a futile attempt to assess her thoughts, and at that moment, I was as inconspicuous as a Rawwk egg in a powerline.

I couldn't help it! I always got this nervous tick whenever I didn't know exactly what the other was feeling. Auntie says I rely on my emphatic superpower too much, but I can't exactly turn it off!

My boss rolled her eyes and then bumped me with her claw, “Relax! You are not in trouble. Stop looking at me like I'll bite your head off!”

A shiver went down my spine. It still felt weird when someone instead points out exactly what I was thinking. I shook my head and let out a small chuckle. "Sorry Rig, just... Bit on edge right now." I said with a sheepish grin.

Some time after I became DJ for this club, the old owner retired and passed it to Rig, who then in turn left the music scene to me. Rig has been my mentor and close friend ever since.

Under Rig, I learned the ins and outs of the music theory, and brought new energy and fresh ideas into things.

Really, me and Rig made this place like home away from home.

"It's just..." I shook my head, "You hear about stuff like this in the news you know? It's not something that's supposed to happen to you."

"You are popular, well, at least here." She took another sip from her brown drink, "You kinda should have seen something like this coming."

"I guess..." I wish it could have been just about popularity. At this point, the things pointing at our farm are piling up!

The Wyvern leaned in after giving a quick glance around the bar, "You think it's about the droid?"

I swear I felt a shiver go down my spine. She knew?! How?

"You texted me about it, remember?" Rig pointed out, noticing my shocked face.

"Right..." I nodded and relaxed, "Well, no. No, the drake had to have been after something else, at least the first time. The timing just doesn't add up. Though now that this is the second time, I... I really don't know what's happening."

Rig then leaned back and crossed her arms, "I suppose now is a bad time to tell you there is someone in the Cantina, asking for you."

My heart skipped a beat. "For me?"

Rig nodded, “Yep. I would have told them off, but since it was another pony, I figured I would first ask–”

It's the girl from yesterday!

I immediately groaned, “Oh sweet Lord, Rig. Don’t scare me like that! Ugh!”

“So I guess you know her?” Rig smirked.

"Yeah,” I sighed in relief for the second time, “I literally ran into her the other night. Told her to come here to hang out."

"Gotcha..." Her expression suddenly turned serious. "Hey, this thing about the droid, or at least the speeder seems serious. If you ever find yourself in a tight spot, just give me a call and I'll do whatever I can, kay? I’ll even get you a ticket off-world if it comes to it."

I nodded, "Thanks, I guess."

Rig then poked my side, "Anything for my favorite DJ."

I looked back at the current DJ in the throne, "There isn't much of a competition." I commented.

"Ha!"

The way to the cantina was barred by the club’s long oval bar table. Single large door at the base of the wall there in the back then led directly into the cantina. Understandably, that meant this entrance was staff-only, plus some trusted individuals. Everyone else had to go the long way around.

I of course walked all the way over there on three legs and my eyes directly attached to my HoloP’s display, where I read up upon any updates for my post.

I grinned like a maniac when I saw just how many upvotes and comments it had. Some of the latter directly quoting my outburst from the stage.

One of the hunter admins already approved my post and propped up a wanted status. There was no reward, so probably only the dragon security would go after him, but anyone who signed up to the app in the general location would get an alert and could keep a lookout for the guy and earn reputation in the process by quietly sharing where he was spotted. Already, the drake’s location was updated three times.

“Oh he’s so–” Thud.

I bumped my horn directly into the door.

"I would have told you not to walk with your head in that thing, but you will ignore me." Rig commented and I did just as she said. You would be surprised just how many cool people I meet by bumping into them!

The door slid upwards a moment too late, revealing a short corridor with two more doors to choose from. One leading to the kitchen and the one right across from me to the Cantina.

It was like an airlock. Just not for air, but for the sound.

With a click and slide, the door behind me closed, cutting off the rhythmic sounds of the club, and when I approached, those in front of me lifted upwards, revealing the secondary establishment.

Ah. The Tropo’s Spaceport Cantina.

Favorite spot of many travellers who looked for a way to unwind, hook-up, or eager to share their tales, which consequently made this place the source of everything I knew about the outer space.

The entrance of course led me out from the inside of another long bar table, this basically meant that this single bar table served two different establishments separated only by a wall and a kitchen.

"Hey V," I waved at the Xexto waitress, once I got past the bar, "Bring the usual to my table," To which she waved with one of her six limbs in acknowledgement.

Much unlike the massive hall of the Tropo Club, the cantina was smaller and cozier, though there was still plenty of space. Like the band stage on my right, occupied by a single entity playing all the instruments with so many limbs it put the bartender to shame, which I couldn't help but to gawk at as I walked past.

There were several bunks accommodating various guests and regulars. One of those regulars currently occupied their usual spot, which was now filled with heavily armored Hunters sitting around a table with a lot of credit cartridges and some banks, all arranged around a holographic betting pool currently projecting a familiar drake.

One Hunter, a tiny Breezie of the group sitting on the edge of the table, noticed me passing by. The tiny equine-shaped thing could probably fit into my hoof with space to spare, and its wings gave off the feeling that if I breathed a bit too harshly, it would flutter-off uncontrollably. Though by the tiny brown armor it wore, the Breezie was still a member of the Hunter guild, and from what I can attest to, the smaller they are, the bigger magical punch they can give.

"Oh look! It's her!" The Breezie gave out a squeak. Before I could worry about some kind of a wanted post on my head, the Breezie simply waved and smiled, "Looking forward to the remix!"

I wasn’t really serious about recording the drakes' screams, but I still grinned as I passed by. I still had someone to find.

The pony wasn't too hard to spot among the crowd of strangers of all shapes and sizes. The grey mare sat alone in a far corner inside a small secluded section, slowly sipping on a drink.

The mare still wore the same black jacket as the night before, covering her whole body. The only addition I noticed on her was the much calmer aura and an already-lifted same 'higher-than-thou' mask when I first met her.

I never liked the idea of people wearing some kind of false pretense, to fit in and hide how they are truly feeling. Why not just be yourself? I know it sounds weird coming from a shape-shifter, but I always strived to be myself as much as I could, in or without my disguise. It just felt weird, tainted somehow, when people felt different than what they showed. It was like vertigo, where my brain tells me one thing, but my eyes show another.

I caught a few cracks in her mask as I approached in the form of her sneaking a glance around at anyone who happened to pass by, and I noted her discomfort.

The mare completely failed to notice me however, so I was able to accidentally sneak up on her without really trying.

“Hey! You came!” I exclaimed, "Er..." What was her name again? "Octo... Octavia?"

The mare jumped a little once I walked into her peripheral. She smiled at me politely, but I could vividly taste her resentment, either to that name, or for me surprising her.

"Olivia." She corrected me.

“Oh right!” I exclaimed and finally sat down on the opposite side of the small circular table that stood between us.

“So…” I started, “What brings an earthpony to the Thunderhead?”

“Research, actually.” Olivia replied.

“Oooh~!" I leaned forward with my forelegs on the table, "What’cha researching?”

“It’s…” She hesitated. A wave of ‘I-can’t-say-that’ ran through her head followed by… something weird. I couldn’t quite make it out, but I somewhat figured that she was arguing with herself what to say to me instead.

“Kitein’s wildlife.” She replied.

Yeah… that’s my bullshit detector going off. The taste of ‘lie’ was straight up baked into that sentence. But... I wasn't going to call her out on it. Didn’t care all that much.

“Sounds kinda boring.” I still commented.

That’s when she started thinking... weird again. I could feel the taste of a little bit of sorrow, but then determination right afterwards. I guess she was feeling sorry for lying?

Then the atmosphere spiralled into an empty awkward silence.

I wanted to speak up, but no topics really came to my mind.

It didn't help that the girl avoided my gaze, but still sneaked a glance in when she thought I wasn't looking.

I gave her an unsure grin. Which then resulted in her furrowing her eyebrows and in 'puzzlement' of all things. I in turn lifted an eyebrow. Was I making her uncomfortable or something?

I have a feeling that my new friend wasn't a very social person...

Thankfully, I saw the waitress coming, with a glass of orange liquid in one of her many hands, "Here you go!" She deposited the Soda in front of me.

"Aw hell yeah!" I exclaimed at the sight.

Then she turned to the other mare, "Anything for you?"

"More of the same, please." Olivia finally spoke up and pointed to her empty glass.

The Xexto waitress nodded and walked away. Which resumed the awkward silence.

We sat there, right across each other, observing and I guess judging one another.

I couldn't exactly decipher what was going on between her eyes, and she hid pretty well behind her 'calm-casual' mask, but I recognized a few spikes of puzzlement and frustration.

Oh-kay...?

"Eh, you ok?" I finally asked.

"Yes. I am fine." The mare retorted after a moment, which only made me lift my other eyebrow.

Then she proceeded to glance at me more subtly.

I mean... Whatever. I have friends with far more weirder quirks. Maybe she just fancies me! Though in which case, I got some bad news for her...

"There you go!" The waitress returned with Olivia's drink. She gave each of us a single look, lifted an eyebrow, and then left.

Finally, the weird one-sided staring contest concluded as I took a sip of my drink and Olivia looked down into her own. This time thinking up a shitstorm.

"How about you?" She suddenly resurrected the long stale body of a conversation, disturbing me from my attempts to decipher her thoughts, "What brings you to Kitein?"

I guess it's for the better. "Well... Nothing really. I was born here."

"Ah." Olivia nodded, "I am off-world. I have arrived only last week."

Whoa, whoa whoa! Wait what?! Hell yeah, jackpot!

"Off-world?!" I suddenly exclaimed, "Oh we're gonna be the best friends ever alright!" While my friend-list was expansive, it didn't really reach out into the galaxy. Well, at least none that I could keep contact with. Off-world communication is expensive!

Never before have I passed on an opportunity like this, and just like with all the people before her, I was about to juice the pony before me of all the space things!

I couldn't help but to rear up with my forelegs on top of the table and started babbling excitedly, "Do you, like... Have a spaceship? Have you ever been in a space battle? Or dodging space rocks? O-Or other space things? Girl you gotta tell me EVERYTHING!"

There was a warm smile spreading across her features, which she attempted to tuck under her 'calm' mask with mixed results, but I could tell she was getting more comfortable without it on.

"I er... terribly sorry to disappoint you, but I only ever rely on commercial means for travel." Olivia looked towards the table apologetically, crushing my excitement in the process, "The only interstellar crisis I have ever encountered is a pillow shortage."

"Aw, c'mawn!" I threw my hooves into the air and let myself fall back down into the seat while pouting at her.

Olivia smiled a little bit wider at my antics, and of course that is the moment my empathic superpowers decided to work again and pull 'cute' out of her. I fought my blushing pouting face, while debating whether I should call her out. I'm not cute, I am cool! But, at least her mask melted away, so I'll let it slide. This time.

That said, her mind slowed down now that the awkward icy wall between us melted. Finally, I got a good look at the real Olivia. Her mind was currently singing 'I-am-comfortable' contrasting her usual ‘on-edge’ caused by the other patrons in the cantina. I suspect she had either a problem or a bad history with other species, and me being a familiar equine face put her at ease.

Olivia lifted an eyebrow in amusement. "I presume it is safe to say you're rather fond of space travel, aren't you?"

"Fond of?" I threw my hooves into the air, "Girl, it's like, literally my life dream to be a spacer!" At once, my excitement was back in full, "Space is just, So, COOL! The space lazers, dodging space rocks, space explosions, space battles! Man, I've never been in space myself, but everything I know about space I learned from people who lived through it and stopped by willing to trade stories! I'm basically almost an expert on space!"

Olivia chewed on her lip, "I don't want to sound like a downer-pony, but... space is mostly empty, you see. With light-years of nothing in between. Unless you are deliberately seeking trouble, you will find yourself traveling days or weeks at a time just to get to the nearest star system. Which, as it turns out, can be rather uncomfortable without an ample supply of pillows..." She finished under breath.

"Heresy!" I jokingly exclaimed, "But I get what you are getting at. No worries though, I've been training my whole life for long periods with nothing to do but wait!" I commented and levitated the Soda to my face.

Unfortunately I underestimated just how close it was to my muzzle without looking and accidentally submerged my face in the carbonized drink.

*SNORT*

I of course inhaled and the moment the drink started to fizz in my nostrils, I jettisoned it out right afterwards, which then had the unfortunate side effect of launching everything else in the glass out into my face.

"A-are you okay?" Olivia exclaimed.

"Eugh... Okay that was horrible." I shuddered at the sensation.

Fortunately, most of the drink stayed in the glass. However my glasses took the hit and were now all sticky with the stuff.

I levitated the windshades off my face and started wiping them with a tissue I took from the table.

For a moment I looked up and, for the first time without my windshades interfering, her set of violet eyes locked with my crimson reds. While I myself didn't really think about it all that much, the girl before me visibly... slowed down.

For a single instant, I swear I felt something along the lines of 'gorgeous', which was swiftly pushed aside with a wave of 'get-hold-of-yourself'. Still, it put a grin on my face.

I levitated back the windshades where they belonged to shield the poor innocent girl and the effect was immediate. Olivia blinked and cleared her throat, as if nothing happened. In addition, her uppity mask was up again. What was with that thing anyway?

"Erm, I do not wish to alarm you," Olivia interjected, "However there is another particular motive behind my visit, you see. It's not just about meeting the only other pony on Kitein."

"Well, I am not the only pony." I corrected her, "I actually know of—"

"Violet." Olivia interrupted, and showered me with 'serious-now'. "I am here for business reasons as well."

Aaaal-righ-ty-oo then! This conversation just got a lot more interesting!

"Oooh~!" I exclaimed, "Alright, lay it out on me. I'm listening." I laid back with a grin and motioned for her to continue before bringing my hooves together like a proper businessmare.

"I've... recently ascertained that you are currently in the possession of..." The way Olivia inconspicuously looked around for any unwanted listeners, and I knew exactly what she was about to say before she said it.

"...A particular drone."

Okay, not quite, but close. Phew!

I slowly nodded. "Yeah I have some drones. Though I bought them a few days back actually. These are the MX-14s we are talking about, right?"

Olivia frowned and started shaking her head, "I think you misunderstood, a drone as in, an insect drone. It resembles..." Again she looked around, and then leaned in and whispered. "...a black pony."

Okay, this conversation now got way too interesting. Uncomfortably interesting. So interesting I felt a crawling sensation up my back.

"Well, I don't know of any pony droid... or drone." I said carefully, "But if I did, why would you look for it?"

Once again she discreetly glanced around, contemplating 'how-much-can-I-say', "The drone is the property of an important pony I represent at this moment."

That forced a squint out of me. More worrying, is how she knows I have it. Did the drone send out a distress signal? "And... How did you get to the conclusion I have something like it?"

"The merchant who sold it to you provided me that information." Olivia explained without a hint of a lie.

This time it was me who struck the other with a piercing stare, and thankfully she laid out everything bare for me. There was a very bold aura of ‘attempted professionalism’ that she was trying to maintain, but I still could feel a ‘naive expectancy’ coming out of Olivia, so whatever she was saying she herself seemed to believe it. But more importantly, my bullshit detector stayed in the green during the 'important pony' part.

It definitely looked like bullshit, but didn't smell like it.

Maybe this mare before me has something to her after all, if she managed to get anything out of N.

That, or she is loaded.

That said, the revelation of how she got the info about me is a bigger problem at hoof right now. If it's true and N is selling information about who has the drone, I really should get rid of it in the near future.

And it might just be this mare’s lucky day...

Though that doesn't mean I am going to give the drone out to her for free. Oh no~

"Alright." I waved with my hooves in a concession, "I do have your drone. Unit B3-Z3 alias 'Bee-Zee' right?"

Olivia's eyes shined at my revelation. Relief was pretty much plastered all over her face, and it was more of a 'oh-thank-goodness' as if hearing a friend is alright after an accident, than ‘convenient’ of a business pony talking about an asset.

Curiouser and curiouser...

"Just be ready to bargain, cus you won't be getting it for free." I leaned in as well, then gave her a serious look and put my bullshit cards on the table, "Before I found the drone, my family had been in a tight spot. Right now the drone is the only thing keeping us afloat and we don't expect to be in the green zone for a while."

I laid back again, "If you want that drone, the least I expect is a military-grade drone manager server for a replacement and a million credits on top."

Was it an over the top shameless money grab? Oh absolutely, but that was the point. I didn't actually expect to get all that money, I only wanted to see her reaction and then negotiate the price down. If she was outraged, I might be able to shake something extra out of her, but if she was calm about it, then I’ll have to be a little bit smart about the deal. Hopefully—

"Oh absolutely!" Olivia replied with a smile, "Something like that can be easily arranged!"

Warning bells immediately rang throughout my head. I would have settled with twenty-five thousand as my minimum but all of it? That would spring the homestead up the Tibanna mining leaderboard! Either her boss is really that wealthy and I just got horribly robbed, or this mare doesn't have much of a sense on credit pricing.

Unfortunately, I had experience with this type of instant agreement, and I am glad to say I've never been tricked by those. Damn. And I was beginning to like her.

Olivia doesn't plan on paying at all.

"Up front." I added.

Now she bit her lip and shifted her eyes, "Well, you see... The pony I represent isn't presently available, but they will require the drone's return quite urgently. Nevertheless, once you've returned it, I can assure you that the individual I represent will be willing to compensate you generously!"

I put on my ‘doubt’ face.

“I mean it!” Olivia exclaimed with her forelegs on the table, “I have no intention to swindle you.” She adjusted her hooves and took on the best ‘serious’ she could manage, “Once the drone is safely in our possession, you can look forward to your payment!”

I kept the same face on for a moment, but when all I got out of her was ‘naive-hope’ I started slowly shaking my head with a very much judging stare. Sure with my glasses still on, but this bitch sure as hell ain't seeing my awesome eyes again!

After a moment of her at best mediocre convincing smile, I got myself a bit of a concession from her mind. There was a trickle of confusion, then self-centered consideration followed immediately by crumbling confidence and growing panic. Her mask was surprisingly durable though, it was pretty interesting seeing her face in a perfect presentation of 'calm-professionalism', with her head behind it going ‘whatishapeningwhyissheshakingherheadOHGODWHATDOIDO’

Her muted reaction certainly was a far fetch from even my expectations. I expected her to have a better plan to take that drone from me than 'I'll pay you later', or even just wanted to confirm that I had the droid and jump me later. But from the way her head broadcasts her feelings, I guess this mare truly believed I would just brainlessly say yes.

That's when I got a pretty good idea about what kind of pony Olivia truly was. She wasn't a naive nobody getting herself lost in the Tropo, or an inexperienced scammer on her first field job.

Olivia was a rich kid on a mission.

The way she speaks was a little bit of a give away. She tries to not sound like a snob, but I have a good feeling that the ‘I-am-above-you’ mask is there for a reason. By the way she’s acting around other races, she probably has never seen anything else than a pony in her life. Other than on a holopad. Probably also read a high-rated guide to Thunderhead for rich people before heading out.

I bet the rich individual is probably one of her parents. She probably heard her daddy talking about the drone behind closed doors and decided to look for it for whatever reason. Maybe she has some older siblings and wants to prove herself in the family, or something. Point is, I believe she really intends to return with money. What I don't believe, is her fighting for the money. I can already imagine her father taking the drone and saying ‘Aw thanks honey, but money is... scarce.’, and all Olivia would say is 'Yes, Papa.' then forget all about me two days later.

Though... Olivia seems to know a lot about the drone, and might even have history with it. Considering that so far I've missed my opportunity to wrench anything out of its databases, this might be a good opportunity to learn at least something. If I push, perhaps she would let something slip up...

"Sorry, but no deal." I said and laid back. She was about ready to start arguing but I stopped her, "I don't want to hear it. Do you even comprehend what you are asking me to do?" I shot her a glare, "I'm not going to gamble my family's future on a promise." Then I eased on her a bit when she evaded my gaze. "Hey I want to trust you, I really do. But I am not going to give out the drone without some immediate returns."

I still wanted her in the conversation, otherwise how else would I make her slip up about the drone, or even better yet, about its creators. Hopefully, Olivia was as naive as I thought and didn’t realize what I was up to. Otherwise she might just gain some of those negotiation points on me.

Time for another of my bullshit cards.

"Besides..." I lifted a hoof and unassumingly inspected the back of it, "I already have a better offer for it."

‘Warning-bells’ rang inside of the girl’s head, "What? Who?"

I shrugged. "Well, I didn't really catch their full name, but they did call themselves the Empire—"

"WHA-WHA-A-AT!?"

Her voice rang throughout the entire Cantina, causing a couple of heads and eyestalks to turn our way. I quickly assessed the crowd and picked up on a few ‘surprised’, ‘annoyed’ and what I've dreaded the most, ‘peaked-interest’. Thankfully, none of the races I recognized were close enough nor were one of those possessing super hearing.

I turned back towards Olivia and gave her a glare. “Keep your voice down. Or do you want everyone to know of our business?”

The mare looked at me like a kicked Tooka and fidgeted in her seat while trying to inconspicuously spy around the cantina. She made an attempt to collect herself and repair her calm mask, though her growing panic made that difficult. Eventually she turned back towards me and spoke with a hushed tone.

"Violet, you absolutely mustn't trust the Black Empire," Then she adjusted her hoof, "You should instead trust me."

I only lifted an eyebrow at that. "Like hell I will! I barely know you, and the first thing you tried to do is to rob me! You really expect me to unquestionably trust you that you won't turn tail and run the moment you get it?"

"Yes!" Olivia waved at me with her hooves again like a crazy person.

