The command ship was as large as it needed to be. Which was, in in most cases, large but not massive. The automatic factories on the nearest low-gravity planet made a large ship unnecessary. Endless cities devoid of any living population, built from self-replicating fission-powered machines were continuously engaged in endlessly harvesting, packaging, and distributing resources as the command ship demanded. It was a form of production that had proved totally useless for any other purpose. The population of Equestria had never changed substantially since Twilight had become Princess and eventually created the Alicorn. It had never decreased due to her sheer will—but at the cost that, as the population became increasingly immortal, it could never grow. So material or energy resources were never a problem, and there was never a lack of either. Save for one. The only resource that mattered. The Milk.

The purpose of the orbital vessel was not to fight directly. That was the point of precision temporal insertion, a field that Shining Armor was considered the reigning master in. The world below had no weapon which could attack them directly and no allies that could assist them. The ship, as armored as it was, was perfectly safe simply by distance. The Proto-Vandrare could probably even see it, if they cared to look with a proper telescope, but even as close as it was there was nothing they could do to stop it. It was probably better that they did not comprehend the utter futility of their position—and best for Spike that he never thought about it directly.

Instead, the Iron Protector was meant as a base of operations. It housed the pilots that operated the tripod mechs and fliers that served as ground forces.

Spike entered one of the banks, and was immediately struck by a strange familiarity. For a moment, he looked up at the vast shelf-like levels of the hollow cylinder and once again found himself a foot-tall dragonling staring up at Twilight’s shelves filled with thousands upon thousands of books that he had organized himself with painstaking precision. Except these were larger. They were not shelves. They were a weapon.

Circling each level were individual cubicles large enough to fit the ponies that sat in their chairs, their hand carapaces separated to allow for the living myelin of the control system to be plugged directly into the circuitry of their transplanted bodies. The cubicles were cockpits, each with a door lined with a blue line around its rim—and each one was both visible from the ship, from the rear of them, despite the fact that they were also on the planet. Each pony was simultaneously on the ship and in the cockpit of their tripod mech, raining down chaos on the Proto-Vandrare across the planet.

Spike examined this, hearing the dull whir of hundreds of machines surrounding him—and jumped when he heard a sudden explosion. A burst of flame came from his side and one of the cockpits snapped out of its alcove, the door slamming closed with a resounding clang as it locked its armored iris closed.

“Dang it!” cried a dark gray stallion, slamming his fist into the controls of his chair.

“Thunderlane,” said Spike, approaching him. “Are you okay?”

“Okay? No I’m not okay!” He disconnected one of his hands and rubbed the lines implanted into the back of his neck. “This thing has some kick to it, any harder and it would have pulled my head off! Again! Do you know how much that smarts?”

“Not really, no.”

He groaned. “Of course you wouldn’t.” He began typing on one of the controls. “Worse, I lost my mech! To one of those stupid clunky metal jalopies!”

“It’s fine. We have more. Reinsert.”

“What do you think I’m doing right now? I’m no quitter!”

The edge of his door flashed with magic and opened once again, his cockpit sliding forward and integrating into a new mech. Through its forward screen, Spike could see it beginning to rise, emerging from its landing pod and standing to its full height. There was a spark of magic as the system reintegrated the engines, and Thunderlane was off again. Spike paused to watch the world passing his screen, now visible at eye-level for an eighty-foot mech. A world still green with a blue sky—but now with so much more fire than it really should have had.

All systems were nominal. The last time he had invaded this world, the linkages were not nearly as sophisticated. The pilots had actually been piloting their own mechs on the surface. Retrieval was accomplished through an energy-intensive teleport. It had taken days to recover the sick, let alone to recover the bodies when the Germ hit. Fortunately, steps had been taken. Emergency systems to provide them with Alicorn so that even if they died they would never truly be lost. All ponies were immortal. Such was the will of Twilight Sparkle.

Seeing nothing amiss, Spike left the room through the archway that connected it to the long equipment loading corridor. It was barely lit, but as he approached, he saw a dull light in the distance. It was a body-mounted light belonging to an earth pony pushing a loader down the track, all alone. Supplies that Spike was not expecting—until he drew closer and realized that it was not supplies at all.

The pony was Parcel Post, his head grafted into a heavy support-body. The loader he was pushing carried a specialized crate, the sides of which were open to reveal a box that had become all-too familiar. A box covered in insidious, glowing runes.

Spike stopped. For a moment, he could hardly talk. But he knew he had to.

“Fleur.”

Parcel Post stopped, looking confused and even somewhat ashamed.

“Spike” said Fleur, her voice projected mechanically from her container.

“You’re actually going to do it.”

“Am I not a mare of my word, Spike? I have said that zis is what I wish to do. And nothing is going to stop me. Not even you. As you have promised.”

Spike looked up to Parcel Post. “Can we...have a moment?”

He turned to the box.

“Yes,” said Fleur. “Zis is an acceptable request.”

