Starlight, Maple and Arambai descended the stairs to the ground-floor basement in silence. Now that they had been that way several times, the mountainous maze of boxes and storage equipment seemed far less daunting, passing in the blink of an eye. Idly, Maple wondered why the stallion kept the room so full when he had access to a network of storage tunnels without even going outside.
Arambai looked over his shoulder as he walked. "By the way, I... wanted to apologize for some of the stuff I said up on that overlook yesterday. Probably weren't the best kind of secrets to let out in company, you know? I just got eager, and forgot why Starlight shouldn't've heard them."
"About there being a boat out of Riverfall?" Starlight droned. "I made up my mind already. I'm not leaving."
"Really...?" Arambai raised a surprised eyebrow. "Even after what happened this morning? Huh. Not that I don't support that decision, of course. Ironridge is a dangerous place for a little filly like you, even one clever enough to survive the mountains. The wilderness is one thing, but desperate ponies are a whole other barrel of troubles to deal with."
"I made up my mind," Starlight answered, seating herself on the teleporter dais and looking firmly at the stallion. "It wouldn't be fair to Maple if I just left. It isn't either of our faults that the ponies are being pushy or bothering me, and I hate it when you lose friends for things you can't control."
"Good, good," Arambai grunted, fiddling with a piece of equipment on his workbench. "At least you're selfless. Always an admirable trait to see in a... pony!" With a heave, he snapped something into place, then straightened up with a chunk of machinery.
"Starlight?" Maple asked, standing nearby and watching as Arambai worked. "If I didn't exist... then... Are you really staying just for me?"
"Then I'd leave," Starlight replied matter-of-factly. "Maybe there's some other place where it doesn't matter who you are or where you're from. Somewhere you don't have to keep secrets because nobody cares anyway. I'd keep looking until I find that."
"I hate to break it to you," Arambai announced as Maple folded her ears in the background, "but even if something were to happen to her, or she wasn't here in the first place, I wouldn't let you leave. Didn't I just say how foolhardy it would be to let you wander unattended around that big city? It's not like I could ask Gerardo to take care of you, either. That bird would probably just fly off the moment he's gotten rid of his precious cargo, or try to find some other family to dump you on. He's not the kind of creature that likes being chained by responsibility."
"It doesn't matter," Starlight hissed, stomping a hoof, "because I'm not leaving and nothing's happening to Maple!"
"Yeah, you mentioned that." Arambai stepped closer, holding a modified-looking helmet. "Here. This one's got extra sensors and indicators, so hopefully we can get some good data even if it gets fried. Wear this the same way you did before, and just do what you did last time."
"You're sure this is safe, right?" Maple asked, standing nearby and steeled for anything.
"It's never hurt a pony before," Arambai answered, waving Starlight on. "Now let's see what happens!"
"Well... okay..." Starlight took the thing nervously in her hooves, the machine already thrumming behind her. Above, the energy rails were dull and dormant, and she wobbled unsteadily from the leftover throbbing in her horn. Reaching up, she set the helmet on her head.
CRACK!
Maple felt Starlight slam into her with the speed of a bullet, sheer luck placing her in the way to catch the flying filly. She staggered back a step from the impact, grunting and holding Starlight tightly.
Above, blue lightning surged through the rails, illuminating the entire room in a cloudy haze for several fractions of a second before vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. An acrid stench quickly filled the room, which Maple realized to be coming from the cables that tethered Starlight's helmet to the machine. She grabbed and threw the thing off, letting it clang and bounce against the floor, smoking lightly.
"Starlight?" She reached down and nuzzled the unconscious filly, unable to see as her eyes struggled to adjust after the flash. "Starlight, are you okay?"
Arambai was hurriedly dashing between consoles, ignoring them. "Interesting... interesting... that's weird... now how do you like that?"
"Starliiight," Maple moaned, worriedly hugging her closely. She licked the filly's scalp, to no effect. Upon examination, however, she was not only breathing regularly but seemed to have a perfectly normal heartrate. "Arambai?" she asked. "Can you turn on a brighter light?"
The stallion kicked a wall switch as he passed, and suddenly the room was bathed in a dull yellow glow. Maple sighed... then gasped when she saw Starlight.
"Arambai!" she screeched, lifting Starlight up. "Why does she look like that!?"
"What the..." Arambai paced closer, squinting. "Is she... see-through?"
"I-I think so," Maple stammered, holding Starlight against a backlight. The lamp was still faintly visible through Starlight's coat, as if she were made of very dark, fuzzy stained glass. They sat there for a solid minute, and as time passed, she gradually went from transparent to translucent and then entirely solid once again.
"Well..." Arambai straightened up. "She's not going to take that well."
"What do you mean?" Maple bristled. "It's permanent? If she's not all right after this, I will-"
"Nahhh." Arambai quieted her with a wave. "She's done this before, remember? I bet she'll be completely back to normal by the time she wakes up. What's really going to bug her is that this is pretty much proof she's different from other ponies. Maybe even metaphysically so. The only thing I can think of is that ponies from the Plains of Harmony are just... different from us."
"How so?" Maple stood defensively, still holding Starlight as Arambai wandered around.
The stallion raised an eyebrow. "You want my best theory? I'm warning you, it's untested." At a nod, he continued. "You see... the way this machine works is by using ponies like... like catalysts. There's all sorts of magic ponies can do that machines can't even begin to approximate, so the idea is to incorporate ponies somehow into a machine. It sounds sinister when I put it that way, but it's really not that different from using yourself to pull a cart. You follow?"
Maple felt sick. "You're saying you tried to... borrow something from her, but somehow took too much, and might have... made her almost disappear? You are, aren't you?" She took a step backwards.
"That's putting it in layponies' terms," Arambai grumbled. "But yeah, something like that. It sure is interesting..."
"Well, you can forget about doing any more experiments on her," Maple hissed. "Who knows if there are permanent effects, or if this could cause her to actually disappear, or something?"
"I wasn't planning to," Arambai replied with a wave of a hoof. "Believe me, if I'd known it would do that, I never even would have tried this time. Sticking the wrong power source in a broken machine to try and fix it is the kind of thing that works in adventure stories, but it's a terrible idea in real life, when lives are on the line. And much as I'd love to learn more about this... doing it safely would require the tools I used for initial research on this type of thing. Besides, where would we get more of her kind to make anything we learned actually be useful?" He shrugged. "Keep an eye on her and bring her back if it looks like anything's getting worse, though I'm not really sure what I'd do about it if it did."
Focusing on calming herself, Maple nuzzled Starlight again. "Okay. I... will. If you don't mind, though, I'd like to go home now and put her to bed?"
"Yeah, that's a good idea." Arambai turned back to the machines, reading over a strip of numbers again. "Let me and your friends deal with the Hemlock stuff. And, uh..." He looked back at her. "Want to not tell Starlight about this? That she really is different from every pony in the northern world? I doubt she'd like it, and it seems like the kind of thing to keep under as tight of wraps as possible."
"Yes," Maple answered with Starlight on her back, "let's do that. Oh, and... if you don't mind..." She hung her head. "I had one other question, about something you said earlier?"
Arambai took a step toward her. "All right, let's hear it."
"I was wondering..."