I just rolled my eyes and stared at her in confusion.

Alright. This is getting nowhere. I am starting to think that the girl literally has nothing to offer me for the drone but empty words. I’ll be better off to just drag everything I can out of her and leave. Just talking about the drone with her in the open is apparently more trouble than it is worth.

"Alright, spill it. Else I'm leaving." I finally spoke. "Why is this drone so important?"

"I..." Olivia paused. She was thinking all weird again. Suddenly, all that naivety was gone, replaced by confidence and I already didn't like the things her head was broadcasting.

She raised her gaze and wore her 'bargain' expression. "H-How about this? While I may not have a means to compensate you, if you escort me to the drone, I will share what information I know. We can continue our discusion about any monetary rewards afterward."

How?! She was completely clueless! She was distraught and not thinking, and I felt all of it! How did she make a complete one-eighty?

Against all odds, the girl had me and gave a fair offer. She caught me reaching into her cookie jar and now she had plenty of negotiation points to tease me with. Did she spontaneously learn to read thoughts? Or was she smarter than she let on? No, I would have noticed any of that... Hm, unless…

For a moment I was picking the risks of taking a stranger to the farm, against learning about the drone. Her reaction to this Black Empire definitely means she knew something about it, and by extension about what I am and potentially where I come from. A whole lot of stuff that I need to know. I might never get an opportunity like this again.

Though I don't trust her at all. Taking her to the farm is a serious risk which I don't think I can take after this many close calls. Though... Her sudden change in attitude just gave me an idea, and she did seem to be pretty squeamish around guns when I first met her… Aaand the docks are far less populated with witnesses than the cantina…

I took a deep breath, "Alright. I'll take you to the drone." I lied.

Olivia took a collected sigh in relief, "I guarantee you will not regret this decision, Violet." She gave me a nod. I would have felt bad about lying to her, but... Well, I do feel bad lying to her.

"But there are rules!" I cut her off, "Just to be clear, I don't trust you a bit. You tried to scam me and been all kinds of shifty and weird towards me, so anything I say goes." I channeled my inner winged Zebra, "If you act out, I'll throw you into the abyss, capish'?"

Olivia nodded and didn’t seem to be intimidated by my threat. "But of course!" she exclaimed, “You have nothing to worry about from me!”

With that, I stood up, “Wait for me here. I have to gather some of my stuff before we depart.”

```

\ /

```

We arrived at the dock without incident, though now I wore white saddlebags on top of my hoodie. I also tried to discreetly prod Olivia for any information, but the girl was tight lipped.

When I spotted my speeder I made my way towards it. That’s when I spotted something laying on the ground nearby. It was the damaged part of the slicer kit the neon-covered drake dropped earlier. I picked it up in my magic, shrugged, and took it with me.

I stopped by my speeder and opened it up to deposit my saddlebags. The mare already made a move to board, but I stopped her and she looked at me questioningly.

"Just a sec, I have to scan you." I explained.

Olivia paled, "S-Scan me? Is that truly necessary?"

"Yep! I take my home’s security real seriously." I deposited the broken thing in the speeder's side-compartment, while also pulling out the same scanner box from last night.

When I turned back, I also took it as an excuse to glance around the docks. We were completely alone.

The grey earthpony took a surprised step back at the sight of the device floating in my magic, "I-I don't want you to look underneath my clothes." She fidgeted on her hooves.

"That's an x-ray you are thinking of. This scanner only picks up electronic devices." I explained while trying to not grin like a maniac.

"R-Right." The mare nodded. Though she looked even less reassured. Then when I finally started approaching her with the scanner fully operational, Olivia started to shake like an unearthed centrifuge. Mph~! she's gotta be hiding something real good.

But… I considered myself a thoughtful person, so for a moment I lowered the scanner, while the girl followed the device with a full-blown apprehension.

“Are you alright?” I asked her and she looked up at me in confusion and a little bit of relief when the box wasn’t getting any closer.

“W-Why wouldn’t I be?” Olivia stood a little bit straighter, trying to hide her real emotions, but I could smell my negotiation points hidden somewhere on her body.

“You are shaking a lot, and I don’t think it's because it's cold.” Then I carefully voiced a way out of the situation for her, “Is there anything… you want to tell me?”

However, Olivia only shook her head. “I am just cold! Not used to being so close to the open streets, you see! Hah...”

Said a pony with a hide wearing a full-body jacket.

“Are you sure?” I pressed. I wanted to give her a way out, since it would be easier. But I am going to get those points out of her, either the nice way, or the 'blaster-in-the-face' way, “Because, when I turn this thing on…” I pointed at the scanner and she followed it with her eyes, “And it finds something…” I paused and gave her a look, “...our deal is off.”

After a bit of hesitation, Olivia shook her head again.

Her funeral!

“Alright!” I happily exclaimed. The very first thing I checked with my scanner was her face cuz’ that’s where—

*beep*

Yep!

I lifted my HoloPone and… Whoa. That’s like, ALL the red flags! That mare was hiding an earpiece in her left ear this whole time! And I really didn’t like the things it was doing, including transmitting audio, which, now that I think about it, makes sense. I knew there was something weird about how quickly she decided to cash in on my curiosity in the middle of fresh panic after failing to gain my trust.

Someone was coaching her in the ear!

I turned the holographic diagram around and showed it to her.

“O-Oh, that is simply my—” The mare of course started spewing bullshit.

“That’s an audio transmitter." I shut her down, "And it is not only currently transmitting audio, but also the geological location.” And I turned away from her with a resigned expression, with my horn still alight with magic from holding the scanner, disguising me unbuckling my blaster holster, “The deal’s off.”

“But—”

Olivia started, but I didn’t give her the time to breathe and whipped around with a blaster at ready.

To be completely honest? I fully expected to have a fight on my hooves. I expected my blaster to be instantly knocked out of my magic, while the girl would have reached into her jacket for something nasty, but by that point I would have already drilled a hole through her foreleg with a lazer from my horn, ready to face any backup.

However, it seems I’ve read this mare’s character pretty well.

Instead of jumping me as a last resort, the girl simply froze up mid-sentence staring at the pocket death floating in red magic pointed at her forehead.

Her reaction also told me that she doesn't have any wired-in reflexes for having a weapon shoved to their temple, and counting in all my reads on her, I really doubt she's some sort of a super spy.

I took a deep breath and slowly lowered the blaster, still pointed in her direction but no longer in her face. "Last chance." I said. "And no lies this time capish? I will know." The mare nodded slowly, her wide eyes never leaving the floating weapon.

"Who do you work for?" I started.

Olivia hesitated, her gaze darting around the docks in search of something, a way out perhaps, but she eventually sighed and replied, "There isn't anyone. It's just my father and I." She exclaimed, but her panic escalated as I squinted at her. "B3-Z3 belongs to Princess Lavender! We were simply trying to find out what happened to her, you see?" She quickly added.

Princess Lavender, huh? That's the name of the royalty Cogsworth mentioned he worked for.

So Olivia knows the name of the droids’ former owner. That gives her some credibility I suppose, but not much. For all I know she only did her homework. She did, however, reveal the identity of the recipient on the other side of the earpiece.

“Go on.” I motioned with my hoof.

The mare then quickly continued, adrenaline-filled desperation quickly forced her to spill everything out as fast as possible, "Just yesterday, my father received a distress signal from an escape pod hurtling toward Kitein. The message was from unit B3-Z3, asking for immediate recovery before we lost contact." She lifted her gaze from the blaster to meet my windshades, "Violet, the Princess is missing... or worse, and that drone is our only link to what had transpired. He might even know where the princess is right now!" She approached with desperation, "I must reach it, you see?"

That's when suddenly Olivia flinched and her right ear flopped. "No, I can do this! This is our best chance!"

I only raised an eyebrow at her sudden outburst.

I felt a brief brainstorming in her head before she suddenly reached towards her right ear with her hoof and a black teardrop-shaped earpiece manifested in her hoof.

"I am sorry for lying to you. I should have told you from the start, but I didn’t, and I am sorry. I believed this matter was simply too important to trust anypony blindly, and I planned to ask for forgiveness later, and I am sorry for it."

That's when she did something I didn't expect, Olivia lifted her hoof with the device and offered it to me.

"You may choose to not speak to me any longer, but perhaps my father can convince you to assist us."

I was pretty much convinced at this point. Somewhere around the point where she started her apologetic rant. Still though, speaking with her father instead didn't really entice me, and looking at the device in her hoof, I'd rather draw something out of her than a person I can't read.

I still outstretched my own hoof. Olivia then took the hint and deposited the earpiece in it.

*crunch*

Not even a heartbeat and I let the earpiece fall to the floor, crushing the device under my hoof in the same motion.

Olivia stared in shock at my action, completely flabbergasted. Even her mind just went blank in confusion.

"Apology accepted," I simply said while finally holstering my blaster, "But why should I care?" I shrugged.

"W-What?" Olivia stammered, raising her eyes from the broken device.

"What's in it for me?" I elaborated, "I don't know this princess, so why should I care?"

"Why should you—" She groaned in frustration, "A pony's life is at stake here, and all you can think about is credits!?"

"Nope." I lied, "All I care about is my family not going bankrupt and having to beg on the streets of Thunderhead."

A spike of anger and hopelessness ran through her head. So far, all the right responses for a girl trying to desperately ask someone to help.

The mare walked in a circle for a moment, frustration streaming out of her. Then she paused and 'an-idea' lit up above her head.

"Luckily for you, Princess Lavender is the leader of the Bearers." She turned towards me.

"And that is...?" I circled with my hoof.

The mare was baffled at my question as if I was missing some common knowledge, "How can you not know who the Bearers are?!" Then she stopped herself and immediately elaborated, "Essentially, a Bearer is..." She shook her head, "You know what? It doesn't matter. What's important is that she's irreplaceable, and the entire New Equin will be desperate to see her safely returned. Do you grasp the magnitude of that? If you help us, the very ruling class of the Core Worlds themselves would be indebted to you!"

She lost me with the planet names, but Olivia made one thing clear, "Lavender is a space princess?" I said out loud.

Olivia blinked, then sighed and rolled her eyes, "Yes, Violet. A space princess."

And my bullshit detector didn't move an inch.

I kinda figured this Lavender was some kind of Exo nobility. Someone local's important daughter who got lost or kidnapped and the droid was simply just sold by the kidnappers.

But this is something else. I knew I should've prodded Cogsworth more about where they are from, they've got to cost like... Like a space-lot!

Olivia said something more. Something about being a hero or whatnot, however I was blind at the moment. I couldn’t see much of anything over the massive credit-signs in my eyes, and couldn’t hear her over the loud noise of ‘chi-chang!’

I could get filthy stinking rich!

For a while, I just stood there, leaning against the open speeder and mind turning three miles an hour. Against my better judgment, actually considering taking her along to the homestead.

Yeah, I thought about ditching Olivia and selling those droids to the highest bidder, but while I pride myself in my extensive list of connections, I've stayed clear of the darker stuff, so I wouldn't even know where to look for a rich buyer. And N is definitely not going to be one.

By far the better approach is to just sell them back to their owners. Sure, a bit scummy, but I did save them from being wiped and reset! And that isn't even talking about the potential rewards...

So... everything Olivia laid out for me checked out. Cogsworth has somewhat slipped about his and Bee-Zee's employment to this princess, and from what I gathered, I had a lot to gain. Just this gig would make me rich, teach me about my own species, and all of that just for letting her speak to the droid.

Of course, I couldn't be sure she wouldn't just pocket any monetary rewards and just disappear, nor was I reassured whether the rich snobs halfway across the galaxy would give a damn about some random pony who didn't even actively participate in saving the Princess.

I wouldn't trust this mare an empty credit cartridge, let alone speaking on my behalf. Which left out the only obvious way how I would go about making a deal like that a reality, and that is to be there in person. This is literally how every space adventure starts!

I could go to space...

I really should let her speak to the droid. It was very tantalizing to see just how close this whole thing could get me to become an actual spacer.

And the longer I thought about it, the more I realized I've already made up my mind.

"Alright, you convinced me." I suddenly exclaimed, interrupting the girl.

"Huh?" Olivia blinked with a 'genuine-surprise', "I- Do I merely have to bring up 'space' around you and you will come around?"

"Don't mock me!" I quipped, while levitating up my trusty scanner which I then pointed back towards the girl. "Space's cool, but space money is cooler."

That earpiece wasn't the only thing on the girl, and soon my scanner started beeping like if at a rave party. For every gadget of questionable purpose I discovered and consequently threw on the ground, the girl flinched in shame.

I didn't entirely hold it against her though. From what I deduced, she just in the heat of the moment forgot those were there.

Then I took her HoloPone as well.

"Nonono—mh..." Olivia started to object, but settled on giving me a pleading look.

I wasn't a monster. Instead of throwing the device for it to join its kin, I instead placed it in the side-contrapment next to all my other junk.

Olivia sighed in relief, "Er..." She made a noise and scanned the desolate dock, as if expecting someone. "W-We should definitely get going. My father is likely racing toward this place as we speak."

I lifted an eyebrow and nodded. Though when she made a motion to board again, I stopped her once more.

"One step." I pointed in her face, "One step out of the line, and you are Rawwk food, capish?"

Olivia swiftly nodded.

"Welcome aboard." I said and moved out of her way. “Take the spot in the back, and get comfortable. It’s gonna be a long ride.”

It wasn’t long and both of us were seated inside the speeder, with the grey earthpony now comfortably sitting in the pillow behind me. The cockpit of the speeder was small, but we ponies were smaller. It’s when the windshield slid into place above our heads that the girl spoke up again.

"So, how far is your residence?" She questioned, as the speeder lifted.

“A couple thousand miles.” I replied, giving Liara some written instructions over my HoloPone.

"THOUSAND?!" Olivia exclaimed, "There is no way Thunderhead is this vast."

At that I turned towards her with a shit-eating grin, "I live on a Tibanna farm, girl! We'll be spending the better part of the day flying over the abyss!"

Huh, never knew a pony could lose color this fast.

Chapter IV - Airspeeder Drift

Kitein’s horizon was always a sight to behold.

At night, everything was dark and shrouded in shadows, safe for tiny islands of civilization illuminated by their artificial lights. When the skies were clear and the stars visible, it was easy for me to just stare up and imagine as if I was there, just floating around in the vacuum, having awesome space adventures.

Bright daylight then was something else entirely. The horizon lights up aflame in the morning, gradually changing through every shade from yellow and orange to blue. Though, even in the brightest days, there is still the Abyss. A dark, black spot, just sitting there below everything, getting larger and darker throughout the day. Like an ever present reminder that it is always there, and with a single slip it will claim you.

Though, all these sights went completely unappreciated by the girl sitting just a hoof’s length next to me.

For the first time in my life, I wished my superpower had an off-switch, as a foul taste of fear permeated throughout the cockpit, akin to a rotting wound. Of all the things I thought about Olivia, being scared of heights was not one of them. It was starting to get on my nerves when now and then Olivia decided to look outside towards the Abyss with ‘is-it-still-there’, then immediately freeze up and fill the cockpit with ‘YES-IT-IS!’.

I was sitting in my seat turned perpendicular to the cockpit, just to keep an eye on her. Though, it was more so that she knew I was keeping my eye on her so she wouldn't try anything funny. I would have felt her intent long before anything. Sleeping with a stranger next to me was understandably out of the question, so I kept myself entertained by browsing the Scale. Reading articles, studying music theory, writing songs in an app, stuff like that.

Just then I did feel a change in her, but not for the better. When I glanced away from my HoloPone towards her, I found Olivia with closed eyes and doing breathing exercises. The fear emanating from her only intensified, and I could safely guess she was imagining all the terrible things that could happen in this instant. Maybe I should have kept that threat of throwing her out to myself...

Still, I started to regret confiscating her HoloPone. It was still stashed in the side-compartment where my hindlegs rested. I initially wanted to install a limiter app on it so that she could still use it and I wouldn’t need to worry about her contacting anyone, but Olivia refused to give me her password and so it now sits beneath my hooves.

Finally, I had enough of that stench of fear that just grew ever potent, and since it didn’t seem like she would stop anytime soon, and I certainly didn’t feel like feeling her terror the whole journey, I decided to start a small talk.

"So... You mentioned you are not from Kitein." I said, trying to break the silence.

Olivia briefly opened her eyes at the question, but closed them right afterwards, nodding slowly.

"Erm, quite. That is correct. I'm originally from Equin." She replied with her overly polite accent.

Never heard of the place, but I still nodded, "Cool. How are you finding the... uh... scenery so far?"

Olivia was surprised by my sudden interest, though already I could feel the fear diminishing as her attention went elsewhere. One win for me already!

“I er...” The mare hesitated, “The city is impressive, although I must admit I'm not particularly fond of the heights and endless expanses."

I looked at her incredulously, “Then why did you decide to come to Kitein?” I waved my hoof towards the windshield and the empty horizon beyond it, “There is nothing but heights and endless expanses!”

At that the girl winced with her eyes closed again and a new wave of horrible smells, "Please don't remind me!"

Oof, not helping!

My last remark immediately undid all the work, and only made it worse. The fear wasn't as terrible as I made it out to be, she was after all more scared of the height itself than directly of me so it was all passive, though it still went on long enough to make my stomach turn. Additionally, I am not sure even Olivia could handle her fear for very long. Red and Blu had the excuse of being pegasi with wings, but this mare has nothing to comfort her. From what I could tell, this is her first trip across the sky of any considerable length and she's jittery already. We barely even left the Thunderhead!

I contemplated just giving her her HoloPone back so that she could distract herself, but I wasn't lying when I said I take Homestead's security seriously.

"H-How long until we arrive?" Olivia asked tentatively.

"Ehh..." I looked towards the dashboard which was currently in a private mode, so that my passenger couldn't see our geological location. Liara was also in text-only mode, cus I don’t want her to accidentally pick up Olivia’s requests. The progress on the dashboard then still read four percent as it had a half an hour ago.

"Quite a while left." I finished lamely, to which Olivia sulked down.

Suddenly, an idea!

I know exactly what the mare needs to get over her fear of heights, additionally, if we get low enough, Olivia won't be able to call anyone, so I can give her back her HoloP! It's the perfect solution!

"Olivia?" I addressed her and the girl in the back looked up at me. "I'll give you back your HoloPone."

"Truly?" The mare lifted an eyebrow.

That's when I took over the controls of the speeder from the autopilot, "Just try not to scream." I added with a shit-eating grin.

"Why would I—"

Olivia started but she was cut off as I disengaged the external repulsor lift and the ever present view of the Kitein’s horizon turned into a full view of the dark Abyss below as I forced the speeder into a sudden nosedive.

"—AAAAAAAAAH! VIOLEEEEEET!"

And we plunged into the depths at mach speeds.

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"—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAA—"

It's been a couple of minutes of a constant vertical descent and Olivia’s squeal was still on it. Like, damn! Girl got some lungs on her!

The descent took us deep into the bowls of the gas giant. We were now well below the green, survivable layer of the Kitein. Nowhere near the really dangerous levels, but I still had some rebreathers ready in the side-compartment just in case one of us was stupid enough to override the safety locks, overpower the pressure difference, and actually manage to open the windshield.

The sight of thick dark clouds blanketing the horizon beneath us was the sign we were nearing our target depth, so I fired up the repulsor lifts once more, slowing our fall and turning the headless nosedive into a gradual descent. Eventually, the speeder leveled out just as the dark layer enveloped us, plunging everything into complete darkness, broken apart only by the speeder’s interior lighting.

“Phew, what a rush!” I let out a sigh of exhilaration, I even noted that Olivia stopped screaming into my ear.

I glanced over at Olivia, who was gripping with her hooves around my seat, squeezing the life out of me now that we slowed down. Her face was now only a few shades of gray lighter than the color of my own hide. “Hey, uh. We are here." I pointed out awkwardly. "You can let go of me."

With a reluctant yet somewhat embarrassed look, Olivia slowly released her grip on my seat. Her trembling hooves moved away, and she settled back into her own pillow at the back, attempting to regain some semblance of composure. "Y-You are a horrible pony. Y-You know that?" Olivia growled, her voice still shaking.

I shrugged, “Come on, it couldn’t have been that bad, the repulsor field negates the acceleration inside the cockpit. We are fine!” Though Olivia only crossed her forelegs and avoided my gaze. The tension in the air was so dense I could literally taste it. “You can have your HoloP back,” I offered, trying to lighten her up and levitating the device out of the compartment towards her, but Olivia didn’t take it, her gaze instead fixed on the darkness outside.

“Well, it’s here if you want it.” I finished lamely.

For a while there was silence between us. We were both invested in our own devices, where I had my headset on and working on my next mixtape, and Olivia absentmindedly looking out into the darkness. Olivia was still peeved at me for the sudden change of vertical direction, and I was uncertain how long that would last.

However, I still had one more trick under my hood.

I’ve once done something similar to my auntie, and only gotten away with a month of blue-milk-only diet. The trick was in this dark place. Can’t be scared of the sight of the Abyss if you are in the Abyss! In a stroke of inspiration, I additionally added a few more commands to Liara, and resumed the descent. This time at a far more leisurely pace, and the darkness outside masked the movement so the pony behind me shouldn't notice.

Now and then I sampled her reaction. My method of getting her to stop stinking up the cockpit with fear worked! …somewhat. Since there was no visible danger outside for her fear to grab onto, it eventually subsided, replaced by her anger targeted at me mixed with confusion which I interpreted as, ‘Why-would-you-do-that?’ and ‘I-hate-you’.

