Chapter Twenty-Two
Philosophy and Mutiny
"Oh, you don't know how glad I am to see you!" I said to my leering, over-armored twin.[1] "I've been improvising like mad ever since we accidentally came to this universe! I'd love to compare parallels and commonalities, but the imperial airships will be here any—"
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[1] And it was a very good thing she didn't.
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"You—you—liar!" screamed somepony from behind me. It sounded a lot like Loose Leaf, but the voice was so distorted by hysteria, I couldn't be sure.
Ao turned and drew her sword in one fluid motion. I desperately wanted to tell her not to kill the crazy pegasus, but I couldn't afford to show an iota of weakness or hesitation in front of the real Replenisher of Graves.
"Meddle not in the affairs of goddesses, fools!" Ao said. "None of you can comprehend what passes here."
The plurality worried me, but I sighed and rolled my eyes as if a rebellion of the native pegasi behind me was only a minor irritation. There was no way I—or the whole of Nebula's crew for that matter—could fight the mare standing in front of me. If I understood the runes on her armor correctly, anypony who even touched her would be killed instantly.
Our one hope would be to convince her to believe we were on her side. I am good at making friends, but the usual techniques were too slow, and many of them weren't appropriate for the situation anyway. That's why I was acting as if we were already close friends.[2]
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[2] See Appendix A: Dubious Techniques, page 237, The Compendium of Friendship, third edition.
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Midnight Sparkle[3] gave a brief glance at whatever was going on behind me and then turned her attention back to me. "Some of your crew seem to be a bit disappointed in you, little one."
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[3] I will use this name for the other Twilight Sparkle from now on in this narrative. It is not meant to be judgemental, merely an appropriate descriptor to avoid confusion.
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I grinned at her. "I just smashed the foundation of the Empire to sand for them, and that's the thanks I get! Typical."
Steel rang on steel behind me, and it took every ounce of willpower I had to stop myself from turning around. Midnight sighed and her horn flared briefly. All sound and sense of motion from behind me ceased instantly. "That sounds like an exaggeration, from what the blacklips have told me about your little raids. You wouldn't be lying to me would you?"
I shrugged. "I'll show you," I replied casually and turned toward Nebula. Ao and four pegasi hung frozen in stasis fields below her bow. I ignored them and called out, "Linwood! Get five of your friends around a medallion and tap out, if you please."
"Any hostile action would be very unwise," Midnight said softly behind me.
I looked back at her out of the corner of my eye. "It would be stupid, you mean. Since when have any of us been stupid, sister?"
She lifted an eyebrow at the word, but said nothing.
Linwood gathered five other unicorns to her in Nebula's bow. She raised her hoof above the medallion-capped crystal, but before bringing it down, she called out, "Thank you for everything Twilight!" Her hoof fell and the group disappeared in a corruscating burst of portal magic.
I turned back to Midnight. "See? I mass-produced and then distributed those things all over the Empire. By now, there won't be more than a few hundred unicorns left in the whole place. By the end of the week, there'll be none at all. No unicorns, no power, no problem!" Wild exaggeration came easier to me than outright lying, it seemed.
Midnight smiled slightly, not showing her teeth, which I took for a good sign. "And the mass of airships I see approaching? No problem there?"
"Oh, those," I said. "I was kind of hoping to jury-rig this gate so I could get my ship home before they arrived. Their ships will run out of power in a few days, and that will be the last of the Grand Imperial Fleet."
"Clever," she said, staring at the distant airships and nodding slightly. She continued to gaze at the horizon for a few more moments and then added, "But not really satisfying, you know? As one of the Dark Twilights, you must realize that upholding a reputation is important. Now, an entire fleet smashed from the sky? That would impress ponies!"
Uh-oh. I forced myself to grin, and I waved a wing dismissively. "Who cares what these backwater rubes think?"
Midnight gave me an odd look, and I realized I had misstepped. She reached out toward my head with a wingtip. It would have been a more kindly gesture if she had been intending to touch me with one of her bare feathers, rather than an enchanted wingblade. I could clearly see the death spell etched into the side of the blade. Anypony it touched, other than its owner, would be instantly torn and twisted into a bloody ruin.
The cool metal stroked my cheek, and it was the slow, sensuous way she did it that gave me a sudden idea. I smiled, closed my eyes briefly, and leaned into it as if it were a caress from Luna. Midnight seemed satisfied with her test and began to lower her wing, but I stepped forward, and brought my face closer to hers, whispering, "Mmmm... Perhaps later, we could…?"
