Luna stepped out of the transport vessel, allowing her lungs to fill with the constantly moving yet terribly stale air that fluctuated above Canterlot. Her ears perked and her body tingled, listening to a voice unheard above the cacophony of sound emanating from all around her.
Above, Republic ships were wheeling about in great circles while civilian planes were beginning to buzz and twitter like nervous birds between the towers below.
They had arrived the previous morning and, thanks to the advanced warning sent to them by Arnaquer and his group, had immediately begun to quarantine and cure the ponies of the metropolis. There was still plenty of work to be done and many ponies to care for.
“He dealt us quite the blow,” she announced to nopony in particular.
“Pardon me, Ma’am, but could you repeat that?” one of the ponies that had followed her up the top of the mountain asked.
She dismissed him with a slight wave of her forehoof. “It’s fine. I was just thinking about the pony we are fighting. This so-called Bunnyhelm. He’s rather shrewd, but, perhaps he is too quick to act. There were secrets left in this city that he abandoned in his haste.” The Princess smiled, a cold wind surfing around her as the sun finally hit the horizon and fought against the moon’s glare.
The city was bathed in warm light, the towers becoming pillars of gold and flame while the sky shone a deep, royal red. Yes, it was time for the sun to return.
“Leave me,” Luna ordered, turning and giving her back to the assistants and guards that had followed her onboard the tiny diplomatic vessel. “I wish for solitude.”
“But, Your Highness, it could be dangerou—” the stallion began. His throat caught and his words became silent as the Princess stretched to her full height and looked down at him.
The moon was still high, glowing in the sky as it became a spectre of its glorious form. Still, its image reflected in the Princess’s eyes as she looked at her soldiers. “I can take care of myself. There’s a pony I wish to meet; it has been a long, long time.”
She began to walk away, long, indigo legs daintily touching the metallic grating of the platform they found themselves on. Beyond her, and jutting out of Canterlot mountain’s side like a tumour of steel, was the Sol Factory.
As she approached the structure, unwary of any traps it might hold, it grew larger and more ominous.
Smoke stacks still fumed with toxic gasses and the massive pipes that ran though the building jutted out of the walls, only hinting at the complex maze of machinery held within. It was a marvel: a machine able to power all of Canterlot and then some; a machine so complex that even those working on it had only vague notions of how it worked.
Luna grinned.
The doors blocking her access gave way with a single blow of magical power, their steel frame rending into a little sphere before being catapulted out of the path. Daylight flooded into the rooms therein, illuminating the dust that floated in the air with a surreal glow.
Luna pushed ever onwards, instinct guiding her though the office spaces and factory floors. Past loading docks and assembly rooms. Finally, she found her heart.
The core sat in the centre of the room.
Brass walls, hooflengths thick, formed a rough sphere that the room itself seemed to have been built around, instead of for. Along the bulging surface of live wires, tubes and pumping pipes that huffed with pressurized steam was a pattern of rivets.
The Princess looked at the device, moving around it in a teasingly slow circle while each and every one of her muscles tensed. In the quasi-quiet of the factory, she could hear the voice.
Screaming and anguish and fear and despair and hope.
She found the door.
Encased on the orb’s side was a rounded archway, a sealed entrance, or, perhaps, an exit. Warning labels and dire images gave away hints of the despair that one might suffer if they dared to tamper with the machine.
“Ah, Bunnyhelm. So foolish to leave. You forgot, Blueblood could always keep a secret. He always had a trump card.” Luna touched the wall.
Her magic and power flowed forth, imbuing the brass structure and making it glow in the familiar colour of her power.
She waited. Waited for the call to come. And when it did, she gasped, tears springing to her eyes and flowing down the sharp angles of her cheeks. Her legs became loose, losing their ability to hold her up as she crumpled and fell to a sitting position.
Her laughter and crying filled the cavernous room and Princess Luna reached out, the very tip of her hoof touching the door.
It opened.
Hissing steam and the white-hot glow of tremendous power sliced out, burning and cutting a path through the room all along the rim of the doorway, a path that encircled Luna without harming her. As the afterglow of magic touched her, she shivered.
The door pulled up, machinery that had rested for a decade being put to work with nary a whisper.
Out from within the machine stepped a single white leg.