Hate didn’t stink like fear, though it still had an uncomfortably hot aftertaste. While I’ve never tasted fear cus' I know I would hurl immediately, I have tasted hate before. It tastes like liquid molten metal, but as if I was drinking it as a pony, so… not good.

Eventually, though, even that subsided, and it wasn’t long before Olivia’s mind was somewhere between calm and restless. ‘too-tired-to-feel’ A side effect of her earlier screaming. Now the grey earthpony was huddled in the corner of the cockpit, staring out into the darkness, because that was all she was feeling like doing. I bet even if she did take the HoloP back, she would instead choose to stare out of the windshield.

Perfect timing, now I realized. Perfect for what I had in mind.

Frantically, though making an attempt to be inconspicuous, I looked up our current depth. We were almost at the bottom of this dark layer. It was just out of sight, any lower and Olivia’s eyes would definitely catch it, which was not my intention just yet.

I stopped the descent and anxiously scoured the dark horizon, while monitoring Olivia’s state of mind. Her mood reminded me of myself when I first discovered this place. I was feeling down, and after a particularly bad argument with auntie Red I stole the family Courier and ran away from home. Feeling particularly stupid, I instead flew vertically to get away faster. I didn’t stop until I barreled through this layer, where my sense of self-preservation finally kicked in.

There!

A small cyan mote of light suddenly appeared in the distance, exactly what I was looking for. The stuff we were currently flying through wasn’t dense enough to block out all light, it was actually a whole different layer above us blocking the sun and trapping heat inside. This is how I could still make out the exterior of the speeder which was illuminated by the inside lights, and how I could observe the light in the distance.

I inputted several commands for Liara and the speeder slowed down enough to not fly past the mote of light. I then laid back in my seat and let Olivia find it on her own, turning all of my efforts at reading her mood.

Olivia was sitting there in the same corner as I once have, forelegs crossed, head resting against the corner, and staring through the windshield out into the Abyss.

The light of the mote had to come into view from below. The fluorescent gas was behaving more as a fluid in this depth and was bubbling upwards. I could almost feel her eyes of landing on it, with nothing else to focus on in the darkness.

She didn’t immediately snap on it, her eyes first absentmindedly followed the prismatic light on its way up, and it wasn’t until it was almost out of sight that her mind finally registered the strangeness of this luminous orphan in the otherwise pitch black darkness. I heard Olivia jump on her hooves, with surprise and curiosity eliminating all remains of her earlier grouchiness.

"Er, Vio… let?" Olivia turned my way, but her question died in her throat as she beheld what we were approaching this whole time, and it was only thanks to the fact I was facing the front that she didn’t see the wide, shit-eating grin on my face.

That bubble of light was not an orphan. Not by a longshot. Entire pillars of streams of bubbles were rising from the depths, each softly glowing in the same fluorescent cyan color. Some pillars died out, the stream of fresh breathable air eventually turned into a trickle with darkness following behind it. They were however replaced by a hundred more, where the opposite happened and a new column spearheaded through the darkness, creating a new pillar that connected the invisible ceiling, and the glow from below.

Olivia simply sat there with her muzzle open as the floor came into view.

A bioluminescent landscape slowly emerged from the shadows beneath us, spreading out into the dark horizon and moving in calm dim waves, only gaining in luminescence in specific parts where the bacteria causing the glow were accumulating, until suddenly bursting upwards into a glowing column of light and bubbles.

The speeder eventually descended to the bottom and gently dipped into the waves, lightly submerging until the glowing line reached the bottom of the windshield.

Olivia glued herself to the window and watched the effect of our intrusion had on the field, which parted around the speeder like water and sped past us into the distance, leaving behind us a shimmering trail.

“What is this place?” Olivia finally spoke up, child-like awe evident on her face.

“Welcome to the Radiant Abyss.” I gestured with a sweep of my hoof towards the luminescent landscape, “Basically, the glowing stuff is a type of microorganism living down here. Long story short, this black cloud traps heat from the sunlight and the little guys use it to convert lower gasses into breathable air which then rises up.”

My explanation didn’t do this place justice. I never really was one for lectures, I am more of an action girl, but she seemed to enjoy it, so that had to mean I did well enough.

"The bacteria is highly toxic and doesn't have any natural predators, and with the abundance of gasses from below, they multiply uncontrollably, however they also often hitch a ride up out of the Abyss on the oxygen they produce which kills all of them off, leaving only the breathable oxygen and give or take some other breathable gasses."

I turned away and gave a glance at Olivia, who was simply listening to my lecture while observing the Abyss.

"It's an entire belt around Kitein, you know?" I added, and the grey mare turned to me for elaboration.

"The Abyss I mean." I explained, "It's a thin layer that goes all the way around the gas giant. When you are up in the clouds and you look down, it's actually this layer you're seeing!"

This time, I completely turned around in my seat to properly face her, Olivia in turn lifted an eyebrow at my action.

"I want to ask for a favor," I elaborated and then pointed upwards, "Whenever you are up, and you look down, whenever you seize up at the sight of the Abyss, remember this sight, now that you know what's down here."

It seemed my words reached the mare, as Olivia's eyes softened. She nodded absentmindedly, staring out on the glowing floor, "I..." She paused, "Sailing across an ocean is certainly not something I have ever expected to do on a gas giant. And a glowing one, no less."

I grinned, "Yeah!" Though scrunched up at the foreign word, "What's an ocean?"

Whatever I said instantly grabbed Olivia's attention, "Ocean? You don't know what an ocean is?" She looked at me incredulously, but then her face softened, "I suppose it makes sense that you would never have seen an ocean, but did you not encounter one during your research on other worlds? Considering you present yourself as an 'expert on space'?"

I guiltily reached behind my head, "Eehh... I'm more of a space-space expert than other worlds I guess."

Olivia rolled her eyes in amusement, "Well, to put it simply, an ocean is an immense, sometimes planet-wide, body of water found on certain worlds."

I tried to wrap my head around that, "Like... A massive reservoir?"

"Kind of?" Olivia cautiously nodded, "Though the water is salty and—"

"Salty? Why?" I shook my head, "Wait, why do you pour salt in your water reservoir? Also that's like, a lot of salt to make an ocean salty."

"—has to- huh?" Olivia blinked, "No, a water reservoir is only a comparison. The salt is naturally present, it dissolves from minerals at the ocean floor."

That made me even more weirded out, "Who would throw rocks into an ocean to make it salty?!"

"No, that's not—" She put a hoof to her temple, then immediately lowered it, staring at me in confusion. "Y-You don't know what an ocean is, yet you know what a rock is?"

"Hey, we got rock farms," I raised my hooves in defense, and then pointed at her challengingly, "And we make salt with it!"

"I— You know what? Forget I said anything." Olivia threw her hooves up in defeat, signaling the end of our salty discussion.

Pssh, who pours salt into an ocean to drink saltwater?

"What about your world?" I couldn't help but ask.

"Equin?" Olivia tilted her head in thought, "Equin is... difficult to describe..."

"Pfft," I smirked and rested on my forelegs, "Do your best. I am easily impressed."

Olivia involuntarily smiled. It was true! "Well, Equin orbits the only world in our solar system, a blue ice giant named Lunaria, which in turn orbits a massive golden star, Celestia."

"Equin... The entirety of it, is a one vast city divided into districts. But... there are also oceans, extensive agricultural fields with rural villages underneath an artificial dome of light, as well as deserts... and forests. I..." She paused, biting her lip. "I apologize, I'm finding it difficult to describe. I've never truly looked back, and... Equin is simply something a pony must see with their own eyes, I suppose. I wish I had some pictures with me..."

"You didn't take any with your HP? Er... HoloPone?" I elaborated when she seemed confused.

Olivia shook her head, "I have it for less than two weeks. I purchased it here in the Thunderhead."

"Ah." I nodded, "Don't sweat it though, I still think your world sounds cool!" I encouraged her, "Has to be pretty lonely with only one planet though."

"I believe it has its charm, and Lunaria has a lot of moons." Olivia paused then looked at me, "How many worlds does your solar system have?"

"Three," I replied, "Ember, Torch, and Kitein. There used to be a fourth one, another gas giant, Crackle, but Torch swooped in too close with its massive intersecting orbit and it fell apart. Now there is only the Crackle's Ring, which separates the Kitein from the rest of the solar system."

Olivia stared at me in horror, "Planets can do that?!"

I smirked, "Yeah! Though that was millions of years ago, and Crackle's Ring is nowhere near Kitein for it to be affected by Torch's gravity when it smashes through the ring every one-hundred-and-thirty years or so. Then there are the only two moons in the solar system orbiting Kitein, Smolder and Garble."

Olivia shook her head in disbelief, "I'll stick with my single world with no chance of interplanetary collisions, thank you very much."

I laughed, and then we fell into a short silence. I iterated through my head for any more topics I wanted to discuss with her, and quickly came up with the main thing I wanted to know.

"So, I was meaning to ask..." I tapped with my hindleg a bit, "What exactly is the deal between you and this, 'Black Empire'?"

Olivia paused, taken aback by the question for some reason, "You've never heard of the Black Empire? They emerged out of nowhere and assaulted one of Equin protected worlds! It was the talking point for decades!"

I gave her a look, "Girl, this is the first time I've heard of the word Equin."

"B-But New Equin is the galactic center!" Now Olivia looked almost offended, "Surely the news had to have reached even out here!"

I waved dismissively, "You are in the outer ring, girl! No one gives a shit about the politics of a system beyond the next sector, let alone half-way across the galaxy!"

The rich girl let out an insulted huff.

I then put the discussion back on track, "I guess it is safe to assume they aren't a group one simply associates with? Like pirates or something?"

"I... I don't think that's exactly right." Olivia shook her head in thought, letting slide my space-politic illiteracy, "Nopony really knows their true intentions, and that is coming from a pony that has spent the better part of her life researching their remains and activities. Personally? I like to think they are, or were, desperate."

That revelation took me aback, "You are an expert on Black Empire?!" I exclaimed, trying hard not to dance in the spot.

Olivia blushed, "Not I, I'm afraid. My father is by far the foremost expert on Black Empire and its technology. I am only his assistant." She paused, and then momentarily evaded my gaze, "In truth, that's the real purpose of our visit to Kitein. Not for the wildlife."

I raised my eyebrow but immediately recalled her lie at the cantina, "Oh yeah! I was wondering what was that about, props to you for coming clean."

Olivia blinked, "You knew?!"

I rolled my eyes, "Girl," I pointed outside, at the ever present background, "Radiant Abyss, this place down below, is pretty much the only reason how life could thrive on Kitein and consequently evolve into creatures that produce Tibanna, the main export of the giant and the only worthy research subject." I said. "You not knowing at least the name is a pretty big give away."

"O-Oh." She looked down, brushing her black mane out of her eyes, "Am... Am I truly that easy to read?"

"Eeeyup!" I pursed my lips, "But since you came clean, I'll admit something to you too." At that, Olivia perked up, "I didn't actually get any offers for the drone before you either."

"Y-You lied?!" Olivia exclaimed in surprise, looking at me unbelievably, "Nopony has ever lied to me before..."

Whoa. Equin's got to breed some screwd up people if they both lie and never expect to get lied to. No wonder she's so weird! Are all people on Equin this naive? I'm surprised she's still alive!

I shook my head, and returned the discussion back on track, "Anyway, since you are the expert, why don't you tell me about the Empire some more?"

"You want to know more?" Olivia almost jumped up, though kept herself reserved, "Well, I know quite a bit, but um... I am unsure if that's a comfortable topic to discuss. A-Are you sure you don't want to speak to my father instead?"

There was a strange hopeful glean in her eyes, and she almost seemed giddy...

I shrugged at her, "You are here right now, is that a problem?"

"No no!" Olivia immediately backpedaled, "I'll happily share what I know, it's that..." The mare bit her lip and nervously brushed her foreleg with her hoof. "Most ponies just dismiss them as monsters and ignore the circumstances..."

I laid back with my forelegs crossed on my chest, "I'm pretty open minded, and I'm curious about what's their story. So stop teasing me and chat away!"

"Oh my goodness, I don't even know where to start!" Olivia immediately panicked, "The Black Empire is such a broad subject... D-Do we even have enough time?"

"Eeeh..." I lazily looked back at the dashboard which helpfully updated our progress down to two percent, "We got plenty of time, just start whenever already!"

"Right. I suppose history is a good starting point." Olivia cleared her throat and started lecturing, "To put it broadly, the Black Empire is an ancient order of Changelings. A race of shapeshifting emotivores who mainly feed off of the fear of ponies they attack. As species, they date all the way to the Celestial Rein, though they separated from everypony during the Great Equestrian Exodus, and weren't heard from for a long time..."

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So, I am a Changeling, huh?

For some reason, today all the stars in the universe have aligned for a one mother of all jackpots and I've met one of the few experts in the whole damn galaxy that specialize on the very species that I've always wanted to learn more about. The species that I am secretly a part of.

And holy shit this girl knew a lot!

It took all my willpower not to jump her with specific questions, like how I can shape-shift, how does the feeding on emotions work, or the nature of my magic, or to jump in and correct her about the stuff that simply can't be true, but I didn't want her to suspect that I am a Changeling myself.

I still don't trust her. She might have not lied about the whole princess business, but there is still a lot of weird stuff going on this day already, and the last thing I want is some random pony knowing my secret.

The journey to the Homestead went past fast, as the mare managed to cover a wide variety of topics, reaching from history, biology, to culture.

In my whole life, I've genuinely did not expect to ever be so thoroughly overwhelmed with Changeling information. And from the 'smells' of it, Olivia loved just talking about Changelings.

Bad news first, Changelings are bad guys and there does not seem to be any other free roaming Changelings outside of Black Empire. At least that are known of. Even worse, apparently their culture revolves around a hive structure, where everyone is born into a specific role, the weak or unable are 'recycled', and pretty much any sign of individuality is suppressed.

Yeah, if these guys found out about me, I would be dead.

The good news, Olivia seems to believe that this might only be how their military operates, as military is the only context Changelings have ever been encountered in. For all we know, there could be colonies raising their own children in culture not dissimilar to ponies.

Changelings could be simply misunderstood because of their culture and unique dietary needs. And the fact they revealed themselves by invading a planet unprovoked.

Apparently, thirty or some years ago, there was an entire space-battle of epic proportions between Black Empire and Equin over some backwater planet. The Empire wanted to turn the inhabitants into a food farm, and Equin wasn't really keen on the idea. But here's the kicker, apparently the natives of the planet were in the middle of their own war, on the brink of destruction of the whole planet even. The Black Empire swooped in on the day the guys were launching doomsday devices and saved the species from extinction.

Then there was some bet with a space race across a solar system, where the natives won the ownership of their planet back. Empire however didn't upkeep the bet and betrayed everyone because they really needed the food. And so the battle over the planet commenced.

In the end, the Black Empire was annihilated with all of its leadership dead and forces scattered across the galaxy, leaving only highly sought after wreckage behind.

This is actually how Olivia and her father knew about the Changelings so much. The two are scavengers hoarding information from these remnants.

In any case, that was pretty much all Olivia knew, or anyone really, on the history and culture of Changelings. Olivia seemed regretful for not being able to tell me more, however all of what she has just freely given me was magnitudes more than I started with.

There was, however, some information I wish she kept for herself.

"—And that's the scientific concuss for why Changelings have holes in their legs!" Olivia finished with a smile, giving me a shudder.

Olivia is knowledgeable, however, I've come to realize that biology is a topic I'll have to explore deeper on my own.

Eugh, I'll never look at my holes the same way ever again.

Quickly, I changed the topic, "You said something about Changelings feeding on thoughts?"

"Emotions," the grey mare corrected, "Changelings feed on fear."

That's another thing. There is no universe where changelings could feed on fear. I doubt she was lying to me, however if I can't stomach even being near a source of fear, then I can't see anyone willingly feed on fear and live long.

I don't know if feeding on fear can kill, but I most definitely can assure that death is preferable.

"What about other stuff?" I waved with my hoof, "like sadness, happiness..."

Olivia shrugged, "Well, throughout recovered databases, there have been many deciphered records with fear in the context of food, fuel, and energy. Some of their victims reported that they encouraged both fear and Hatred." She paused as if she remembered, "There has only ever been one instance of information where Changelings have been feeding on Love."

"Oh?" I immediately perked up.

"Quite." Olivia mused, "Unfortunately that mention comes from our own records which are, regrettably, two thousand years out of date."

"But they could do it?" I pressed.

"Er, it's doubtful." Olivia shook her head, "Two thousand years is a long time, long enough for species to switch to a whole new diet for its reliability. But then again, it is far more likely that the ponies back then simply noticed the lack of Love of changeling prisoners, and wrote down that Changelings feed on love and leave only hate and fear behind."

beep

Our discussion was interrupted by a sudden chirp of the dashboard console. Liara has already set us on an upward trajectory some time ago, even the Kitein sky was back to its usual blue color than the orange tint of lower levels, so the notification we were getting close to the Homestead wasn't surprising.

"What does that mean?" Olivia asked after I turned around.

"We are almost there." I explained.

"A-Already?" The girl exclaimed, almost sad that our time was running out.

"Yup. " I nodded, "Time flies when you are having fun, huh?"

After four hours of travel, we finally returned back to the general height of where we initially dove from. We were still a ways off from the Homestead, but the high altitude connected us to the Scale once more. And now that I think about it... giving me the opportunity to contact Red and Blu to prepare them for our arrival.

Hopefully, Red will not freak out and Blu will not be too excited.

At that, I set the communication app to quiet mode, and ignored any imminent rant from Red. I then turned back to Olivia, who was now staring out of the window. There still was a lot of apprehension in her eyes, but it was progress.

"Alright, that should do it." I announced, "The Homestead should be at the horizon any minute now, and we are clear to land."

Olivia glanced at me, "I... I suppose I should thank you for the trip."

"Don't mention it!" I waved her off, "Sorry for the dive, but I had a feeling the place would help you get your mind off of things."

Olivia shook her head, and changed the subject, "What is it like to live out here? How do you even get to start? Did you build your own Homestead?"

"I mean," I shrugged, "The view is great I guess. But no, we got the Homestead through a contract with the Dragon Lord. Though, personally I wasn't there when my family signed it."

"Contract?" Olivia raised an eyebrow, "What kind of contract?

"The risky kind," I explained, "To even start thinking about getting a home this far out, you have to get a license in the first place. Then you can either commission a company to build you a farm unit, which is highly expensive, or you sign a binding contract with the Dragon Lord." I continued, "You get a farm unit, but you not only are indebted to the Dragon Lord until you pay off the unit, but you also have to keep your unit supplied to stay afloat, and keep up with a minimum quota."

"And if you don't?" Olivia tilted her head.

"Ehh..." I cringed, "If you can't keep your unit supplied, you can't mine Tibanna. If you can't mine Tibanna, you'll fall behind on your quota. If you fall behind on your quota, your license gets revoked. Without a license, you cannot legally sell Tibanna. Eventually, you will be forced to return to Thunderhead along with your entire unit else you'll simply run out of fuel for the generator and fall. You still can sell the unit either for credits to help you get back up, or for a halved debt along with other debt related benefits."

"That sounds harsh." Olivia commented.

"Harsh?" I snorted, "I think its pretty fair!" I then elaborated, "Dragon Lord doesn't really do the whole 'I'll take your firstborn' thing. He just takes a by-you-decided percentage of whatever comes to your bank account until you pay off the debt, doesn't matter how much you pay or long it takes. You are just on a cooldown, as while you are in debt, you can't get a new license, leave the planet and few other stuff."

"Plus," I continued, "It is worth if you manage to pay off the debt even with the added load." I turned towards Olivia and pointed at my chest, "Take us for example. We paid our debt and we are now off the hook. The Homestead? That's ours now. We can do whatever we want with it, and we can even sell it if we want to. Oh and that's another thing, we can also sell the Homestead even if it has been destroyed." I then added, "Let's say a liquid Tibanna condenses on the walls and the whole thing explodes. We can still sell our ownership with full value of the lost equipment, the Dragon Lord will take the loss, and we can start anew. Or not, and find something else."

Olivia nodded, "I see." She said. Though, a bit more absentmindedly by the potent 'thinking' signals she was giving off. And I could tell I lost her interest by the sudden raise of 'frustration'.

As another silence fell between us, I took the opportunity to look towards the horizon. The Homestead was still a ways off, but I expected to see its silhouette any moment now.

"Why can't I understand you?" Olivia suddenly spoke up, and immediately kicked herself with 'not-out-loud'.

I blinked. Oh? She's been thinking about me?

Olivia continued anyway, "One moment you are nice and quirky, and the next you are pointing a gun at me, but yet, right afterwards you..." She groaned, "Argh, you are so frustrating!"

"I do not like you," Olivia exclaimed before I could comment, "But... I suppose I should thank you." She paused, then quickly elaborated, "For taking me along I mean, and for changing your mind. You are an... interesting pony to be around, Violet."

"Aww, shnucks!" I waved her off.

"Even though you are brash, selfish, and lack any semblance of a proper tack." Olivia quickly added.

"Yup, that's me!" I grinned, "Violet 'Tackle' Sky!"

"That's not-"

"Oh hey, we are here!" I interrupted, pointing out the window, "Welcome to the Hors Homestead!"

We were rapidly approaching the Homestead, and I could already see its majestic siluete coming up on the horizon, lit up by the Aurora sun. Olivia certainly took notice, she leaned forwards, her eyes widening in surprise.

"So?" I turned and nudged her, "What do you think?"

"It is... floating?" Olivia replied with a raised eyebrow.

"Well duh!" I exclaimed rolling my eyes, "This is a gas giant! Where else would we build? On the ground?!"