"Oh?" She grinned widely. "But first a little battle to get our hearts pumping, and then—"
"Oh, all right," I said, as seductively as possible while trying not to shiver. "We know what we like. Confidence, strength…" I wrapped my wings around her armored neck. "And it's been a very long time since I came across a version of myself who was so deliciously powerful."
Yes, of course I kissed her. I thought of Luna, and I kissed her hard. She kissed me back, putting tongue and teeth into it, and when I drew back, my lower lip was bleeding. I licked the blood away and smiled at her. I showed all of my teeth.
A flash of my horn dispelled the stasis field around Ao, and I screamed, "Cork her! NOW!"
We all hit the deck and Sugarpine fired the full charge of the anti-magic gun straight into Midnight Sparkle's face.
As I had expected, the reflexive mandalas that were part of her armor disrupted the spell matrix before it could affect any of the built-in defensive systems. The orichalcum double spiral around her horn would have stopped the spell from nullifying her personal magic as well, if it had been powered. But it wasn't.
Midnight Sparkle snarled. Her eyes blazed—and then went wide in shock as she realized she couldn't use magic any longer.
"You shouldn't have reminded me that your armor is attuned specifically to you," I said. "When it didn't kill me on contact, I knew that, as far as it was concerned, you and I are identical."
"You… You…" She sputtered in a wholly satisfactory way.
"You wouldn't be able to remove that helmet unless you disconnected it from the big charged crystal on your back, right?" I unfurled my clenched primaries to reveal the short piece of orichalcum power cable that I'd pulled from its sockets as I had kissed her. I held it up for her to see, smashed the connectors at each end, and threw it over the edge of the platform.
"Your armor's defense spells are still working," I continued. "But how long do you think they'll hold out against a series of full broadsides?" She followed my pointing hoof to see that Sirocco had swung Nebula until her starboard side was facing the gate platform. Every gun aboard her was crowded at the rail and pointed in Midnight's direction. "Face it. My friends and I have outmaneuvered you. Return to your world through the gate and let us take care of this situation ourselves. Please."
Midnight Sparkle continued to gape at me for a second, and then she laughed. She threw back her head and let loose a wild and unrestrained laughter that forced a smile from me, even as it made me slightly uneasy. She stomped her armored hooves in glee until the obsidian beneath them was webbed with cracks.
"Oh, oh, yes!" She cried out. "A thousand thousand worlds, and I am never less than brilliant! Oh, little one, you've delighted me beyond your knowing tonight!"
"I'm glad you're happy," I said, no longer smiling. "As long as you leave—"
"When I'm finished," she said, patiently.
"My friends have enough firepower aimed at you to—"
"Your friends?" she asked, raising her eyebrows in mock puzzlement. "Oh yes, of course you have friends!" Her eyes narrowed to slits and her smile turned smug. "So, why in the world would you think that I don't?"
Midnight Sparkle took a second to savor my expression and then lifted her head and called out, "OH, SPIIIKE!"
"Roadapples," I said softly as my ears drooped. She was at least a few hundred years older than I was, and that meant...
The solid stone platform beneath my hooves shook, and a sound almost too low to hear rumbled out from the direction of the library building.
"Take my advice, and don't bother shooting at him," Midnight said, casually. "You'll only make him mad."
The thud of massive footfalls made the platform vibrate beneath us. A deep, rumbling voice called out, "Trouble, Twi?"
Spike's massive head emerged from behind the building, about thirty feet above the ground. His scarred muzzle swung in our direction, and he peered curiously down at us all. He was wearing what would have been considered light armor on a pony. It must have weighed a couple of tons, at least.
"Everything's fine, Spike," Midnight said. "This little Twilight got a bit clever on me, so we'll have to take out the fleet the old fashioned way."
He chuckled as he approached. It sounded like a minor avalanche of granite boulders. "Send 'em to Celestia?"
"Express delivery," she said, smiling up at him.
He bent his neck down and stretched out a wing to provide a ramp for Midnight to walk up to his back. Evidently, he was also impervious to her armor's spells. She climbed up to a spot just behind his head and settled in.
The blacklips had been hanging back, but the stallion stepped forward then and asked, "What do you wish us to do, Your Highness?"
She looked down at him. "Take shelter in the fortress for now. You've been given the Book of Laws. Learn it. Copy it, and send it out across the world." She turned her gaze on us again. "Leave this cute little Twilight and her raggedy crew to their own devices, they are… only flawed avatars of my will." She grinned and leaned over toward me, adding in a near whisper, "That sounds plausible, doesn't it?"