Post hesitated, but then nodded to Spike and walked into the light of the control cylinder, watching the pilots and their screens intently and with an expression of awe on his face at the wonders that Equestrian technology had achieved.

Spike was silent for several moments, but forced himself to speak. “I am not going to try to stop you.”

“Is zat so?”

“I don’t think you’d let me.”

“Ah. See? So long together, you really were paying attention, no?”

Spike smiled. “But I really wish you wouldn’t. Please, Fleur. I can’t...I can’t lose you again.”

“And you shall not. But zis? I am sorry, Spike. Zis is something I must do. You...may not understand. But it is very much important to me.”

Spike held up his hand to the box, but Fleur stopped him.

“No. None of zat. Not for my sake. I am not dying, Spike. Ze system, she is safe. Zis is not goodbye.”

“Can I...can I at least see you?”

She paused, taken aback. “Spike, no. Zis is...not ze time. Zis is not something you wish to see. Believe me.”

“I know what you are. What that planet did to you. What I did to--”

“NO. It was not you zat did zis to me.”

“I was in command--”

“I will not have zis debate!”

“Then at least look me in the eye,” he said. “I know what you are, what you had to become. But please. I don’t...if you...if you...”

Fleur paused. “You could not bear for ze result to be as with Rarity. But zis is not ze same. I am not beautiful. Not anymore.”

“Just...show me. Please.”

Fleur sighed, but acquiesced. From an internal mechanism, the box began to open.

The metal hissed and clicked, motivated by internal mechanisms that existed only in an abstract sense. The black shielding split and then, with a dull, quiet hiss, slid apart. The runes did not move, as they were not inscribed on the metal but rather projected onto it from the outside—so the metal slid away, smooth and unmarked, while the spell instead ingrained itself onto the glass tank held within, the shimmering purple light casting volumetric beams through the turbid liquid contained within.

Spike had known. In a fully abstract sense, he had always understood what she was. Now, though, he saw her. What 997-G had done to her, and the sheer and terrible lengths that Twilight was willing to go to achieve absolute survival of the pony race.

Her body had already been severed and disincorporated long before she had died. As such, all that remained was the head, floating in the exact center of the box, roughly on its side and facing down. Her skin, once so white and covered in a coat so very silky, had become brown and taught, a layer of pale mummified leather clinging to shriveled muscle and partially-exposed vertebrae. Little of her mane remains apart from a few gray strands emerging in clumps, floating lazily around her. Her eyes had long since dissolved, leaving a pair of gaping skeletal holes. Her face, like the remainder of her skin, had retracted, her lips curling and drawing back to reveal her teeth, her jaw fixed perpetually open in an expression that looked almost like a scream. Blood no longer flowed through her. Her brain had hardened and solidified, and she no longer drew breath. There was no longer a reason to plug the hole where she had once met her robotic anthropomorphic body. In the reflection of her glass prison, Spike could see the exposed remnants of shriveled veins and her decayed spinal cord—and several glints of silvery wire.

The only part that remained close to what it had once been was her horn. They had not cut if off as they did for most of the dead, to better fit them in the boxes. Fleur, like the rest of them, could no longer cast magic; her body was devoid of Milk, powered solely by the Alicorn. And yet that last remnant of what she had once been still remained, perhaps treasured or perhaps an unending mockery.

“Now you can understand,” she said, softly. When she spoke, the mixture of formaldehyde she floated in ignited with sickly green light, its glow illuminating the gossamer threads of viscosity that linked her head to the media that sustained her and prevented her from decaying further. The last remnant, the head of her long-dead corpse, the solidified anchor that kept her soul from ever being truly severed. Such was the ultimate gift of Twilight Sparkle: perfect immortality, and an endless utopia of permanent survival.

“You’re still beautiful.”

“No, Spike. I am dead. Do not lie to my face. But, more important, please. Do not lie to yourself. I am...at peace. With what I am. Yet I was always so afraid that you, you would...”

“I always knew what you are. And no matter what your body looks like, you’re still Fleur De’Lis.” Spike smiled, staring into her empty eye sockets. “Please,” he said. “Please be safe. Just...come back to me, okay?”

Fleur’s eyeless and expressionless face stared back at him, unable to move in the slightest, but the cloudy media flashed.

“This, I promise,” she said.

Spike gave the glass a final poke, over the spot where her nose once had been. The pain was excruciating, but he ignored it. Then the box began to close, and Parcel Post had already started to return.

“I am ready,” said Fleur. “Load me into my new body.”

Parcel Post looked to Spike.

“It’s not my decision,” he said. “She may be dead, but she’s still a pony. She still gets to choose.” He nodded to the box. “Good luck.”

“No,” said Fleur. “You will be the one who requires the luck. Please preserve it for yourself. Until I return.”

Spike smiled, and watched as she was wheeled off to battle.

Author's Note

The machines which churn forth love and happiness derive their action from fuel. This fuel may be specific.