Olivia flinched, "Sorry..."

I waved her off, "It's fine, though, what did you expect?"

"A cloud house," Olivia admitted, "Perhaps something akin to the Thunderhead? Or a community of ships I suppose."

"Eh, not a bad guess." I shrugged, "There are some that do stick ships together like that, but the Homestead is much more specialized." I explained, "And, good luck trying to build with clouds on Kitein. If the weather doesn't tear it apart, then the wildlife will. Then there is necessity to enchant all of the equipment to keep it inside, and that's a whole other can of really expensive worms. Not even talking about the sensitive equipment that cannot be enchanted else it explodes or something."

"I see." Olivia nodded, "Well, I think it is cozy." She admitted with a small smile.

With that, we spent the small remainder of the trip in silence, as the Homestead grew larger and larger in our view. The moment we were close enough, I inputted the landing sequence and the speeder began to slow down. The Homestead was now in full view, and once again I could see Red and Blu waiting for us at the landing pad.

"Alright, so before we land," I turned to Olivia, "I need to ask you to keep your cool. My family is... well, Red especially... Er, If you think I am bad, then you haven't met her yet."

Olivia blinked, "H... Huh?!"

After successfully putting Olivia into a panic mode, the speeder finally landed on the Homestead's landing pad, with Red and Blu already standing close by.

That's when the weirdness I started to associate Olivia with, returned.

The moment Olivia stepped out of the speeder, she was like a changed person. Gone was 'on the edge' Olivia, and in her place was a mare who was calm, collected, and even a bit... professional. Even her head was held high, broadcasting 'relief' and 'finally-something-familiar'. How come I put her on edge!?

Gotta give it to her though. She's got some good masks.

Finally we stood face to face with my family, and I could already see the confusion and shifty looks towards Olivia in their eyes. Red was the first to speak up, "Violet, who is this?"

"Oh right!" I exclaimed and immediately pointed towards the grey mare, "Red, Blu, this is Olivia Walker. I ran and tackled her last night, but we met only today. Olivia, this is my family, Red and Blu Sky Hors."

I expected a couple of eye-rolls from my method of meeting new people, but Red was very much in 'serious-mode'. Even Blu kept it to just a quick smirk.

At that, Olivia stepped forth. "It is a pleasure to meet you both." She greeted with a bow, "I am Olivia Walker, and I represent the owner of the droid you have found."

Damn, she's good. Is that really the same jittery mare from just a few hours ago? Not that I am complaining, I could feel Red immediately start sizing Olivia up, taking the heat off of me!

Red and Blu exchanged a look before Red continued, "Blu, can you entertain our guest? I need to have a word with Violet."

It took all my willpower to not gulp audibly.

Blu nodded with a shrug towards me and gave an upbeat smile to Olivia, "Welcome to the Hors Homestead, Miss Olivia! It's great to meet you. Let me show you around!"

As Blu and Olivia went further into bridge that connects the Homestead, I prepared for my immediate battle of wits with Auntie Red.

Red turned towards me with a worried expression, "Violet, what's going on? Why do we have a guest? Why didn't you check with me? You know the risks involved!"

"I know, I know!" I immediately raised my hooves in defense, "It was a bit sudden, but she gave some good reasons for me to bring her here!"

"Explain." Red demanded.

And so I did. "Basically, someone nabbed her boss, very rich space-princess-boss I mind you, and the droid we found is the only lead she has to find her. She also promised to intercede on our behalf for a very juicy monetary reward!"

Red, closed her eyes, sighed, and rubbed her temples. "And you trust her?" Red lowered her voice, glancing where Blu entertained our guest.

"Oh absolutely not!" I dismissed, "She tried to scam me, bug me, has been all kinds of shifty," I clapped my hooves together for every suspicious thing Olivia did. "And I am still not entirely convinced she isn't some kind of secret spy from how many spy gadgets she was carrying."

"O-Oh!?" Red blinked with 'barely-contained-scream', "And yet, somehow, you still came to the conclusion that bringing her directly to the Homestead was a good idea? Why?"

I motioned, towards the girl in question, "Because of two things. One, Bee-Zee really has some information which could save someone's life, and two, that 'someone' is incredibly rich. Obscenely rich. Like, Interplanetary rich! And goes by the name Princess Lavender!"

Red was quiet for a while. A whole set of feelings run through her head at once.

"And here's the kicker," I leaned in and went for a knockout, "The mare looks, acts, and feels, like a random official whose boss got nabbed and wants to find out what happened." Seeing Red falter, I continued, "I've taken every precaution I could, and I have several more thought-out depending on how things go. As far as I can tell, we have a lot to gain and the risk is minimal. On the contrary, keeping that droid around is a no-go for us as N is apparently selling info we have him."

That did it, Red flinched at the last reveal and sighed in resignation, "I suppose that's as good of a deal we can get out of this mess." Red admitted, though still shook her head. "Still, all of this smells of a Neigharian Prince..."

"I am aware," I replied, "But you yourself heard it from Cogsworth himself. That princess character is very much real and we would be mad to just shrug something like this off, and we don't really need the droid to stick around anymore either." I paused and looked around the landing pad, "Speaking of which, where are the two of them?"

Red sighed, "Cogsworth right now indulges in the oil bath. Which, after he's done, he owes us a very long explanation. As for Bee-Zee, I sent him out to the Plant for a defrost duty."

"Gotcha," I nodded, "For now, I say let's see what that girl gets out of the droid first and what Cogsworth has to say, then come together on a family meeting and decide with the new information."

"Fine." Red finally conceded, nodding reluctantly, "Take her, but keep an eye on her. The last thing we need is to get caught up in any political mess or illegal activities," Red warned, and then motioned with her head towards the transparent bridge where Olivia and Blu were talking. "I don't trust her."

I followed her gaze and saw Olivia paying attention with a curious expression, while Blu was explaining something to her. The mare was nodding along, but then suddenly something has changed. I couldn't really read her at this distance, but I figured Blu could't help but share some gossip about me as Olivia immediately turned towards the landing pad, and our eyes met.

"I know what you mean," I replied, looking down and checking the weapon still strapped to my foreleg before stepping out towards the bridge, "But I have only good feelings about this!"

```

\ /

```

The Homestead Plant structure was fairly different from the Dome. Where the household was, well, a dome with repulsorlifts attached from below, the Plant was a tall prolate structure, with a large open hall slightly below the center, ending in several levels of engineering blocks. The Plant was the main reason why this mining unit was a self-sustaining household, with the Tibanna gathered from the drones being processed and stored in the lower half, along with the drones themselves being maintained and repaired in the large hall. The upper half then was where most of the greenhouse systems, including the water reservoir and recycling systems, were located.

The bridge itself then lead us into the dead center.

Olivia was now following me in silence throughout the bridge. It was safe to assume that Blu told her something personal about me, as once again she was sneaking in a peek at me when she thought I wasn't looking. I have no idea what gossip Blu dropped on me, but the sudden intensity of 'curiosity', 'nervosity' and 'opportunity' was unmistakable. Guess she wanted to know more about me?

"So," Olivia spoke up on the way, "You've been living here with your parents for a while?"

Immediately I stopped to correct her, "Okay, first of all, not my parents. I am adopted."

"Oh," Olivia paused, but then she immediately followed up, "But wouldn't that still make them your—"

"No." I interrupted with a shake of my hoof, "It is an aunt and uncle respectively. Red and Blu are siblings, so if I suddenly started calling them ma and pa... things would get weird."

Olivia nodded with a small 'oh', and resumed our walk towards the Plant. “Sorry, when I saw that all of you have white hides, I assumed…”

“No problem," I waved her off, "I am still a relative, just not direct. White runs in our blood I guess.”

Well, I was right that Olivia wanted to know more about me. Unfortunately, I couldn't exactly tell her the whole 'I am a Changeling' thing. This was pretty much the agreed upon lie we came up with, after a long discussion between, me, Red and Blu. Understandably, it was far more easier to explain I was a daughter of some dead relative halfway across the galaxy, than an alien shapeshifter with mind powers. Shame I need to throw bullshit around this topic. I can only imagine how she would react if she knew that am literally the living subject of the species she's been studying for years.

A few steps later we arrived at an airlock of the looming structure, guarded by a segmented door and a panel, and I unceremoniously planted my hoof with the HoloPone on a nearby panel.

*Whish*

Eight segments of the entrance immediately folded to the sides, revealing a transparent shield that now replaced the door. I gestured Olivia to step through, and she did so with a quick comment.

"Is this a decontamination chamber?" Olivia asked, looking at it. "Is it dangerous to go inside?"

I shook my head, "Nah, it's just a pressure chamber. Our work is highly pressure sensitive. The outside pressure is often fluctuating even without us moving throughout the bridge, so we have to keep the inside-pressure constant." I then added, "It doesn't take much pressure difference between profit and an explosion!"

"Oh." Olivia blinked after I stepped inside, watching the door behind us close instantly. "I see."

*Whish*

"And here is where the magic happens." I announced, leading the mare forwards.

We came up upon a walkway with the sound of vibrating metal underneath our hooves. A railing kept us safe from the edge, with the walkway suspended over a decently sized hall, stretching horizontally to the other side.

The insides of the Plant were built with power efficiency in mind. There were no grand energy gates active at all times for all drones that come charging through. Both ends of the hall simply had three small octagonal entries on the far walls, with a physical gate and energy field isolation to maintain the interior pressure. The drones then used one side of the hall to get in, and the other to get out.

The Plant had sixty-four drone depots, though until now we could support only eight. Only one drone was currently docked, since there were so few available, it could take up to an hour before more returned. And so the hall was mostly silent, safe for a humming sound of that single dock as the high pressure Tibanna the drone gathered was funneled through pressurized pipes out into the floor.

"Where is Bee-Zee?" Olivia asked, looking around.

I pointed towards the floor, "He's downstairs monitoring for frost buildup on pipes. There is space for only one persone there, so we should wait. He should be up soon."

"I see," Olivia replied and I caught her giving me a strange look. Immediately the mare feigned interest in the technology beneath us and sat down by the railing to get a better look below us. "So... What exactly are you doing here?"

I followed her suit and also sat down next to her, while resting my forelegs, "Well, we mainly mine for Tibanna. Kitein is one of the rare gas giants whose atmosphere structure and density in the lower levels naturally supports and accumulates Tibanna."

“Is it profitable?” Olivia asked, turning towards me, “Mining Tibanna I mean.”

"Pfft! Is the sky blue?!" I exclaimed and shook my head, “The entire Kitein’s economy revolves around Tibanna! If you are not directly gathering Tibanna, then you make living off selling stuff for gathering Tibanna! Or teaching people how to mine Tibanna, or building farm units for people who want to mine Tibanna!”

I waved with my hoof around the hallway, “Didn’t you see all the ads all over the city? ‘Buy coke today! Taste the refreshing beverage after your long day of Tibanna mining!’, ‘Running behind your Tibanna minimum quota? It’s time for an upgrade!’, and 'Not again! Hire a Hunter to protect your Tibanna!'”

Olivia sulked down, “I suppose it was a silly question.”

"Bah," I waved her off, "But to answer your question, it depends on what approach you take. You can be a proper farmer and go the natural way by cultivating Beldons and collecting the Tibanna they produce. It is by far the safest and you get a lot of benefits doing it, but it is a slow-burning process. Then there is the atmospheric condenser, which is a bit more pricier to setup and maintain, but allows you to passively gather Tibanna from the atmosphere. You probably already saw Thunderhead's atmospheric condensers, it's the massive pillars hanging from the city." That's when I waved towards the single drone in the hall, "And then there is the drone mining."

The newer model MX-14 was a sleek spherical drone. There weren't any other marks on its hull, other than access panels and venting. It was basically just a remote-controlled floating tank, anything smarter would be too expensive to replace. As if on cue, the one occupied drone depot finished its emptying process, signalized by a loud 'clunk' and a sudden stop of the humming sound.

BLARGH

An alarm then went off with a red light surrounding the drone's resting place, indicating an imminent takeoff. In a quick succession, a door on the end of the hall opened, and the drone violently shot out of the depot, and then out of the Plant. Plunging the hall into silence once more.

"Drone mining is by far the most profitable route, but also the most risky." I continued, "Basically we have a ton of expendable drones diving every day deep below into Kitein's red zone, where the Tibanna has accumulated on a thin layer over millions of years."

"Then there is the question in how you package it." I continued, "Most tend to stuff it into carbon-freezed canisters and call it a day. We, however, go the extra mile and refine it into Tibanna's frozen form." I pointed down. "Below the floor is an entire refinery the Tibanna is pumped into and immediately condensed and frozen. It saves us a lot of space and carbonite import, and it increases the Tibanna's value by a lot." I then sighed, "But to get Tibanna into that state, you need to get through..." I shuddered, "Liquid Tibanna."

Olivia gave me a look, "Is it dangerous?" She asked, "You have mentioned explosions..."

"Definitely." I nodded, "I swear Liquid Tibanna just wants to explode. All it takes is a single light ray, sensor radiation, or a sudden pressure change. Sometimes, all you need to do is to look at it funny and the whole thing goes up in flames."

At that, Olivia of course started glancing towards the floor nervously, as if expecting it to buckle up, "Tibanna really does that?"

I lifted an eyebrow, "You don't know much about Tibanna, do you?"

When I saw her shake her head, I grinned and looked towards a small elevator shaft that was leading down to the refinery. A red light was blinking on a panel above it, indicating that the refinery was currently in progress. "I suppose we have some time for a crash course." I finished and immediately fell into a lecture.

"First of all, Tibanna is a gas that likes to do something we like to call 'Clumping'. If you mix two jars of Tibanna together under pressure, the resulting gas will be three times denser than the original mixture. Understandably, the denser the Tibanna, the more volatile it is, and the more are its secondary effects amplified."

"In a gaseous form, Tibanna is the only known case of something called 'exponential-superconductor'. Basically, if you put Tibanna in a tube, put a laser pointer on one end and lense on the other..." I lifted up the hoof with my blaster pistol, "Congratulations! You made a laser blaster! Tibanna naturally amplifies any energy put into it, depending on its density. Now, there are of course other factors like burnout, shading, isolation, and focusing the resulting energy, as Tibanna amplifies everything, but that's the basic concept."

"Tibanna is a catalyst, alone it is just a volatile gas, but it is a super powerful component when used in other stuff. Put enough Tibanna in a power generator, and you have a power generator that can power a city. Put enough Tibanna in a weapon, and you have a weapon that can blow up a city. Put enough Tibanna in a shield, and you have a shield that can withstand a city being blown up." I paused, "Put enough Tibanna in a matter-antimatter mixing chamber and you have a hyper-matter that pulls your starship throughout the galaxy!"

"Oh..." Olivia stared down, feeling 'inadequate', "I see the 'space expert' claims were not exaggerated."

At that I sheepishly scratched my head, "Well, it comes with the profession. And I can't help it! Tibanna is cool!"

I could tell Olivia wasn't really interested in the topic, but... at the same time she was? Couldn't really decipher what was going through her head. She definitely wasn't bored, so I had to be doing something right.

I waved with my hoof, "Anyway, you can imagine why Liquid Tibanna is a straight-up hell-spawn. It takes all the volatile parts of Tibanna and cranks them up on eleven. Worse yet, it has a tendency to condense on walls and just one day show up like a really ugly present."

"Frozen Tibanna on the other side?" I suddenly pointed at the mare with my hoof, "That stuff is a miracle!"

I then elaborated, "Frozen Tibanna is a recursive-insulator. Basically the exact opposite. It not only is the perfect universal coolant, but its also super stable. You can even leave it out on air and it will evaporate instead of melting into Liquid Tibanna. This stuff is literally sucking any energy out of the environment and evaporating in turn. Radiation, heat, this stuff is essential for compact generators."

"Seems that you are quite passionate about Tibanna." Olivia noted with a smile.

I shrugged, "It's the lifeblood of Kitein. It's hard not to be passionate about it. Plus, if you don't know the ins and outs of Tibanna, you are bound to blow up sooner or later."

At that, a familiar sound of rolling elevator interrupted our conversation. I immediately turned towards the sound, and saw the familiar see-through cage ascending at the other side of the catwalk.

"Ah, there he is!" I exclaimed and pointed out as the cage reached our level. The doors then opened to reveal a black droid stepping out.

Olivia immediately jumped up, "Bee-Zee!"

The droid in question turned towards us, and after a moment of its antennae twitching, he made his way across the catwalk. Bee-Zee's expression hasn't changed from the usual blank stare, however Olivia was certainly ecstatic to see him and met him half way.

"Bee-Zee, we received your distress signal!" Olivia exclaimed, "What happened? Where is Princess Lavender?"

Suddenly, the droid went up in flames.

*WHOOSH*

However, these flames had a familiar green tint to them. The same green tint of my own transformation.

The moment the flames died down, a pony mare stood before us. Considering who this whole situation was about, I could safely assume who now stood before me.

"Wh-" I started.

"Aardvark of Terra," Princess Lavender interrupted, "You are my only hope."

Prologue

```

Once upon a time,
In a magical world of Equestria...

```

SPARK WARS

```

It is a period of peace. At its center stands New Equin, a Galactical Homeworld of many species and creatures who above everything else spread the word of friendship, unity, and prosperity.

Ruled by the Twilight Order, New Equin has invited many worlds and their occupants to live together in harmony. And in the span of a few thousand years, peace has spread out all throughout the galaxy.

An evil force once known as the Black Empire, lurks in the shadows, plotting and preparing to seize this place of wonders, and establish fear and despair in their stead.

The Twilight Order does no longer recognize the Empire as a threat. Only Princess Lavender dares to leave the safety of her homeworld on board of a spaceship Tanequine IV, in hope of learning the fate of the once dreaded foe.

The Princess and hooful of her most loyal agents have searched far and wide for the scattered forces. Instead, they found the Black Empire almost in its former strength, ready to launch its next vicious attack.

Through magic and sorcery, Princess Lavender learned the Empire’s intentions and obtained detailed plans of an upcoming siege. She then fled to warn New Equin of the danger.

Unfortunately, the sinister faction noticed Princess Lavender's intrusion, and is now chasing her with Empire's own flagship, The Daughter.

```

/ \ |>--(XXX)--<| \ /

```

WHAM

From a radiant flash, a spaceship appeared in the black expanse of cosmos. An orange gas planet could be seen in the background, filling the dark expanse with reflected sunlight.

The shape of the Equestrian scouting ship resembled a large polished white pill, with a single yellow stripe across its hull. It drifted throughout the cosmos thanks to four large thrusters that shot out blue scorching plasma into the space behind it.

Numerous long rods were protruding from its shell, which were still sparking with powerful magic from the teleportation the ship just went through. At once they started to retrieve into the ship, and clicked with the hull when finished.

At the back of the ship, just between the thrusters, a meter large round chamber opened up and out of its depths flew out several black discs into the space behind the Tanequine, and as the discs sailed towards some unseen target, the ship continued its run for the planet below.

WHOOSH

Right on time, the Daughter emerged from green swirling depths of the hyperspace.

The Daughter was a giant monstrosity formed from a numerous mess of long sharp wings protruding from all sides of some unseen center, twisting in sharp angles around it like limbs of an enormous insect beast. Each wing was long and sharp enough it could easily cut the pill ship in two, and was littered with thousands of holes, each four times larger than Tanequine itself.

Daughter was black as the starry background behind it, leaving only void where stars should have been. It would have been invisible to the naked eye, were it not for green glowing orbs levitating in the center of each and every hole in the ship's wings.

BLAM

BOOM

KABOOM

ZAPP FZZZT FHOOSH

```

Before the vortex behind Daughter could even close, the black discs exploded right under its hull, and Tanequine fired all the lasers, rockets and plasma it had on the monstrosity to cover its escape.

The trap didn't even scratch the Daughter's shields which flashed with transparent lime field around the entire structure with each blow, and the black monstrosity, undisturbed, continued its way towards the small ship.

Tanequine, thanks to Equestrian engineering, flew at an impressive speed, and for a moment it seemed the ship would simply fly away.

But then, the Daughter returned fire.

A single orb in one of the Daughter's wings cracked with energy.

ZAP

In an instant, the two ships were connected with a bright green beam.

ZAP ZAP

First and second shots overpowered the ship's shields, and the third had hit. Hard.

```

/ \ |>--(XXX)--<| \ /

```

Ground shook, lights suddenly went out and moments later red emergency ones lit up.

Alarm broke out on the deck of Tanequine. Moments later, all the passengers on board started preparing for hostile boarders to make an appearance.

Small multicolored equines who were the Tanequine's most numerous inhabitants, were arming themselves with blasters, sabers and spare emergency personal shields.

Some of them had wings and flew around ordering their comrades, some had horns and helped equipping everyone with armor and helmets via a levitating field originating from their foreheads, and some had neither, those took the best shields and saddles brimming with weaponry.

The little equines weren't the only ones preparing themselves for the upcoming battle. All over the ship, an army of robotic creatures started activating.

They took on various forms, be it a simple floating sphere broadcasting orders, or a large behemoth rolling through the corridors on three wheeled legs. A black panel was embedded in the middle of each of the metal beast's chests, displaying in yellow letters a name of the cybernetic creature occupying the mechanism.

Armed with a phaser, a saber, or a holographic shield, these metallic creatures were meant to take the blunt of any incoming onslaught. And if they were to be destroyed, the one controlling it could easily exit the body and wirelessly transit themselves into a new one.

CRASH

"Oh dear! Did you hear that B3-Z3? That must have been the main reactor! We are all doomed!"