The stallion stammered a bit, but by the time he had collected his thoughts, Spike had leaped into the air with two mighty sweeps of his wings, and climbed into the night.
Skyla glanced at the pegasi still trapped in Midnight's magic, and then at the two standing on the platform staring after Spike. "Don't be stupid," she said to the blacklips, and then disrupted the stasis fields.
Our rebel pegasi joined the two on the platform, looking to the three-stripe stallion for guidance. Well, all of them except Loose Leaf, who focused a poisonous glare on me. "Inside," the stallion commanded. "Seal the doors and get the crews to the guns. Be ready for anything."
Skyla ignored the suddenly bustling pegasi and turned to me. "Can you modify the gate in a hurry? Or maybe we should go through to her world and try to get home from there?"
"She'll have protected it some way," I said shaking my head. "Probably several different ways. We're not getting through that gate."
Skyla shook her head and bared her teeth in frustration. "Then, what do you suggest? I don't want to be here when she gets back. Did you see the look she gave me?"
I hadn't, actually. Midnight Sparkle hadn't even spared Skyla a glance as far as I knew. I turned to Ao. "How well patched is number three? Will it hold a good charge of gas?"
"Sadly, it will hold no more than it does at this moment. With the edges sealed and the sail painted with lacquer, this one would trust it with three quarters pressure at most."
"Ceiling now?" Skyla asked her.
"Perhaps another three hundred feet, but no more, Captain. Given an hour to improve the patch—"
As if to demonstrate that we didn't have nearly that amount of time, a long stream of green fire jetted out across the valley. More natural-colored fire blossomed in its wake. Flickers of magical force spattered the sky to no apparent effect, and another jet of dragonfire lashed the massed airships.
"Three hundred feet will get us above the valley rim," Skyla said. "Maybe we can escape in the darkness."
I shook my head again. "Use the gems. We've got plenty."
Skyla grimaced. "I don't want to abandon—"
There was a movement in the corner of my eye, and I had drawn my short swords before I had even consciously registered the threat. Loose Leaf squawked and back-winged away from my blades, Ao's sword, and Skyla's battered and notched cutlass. She fumbled with the spear she was carrying, trying to change her grip to one appropriate for throwing. It was completely obvious that she had spent her entire life training to be a scribe.
I sheathed my blades and gently pulled the spear away from her with my magic. "I know you feel betrayed, but revenge won't help."
"You lied to me, you bitch!" she screamed, and for a second I thought she might attack me with her bare hooves.
"I had one little airship against an empire; of course I used every weapon I could, you idiot! Get your nose out of the books once in awhile and learn something about how the real world works!"
Ao and Skyla gasped. I could hardly believe those words had come out of my mouth, ether. In my defense, I'm hardly ever that curt or unkind, but I was in a fairly stressful situation.
A few more airships exploded into flames behind us.
Then Loose Leaf started to cry, and I felt like a complete monster. "Listen… Leaf, I'm sorry. I didn't—"
"Do we have time for this right now?" Skyla snapped, still covering Loose Leaf with her cutlass.
I turned to look at the one-sided battle. From a mile away, it looked like one of those paper balloon festivals, only in reverse—flickering flames and glowing envelopes sinking instead of rising.
"No," I admitted. "Captain, I highly recommend getting the entire crew mustered around the parachutes and having them tap out. I will stay behind long enough to scuttle Nebula;[4] there are several things aboard that I'd rather not fall into her hooves."
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[4] Scuttling is the deliberate sinking or destruction of a ship by her own crew.
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"Agreed," Skyla said sourly, but didn't move. "Mr. Sirocco, see to it."
Sirocco snapped a salute and flew up to Nebula, shouting the orders. Skyla stood calmly, still pointing her blade at the weeping Loose Leaf.
"I can manage on my own," I said to her. "I'll be right behind you."
She and Ao just stared at me.
"Oh, Celestia trample it!" I swore at them. "I'm not going to—"
The platform beneath us shook with a boom as Spike suddenly dropped down in front of the gate, and Midnight Sparkle's wild laughter rolled over us like a wave of knives. "Ah! Now that was more fun than I've had in a long time!" she said as she strolled down Spike's extended wing.
Not having learned her lesson about soi disant goddesses, Loose Leaf spun and prostrated herself flat-out before Midnight. Ao rested the back of her blade across one shoulder and settled into a casual-looking stance. I set the spear aside and waited.
