Black Star looked about his work-space. Knick knacks. Little things with a bit of character, but with no voices to project it, or were they just plastic, just like everything else? He let his posture droop. He sighed. He would change, he knew it, but had he ever been the stallion he thought he was? Doubts started to form. Was he good or bad? Was there good or bad? He gawked at his own goth poetry. He felt silly. He recollected the mistake once again. His posture drooped further. His eyes watered, he buried his head into his hooves. How the fuck could he do it. Where was his mind. Caught up in a moment, he surmised. He looked to the rest of his space. A large white paneled room which they shared when eating, but technically it was meant to be his work-space and sleeping chamber exclusively. He had almost forgot that. She sure did. It was these little, quirky discrepancies that help make their relationship intimate in everyday workings.
He loved her so much. Without her he thought he could no longer enjoy things. Her funny little accent, the things they experienced together. They were some of the finest moments of his life. He wanted more of them, but he submitted. There may be no more. His body quivered and tears flowed freely. He couldn’t help but begin to sob. He attempted to stifle it, reducing it to a few labored breathes. He composed himself and looked up to his reflection in his terminal's screen. Black fur, brown now puffy eyes. He levitated a picture of his mother that was cropped between the screen. He looked to his mother’s graceful facial expression. Another pair tears fell from his eyes.
He suddenly let it drop to the floor and switched on the terminal with his magic. A beep came from the low quality built-in speakers of the machine. A notification displayed on the computer’s taskbar. Not acknowledging it, he opened an application. One of his back hooves tapped uncontrollably on the white metal floor. The application loaded solitaire. He noticed a few obvious corresponding numbers, he placed them. His hoof slowed, but it still tapped steadily.
A sliding of a door stirred him from his catharsis. He looked at Cub’s face, his eye twitching.
“You alright?” she said looking him up and down, observing his puffy eyes.
“Hey, uh, I just lost my cool.” He rubbed his eyes. His bad attempt at hiding his tears just aggravated his eyes.
“Yeah, anything happen since I left this morning.“ Said Cub as she opened a cooler compartment on the wall, taking out a piece of pizza.
“Well, we got a notification of some sort, I haven't gotten around to checking it out.” He said clenching his eye shut as it watered.
Cub stated “Looks like you’re outta commission,” Star interrupted “About.” Cub continued “so how 'bout you let me take a look?”
Star answered “Ok.” using his hooves to push him and his chair, back away from the desk.
“Alrighty.” she placed her cold pizza down on an old, yellow plastic plate on a table. Cub manipulated the cursor and hovered it over the notification. A small white bar read; 1 New video message from: CBE Intel Communications. “Looks like we got something from HQ,” she clicked on it and Black Star’s communications inbox opened. She inspected the date on the newly arrived message “It was sent four days ago.” she said giving all attention to the machine.
“Yeah, the systems have been a bit funky lately,” He removed his hoof from his eye, blinking away the drops of water “slow and glitchy.”
She opened the video message. Star pushed his chair forward to get in view of the screen. Young Cub leaned on the side of his chair.
The terminal came to life and an older stallion with greying fur sat with a radiant yellow background behind him. He spoke “Hello, how are the travels?” the stallion gave space for a response. None came “Well, that’s great,” he said putting on a smile, then letting it falter as he continued “I am sending this message to warn you of some possible problems with power. The last time you sent ship feedback reports, one of our engineers detected an anomaly. In particular your central core’s config has been recoded very strangely. The process for correctly dividing fuel and electricity has been altered. So we reviewed the config from previous reports and it seems that it has been slowly morphing, but we cannot grasp for what purpose. We advise you replace the config with the fixed one we have attached to this message, all the folks here at CBE wish you good luck.” the stallion nodded as the screen was replaced with star’s inbox once again.
Cub looked to the sitting Star “This power thing, is it gonna have tah get done right now?”
He wheeled himself all the way to the console “Well, I’ll have to see a few things,” he took hold of the computer's mouse.
“Could this have something to do with Y being down?” she said sauntering towards the door.
“Probably, I’m checking it.”
She glanced to him to search for further answers, but he was already absorbed in a search. She wandered over to a small table, and looked wistfully through a viewport. The stars meandered slowly past her. A white light sparked somewhere between a few of the similarly colored specks. She leaned in to get a look through the glass portal.
She could just barely make out it’s form before being spooked “Got it!” he said with great exclamation. He turned to her to see the daggers she was staring “Sorry, Cub It’s Y,” he turned the monitor to her. It displayed a graphic of the ship. The craft was circular in shape, hollowed and sectioned in its middle. One of its sections parts was highlighted and was scrolling through it’s various statistics. The power’s stats were singled out and expanded to be easily seen. 2320/8576 was the ratio of the current gallons fuel supplied per hour to the Y section. It seemed like it was under feeding the section, but she was not the professional when it came to numbers.
“Well, it looks like it’s not giving the section enough juice.” she said looking towards him.
“Yes, and all that’s left in the section is life support.” he said with punctuation.
“Well?” she said motioning for more with her hoof.
“Oh, well,” he said with a bit of confusion and hesitance “If you had hung around Y for too long you could have suffocated,” he brought up a tad more detailed statistic “you see, the place has only two hours before all power is lost and that’s unfortunately, the only place where the file can be edited.”
“So am ah goin’ over there?” she said narrowing a single eye.
“Yes, I see no way around it,” he said putting a hoof to his chin “there’s a small terminal just around the corner from the exit you came out from the earlier. You’ll have to use the communicator to get me a look at it before we fix it.” he clicked a button and the computer’s display went dark. “You ready?”
She levitated her pizza and took a large bite out of it’s side and placed it back down and simply said “Yep.”
“Alright, you should hop to.” he said turning his terminal to it’s normal position.
“mmmhhmmmhhh” she said as she trotted out of the room, still chewing what she had saved of the pizza in her mouth.
She walked through the ever tangled corridors in the direction of Y. Each section separated by blast doors made her halt for a few moments opening them with nearby display panels. She made it to Y in a shory forty minutes and walked around the familiar space. She felt a tiny bit of nostalgia for the section. Her gaze lingered on a bit of cracked paint on a doorway where she had once accidently dropped a brush. She walked around a corner and was blinded by a golden white light. “Shit.” she said to the empty space. She shielded her eyes and tried to look at what had shone so bright. A mirror stood by itself. She looked for anypony that could have set it up. The hallways whistled slightly, or at least she swore it sounded like whistling.
She walked close to the mirror. She examined her tired reflection. Her eyes carried a great weight. She pulled on them with her hooves. Her fur was a creamy blonde. Her mane was similarly colored, and it had been a sharp mohawk, but she had let it droop. A shape separate from her, moved in the mirror. Her eyes widened. She had began to sweat. Her eyes traced the object. The air surrounding her grew cold. She shivered. The sudden shift in heat caused the mirror to fog. A tension grew in the air. She could not explain it. Her mind confused and strained.
A voice spoke and the fog faded “Oh, it’s been so long, kid.” a familiar voice. Her sister’s voice. Her form shaped in the mirror.
Cub looked and gasped.