"Hssssst..."

As all aboard were shouting orders and running around, one odd pair consisting of a smaller grey robot and a black, bug-like pony, was parading throughout the white corridors of the ship.

The robot had T-L6-Cogsworth displayed on his chest display. It had three-arms sticking out into different directions from its body, which was hovering above ground thanks to a thruster in the center. And it had three eye-cameras on top, each on a jointed stalk, free to turn around anywhere independently.

Instead of weapons, this one was equipped with three fingers on each of his three arms, as to better fulfill his profession.

"Help? I am a butler! I have no weapons! And you are a walking over-glorified maintenance droid!" Cogsworth exclaimed, his three eyes turning frantically all around as if the invaders would bust through the very walls of the ship at any moment.

The other one though looked a lot like an equine, but instead of having a smooth colorful hide like the rest of the crew, B3-Z3 had a black metal shell covering its body. It had black dagger-like horn on top of its head, two antennae in the place of its ears, and cyan eyes with a strange white hexagonal pattern to it.

CLONK

"Oh no! What was that?!"

"Hsssst."

"A 'tractor beam'?"

"Hsssst!"

"What?! What do you mean 'boarded'?"

"Hsssst!"

"Oh no! They are coming right here!? Right for us? We are doomed! We are absolutely positively doomed!"

```

/ \ |>--(XXX)--<| \ /

```

The heavily damaged Tanequine came to a complete halt. The formerly active thrusters were now only a mess of molten scrap with a line of scorched metal scarring the path the green beam took. The ship was left unable to either run or fight. An easy prey for The Daughter.

A green telekinetic field now enveloped the smaller ship, which was then slowly pulled towards the looming behemoth.

```

/ \ |>--(XXX)--<| \ /

```

The equine soldiers, now dressed in white helmets and black heat-resistant vests, were running throughout the corridors of the Tanequine IV to reach and secure all entrance points inside of the ship.

At one of those places, several soldiers had positioned themselves at both sides of a corridor ending in a single blast door. Unicorns at the very back levitated blasters above their heads and pointed them at the door. Few earthponies were in the front, equipped with a set of blasters mounted by their sides. And similarly, the pegasi were gently hovering near the ceiling, also equipped with the saddle-mounted blasters and aiming at the entrance from a higher angle.

Right at that moment, a single large mech rolled through the middle of the corridor. It went past all the equines and only stopped and positioned itself between the earthponies upfront.

Its chest between the robot's two mighty arms opened and revealed what seemed to be a crystal orb. It started glowing, and instantly, a forcefield dome manifested around the mech, blocking the corridor and protecting all the soldiers behind it from harm.

After a few more shouts of orders and hoofsteps of the present equines, it all came to an eerily silence.

They now all waited.

```

/ \ |>--(XXX)--<| \ /

```

Tanequine IV slowly drifted towards the depths of the Daughter.

The giant holey wings of the behemoth were now already reaching far into the distance, and along with the green orbs cracking menacingly with energy at the smaller ship's presence, it left no means of escape.

Finally, as the ship moved close enough, the Daughter fully revealed itself.

The body of the ominous flagship showed itself to be an oval mess of vaguely organic looking black alloy, resembling an enormous black cocoon long miles across. There was no system in how the ship was built. There were strange knobs and niches traveling all around over the surface and over each other, keeping the shape of an ellipse.

The other noticeable extrusions were the wings which looked made out of much more polished metal and pierced directly from the cocoon.

In the silence of the space, an open entrance revealed itself at the bottom of the Daughter's body. A large hole, not even properly centered in the middle of the body, yet still large enough to swallow Tanequine whole.

Slowly but surely, Tanequine IV was pulled towards the opening by the green glow surrounding it.

```

/ \ |>--(XXX)--<| \ /

```

CRANK

The sounds of docking could be heard echoing all throughout the Tanequine IV.

All the soldiers in the airlock corridor looked around themselves in fear and anticipation. They all traced their blasters directly at the center of the door, and waited in a heavy silence.

And waited...

And waited.

*BZZZZZZZZZZZZZ-*

Suddenly, a sharp green light protruded through the airlock door. Several moments later the light moved to the right, leaving behind a trail of melted metal. Enemy has just begun to cut through the door, giving all the soldiers on the other side a clear countdown to their inevitable encounter.

*-ZZZZZZZZZZZZ-*

The light met the first corner.

The mech at the front remained impassive to the incoming battle, still, its left arm filled with many gunbarrels started spinning around.

*-ZZZZZZZZZZZZ-*

The light cut through its third corner without slowing down.

The earthponies equipped with stronger personal shields, checked with their holographic sights to make sure they wouldn't miss their mark.

*-ZZZZZZZZZZZZZT*

The light cut through the last corner and met the glowing trail at last.

Silence followed.

Then the cutout hole began to fall. Each and every soldier in the room traced the slowly opening way. The moment a gap appeared at the top, the door's fall suddenly halted and two black balls jumped out.

An earthpony at front yelled a warning.

But it was too late.

BOOM

The black orbs impacted with the shield and exploded in a green wave that passed through and fried all the electronics in the single machine. Only thanks to the inbuilt save guards did the virtual occupant not succumb to the same fate.

The blast caught the equines so off-guard that before they could recover, they were already under a barrage of piercing green beams.

Zap!

Zap! Zap! Zap! Zap!
Zap! Pew! Zap!

Pew!

Two pegasi were first to go down. One got hit in the wing and the other in the side several times. The green beams cut straight through them like a piece of paper and managed to scorch the walls on the other side.

The earthponies were lucky to be equipped with stronger shields and managed to retreat along with their injured pegasi as the unicorns created a secondary barrier.

Orders of retreat were yelled by one of the unicorns at the back, trying to keep up the shield which was already straining from the barrage from the other side of the room.

With haste the defenders vacated the hallway and soon were instead replaced by their pursuers.

Black equine figures now filled the corridor. Flying, walking, crawling, all in overwhelming numbers. Each was covered in thick black armor with a small jetpack on their backs, which of those who flew were kept afloat by green plasma shooting out from it.

Their heads were covered by black helmets which hid their faces, along with their muzzle covering sticking out like an armored triangle ending in the helmet's filter. The only place on them which wasn’t covered by the pitch black armor were two green straight lines in place of their eyes, glowing menacingly.

Unlike the ponies, the offensive force lacked any conventional weaponry. Instead, each and every one of them was equipped with dagger-like horns on top of their helmets from which green lasers shot down the corridor.

Zap!

One black soldier fearlessly pushed through to the frontline, firing green beams towards the retreating equines.

PEW!

A stray yellow blast from the opposing force struck him. The soldier fell over with a glowing molten hole in his chest. The two green lines in his visor went as dark as the rest of his black armor.

His body was stepped over and replaced by five more of the black figures.

Many soldiers of the Black Empire were shot dead in the initial push into the ship as the two sides exchanged green beams and golden projectiles, but each loss was counterweighted by more pouring through the opening into the ship.

By sheer numbers and overwhelming barrage of green lasers, the attackers swiftly pushed back the defenders deeper through the ship’s hallways.

Soon, only the soldiers of the Black Empire remained within the airlock corridor, with blasts of laserfire sounding from further on in the Tanequine IV. Few stragglers remained back to check and make sure that none of the defeated lived.

Then, a squadron of six more soldiers walked inside the now quiet corridor in a much more organized manner. They arrived in two rows of soldiers, then stepped to the sides and bowed to the large figure that followed them through.

It was a tall imposing figure. Towering over all other beings in the corridor. A long black cloak covered most of its body including a hood that hid its face from view behind a veil of darkness. The rest of its body was hidden in similar fashion. Only its two forelegs were visible, covered by the same black armor of the Black Empire.

One of the Empire's soldiers that was in the initial push stepped towards the figure and bowed.

"Lady Invader," The soldier spoke in a flat and emotionless tone, "The Equestrians took heavy losses and are retreating."

“...Excellent...” The figure's voice rang all around like a deathly whisper, only vaguely feminine. Her voice frequently cut off with long pauses, as if she was constantly out of breath, “...Proceed to the bridge... ...capture all officers... ...prioritize the captain...”

"As you command, your highness." The soldier replied and walked off to fulfill the command.

Without a word spoken, the soldiers by the sides who stood idle, now flanked the large figure and began escorting it through the ship.

Not a single one of the group paid attention to the bodies and scorch marks littering the hallways.

```

/ \ |>--(XXX)--<| \ /

```

Deep inside the Tanequine's Virtual space, another invisible battle was being fought. Unfortunately for the Tanequine's forces, this battle has proven to be even more one-sided. System after system of the spaceship's critical infrastructure fell to the unending swarming attacks of the Daughter.

The only reason why the ship itself hadn't already turned against the defenders, were the virtual crew engaging in a burning bridge strategy, torching every system to the point of unusability before the enemy can act. Their cybernetic nature allowing them to only barely keep ahead.

But even then, it was only a matter of time until the virtual battle was lost.

```

/ \ |>--(XXX)--<| \ /

```

The physical fight on the other side was very much in full swing.

The defenders had a natural advantage of knowing the place, and having the time to prepare traps and choke points in the narrow corridors of The Tanequine IV.

At one of such choke points the defenders had an enormous advantage and managed to hold off the whole invading force. One giant mech effortlessly held back the entire army by gunning down anything that tried to pass through the corridor in front of it, while shrugging off any retaliation thanks to the shield dome around it blocking the hallway.

The ponies assisting it stood behind and occasionally levitated any grenades the attackers threw their way back where they came from, as now they were ready for it.

zap!

A blast of green fire came out of the corridor.

urrrRATATATATA

The mech's arm roared in response, eviscerating the enemy in an instant and pinpoint accuracy.

The ponies had nowhere else to run, as the corridor they currently resided in was the final position before the command bridge itself, where the majority of the leadership and non-combatant staff laid in hope of a miracle as the mech and the ponies were their final line of defense.

In the virtual space, some sort of stalemate was miraculously achieved as well, as the bridge and all of its systems were finally physically isolated from the rest of the ship.

Finally, there was a moment to breathe for the defenders, and a proper plan for retaliation could be formulated by the leadership.

Unfortunately for the defenders, overwhelming brute force was not the Black Empire's strongest weapon.

In a single visceral instance, every single robot connected to the ship inexplicably shut down, as the very function that was supposed to saveguard them was triggered, and the physical isolation of the bridge became an inescapable prison as the enemy digital swarm got in through a hidden backdoor.

The ponies within the same corridor as the now offline mech had only seconds to react as the shield that was their only protection suddenly disappeared, before the corridor was filled to the ceiling with green beams.

Zap! Zap! Zap! Zap!
Zap! Zap Zap! Zap! Zap! Zap!

Once again, the victory went to the attackers and the remaining defenders had no other choice but to fall back to a more defensible position in the command bridge itself.

With the firefight going on deeper and deeper down the corridor, a new figure responsible for the backdoor entry into the ship's systems, showed itself.

A mechanical figure came around a corner from the direction of the firefight. It was slim, slightly taller, and encompassed in polished dark metal the Empire was known for. The most noticeable feature on the individual were the two pairs of green round eyes instead of the straight lines of the others. The second pair of glowing eyes then were on the bottom of its head, on each side of its jaw, separated by a sleek muzzle and pair of metallic fangs.

It briefly looked down the corridor before turning around and leaving. Off to change the tides of the battle in different parts of the ship.

```

/ \ |>--(XXX)--<| \ /

```

The battle was not over yet, but when the fight reached the bridge of Tanequine IV, it was swiftly overrun by the Empire's troops and the ponies were forced to surrender. Those who didn’t fight were herded together by the wall and kept under a close watch by their capturers, who in the meantime scanned the bridge’s systems for information.

That’s when Lady Invader entered the bridge, along with her entourage.

On the sight of her, the captain of Tanequine IV jumped up from the captured group. "What is the meaning of this!" The unicorn yelled, "Who are you and what do you want! This is a peaceful envoy on the way to—"

"...Save your breath for screaming..." The hooded figure turned towards him.

The pony shivered.

Two black troops dragged the shocked stallion away from the herd, some protested but none stepped out of line to help him.

The stallion was deposited at Invader's hooves and was forced to look up into the dark void of her hood.

"I..."

"...You have taken something from me..." The imposing figure cut him off, "...I want to know what it is... ...and I want it back..."

The captain shook, "I-I don't know what you mean! T-Tanequine—"

"...Do not bother..." Invader cut him off, "...I can smell your lies..." Then she as if took a whiff, "...And your fear... ...is empowering..."

The captain shook like a leaf, "I-I... I have my o-orders..."

"...So do I..." The imposing figure stepped closer to him, to which the captain started struggling against the two black soldiers. "...But worry not... ...For soon...” Lady Invader leaned towards his face. Close enough for the light of the room to show him what was hidden under the hood.

"...I shall know..."

The captain's eyes widened in terror and he began struggling even harder. The ponies in the room could only look away.

...Everything...

And then the screaming began.

```

/ \ |>--(XXX)--<| \ /

```

"B3-Z3? B3-Z3! Where are you? Where are you, you walking can of compressed hassle?"

The battle was over, with the Empire's black troops being the clear victors. Few pockets of resistance were still keeping a hold in several corridors, but they were all quickly succumbing to the might of the Black Empire.

The duo of mechanical creatures, B3-Z3 and T-L6-Cogsworth, got separated in one of those firefights, where a silent corridor turned into an exchange of deadly blasts in a single moment.

"Well, at least I wasn't wrong about being doomed... This time." Cogsworth commented.

The mech's three eyes twitched all around him, trying to keep up with all possible directions an enemy could jump out of. "Hnnng... I knew I shouldn't have taken a job on a spaceship, or any ships for that matter. Death and doom at any corner, I say!"

He floated behind another corridor which looked safe, "It may have not been a miscalculation in the spark drive, nor an accident in the engine room, nor a violent mutiny, but the moment I drop my guard for a second and relax, BLAM! Space invaders! My dear! I hope I'll get out of this in one piece."

Suddenly several blasts sounded just a corridor away.

"Ack!" Cogsworth panicked and flew into the closest door which conveniently opened for him.

"Hnnngh!" Cogsworth whined again, "Now B3-Z3, this isn't time for hide and seek!"

```

/ \ |>--(XXX)--<| \ /

```

Elsewhere on the ship, B3-Z3 was occupied inside a rather dark corridor on the less frequently used parts of the ship, farthest from the airlocks and the bridge. A place where the Empire's forces hadn't had the time to reach yet.

B3-Z3 and another pony were currently next to each other, with the drone's horn alight with green magic and directly touching the other's forehead.

The other pony was an earthpony mare. She wore purple robes which hid her form, with the only decoration being a drawing of a parchment depicting a six pointed star, on both of her sides. The mare's face clued on the lavender color of her hide underneath, and her mane and tail poked from underneath the robe, showing more shades of purple with a single pink streak of hair though the middle.

Both had closed eyes in concentration, fully focused on whatever arcane ritual they were participating in.

Suddenly the black mech's horn stopped glowing. The mare's eyes rolled up in her head and she dropped on the floor. B3-Z3 then stood there above the mare's unconscious body.

That was the scene Cogsworth floated onto.

"Oh sweet Binary, B3-Z3!" Cogsworth gasped as the black mechanical drone turned towards him, "Y-you... You've killed the princess!"

"Hsssst." B3-Z3 hissed.

Cogsworth's three eyes tilted, "W-What important mission? The ship is being overtaken by some mean mannered space invaders and all you can think of is some server maintenance?" He turned around and closed the entrance into the room by pressing one of the many blinking lights on the wall, "I had hoped we could just hole up somewhere and wait till this whole thing blows over, but now?" Cogsworth started panicking, "Oh nonononoNO! There is no way we can return to the bridge, and that is the safest place on the ship! Oh no, oh what now?"

B3-Z3 meanwhile walked off from the rambling mech. He quickly trotted through a corridor and vanished behind a corner.

"Oh dear, oh my... Being shot by space invaders, or getting jettisoned out of the airlock for treason— W-wait! Where are you going? Don't leave me behind!" Cogsworth called out and flew through the corridor after him.

He found B3-Z3 connected to a panel in an inconspicuously looking wall. The drone's horn was inserted to his forehead inside a dataport wall socket. The opening was seemingly far too narrow and a completely different shape than the drone’s appendage, but the horn fit nonetheless. Only slightly glowing in green magic.

"However..." Cogsworth stopped when an idea popped into his spherical head, "Perhaps we could surrender! Now that you murdered the princess in cold blood, surely they shall be more lenient towards us." His eyes perked up, "Maybe they will even let us join them! Yes! That's how it works out in space, no? Ah! You even look similar to them! Even better!"

Then Cogsworth's eyes all narrowed at the drone working at the panel, "Wait a moment, you are one of them! You are a spy, aren't you!" He pointed accusingly at B3-Z3 with one of his arms, "Have you perhaps planned this all along? Have you faked your loyalty? Gained our trust and then assassinated the princess as your friends invaded the ship? How about our friendship? Have you faked that too? Am I just a tool to you!? Does our relationship mean nothing to you?!”

Then he leaned in with his three eyes and begged, “Can you vouch for me?”

"Hssst." B3-Z3 finally hissed back.

"A traitor?" Cogsworth stared at it, "Well of course we are traitors. You killed the bloody princess!"

At that moment, the drone extracted its horn. The wall split in two and revealed a small cockpit filled with dozens of buttons, levers, and blinking lights.

"An escape pod?" Cogsworth noted, "Well, I suppose that is not the worst idea— Ah! Alright, alright! I am moving!" He floated when B3-Z3 pushed him inside, "Am I now a hostage?"

The door closed behind them and the two made their way towards the front of the confined space.

The grey mech scanned the large console in front of him until his eyes stumbled upon a large red button with a label 'LAUNCH', "Ah!" He exclaimed and pressed it.

A short countdown showed itself on the console, which Cogsworth attentively observed.

"Wait..." Cogsworth paused, "Won't they just shoot us down?"

"Hsssst." B3-Z3 hissed in response.

Cotsworth's eye-cameras all turned around at the drone in shock, "Well that's not very reassuring!"

```

/ \ |>--(XXX)--<| \ /

```

Tanequine IV was still fully docked within the black cocoon’s hangar hole. Though it could still be seen from the outside as the giant opening lacked any closing mechanism which would trap the smaller ship inside.

At that moment, a part of the lower section of Tanequine IV split apart, revealing dozens of round modules docked within it.

In a second, the engines of one module ignited, propelling it and its inhabitants away from the ship and through deep space.

The launch of the escape pod however did not go unnoticed. As the module sailed away from The Daughter, all the green glowing orbs in the flagship's wings the module passed by, began tracking its movement. It would only take one to decide to fire and the escape pod would be vaporized.

Yet, none of them have.

And so the module sailed off into the distance, its target being the yellow giant beneath.

```

/ \ |>--(XXX)--<| \ /

```

A group of black soldiers entered the bridge, dragging with them a barely conscious pony. "Your highness, we found this Equestrian in the hallways, unconscious." The front one announced in an identical emotionless tone.

Lady Invader turned towards the newcomers, her gaze immediately fell upon the purple earthpony who just now slowly began to wake up.

"...Ah..." The imposing figure sighed in recognition, "...Princess Lavender... ...I presume..." She then briefly faced the small herd of survivors of the bridge, some of which were nursing the captain of the ship who was still unconscious from her earlier interrogation, "...Me and your captain... ...had a lovely... ...conversation... ...about you..."

Invader then turned back to the lavender mare, which the black troops took as a sign and dragged the pony towards her, "...Unfortunately... ...he has been... ...not as... ...informed... ...as I have hoped..."

Just then the pony truly took in her surroundings. The mare looked up in fear and confusion, "W-Who are you?" She tried to struggle, but then noticed that she was held by two soldiers by her sides, "W-What do you want with me?"

"...That... ...I am certain you are well... ...aware of..." Lady Invader replied with a sense of amusement in her voice. "...And if not..." She leaned in. All the ponies in the room looked away, as they have already seen what follows, "...We shall find out... ...together..."

"...Now..." Lady Invader gave a sign and the soldiers stepped away. "...Tell me..."

The moment the Princess looked up into Invader’s hood, the same sight was presented to her. There was a helmet underneath that hood, composed of a wall of hexagonal pattern which made the mare uneasy. Suddenly, green points of light manifested in each of the surfaces like irises inside of a segmented eye and immediately pointed towards the pony.

At that exact moment, a terrible headache engulfed the mare.

...What have you learned...

First came the whispers.

Thousands of quiet voices invaded the mare’s own thoughts, whispering, searching, and crawling through every cranny and every memory of her mind. All growing more agitated and restless with each moment the voices did not find what they wanted.

The mare was only vaguely aware of her own voice expressing her displeasure amongst the thousands that she drowned in.

At once, everything stopped. The mare dropped to the ground, gasping audibly before rolling to her side, unconscious yet again.

Lady Invader stood there looking straight ahead, contemplating what she had learned. Or what she has failed to learn.

"...Clever..." She growled.

Lady Invader turned around and began to walk out of the room, "...Return to the ship... ...we are done here..."

"As you order, your highness." A soldier by her bowed, "What shall we do with the survivors?"

She spared them a glance, seemingly in thought, "...Killing... ...her's little ponies... ...seems wasteful..."

Some ponies who heard her response sighed in relief, and they hung on a hope that they might just survive the encounter. It was short lived, however.

"...Food..." Invader breathed out as she continued on her way out. Speaking loudly enough for all of them to hear. "...is hard to come by... ...after all..."

```

/ \ |>--(XXX)--<| \ /

```

"Now B3-Z3, I do realize that the escape module may have been our only option, but have you perhaps considered our vehicle might have a slight issue with landing... on a gas giant?"