Skyla slammed her cutlass against the platform and yelled, "Did you have to kill them all? Are we next?"
Midnight gave her an indulgent smile. "You really are Shiny's daughter, aren't you? So full of righteous indignation and moral outrage! Isn't a return to harmony and balance worth a few lives?"
Skyla gasped and swung her blade to point at the burning wrecks that had dropped into the valley and onto the surrounding peaks. "You call that harmony?"
Midnight shrugged. "It's a step in the right direction. You might notice that we burned them from the top down. There was plenty of time for the crews to bail out if they were smart. I even let a couple of destroyers go; they'll spread the news faster."
Skyla visibly shook with rage. She pointed her battered cutlass back at Midnight and shouted, "You, you—"
Midnight shook her head and made a tsk sound. "You should take better care of your weapons, Furry Burry. That thing looks like a saw!"
Ao tackled Skyla as she screamed and leaped for Midnight's throat. Skyla was much stronger than she looked, but Ao knew some amazing restraining holds that could only be applied by someone with her snakey physique.
"Language, Furry Burry!" Midnight said, pretending to be shocked at the stream of profanity and threats that burst from Skyla's mouth. "What would your mother say?"
"Please," I said, holding up a hoof between them, and glaring at Midnight. "I'd rather you didn't give my niece an aneurysm!"
"She's my niece, too," Midnight said with raised eyebrows. "Sort of."
"Can I talk with you, please?" I asked, motioning toward the shadows at the base of the library tower. "Alone?"
"Alone? Of course!" She grinned at me lasciviously.
"Oh, don't even try that nonsense on me," I said as I stomped alongside her across the platform.
"I'm serious, Twilight," she said, and she did sound sincere. "A good battle always makes me frisky. Haven't you ever—"
"No!" I lied, unable to suppress the memory of the amazing night with Luna after the defeat of Grogar.
"Ha!" Midnight chuckled. " I know that look! How about the kirin? She looks remarkably flexible. Have you ever—"
"This isn't funny!" I growled at her. "We're at your mercy, yes. If I have to surrender to you to get you to let my ship and her crew go—"
Midnight Sparkle rounded on me and I could see real anger in her eyes. "You think I would really make such a demand? Would you?"
"I'm not you!"
"Yes, you are, Twilight," she said, staring me right in the eyes. "You're younger, less experienced, but you know, don't you?"
"Know? Know what?"
"Midnight coat, dragon eyes, tiger fangs, razor-edged feathers… Dressed up to go to a charity event at the children's hospital, are you?" She practically sneered as she went through the list that described her as well.
"T-this?" I glanced down at myself. It didn't help steady my mind that there was dried blood spattered on my forelegs. "It's a disguise. A convenience that I'm stuck with! I'm not really like this."
"Petunia's Polymorph?" she asked, knowing full well the answer.
"N-no. I mean yes, but not at first. Look, there was a situation—"
"And things got out of hoof," she finished for me. "But they always do, Twilight. This—" She slammed an armored hoof to her chestplate with a loud clang. "—is what you know. This is what ponies need."
I opened my mouth to protest, but couldn't find the words.
"Oh, ponies enjoy a maternal, nurturing ruler, even if a shining example of justice and morality sometimes makes them feel a little bit guilty and inferior. But when they are threatened, when their lives and the lives of their family and friends are on the line—" She leaned in close and lowered her voice. "—then they want the amoral, violent bitch who will obliterate their enemies without a qualm! Her strength and ruthlessness are their shield, and they love her for it!"
I took a step away from her. "Of course they want to be protected, but a general's role is different from peaceful—"
"Oh, shut up, Sparkle! You can't lie to me!" She arched her neck and glared coldly down at me. "I know exactly what you felt when Chrysalis stood over a defeated Celestia in her own throne room. Shock, yes. Fear—only natural. But mostly disappointment."
I gritted my teeth and said nothing.
"I don't mean to be cruel," she said, her voice softening. "You're years behind me, but you're on the same road. The fact that you look like you do means you know the way instinctively, even if you haven't admitted it to yourself." She turned and looked back at Spike. I was surprised to see he was sitting on the platform, apparently talking in low tones with a no-longer-restrained Skyla. "We keep our worlds orderly and in harmony. One day, you'll realize that fear and respect always outweigh a shining example, and you will join us."
"I don't want to be like you," I said, pointlessly.
"Well," she replied with a casual shrug, "if you find a more effective way, let me know. I'm always open to logical debate with reasonable opponents." She swept out one wing to indicate the fires dotting the mountainside.