"Hisss..."

"Well, your slight miscalculation got us doomed!"

The escape pod has just barrelled through into the planet's atmosphere, and it was when the flames of the re-entry subdued, the two machines realized their vehicle was unable to land on air.

In panic, Cogsworth mashed every visible button in the console before him, which was made difficult by everything rolling around, but at least he kept himself upright with the thruster beneath his body. B3-Z3 was not so fortunate and was tumbling around behind the floating mech in the fast rotating escape pod.

"Reeeeeee!" The black mech exclaimed with his limited vocabulary.

But no matter what the two tried to do, the pod kept uncontrollably descending into the depths below in a spectacular manner.

```

/ \ |>--(XXX)--<| \ /

```

A pair of slitted eyes observed the falling object in the sky. A trail of black smoke could be clearly seen through an orange tinted display, which quickly identified the source.

The escape pod has quickly shortened the distance between itself and the observer, spinning uncontrollably. Its trajectory led it on a fast vertical decline.

The orange display tilted downwards, revealing four tall pillars hovering in place on a quad of four thrusters. A stream of blue plasma shot out of its sides periodically as the thing was trying to keep itself upright and stable. The top had a rod sticking out and metal rings surrounding it.

The display then zoomed out, showing that the escape pod's descent led it directly between the four floating pillars.

Then the pod finally passed by.

A net of lightning manifested between all of the pillars at once. As the pod barrelled through, the lightning latched onto the hull of the speeding vehicle and visibly slowed it down. Though, the pod still flew right by them and the lightning stretched out after it far below the level of the pillars. Just as when it seemed it wouldn't be enough and the lightning would let the escape pod fall into the endless depths below, the pillars managed to slow it down to a near halt and then levitate it back up right into the center of it all.

When the pod settled, the pillars' bottom shined and a square grid of light manifested at the bottom, joining all the pillars together. Next there was a wave of energy and the grid transformed into a blue transparent platform.

The lightning cut off.

THUD

The escape pod fell on the azure platform and settled there after rolling a moment. Finally, the pod has settled down.

The display was let down, and revealed itself to be an electronic binocular held within a clawed limb. The pair of slitted eyes which till now observed the falling object stayed briefly locked onto the scene, until one of the clawed limbs lifted and waved towards the escape pod.

Next there was the sound of roaring engines as a small fleet of vehicles closed in on the now captured escape pod.

```

/ \ |>--(XXX)--<| \ /

```

Lady Invader entered the helm of The Daughter's command deck. Wide metal door split into two parts before her, and opened the way.

There was a long wide path leading across a large dark room. Black walls surrounded everything, with only dim green lights illuminating the insides with their ominous glow.

"The Equestrians hide and isolate their escape pods, your Highness. We were unable to scan the ship or otherwise secure them before one launched. But you'll be happy to hear its launch revealed their locations and we secured several more groups of Equestrian ponies attempting to hide in the rest."

Invader walked across, closely followed by an officer escort. Safe for Invader, all the officers revealed the true face of the Black Empire's species.

Their bodies were hidden by official uniforms, only disrupted by a pair of insectoid wings on their backs. But their faces were clearly covered by a black chitin along with hooves filled with holes through and through. All of their eyes were green, but filled with far more intelligence than the front soldiers which invaded the Tanequine IV.

"...How... ...did it escape..." Invader spoke slowly.

The group walked in a row, as the path through the room was flanked by four drops into the ground, marked only by a single green highlight. Two hexagonal holes were by the entrance, filled with blinking lights. But then there were two large elliptical drops, full of machinery, panels, and black chitined crew of the empire which was busy with maintenance and communication with the rest of the ship.

One of the closest officers caught up with the hooded figure upfront, just as the path widened enough. "The sentries have orders not to fire upon friendly units, your highness. There has been a friendly signature detected on board."

The escort arrived at the front of the command deck, where a wall filled with circular windows allowed an outside view. There were two large front windows near the center, flanked by smaller, more numerous windows. Together the view outside made it feel like looking through the eyes of a giant insect.

"...That drone..." Invader sighed in recollection. She stepped towards one of the windows up ahead and took a look at the yellow planet on the other side.

"...Release an infiltrator..." Lady Invader finally answered, "...The traitor... ...cannot escape us…"

The officers bowed, "As you command, your highness." Then they left the way they came, across the path.

None of the workers present paid the retreating group any mind, and kept busy with their own tasks.

Same for Lady Invader, who gazed through the window. Contemplating about her next move.

Chapter I - The Hors Homestead

*BEEB-BEEB-BEEB-*

"Nghhh-nooooo... It's too eeeeeearly..." I whined into a pillow and smacked at the offending device till it stopped.

I felt like I barely fell into bed and the buzzer embedded in the wall of my bunk bed started screaming. Spent the entire night trying to figure out what went wrong around the homestead!

Reluctantly, I sat up in my bed like a rising zombie and rubbed my tired eyes.

My sleeping quarters were very compact with about three square meters across, and just a small cozy bed inside of a hole in the wall, plus some other furniture.

Cramped for most races, but a perfect balance of space and practicality for a pony. And there was my much bigger workshop just next door.

I begrudgingly threw away my blue striped bed sheets and stumbled out with my limbs landing on blue synthetic carpet, which would otherwise be a cold metal floor which doesn't exactly feel nice on pony hooves.

Basically blind from exhaustion, I made my way past a desk with a chair and some study material on top of it I downloaded over the Skale yesterday. Or was that still today? Either way I stepped towards the exit which helpfully opened on its own.

The other room was a mess I called my workshop. Floor was littered with a mess of spare copper wires and electronic components, which got only worse near the other side of the room. And I had to dodge a couple of haphazardly balanced empty cans of Fire! Cola.

My bedroom and workshop were both a part of a 'D' shaped room, with my sleeping quarters being on one edge separated by a door, and my workshop taking the whole other three quarters. Two doors then lead out on the hallway by the straight side of the wall, plus the third door leading to my bedroom.

Dead on my hooves, I walked across the landscape of salvage, dismantled speakers and shelved devices with no care about what got under my clumsy limbs.

I made my way directly to my workbench on top of which sat a partly disassembled core of Miner6 which was the thing that gave me so much trouble yesterday. The moment I sat at the chair, my head and hooves collapsed on top of the desk.

Too tired to move any part of my body, I lazily fired up my horn with my face still on the desk, and red magic levitated a HoloPone, which to this moment ran tests on the core, towards me. The holographic datapad designed to be worn by ponies lit up and a sheet of holographic display rolled out of it.

<Test of 'Miner6' found 0 errors. Diagnostic return: NEGATIVE

Aw... Come-on.

"Nghhh..." I groaned and dropped the device.

I wondered whether I should run the diagnosis again, but after a quick thought, I decided against it. No sense doing the same thing over and over.

It was the third time the Miner class-X emerged empty from the gasses below and it was better to know what caused the bug, else we ignore it and next time the Miner wouldn't return at all.

I just had absolutely no idea what went wrong with the drone, it seemed just fine the other week and all hardware and software diagnostics returned negative. I tried to think, and hard, but my mind just went blank after yesterday's brain workout.

In the end, I just gave up and disconnected the HoloPone before wrapping it around my left hoof.

Then I walked away in the same manner I woke up. Like a zombie.

Once I reached the closest door of the two in the room, I poked the thing with my horn till I remembered I had to press the panel beside to get through these ones. The door slid open and I stumbled out onto a long hallway running paralely between my room and the two bedrooms of my uncle and aunt, and walked through the corridor till I reached a bathroom at the end.

Once inside, I made my way to the sink right away and began my daily routine. First, I looked at myself in the mirror.

The mare in the mirror stared back. My otherwise snow-white hide had grey smudges all over it from my work on the Miner6. Auntie always hated when I got it dirty, and to be honest, I would have definitely cared about my looks more not there for the... obvious reasons.

My electric mane was disheveled into an unrecognizable state, with the white and blue stripes sticking out into random directions. Likewise, my tail was in a similar state of disarray.

It was... not that different from my usual manestyle.

And my face? Circles under eyes, check. Stuffy nose, check. Spots of droll down my jaw, check. Blood red iris now accompanied by visible blood vessels, aaaand check!

Simply elegant.

It was pretty much obvious with just one look into my face I was standing on my last legs, but nothing that a cup of Fire! Cola couldn't fix. Plus, I could always get some sleep on the way to the city.

Well, that was one face anyway. Now the other.

*WHOOSH*

My whole body was encompassed in green flames. Burning away all the transformation magic that hid my real form.

The flames started from my forelegs and stopped at the tip of my horn, leaving behind a black monstrosity which was... very much in the same state of disarray as my disguise.

My blue and white mane still was a mess, though now its texture resembled more to silk full of holes than hair, same as my tail.

My body is what has truly changed. I no longer had the white fuzzy hide like usual, instead, from my hole-filled limbs, all the way to my face, I was covered by black chitin. It looked like tough biological armor, but the amount of hairline fractures I've acquired would disagree with that.

At my midsection were two pairs of insectoid wings hidden under an outer shell. I opened the elytra and spread those babies wide open. I then flexed before the mirror both the forewings and hindwings respectively. I loved those things. I could fly, and shoot frickin' lazers from ma face!

Speaking of my face. My muzzle was a little bit longer and filled with very much carnivorous fangs, pointy teeth, and generally a look which kids would be imagining they would find under their beds. And then laugh when instead of a 'Hisss' I would say 'Five more minutes.'

And then came my horn and eyes. My horn was now curved and sharp like a dagger, instead of the stubby straight point of a regular unicorn. My eyes however, were now completely pink with a blood red iris and a black cat-like pupil in the middle. Stuff of nightmares!

All for all, I was... a walking zombie bug-pony still in need of a shower.

I still pretty much looked like dead meat, the pink edges of my eyes still had visible veins, and I very much stinked.

I stepped away from the mirror and went for the shower where I let the water soak me and proceeded to scrub myself with a brush levitating in my red telekinetic grasp. Then I praised whoever laid me for being born with chitin instead of hide when it came to drying.

After the quick shower —in which I only once successfully fell asleep— I was out again. I now looked like a zombie bug-pony after a shower.

"Meh, good 'nuf." I murmured to the mirror.

*WHOOSH*

Once again, I was enveloped by green flames and a white unicorn with an electric mane stood before me.

This time she looked MUCH better. Like if after a good night's sleep and a spa session full of grooming.

I stepped to the side and looked at that sexy flank in the mirror. I even gave a look at the cutie mark I've chosen for myself.

A single black note on my white flanks. There even was a real one, white note on my black chitin, under my disguise. Though I am not sure it was worth the trouble to get it, if no-one was ever going to see it. Other than my family, that is.

But I had enough of my shenanigans in the bathroom. I was now hungry.

The trip to the dining room brought me across the hallway and down via intersecting stairs, which ended in another hallway below. The whole homestead was built that way. A round five-story dome, with stairways and hallways in the middle, flanked by two 'D' shaped rooms. Overall there were seven rooms each serving its own purpose, including an observatory on the top.

At the end of the stairs, I skipped to the left and passed through a door which revealed the dome's kitchen quarters.

I was pleasantly surprised when food was already on the table, including my favorite algae bread and a mug of Fire! Soda.

The shape of the room was the same, if not identical to my own room. There was the main body, with a dining table where I walked off to and sat down on a flat cushioned stool on the ground, right by my food. And there was the kitchen right behind a low wall where I could hear something good bubbling on a plasma stove. Then there was the secondary room which was used for storage.

I placed my left foreleg on the table and activated the HP on it. I then browsed over the Scale Network for anything interesting while I levitated a cut piece of the green bread in my crimson aura and crammed it in my muzzle. Mmmhmm! Yummy!

I reached for the mug and took a sip. Then immediately cringed in disgust when I found out that instead of the orange drink there was a purple liquid in it.

"An Eridian juice?" I whined. My nightbite was so close to being perfect! I would love me some of that dragon energy drink right about now...

"It's bad for you!" A mare's voice came out from the storage. "It's about time you started drinking something more healthy!"

I rolled my eyes and pushed the drink aside. Why was everyone so worried about my health? If I took on the correct form, I could literally eat and drink anything! Plus, I could easily just burn away any side effects of long-term use by a single transformation! I literally couldn't get even fat!

I turned my attention back towards my HoloPone and looked up the weather forecasts and other city news.

Huh, looks like the Lamia got to eat again. Guess someone didn't pay the Dragon Lord in time...

I heard the door to the storage room open. Immediately, my special powers detected ‘not-this-again’ filling the room.

"Come on, Violet. I told you not to wear that face when home!" The voice coming up to me said.

I looked up and saw an older pegasus mare coming up from the storage, depositing a metal box from her back onto the kitchen counter. She wore a brown jacket across her pearl white hide which concealed most of her form and her cutie mark, and a black ribbon which decorated her red mane.

I sighed and rolled my eyes that I had to drop my disguise again, though I obeyed my aunt.

No one dared to argue with a mare named Red Sky Hors, and no one dared to go head to head with my uncle, Blu Sky Hors. And then there was me, Violet Sky, minus the obvious horse pun thank you very much!

Whoosh! The disguise went off.

"Ah!" Auntie Red's face shined, and her ‘that’s-what-I-like-to-see’ tingled my senses, "There is my favorite Bedbug."

She then proceeded to invade my personal space with far too affectionate hugs and nuzzles.

"Ngh, Aunteeee!" I whined in embarrassment, but she ignored my pleas and basically spoon fed me with her affection, which I couldn't help but to gobble up.

Guess that's the other dietary need taken care of...

Eventually auntie Red took a step back and returned to the kitchen to make her own food, to which I resumed my own. Even the Scale provided some interesting information.

"Seems like tomorrow evening there will be a storm." I noted.

"And an electromagnetic one at that!" Red replied, walking around the table with more food balancing on her wings. She then deposited it and sat down across from me. "But at least tonight’s wind speed won’t pass thirty miles. Blu went to make sure the shields could take it."

"Uh huh."

One more round of ‘not-this-again’ filled the room. I looked up to see what I did wrong, just to see Auntie Red pointing with her wing towards my untouched mug.

"Drink the Eridium, Violet. It's good for you." She ordered.

"But auntie! It's disgusting!" I objected.

"It is that or the Blue Milk from now on." Red finished with an aura of ‘not-taking-shit-from-you-now’.

I grumbled and took a sip from the gem mixture, trying hard to not think about whose digestive tract it had to go through for it to become refined for a non-dragon consumption. It was coarse and tasted like cooling liquid, but it was far better than to be confined to the same fate like uncle Blu.

The room fell into a silence as auntie Red pulled out her own HoloPone and we both lost ourselves in the Kitein wide web network.

My eyes widened when I found that my best friend published a new track. Sweet!

"So," Red took a sip of her Blue Milk. "About the drone. Found out something?"

I groaned, "Don't even ask. As far as I am concerned, there is nothing wrong with that drone." I then munched on one last piece of the bread.

"Ah." She bit her lip, "Then I suppose you wouldn't be happy to hear that another returned to the docks prematurely."

I looked up from my leg in shock.

"What?" I stared at her, "When? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Calm down Violet." Red she rolled her eyes, "It was just a couple of hours ago and I decided you needed the sleep more."

I sighed, "Alright, I can hook it up on my HP, run a diagnostic and find out what they have in common—"

"No need, I already found out what is happening." Auntie interrupted me again, waving her own wrist device.

I looked at her in surprise. "You have?"

Red nodded, "It is our server managing the new MX-14s. It can't keep up with the demand of processing power those new drones require to operate. The drones have a failsafe which returns them to the docks."

I bit my lip. "But... we can't cut down on how many drones we have out, else we fall behind the Tibanna quota." Then I sighed, "Damn, if the Exo gets a whiff of this, they won't hesitate to write us off as unproductive."

I was a little bit confused when I didn't feel any worry from her over our livelihood, but the absence alone gave me a little bit of reassurance.

"You have a plan?" I took a guess, "Can we squeeze a bit more out of the server?"

Red shook her head with reconciliation, "No it's too old. The new MX-14 drones are simply too much for it to handle."

I looked down in shame. Buying those new drones was my idea. I even came up with a clever scheduling system to minimize the pressure on our outdated server. Both aunt and uncle were skeptical of my suggestion to invest into more expensive drones, but in the end the two trusted in my instinct, and where did it lead? "I... I am sorry auntie..."

An aura of ‘it-is-fine’ and ‘nothing-to-worry-about’ enveloped me when Red smiled, "You have nothing to apologize for, Violet. On the contrary! You were right!"

I lifted an eyebrow.

"Look at this," She said and tapped on her HoloPone. Next, my own foreleg beeped with a new message.

I clicked on the link within the message and a website from the Scale network opened up. It was a graph along with a short blog. It didn't take me long to figure out what it was about.

I looked up at auntie with widened eyes, "The Tibanna quota went up again."

Red nodded, "We were already lagging behind the Tibanna quota with the old MT-series. Me and your uncle planned on hooking up three more of the MTs and hope for the best, but with this rise we would be—"

"In deep shit." I finished. Auntie frowned at my choice of words, but reluctantly nodded.

"I can't believe I am saying it..." She bit her lip, while I grinned, "But your deal with that zebra saved our hides. You not only found those great drones on her market, but you also delivered a little bit of a revenge after she ripped us off with that server when we were starting our business, and on top of that, you came up with an efficient schedule that let us use all of the new drones even with the limits of our old server."

Red nodded to herself, "How I see it, the only thing that holds us back from swinging up with our production is the server. And considering it's been running on overclock for over five years, I am surprised it didn't simply go up in flames."

I felt Red accepting her own words, "I suppose it is simply time to get a new server too."

I nodded. "Do you have any ideas?"

Immediately, I felt a kind of 'here-it-comes' or 'the-big-reveal' which made me lift an eyebrow at her. Auntie Red in turn only smiled at me. "As a matter of fact, I do."

Auntie turned her attention towards her HoloPone and tapped on it for a moment. Right on clue, my own HP pinged me.

I took a look at my own foreleg, "Holy shit!" I exclaimed, "Is that...?"

Auntie Red nodded, a taste of ‘you-deserve-this’ filled me. She was proud. Not just proud, but proud of me! I never felt her feeling like this before, and this is the first time I felt something like this aimed at me. It was kind of energizing!

"Access to our family bank account." Red only smiled at my gaping maw, "You are a part of this family just as much. Me and your uncle have talked and... I know we didn't always trust your unique judgment... And sometimes I feel we didn't entirely integrate you into our family..." There was a bit of regret in the air, before Red continued.

"Violet," Red stood up from the table, "You have proven yourself to be an integral part of our little business, and it is about time both me and Blu properly acknowledged that." She nodded towards my HP, "We now officially give complete trust in your competence and experience to acquire the next piece of hardware." Then she rolled her eyes with 'Yes-I-admit' rolling out of her, "And considering your empathic superpowers... it makes you unlikely to get robbed silly."

I grinned at that.

I also stood up and this time it was me who walked around the table and hugged the other, "I promise I won't fluke all of it." Then I smirked mischievously, "All of it. Perhaps I'll take a detour in N's vehicle section, that sleek Turbo-Feeder reeeeally caught my eye!"

"Do not even think about that, young filly!" Red immediately scolded me, but the ‘not-amused-but-kinda-amused’ I felt betrayed her expression, "This is our livelihood we are talking about!"

"I know that!" I replied, and then mischievously looked to the side, "Buuuut, perhaps I could look around for a cleaning unit. Or a cooking one!"

Now that caught her attention. I grinned when auntie paused to think about it and I felt her brainstorming, though she quickly shook it off. "Absolutely not! I am warning you, Violet, if you spend more than twenty thousand credit units on that server, it's going to be blue milk for you for the foreseeable future!"

"Not the milk!" I melodramatically called out as I walked out of the kitchen. "Anything but the milk!"

My departure was quick and just as I was about to walk down stairs into the garage, the doors into the kitchen opened again.

"Violet?" Red's voice carried out from the kitchen. Once again, I could feel the hints of ‘not-this-again’.

I stopped to turn around and after a bit of hesitation I tentatively called back, "Yeah?"

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

My eyebrows furrowed. I checked myself out, but I pretty much had everything I needed to go down in my own airspeeder.

"Some clothes?"

I rolled my eyes, "I'll go naked!" I called back and made my way downstairs.

"Violet?" Auntie called out with that no-debate tone, but it was that ‘not-taking-shit’ which really made me stop.

*WHOOSH*

And I was in my other body. Along with my favorite white hoodie. What can I say? White on white is my favorite combination!

"Some real clothes Violet."

"Aw, c'mon!" I complained, but complied and went back up into my room to dress up.

It didn't take long to head back and dress up. Turns out, I have forgotten something behind. My favorite pair of purple windshades! Soon, I stood in the garage with the now real white body-sized hoodie and a pair of DJ glasses covering my eyes which no one could ever separate me from.

Wearing white hoodie and the purple windshades underneath for little variety made me look pretty cool, but that was its only positive.

Stooopid nudity ban, ponies had natural coats! Sure, I wouldn't like to stare at alien junk anytime I pass one, but why do we have to put on clothes too? They itch, and sweat, and grumble, grumble, grumble.

The homestead's vehicle garage was the second lowest part of the whole structure, just above the server room along with the generator.

I skipped the stairs and turned left into a wide open area where the homestead's three vehicles sat dormant, right before the garage’s large hangar door on the other side.

There was the Hoverlifter which Uncle only rarely ever used anytime the homestead's repulsorlifts needed maintenance, or we needed to haul something heavy around the farm.

In the middle was the family speeder with a sharp nose and windshield, with three raised repulsor lifts in the back. It was a currently broken grey V-35 Courier which was... kind of my fault. Lesson learned, don't dive with a modified landspeeder.

The third vehicle then was my blue M31 Airspeeder. It was a long pointy ship with two peaks upfront of which one was ripped off, a transparent cockpit in the middle and a repulsorlift engine in the back.

Imagine the surprise when little-me got her hooves on a discarded wreckage of this luxury vehicle just chilling in the waste disposal truck on its way to Thunderhead. Years later, after fixing, replacing parts, and some paint job, I finally got it working just a couple of weeks ago.

Then there was the cargo holder settled down behind my speeder. Since the family airspeeder was out of commission, it was up to the blue M31 to haul supplies back and forth between the city.

It was a large grey oval thing about the same size of the airspeeder, with all of that size being the cargo space inside. Two cylindrical shafts were set beneath it, hosting the two energy binders with which I could hook it up to the speeder.

I looked towards the hangar door on the other side of the room and lifted my HoloPone. With a single swipe of my magic, the hangar began to slide open.

Screeee! Shut. Screeee! Shut.

A thick sheet of metal on the left side separated from the wall and slid into another which then did the same, slowly opening the massive hangar door. The power of the Kitein winds which the metal door held back till now rushed in, but with the purple windshaders isolating my eyes it wasn’t much of a bother, and so I watched as the dark expanse slowly revealed itself before me.

Screeee! Shut. Screeee! Shut.

With the final part of the hangar door hiding itself by the side, the room was cast in a silence interrupted only by the whistling of the wind coming from the vast expanse spanning towards the horizon and further. The cold air of the Kitein night crawled inside the garage and I let it play with my mane and took a deep breath of it.

It was pretty dark outside, with the farm's artificial lighting being the only illumination for the ring platform around the entire perimeter. The sun had yet to come out and wouldn't for another fourteen hours, leaving only the stars and an eerily darkness of the depths beneath.

I stepped towards the blue Airspeeder and tapped on my HoloPone once again. This time it was the cockpit that opened. It popped up and slid right across the hull, showing the interior.

"Authority recognized. Welcome, user Violet." A female electronic voice came out from my HoloPone.

"Sup, Liara." I wasted no time and climbed up.

The inside had a plethora of small compartments by the sides, a manual steering-control in front, and a comparatively tiny seat to it all, way high up from the floor. The floor in turn was then cushioned with a single fluffy pillow for the rare times I took Red out to the city.

The interior was nowhere near resembling the luxury it was advertised for, but then again, I found it on a junk pile. But I am sure that some day I'll get around to properly equip the speeder with more pillows and what not. And definitely make a replacement for the one missing peak. I am just glad I can show off the years of my work.

"Liara, set course for the big city." I ordered.

The Virtual Intelligence picked up its name and immediately fulfilled my command. "Establishing a course for the Thunderhead. Estimated time of arrival, four hours and thirty minutes."

I made myself comfortable in the small cockpit. It was a one person Airspeeder, which meant two ponies could probably have a round of Blackjack in there comfortably. Seriously! Being small was awesome!

"Make that five," I replied, pushing a few buttons and controls. I could hear the start of an electric buzz from behind as the cargo holder's energy binders latched onto my vehicle, and then the transparent windshield slid back into place around me, cutting off the sound.

"Randomize both trajectory and speed." I added. The worst thing anyone can do is to make a beeline between their home and a city. That would be just asking for pirates to follow the trail. "And plan the route on the lowest safe level." Just to make it harder to detect me. The chances of meeting anyone on Kitein, even with sensors blaring miles in radius, are one in million, but you can never be too sure.

"Understood, user Violet." Liara's voice once again informed me.

Glad I managed to hook up the autopilot with my virtual Liara account, else I wouldn't be able to do this!

Whroom...

I heard the repulsorlift engine spring into action behind me, and the next moment, the entire vehicle started floating without me doing shit.

Slowly the airspeeder turned in place a half a meter above ground. When the front turned towards the open hangar door and the sky beyond, the propulsion thrusters at the back roared and the entire thing lunged forwards.

The unending abyss of the Kitein now spread out before me. Thousands of miles of just air and gasses were ahead of me, below me, and above me too.

I turned my head around in the cabin to take a look at the departing homestead. Just a few lights illuminating a small metallic island of the complete darkness of Kitein night. Already I could now only faintly make out the closing hangar I have left from.

"A nap is in order." I yawned.

A single tap on the console before me and the small seat I sat on lowered a hoof's length and leaned all the way back, leaving me more than enough space to relax for the long journey ahead.

I laid back in the spacious cockpit and put a headset that was stashed by the side and plugged it into my HoloPone. I adjusted the windshades on my eyes, then brought up the new track from the Scale I spotted earlier and let it play.

Sweet beats started playing into my ears and I couldn't help but to nod my head into the rhythm.

It wasn't long before I nodded off too. In a transparent cockpit, speeding across the bottomless sky filled with stars.

```

\ /

```

*Bleep*

"Estimated time of arrival: Ten minutes."

"Ngh. Already?" I groaned and rolled over. My headset fell out of my ears and I already missed its sweet beats. My windshades also fell off sometime during my slumber, and so I levitated them back onto my eyes.

*Yaawn* "Are you sure we are there yet? It felt like minutes to me."

"Negative, user Violet. You have slept for—"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." I waved her off. I sat up in the small cabin and finally looked out of the windshield. "No shit. We are here."

Up ahead on the dark horizon was the slightly darker shade of a big floating city. The Thunderhead.

It was the capital city of the whole Kitein and it let itself show by its sheer size. Thunderhead was the largest structure on the planet, with around a hundred miles in diameter and thirty in its height, not counting the massive pylons which hung from beneath it, sucking in air and condensing Tibanna stright out of the atmosphere, getting more Tibanna a pleb like me has no chance seeing in a hundred lifetimes.

Damn. Having just one of those things and we would be set for life. And the Thunderhead had seven, evenly distributed around its center.

"Warning. By the order of Exo directive, no autonomous entity is permitted to control an airborne vehicle within the Thunderhead borders." Liara reminded me.

"Change to the manual." I said. The driving wheel in front of me unlocked and I took over the controls from the autopilot with my hooves.

Slowly the Thunderhead changed from an outline on the horizon, into an actual structure which was fast approaching. Still it was a couple of minutes away.

I think it is a shame that autopilots are banned in the city. The best one can do is a dedicated driver droid, though that’s a bit expensive and not all that worth it in the end. I still think it is stupid, but I suppose autopiloting algorithms aren’t exactly built to react correctly when an idiot skips the traffic in front of the speeder.

I steered the airspeeder around and aimed for my usual drive in. I watched with a silly grin on my face how the city grew closer and closer, until it was just a massive wall of metal platforms and entry points that just blocked the horizon. Already when I looked to the left and right, it felt like the walls of the Thunderhead go on forever.

There were thousands of cars and airspeeders just like mine, slowly concentrating into a single stream of traffic fast approaching the dragon superstructure. I even spotted a few spaceships descending from above and entering one of the larger entrances of the Thunderhead.

Suddenly, the endless expanses of Kitein just vanished and were replaced by the rushing insides of the big city.

I always enjoyed entering the city. There was just something about approaching it at high speeds only to see everything just vanish and reveal itself at the same time.

A massive corridor highway opened up before me, spanning across the entirety of the Thunderhead. Houses, streets and businesses, all standing and attached to massive walls and pillars in the insides of the big city, with numerous giant platforms and tunnels connecting them all. Large tunnels followed my highway in parallel by its sides, where I could see plenty of pedestrians behind a window shield going about their business.

I wasn't the only one using the highway however, countless various vehicles of every type were flying with me with their own goals in mind. Some were flying at the same height as me, and some sped by above us.

There were of course few people who flew under their own power. Being the homeworld of dragons, of course many species would sometimes prefer to stretch their own wings. There was for example a gryphon who just joined the line a few cars ahead. He wore a turbopack on his back aiding his wings, which meant they had no problem keeping up with the traffic.

Maybe that's why autopilot is banned? I did hear something about a griffon being smacked by an airspeeder ‘cause the system did not detect them.

Or perhaps it has something to do with cyber security. Wireless slicing is a thing now, unfortunately.

Right at that moment, a massive dragon decided to show off his wingspan. He flew above us in a line for large vehicles and easily sped past. The dragon wore an enormous suit bearing green colors of Kitein security patrol, along with a set of turbo engines under his wings which propelled him forward and illuminated my cockpit with blue light along the way.

So. Frickin’. Cool.

Man, I love this city!

```

\ /

```

I drove my airspeeder down into a dock. A spacious hall carved inside one of the massive pillars. My spot was marked by several lit up lights which dimed as I hovered above and snuffed out just like the lights around other vehicles parking in their own spots.

The landing was smooth and once I touched down I opened the cockpit and jumped out on the metal floor below. The ever consistent buzzing of the cargo holder stopped as soon as it came to rest on the ground and the energy binders turned off.

I wasn't too scared someone would come and bind them to different vehicle and fly off. That thing wouldn't move an inch without a repulsor lift, which could only come online by binding with an authorized speeder.

But before I locked everything behind me, I reached inside the airspeeder with my magic one more time and picked up my personal blaster holster.

Inside was a cheap stubby Model 57 Blaster Pistol, it wasn't the prettiest thing, but it was a reliable sidearm and would do the job if it came to it.

I checked out the weapon before strapping it to my right foreleg.

Theoretically, I wouldn't even need it, because I knew a neat little horn trick that lets me shoot laser blasts right out of my forehead, but one can never be too sure! Especially where I was headed.

Finally I adjusted the windshades on my eyes and levitated the hood of my white hoodie over my horn which then straight up disappeared underneath it. Really sweet enchantment I learned to do. It made any hat easy to use, and as a bonus made me look like an earthpony.

Ooo? What she gonna do? She got no horn— BAM! Lazer to the face.

The Higher Tropo was a shady part of the Thunderhead. It was located nearly at the bottom of the city, with Lower Tropo being the engineering heart of the whole structure and where most of the Tibanna mining and refinement operations took hold.

I was walking across a street of massive pillars through a tall and wide glass tunnel connecting two of them. Anytime I looked up, about a mile of just space and as many ad signs as traffic vehicles speeding by stared right back at me, before a huge roof cut the view off, riddled probably with more streets and passages.

The whole city was split up like that. There was the Exo, where all the richest and important people walked around under the sky, and it is where the Dragon Lord himself resides.

Then there was the Thermo, Meso, Strato and then Tropo. All with their own layers and streets, though the former three had no specialized use and so it was the place where most of the population and businesses of the Thunderhead resided.

“Hey!” Someone yelled behind me.

I turned around, but noticed the call wasn’t at me. A young drake decided to spread his wings and fly, and someone else took offense in that.

“No flying in the tunnels!” That someone was some alien which I had hard time describing, but it quickly gave up as the drake didn’t give a damn and disappeared at the end of the tunnel.

I couldn't blame the fliers. If I could, I would also use my two pairs of wings to travel fast anywhere. Unfortunately, these tunnels are sealed from the outside for a reason. The wind caused by the fast flying traffic, is insane.

Sure, the glass tunnels themselves were massive, as it wouldn't make sense that a dragon city on a dragon homeworld would have traversable passages the size of a pony. Unfortunately, flying inside was also banned. Probably because of some idiot who didn't look where he was flying and went straight down the gullet of a dragon who was yawning at the moment.

At least the walls of the tunnels were transparent with a pretty awesome view across the Tropo. So good, I couldn’t help but to stop for a moment to look.

Tropo has the highest level of traffic in the city, with it being the main dock of Kitein and all, plus where all the Tibanna mined from the gas giant congregated before being loaded onto starships and shipped offworld.

The entire thing was built around visitors. Highways built like a grid, from roof to bottom, with the massive pillars each acting as a town or a vertical street on their own. Holographic ads were at every corner, hundreds of small ones decorated every tower, propagating to new arrivals a new soda flavor they’ll taste nowhere else, to entire space ships ready for hire. Then there were some truly massive ones, embedded in the face of a tower and reaching all the way towards the ceiling, showing a dragoness in all matters of dresses and eye-catching actions throughout the day. Usually these were hosted by towers solemnly built for entertainment, both casual and risque.

Certainly one of the most colorful places on Thunderhead.

Tropo was pretty cool, but Meso was like on a whole ‘nother level. The dragons designed it to look like a massive cave with every building being either its stalagmite or stalactite and a slow traffic moving through the middle. Entire buildings hanging from the ceiling! With a sea of spikes littering the floor.

Though I had enough sightseeing. A moment longer and I would definitely fail to resist taking my new speeder for a tour of the city and spend the entire day just driving around. Auntie wouldn’t be happy if I got side-tracked for forty-eight hours… again.

And so I stepped away and continued on through the tunnel.

```

\ /

```

Finally, I arrived at my intended destination.

A holographic sign welcomed me as I entered a district which led all the way through one of the enormous city pillars. The shop the neon sign belonged to was then pointing me to a door right around a corner.

'Scrapyard at Feathered Zebra'
Parts, Droids, Sometimes Ships!

*ping* *ping*

An electronic chirp announced my arrival at the shop the moment I stepped through the pair of self-opening doors.

"Violet!" Said the shop owner behind a cage on the left side of the shop, "You are someone I haven't seen in a while!"

"Sup, N." I greeted her.

The Feathered Zebra was, unsurprisingly, operated by a zebra with a pair of white wings by her sides.

Neither I or my Auntie really knew the zebra's real name nor whether the pair of wings by her sides were real, or mechanical. But I wouldn't be surprised they belonged to some unfortunate pegasus and attached by less than legal means.

Junk was at every step of the place. Only a single walking path was spared of the mess, safe for some of the bigger parts at the far side of the room, which had wide clear circles. Just as I entered, I spotted a junk rack full of parts on my right side which none of I recognized nor looked for.

At the left side was a curved counter, a slab of metal full of exposed panels and piping. The top was however covered by a metal cage reaching to the ceiling behind which the zebra stood overlooking the shop.

A separated head of a droid sat by the side, hooked up to an in-built console display on which the zebra seemed to have been working on till I came. She turned it off, before giving me her attention.

"So, what's bringing you here?" N placed her forelegs on top of her counter.

I smirked when I already felt her brainstorming. Undoubtedly about how to rip me off this time.

"Please tell me you finally got an AIR type T-14 repulsorlift core." If I could get hooves on something like that, I could finally repair the Courier back at the homestead.

Unfortunately, the Zebra shook her head. "Sorry, only have the land types. Ever since the reptiles up top pissed off the stripes back home, there has been a shortage of air types."

I sighed, "Sucks, but not the only thing I came here for."

The zebra’s shop had a small feel to it, but I was well aware that the Zebra had some serious deals going on behind the curtain. Scrapyard or not, officially N’s little business specialized in repurposing discarded equipment people sought to sell, either to be then used in another department or to be stripped into base components, melted to ingots, and sold that way.

Unofficially? Well… let’s just say that the day Wind Raiders found out where I live and got past our ring-shield… Would be the same day N is selling our remains to others.

Other noteworthy features of the shop were the armies of droids and robots N was famous for. If you want a droid or a drone, N is the one to go to if you know how to get around her ridiculous pricing. And that's the reason I came to her instead of a common and more reputable vendor. You can't bargain on prices with those.

Already my eyes were drawn towards some two-legged units exhibited at the walls. Though I knew for a fact N kept her good stuff in the back.

As I was looking around, the only thing out of the ordinary and also what caught my eye, was a tall cylindrical device stationed in a corner next to the entrance. A green light shined from its center and I immediately recognized its purpose.

“Is that a mind scrambler?” I pointed at the device.

“Uhh… Yea!” N paused for a moment. Her ‘shit-she-noticed’ gave me a clear idea why she had it here. Guess she got a little bit paranoid when the last time I was here, I completely ignored her recommendations for a new drone and went straight for the good stuff.

“Cool! Never seen one of those!” I nonchalantly exclaimed. “You scared someone would just waltz in and politely ask for a one-hundred percent discount?” Then I grinned at her, “Is it because of me?”

“Nah,” N denied, “I heard one of the clerks in Strato got robbed by some mind freak. If one comes here, that thing will cause a racket.” She pointed at the Mind Scrambler.

“Uhuh…” I slowly nodded.

Quickly I lifted my hoof and locked my eyes with hers. Before she could realize what I was doing, it was too late. “You will give me a discount...” And I circled with my hoof in an enchanting manner. N’s eyes widened in panic and I basked in its aftertaste of fear.

Figuratively speaking. That shit’s disgusting.

A second passed, then I saw her eyeing the mind scrambler behind me which was just chilling there. Then I fell to the floor laughing like a maniac.

“AHAHA-HAHA! You should have seen your FACE!” I laughed.

“Screw you, kid.” N’s panic was replaced by annoyance. Then she scowled at me when I kept laughing, “Are you done?”

Suddenly I remembered the story about the zebra's wings and decided that being a contributor to her zebra pega-corn visage was not my life goal.

“A-Anyway,” I stood up and got over with my laughter pretty quickly, “Eh-Ehm, do you have any servers? Preferably one with legs, or something else fancy?”

The moment I mentioned I was looking for a new server, I felt an excited ‘oh’ before I heard it.

“Oh?” N exclaimed, her annoyance was replaced with sudden nosy-nes, “Did something happen to your old one?”

“Not really?” I said truthfully. I didn’t see any harm in telling her, “It’s just pretty old and can no longer keep up with our new drones.”

“Hmmm.” N mused, “Well anyway, we can look for something. I’ve got a whole junkpile worth of processors in the back. If it comes to it, I can get one of my droids to whip something together for you.”

Ah yes. N's famous 'Whip-togethers'. No thank you!

N then lifted a HoloPone on her left foreleg and nudged it with her snout.

A part of the counter revealed itself as an entrance as it sunk into the floor and allowed access behind her cage.

“I believe you can behave yourself.” N have me a glare.

As a response, I gave my best saint face and topped it off by liting my horn and made a little halo appear above my head. The winged zebra just rolled her eyes and waved at me with her hoof to follow her.

With a show of her HoloPone, a door at the back of the cage slid upwards and revealed a corridor leading deeper into the establishment. I then followed N inside.

“By the way, just putting it out there,” N spoke as she led me through a long corridor littered with piles of crates, “If you decide to sell that server of yours, you can swing by me. I am sure I’ll have a use for it.”

It was a nice deal to have, but what took me by surprise was how... giddy the zebra was when she mentioned it. She was... looking forward to buying our server? Maybe she expected to mine some juicy data out of it? Or... hmmm. Either way, I took a mental note to not do exactly that.

"You are in luck, you know? A new haul just came in and I got some real special stuff!" She started again when we stopped by a wide door on our right, which slid apart and opened as soon as N waved with her HoloPone in front of an access panel.

On the other side a huge hangar revealed itself. Shelves full of devices stacked on top of each other, large mechs lined up by the walls next to each other, and a huge pile of junk on the far side of the room where I could see a small army of small one-eyed DUM droids loading the junk on to a nearby conveyor belt. I even spotted an entire space shuttle, partially stripped for parts.

“Alright,” N turned towards me and she gave me a serious look, “You know the rules. If you take something, I’ll cut something. And keep that thing dark." She pointed at my forehead, "I don’t wanna deal with you levitating shit around and disguising it as 'just looking through my HP' either, capish?”

I gave a salute, “Aye aye, Capt'n.”

The Zebra nodded and led me deeper into the hangar. We ventured into the right side between a few wider shelves filled with disabled droids and drone parts. I looked around and noticed far behind us a wall covered by a wide grey curtain, which was further concealed by a pile of crates. I had a feeling that’s where N hides the good stuff.

"Now this baby is exactly what you need," N spoke and I almost bumped into her.

What N recommended to me this time was a large bulky thing towering three meters above us. The thing had to weigh at least five tons and if it toppled that would be the end of it. It did come with a pair of rubber threads which would allow it to move around, which was sweet, but still a bit too large for my tastes.

“Thirty thousand units and it’s yours.” N finished.

I made my decision known just with my expression, “Eeeeh… I mean, it’s impressive and all, but...” I shook my head, “It is way too tall and heavy, and the threads don’t make it look any safer. I have a feeling the threads will move, the top won’t and the whole thing comes falling down, squishing me like a bug.”

N looked into space in thought, “Huh, that would explain the blood and brain matter on the side of it.”

A brain WHAT? I looked at the zebra and tried to get a read on her emotions to confirm she was kidding.

She wasn’t kidding.

N shrugged to herself and I then followed her towards the next in line. “What do you have in mind then?” She continued and pointed around the shelves.

I shrugged off the shock, “Something small that walks,” I said, “What I had in mind is a mobile server which would take instructions from our main server and physically connect to docked drones to run maintenance. Our server runs just fine, it's just outdated and needs the processing pressure off of it.”

N shook her head at me, “Interesting idea, but that won’t work. You need something solid and powerful.”

I would have tended to believe her, not for her blatant ‘smart-kid’ and her earlier interest in our older server. It meant I was on the right path with my plan.

*CRASH*

A sudden thundering sound spread across the hangar.

We both whipped our heads around towards the looming server, which thankfully was still standing tall. I quickly determined the real source being the large junk pile at the front, as I could clearly see that an entire section had slipped down in a landslide.

"Oh for fuck’s sake, again?!" N exclaimed and made a motion to run up to the commotion, only to remember I was still here.

She hesitated, but looked towards the landslide in urgency. N then gave me a glare, "Stay here and don't do anything stupid."