When I didn't respond, she said, "That was a joke."
"Not funny."
Midnight lowered her wing and folded it away with a sigh. "This has already taken up too much of my time." She began walking back toward the ship, leaving me no option but to follow.
She almost tripped over the still-prostrate Loose Leaf as she approached the group under Nebula's bowsprit. She frowned at the distraught pegasus.
I hastened to intervene. "Sister, this is Loose Leaf, one of the pegasi who helped us carry out our plan to undermine the Empire. She's one of the few who remained loyal to your intentions. A true supporter of equality and harmony."
"Oh?" Midnight looked down at the poor, shivering mare. "Well done, Loose Leaf. You may rise."
Leaf looked up fearfully, and began to get her hooves under herself. She hesitantly opened her mouth to say something, but Midnight had turned away from her and was gazing out over the wreckage-strewn mountains.
"This was a great and vibrant kingdom once," she said. "Its trade routes stretched across a dozen worlds and the poorest of its subjects were rich by any measure that matters. All with the barest trickle of magic. Truly a wonder."
"Then you happened?" I said.
She laughed. "Oh, no! It was reduced to a dozen squabbling principalities long before I found it! The collapse was all their fault—greed and grudges; same old story. But don't worry, it will be prosperous and great again someday, under my—or perhaps our guidance?"
"A cozy dictatorship of two?" Skyla put in, glaring at both of us for some reason.
Midnight shook her head. "Sarcasm does not become you, dear, but no. I am far too busy to attend to day-to-day details here. Guidance is the right term." She grinned. "Stern guidance, true, but good advice is rarely accepted on its merits. I'll let things shake out for a few years and then peek back in to see how they're doing."
"What about us?" Skyla demanded. Poor twitchy Loose Leaf was looking back and forth between her, me, and Midnight, probably wondering the same thing on a much more personal level.
Midnight shrugged. "Unless you enjoy floating around here, I suggest you return home. You can probably scavenge enough crystals from the wrecks to power the gate in the badlands. That's where you came in, right? I'd let you use this one, but I've reengineered it to be a permanent link to one of our nexus worlds, and it's set up to annihilate unauthorised users." She gave me a direct and meaningful look. "Or anypony who interferes with it."
"Message received, sister," I said, sourly.
She smiled. "Good! Oh, by the way, we usually call each other cousin. I don't really know how that got started, but it's traditional now." She gestured to Spike, and he once again extended a wing for her to climb. With all that heavy armor on, I supposed it was too difficult for her to fly without a magical boost.
"How many of you are there?" Skyla called after her.
Midnight gave her an evaluating look before replying. "More than there are of you, dear. You would do well to remember that."
Spike reared and Midnight gave me a last wave with her wing. "Look me up when you get a few more decades under your saddle, cousin! We could use another good improviser on our side!"
The wind from Spike's wingbeats whipped our manes into streamers behind us, and then they fell limply as he and my rather unpleasant other self disappeared into the gate.
"That sounded threatening to me," Skyla said, still scowling. "Did that sound threatening to you?" I was still wondering about Midnight's use of the word side.
"This one is of the opinion that everything she said conveyed a certain amount of menace." Ao's tone of voice was the polar opposite of Skyla's, and she seemed to relish the word. She stared, smiling slightly at the empty gateway for a moment longer, and then shook herself and turned and kneeled to my niece. "This one offers abject apologies for laying hooves upon you in such a fashion, Captain."
"Oh, get up, Ao! You were right. She baited me, and I should have known better."
"Well, we should probably—" I began.
"We will shore up the repairs to number three while we wait for dawn, and then maneuver over one of the larger wrecks for salvage operations," Skyla said, interrupting me. "Our presence should be enough to chase off any hostile survivors."
"Didn't you order the crew to tap out?" I asked. "That'll be quite a job for just the three of us."
"Sadly," Ao said, in a voice pitched to carry, "the crew are lax and slovenly lubbers who are unable to complete a simple task in a reasonable amount of time." She twisted her head around to face the ship. "Isn't that right, you scurvy nags?"
A few horns appeared above the rail, and more heads followed, all wearing somewhat abashed expressions. "That must be why you are all still here," Ao continued, "because disobeying an order from the captain would be mutiny, wouldn't it?" The crew looked nervously at each other.
"Wouldn't it?" Ao repeated.
A chorus of over a dozen low, repentant voices replied, "Yes, Ms. Ao."
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