I rolled my eyes, "You got cameras around."

N paused and gave a glance towards the ceiling, then she pointed at me and slowly nodded, “That I do...”

Then she spread her wings and took a flight. Well what do you know! They were real!

Which leaves me to my own devices...

Don’t do anything stupid, eh? Pfft, no worries. I’ll just… take a look around!

And with that I turned one-eighty with a shit-eating grin.

"I SWEAR TO MY STRIPED ASS, I'LL TURN YOU INTO SCRAP! AGAIN!?"

As N was berating her robotic workforce on the other side of the hangar, I made my way towards the boxes I spotted earlier. I looked back before inconspicuously moving the boxes out of the way to get a look behind the grey curtain.

My suspicions were proven correct. There was a room on the other side, concealed by the curtain for it to look like there was just a wall behind. With one last look back, I slipped underneath it..

It was a little bit darker on the other side, with the only illumination coming from beneath the curtain. Plus, my windshades did not make seeing in the darkness any easier, so I moved them up behind my horn.

"HOW MANY TIMES I HAVE TO TELL YOU! DO. NOT. DIG. HOLES! MOVE THE JUNK FROM THE TOP!"

From what I could see, the place was kind of creepy with the low ceiling and deactivated droids scattered all around.

I hated narrow spaces. Not on the level of claustrophobia, but I hated narrow spaces either way. It was embarrassing, and a shiver went down my spine. Especially when I passed a mech looking like a skeleton of a dragon. Dim red eyes and all.

"DON'T LOOK AT ME, DIG THEM OUT!"

I felt like at any moment everything would suddenly turn on and start slowly crawling towards me with words ‘Kill me!’ and ‘Give me your flesh!’ and other cliche horror one-liners.

Then I spotted a two legged white and blue astromech about my size. "Sweet!" I whispered. It was exactly something I was looking for!

I was just about to whip out my HoloPone to look up its specifications on the Scale, but then I noticed a small cylindrical device embedded in the droid’s side.

A limiter. Slowly, I walked away.

I looked around in dread and sure enough, all of the droids inside had a limiter on some part of their body.

"Uhh..." I bit my lip, "Suddenly the crazy idea of crazy killer bots is not as crazy anymore."

*crash*

“OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD”

I heard stories of people electrocuted by their robots, because their neighbor thought it would be funny to program the autonomous intelligence in their droid to understand its place in the world. There is a very good reason why that is a very bad idea. If I suddenly woke up and realized my head was being used to hammer down nails, I would start hammering people down too!

I had a feeling that if I took any of these guys home, they would strangle me in my sleep. ...or more likely yeet itself off the farm.

I took a stroll through the back lines to try and find something that would be useful and without the limiter on it, but luck was not on my side.

Still, it was quite a journey. There were some really weird mechanisms I never even heard about. There was a large bulbous mech sitting in the background with tentacles spread out beneath it and a limiter just dangling on one of its limbs. It looked somewhat like a Beldon, so I had a feeling the thing was made by some nerds studying Kitein's wildlife.

Then I spotted one in the shape of a Terran. Two legs, two arms, and golden plating. Short Scale-ing later, and I found out it is a protocol droid. Man, even the large ball with tentacles was more interesting! Then I noticed the thing had like, five different types of limiters widely spread out across its surface. Well shit...

There were heavy mechs for lifting, armed droids for manufacture, robots for handling shit. Literally. And bots looking like a...

Like a...

“What in the world...”

“AND I SWEAR IF YOU DO THIS AGAIN, YOU’LL BE A PART OF THAT PILE!”

I’ve never in my whole life seen another member of my own species. Safe for the one in the mirror. Ever since I was just a small squirt I kind of figured I was some kind of secret undiscovered species or something, since my disguise was virtually impossible to distinguish from the real thing. But considering I also possessed some kind of emotional mind-reading, I figured I would simply know when I came across another… me-species.

I barely even knew the name! It was something like… Different, uh… -ing.

But the resemblance was unmistakable. Just the black shell and the holes in its four legs made it immediately clear.

I was looking at a Differentning.

Or at least a droid version of it.

I made my way closer around the line of other droids, to take a better look.

It looked deactivated and in a sitting position, its holey forelegs kept it upright with its head slumped over. Its eyes were either dim or closed, I wasn’t sure. Unlike my natural form with my silky mane, the droid was completely bald, safe for some kind of cosmetic black fins on the back of the droid’s neck. On the sides of its neckline were two buttons or something. Could be a cosmetic, or it could shoot lasers for all I knew. On its back, In place of its elytra was some sort of black glassy looking cover, but it wasn’t see-through, I could tell that much. And from what I could see, it had no tail.

My attention was brought back towards its head. The droid’s ears were designed to look like tattered black antennae decorated with their own little holes. I poked one of them and the thing moved on its axis. Finally there was the horn, not as sharp as mine, it was more of a slim straight thing with two black stripes of the same glassy material along its length.

Overall, I really did dig the look. It was all polished and smooth. Fancy all around with the whole hole-ey decoration. Guess my species really do dig the hole concept, hehe. It even had a cute little mouth with two tiny fangs sticking out of it.

I kinda… wanted the thing. No, not kinda. I really wanted it. Who knows what kind of things it knows about my kind! Though I hope N won’t spontaneously learn to hear my thoughts, else she would scrub me of every credit. Though, a glance towards the limiter firmly embedded in the mech’s side really had me reconsider.

Speaking of the devil, I felt the distinct ‘There-she-is’ coming off from behind me before I noticed the shadow crawling up to me.

"You do realize how the Dragon Lord feels about slavery," I turned around. "Right N?"

N looked like she was about to speak when I interrupted her. She glanced towards a near corner before noticing the droid I talked about. Interesting...

"What? Oh no! Nonono. It’s not what it looks like, Violet." N pointed around the shady room packed with potentially dangerous droids, limited only by a small cylindrical device which could fall off just by looking at it too harshly. "This is my storage room for all the droids scavengers find and bring in." The Zebra started explaining, “Most people don’t really care what’s in the head of the droid. They just find it, shoot it with a limiter and bring it here. I then place them here to wait till I have time, then one by one either reset them or place them on the shelves. Depending on what I find inside.”

I nodded in acknowledgement. I pretty much figured that’s what was going on here, though it was nice to have a confirmation. I tried to take a look towards the corner N gave a glance.

“And this cute little guy,” N then walked past me and blocked my view before patting the black droid on the head, "Is Black Empire tech!"

Black Empire huh? Cool. Sounds ominous though. Wait… Please don’t tell me my species are bad guys!

“I...” I paused. I had to think through what I wanted to say. I wanted her to know I was interested, but also needed some more info, “I won’t lie, that thing looks awesome. But… I am not entirely sure if it even does what I need it to do.” I shrugged and pointed at the droid, “What does it do?"

N bit her lip, “Well… To be also completely honest, I am not one-hundred percent sure what it’s capable of either,” Seeing my lifted eyebrow, N proceeded to quickly reassure me, “But! The things I’ve heard about Black Empire tech and from my own initial scans and tests, this thing is supposed to be the main workforce maintaining their starships. I am talking here about military grade technology. Communication, construction, maintenance, even security!”

That caught my attention, “Communication you say?”

“Yeah!” N nodded, “Though don’t expect it to host an army of drones like that Master-Class server I sold your aunt. I can guarantee...” She paused in thought. “One. Maybe Two drones simultaneously. You’ll have to try more by yourself.”

Damn. And she wasn’t bullshiting. If she was right, I could rig the droid to host a few drones and do maintenance on the main server and docked drones just as I wanted…

I started liking the drone more and more...

I bit my lip, “What about compatibility?”

N had a wide grin on her face. “It has all the compatibilities.”

My eyebrow went up, “You kidding...”

N pointed at its forehead, “That horn is not just for show. It is its main access key, just point it at a socket and it will do its magic. And I mean literally! This thing can fling spells around like it’s nobody’s business!” She really looked really excited about the droid. And who could blame her, that thing sounded amazing! And expensive…

“Does it turn on?” I asked my final question.

“Oh absolutely!” The Zebra quickly nodded, “I hadn’t tested it much as it came on a short notice, but I am proud to say the limiter works flawlessly! Just have to clear its head so there are no issues.”

That was it then. I was sold. No matter what, I had to somehow acquire that black insectoid droid else everything that droid has in it will be scrubbed clean. Though, I had absolutely no doubts that N would make sure I wouldn’t get it for cheap.

Time to wave my bullshit card.

"Hmmm." I mused, "I'll give you five thousand units for it."

N bulved out her eyes, "Pfff HAHaha, w-what?" She laughed, "Hello? Are you deaf or something? This one is worth at least five hundred thousand units!"

I waved with my hoof, "I mean, yeah, maybe." I shrugged, "But no way anyone would be buying a slave and then have the Dragon Lord breathing down their necks."

N rolled her eyes at me, "Come on, kid. I thought we cleared that one out." She pointed at the mech, "I would know if I had an Artificial Intelligence or KI in my hangar. It's the first thing I check! This thing is autonomous, not alive. None of them are! It's just a piece of equipment. Five hundred thousand units is the price, if you don't have the credit bugger off!"

I gave her a shrug, "Tell that to the Exos when they come down here, looking for some of the 'new rare tech' they've heard about."

That shut her up.

I felt a little bit of panicked 'shit' followed by N's brainstorming. Just a little push and I should have a sweet new bug bot just for myself.

"Seriously!" I shook my head at her, "I can already imagine some kind of chubby short official from Exo, waltzing in with an armed escort and just taking shit with a bullshit reason like I just said." I waved towards the mech, "I am telling you right now that this thing is painting a big fat target at you. I am pretty much doing a service to you! Three thousand units!

N gave me a death glare and I backtracked from her 'I-don't-need-your-shit-right-now'.

"Don't push it, kid." The Zebra growled, then returned to her brainstorming.

I tried to take a good read on her, but the storm of emotions moved around in her head a bit too quickly to get anything specific. All I could feel was ‘panic’ ‘panic’ and more ‘panic’. It was pretty entertaining seeing her trying to keep a straight face.

"Twenty thousand units." N suddenly exclaimed.

I sucked in air and then it was me who began brainstorming.

Twenty thousand credit units was a lot. There is no way I would have enough to buy a good server from N on top of this mech, and auntie definitely wouldn’t like it. Fortunately, I had one more negotiation point to spend on her.

“Ten,” I said and N began to shake her head, “And I’ll take it off your hooves today. Limiter and everything.”

The zebra gave a glance towards the droid and kept looking at it.

Only one small push remained, “C’mon. Knowing you, you bought it off a scavenger for a thousand units or something ridiculous.”

That did it.

“Twelve thousand units.” N said.

"Deal." I stretched my hoof towards her.

The zebra sighed but lifted her own striped hoof for a hoof shake.

"How do you want to deliver it?" She went straight for the business part of the deal, no longer as upbeat. I would have felt bad, but the bitch deserved it.

"The usual." I nodded, “I have a cargo, so I’ll come for it in my speeder around the back.”

The zebra nodded, lifted her HoloPone and started fiddling with it with a feather tip.

Seeing her distracted, I took my chance and inconspicuously made my way around her and towards a near corner. Before N realized where I was going I was already gawking at the one thing she was anxious about me finding.

There in a corner was a compacted robot sitting on the floor. I immediately recognized it as the Mr. Handy type of Nebulan shell of the Terran design. Pretty common, and I’ve seen my fair share floating by the streets. I heard Nebulans like to change their forms like clothes. Which… I actually can relate to!

It was probably empty though.

Nebulans were a very much sapient race. A formless mass of electro-magnetism, but sapient nonetheless. One being here, with a limiter no less, would have quite the interesting implications.

"Holy shit, is that a Nebulan shell?" I announced that I found the Zebra’s little secret.

N whipped around and pointed with one of her wings at me, “Don’t even think about it, kid. You cost me a lot already.”

I ignored her and examined the shell from all sides, "Man, the things I could do with an empty Nebulan shell..."

I paused, when I felt her dread.

"It is empty,” I turned to her. “Right?"

N was glowering at me with one twitching eye.

I grinned, "Oh, N… What was that about slavery?"

```

\ /

```

Holy shit! I can’t believe I just did that!

Oh she was so mad. But I got two droids for just fifteen thousand units! Aw man, that was like my best deal yet! I just… I just had to brag! There was no way around it!

I was almost at the docks where I had my speeder parked when I could no longer put off the part where I had to brag to someone about my escapades. But it was still a few blocks away so I decided to walk on my three legs and lifted my left foreleg on which I had my HoloPone. With a quick flick of my horn, I texted my best bud.

It took a few minutes before Rig responded, but eventually my HP gave out a chirp.

*RAM*

A blur of grey passed right in front of my face. Before I could react, I was laying on my back, dazed from an impact. I was so thoroughly caught off-guard that I just laid there on the ground just dumbly staring off into the transparent ceiling of the tunnel, trying to comprehend what just happened.

When I finally came to my senses, I figured I had to walk into something face first. Though, that something had to run me over and stayed there as I noticed a whole new weight settled itself on my chest when I tried to move.

Then when I looked down, I found a pony laying on top of me.

It was an earthpony. Her narrow feminine features clued her gender as has her face covered by a light grey hide and a styled black mane. Black jacket covered the rest of her body, with only her likewise black tail poking out on the other side.

There was a painful groan and then the mare's eyes fluttered open, showing violet iris which quickly focused on my own.

"Hello there..." I exclaimed.

I could feel the mare's confusion, panic and embarrassment which I could only decipher as 'I-can't-believe-this-just-happened'

A flash of panic and realization she's still laying on top of me later, the mare jumped up and started apologizing.

"Er…” The mare started. “I terribly apologize, I was in a hurry and wasn't paying any attention. I just looked elsewhere for a spell and-"

I also got up to my hooves, only to realize my windshades slid down my face. Then I made the mistake of not adjusting them with my magic and instead lifted my left hoof to set them in place around my eyes. A hoof that still had my blaster holster attached to it.

“—and OHSWEETCELESTIAITSAGUN!” The grey mare suddenly shouted.

I couldn’t help but to jump a little, then I leaned backwards with widened eyes from her sudden outburst.

"Whoa." I noted, "You are definitely new in Tropo."

The way she was still glancing at my holster on my foreleg and then for an escape route, with the combination of ‘I-AM-IN-DANGER’, had me worried she would run away screaming, though she held it in pretty well.

“Lady chill!” I exclaimed, trying to calm her down, “It’s fine. I wasn't paying any attention either.” Then, I lifted my other hoof towards the mare for a shake and gave her a toothy grin. “Violet Sky. Nice running into ya!”

“Er… Quite.” The grey mare gave my hoof a glance, before trying and failing to replicate my expression. “Uh… Olivia.” She said, then bumped my hoof with her own instead, “Olivia Walker is the name.”

The mare then did a short breathing exercise, after which she visibly calmed down. She also made an attempt at adjusting her black frazzled mane with mixed results, but overall stood a bit straighter with a facade of… kinda stuck up professionalism now that I noticed.. "I uh… I apologize for my outburst. I am certain that you are a completely respectable pony. I simply… Er, I heard about this area of the Thunderhead and assumed…"

I stopped her, "If the things were about Tropo, they are most likely true. You really should be careful around here."

And there goes her collected ‘higher-than-thou’ demeanor. Wasn’t all that big of a fan of it anyway.

I grinned and poked her in the chest before she spiraled down into panic and paranoia, “Hey, wanna hang out?”

The mare jumped at my touch, but immediately made an attempt at calming down, before she acknowledged my words. "W-what?"

“If you want to hangout?” I repeated myself, “You know… walk around, talk about stuff, and get to know each other!”

Suddenly, the grey earthpony stepped back with a bewildered expression, which wasn’t exactly how I expected her to react. Eh? Was it something I said?

"I just mauled you, and you want to… ‘hang out’?” The mare looked at me strangely, though it was more in ‘genuine-surprise’ than ‘I-think-you-will-lead-me-into-an-alley-and-murder-me’. I suppose no one has ever interacted with her in such a way before.

"What can I say?" I shrugged and grinned, "Not many ponies around here in Thunderhead to get mauled by!"

A plethora of emotions I could feel going on through her head. Most notable was the ‘not-sure’ and some form of doubt slash suspicion, and a round of ‘genuine-interest’, but all of that was quickly swept aside by a surge of 'I-have-places-to-be'.

“I uh… I cannot right now...” The mare nervously scratched her leg.

“No problem," I waved her off, "I also have places to be. Here." I lifted my HoloPone and sent her a message. "An address for a club where I work part-time. It's a pretty chill place and doubles as a cozy cantina in sound-isolated places if the loud music isn't your thing."

Her own HoloPone chirped and she lifted an eyebrow at me, "A Cantina?"

"Yeah!" I grinned, "They even play real bangers, neat place to relax and party!"

She looked down the corridor, thinking about it, "I suppose..."

"I'll see you there then, Olivia Walker." I said and made a motion to walk away.

The mare nodded and tried to match my smile, "I'll see if I can come by… Violet Sky."

I gave her a small salute and went on my way.

Nice girl! Her unique nasal accent is pretty cute too.

I didn't wait a single moment and started walking on three legs again with my face in the HoloPone.

I let my hoof fall right back down and groaned in embarrassment.

After that minor embarrassment, I decided to walk the rest of the way, actually looking where I was going.

I rounded one more corner and found myself in a familiar dark and enclosed corridor covered by graffiti and stains, which led into a metallic gate that opened as I approached.

Behind was another gate and I had to wait till the one behind me closed before I could proceed. The gate checkpoint was here just so the wind speed and pressure difference in the docks and the outside didn't make a mayhem down the tunnels.

Nothing dangerous, but the wind rushing through the streets wouldn’t be pleasant either.

Finally the gate opened and revealed the docking hall beyond.

It was a long and wide hall, supported by a plethora of columns and lights in the floor marking empty spots.

One massive hole was in the place of the entire left wall, through which I flew in earlier. My airspeeder was in its spot too, still waiting for me along with its cargo holder. So that’s where I trotted off to, and as I walked around a few other docked vehicles, I was already lifting my own HoloPone to start up my blue airspeeder.

That's when I felt something.

'There-she-is'

I always could recognize when someone was thinking about me. Everything was unusually clear and easier to read, where if they felt something for someone else or even just to themselves and no one in particular, it was like trying to read in a mist.

I discreetly glanced around with the corner of my eyes and did my best to monitor my immediate surroundings. Thankfully, no one was trying to sneak up on me just yet and even managed to find the source of the feelings.

It was the same drake I saw earlier flying through the tunnels. Just chilling by the far side, leaning against a wall and smoking. He wasn't really hiding. On the contrary, he literally had neon lights in his hoodie illuminating his scaly face with yellow haze, and even his spines glowed in purple along his back down his tail which was lazily sliding across the floor.

He was a common punk. There were plenty of street gangs and other territorial groups around the Thunderhead, but thankfully they kept it to just some vandalism, and at worst smuggling. When you have notoriously known territorial and hoarding species and then you add in a growth spurt, you end up with an army of teen kids that want to join up with the baddest gangs and be all cool and bad. The neons were a dead giveaway.

So far he didn’t show much interest in me, and was far on the other side of the hall to try anything if he suddenly changed his mind. Which I took full advantage of.

I approached the airspeeder and gave a signal with my HP to open the cockpit. When the punk didn’t move, I crawled in and started the engines. All the while the drake did nothing and kept smoking like it was nobody's business.

And then I flew away in my airspeeder. No-one jumped me, no-one came to rob me. Nothing.

Honestly? He was probably just watching my ass.

```

/ \ |>--(XXX)--<| \ /

```

*chirp* *chirp*

A familiar sound welcomed a new customer in the Scrapyard at Feathered Zebra.

The zebra merchant was absent. Replaced with a droid head on the counter which observed the newcomer tentatively looking around the entrance, "W-Welcome." It spoke in a broken electronic voice, "Look around and sss- and see if there is-s anything you like."

The customer took a quick look around the displayed devices before making a beeline for the head behind the cage.

"I am here for something specific."

"If you require as-s-assis-s-as-s..." It paused. "Assistance, please wait till my mas-s-master returns." The head replied.

"And how long—"

*Shut*

That's when the winged zebra returned and took notice of the new customer.

"Do you need anything?" N approached as the door to the backroom closed, then unplugged the droid head which promptly powered down.

"I am looking for a lost drone. Black, with fangs, and holes in his legs."

The zebra lifted an eyebrow at the newcomer, "Ya mean a droid?"

"...Yes."

At the answer, N briefly threw a glance around the shop to make sure they were the only ones present, then turned back.

"I have no idea where you got the info, but I don't care enough." The zebra glared, "Either way, you are out of luck. I just sold it, and the droid left the building... a while ago."

"However..." The winged zebra lifted her forelegs on top of the counter and leaned forward, "Depends on how much you are willing to pay... I might just tell you who bought it."

The newcomer on the other side of the cage briefly glanced towards the corner next to the entrance.

“I am certain we can come to an agreement…”

The zebra failed to notice the customer discreetly swung with their hoof, but that might have been because of her glassed over eyes staring into the other set of violet eyes. “I uhh… I’m listening?”

“Hmmm…"

"…I see…"

"…Thank you for your cooperation. Would you kindly edit the footage on your cameras too? That would be swell. Make sure that you don’t remember me…"

"…It has been a pleasure.”

As the newcomer turned away and left, they stopped by the left corner besides the exit. The cylindrical device there sat dormant, not even its usual green light was glowing. A hoof slid down and picked a small disc from underneath, at which the device sprung to life once more.

Then the customer left.