//------------------------------//
// Time Marking 
// Story: Cryo-7 
// by Metal Pony Fan 
//------------------------------//

	"You what?" Radio asked over the intercom, voice muffled by the device's volume settings.

"We found the pony."  Astral sighed and leaned against the rough hoof-carved table, adjusting a nearby candle as he repeated himself.  "Her name is Fluttershy, she's one of Twilight's friends that we've been looking for."

"And, she's the one that took out a massive hydra in single combat?"

"It looks that way.  She's stronger than your average pony, has battle instincts that border the far side of savage, and she hefts a mean spear."  Astral looked around around the dirty hovel Fluttershy brought them back to.  It was more of a burrow than a building, a half dug pit between the twisted mangrove-like roots of a tree, sealed up with panels from some wrecked ship.  The table he sat at was little more than a massive chunk of the same wood with a flattened top.   "She's also been here alone for a long time."

"Where is she now?"

"Sleeping, I think."  On the other side of the only wall, a heavy curtain, made from some kind of leather, separated the sleeping area from the rest of the burrow.  "Twilight's with her.  The poor pegasus hasn't left her side since we found her."

"Um, are you sure the name was Fluttershy?"

Astral blinked.  Why would Radio question that?  "That's what Twilight called her, and she seemed to respond to it."

"Oh...  Cause my mom described Fluttershy, um, as a, well, let's just say she was described differently."

Astral tapped his hoof on the table.  "Radio, you aren't making sense."  He rubbed his hoof over the wood.  It was a rough table, primitive, like everything else in the makeshift building.  The surface was covered in small scratches, left by whatever knife was used to carve it?  His hoof ran over a smooth spot, and Astral took a closer look.  "Hey, I need you to do something for me.  Check the computer and tell me how long a day on this planet is in relation to Canterlot."

"Eighteen hours, why?"

That was fast, the colt must have already had the information on the screen.  "I'll let you know in a bit.  How long until Berry's vaccine kicks in?"

"It doesn't just magically kick in," Radio answered, annoyed.  "Her immune system needs to acclimate to the foreign material and create antibodies.  In this case, the material is a variety of retroviruses modified so they can't attack the cells.  The exact time needed varies from pony to pony, but given her body weight and the dosage, Twenty-nine hours is the most it will take."

"And how much of that is left?"

"Twenty-six hours, but I'll run blood work in a few hours so we have a more accurate estimate."

"That's all I needed to know."  Astral shook his head.  As helpful as he's been so far, that colt needed to work on his attitude.  "Thanks, Radio."

"No problem, captain, but can you please talk to Berry?  She won't let me finish her dental exam, and she's making unreasonable demands."

Astral raised an eyebrow at the communicator.  "I don't think you get to complain about anypony being unreasonable.  Or did you already forget the first half of our stay on Sevus?  Berry?  Let him finish checking your teeth.  Radio, as soon as you're done with that, humor her.  Unless it's truly unreasonable, like wanting to put on the spacesuit to go for a stroll, or making modifications to the shuttle.  Understood?"





Radio sighed into the communicator.  "Yes, sir."

Berry leaned in and yelled into the device, "Understood, Uncle Astral!"

"And try to get along.  We're going to be stuck with each other for a while."

"No promises," Radio muttered.

"I promise," Berry started her practiced motions, "Cross my heart and hope to fly, run a laser 'cross my thigh."  She nodded solemnly at the end of her oath as Radio stared in bewildered silence.

"Radio, if you don't at least try, I'll make you do what she just did."

"Fine!  I'll try," the colt answered quickly.  There was no way in hell he was doing that.  He would just take a real laser to his thigh out of principle.  "But that's all, no guarantees."

"That's all I'm asking.  Sit tight, you two, we just have to wait it out for one day.  I'll check in after seven hours or so.  Astral out."

The com unit went silent, not even playing the static of an open channel.  Radio set it on the Dashboard, just past the sensor console.  "You heard what he said," he told Berry.

"Yep," she nodded.  "He said you have to do what I ask."

"Yes," Radio ground out, wrinkling his snout, "after I finish checking your teeth."

The pink pony hid behind the pilot's chair, hooves clamped over her head.  "I don't need it!  I brushed every day!"

Radio jumped up on the chair and looked down over the top.  "Did you use toothpaste?"

She looked up, then ran to the back of the shuttle.  "I don't what that is, but it sounds nasty!"

"You're making this harder than it needs to be!"  Radio sighed and sat down.  "I promise it won't hurt."

"Liar, liar, tail on fire," came the reply from the passenger cabin.  "That's what you said about the vaccine."

The colt threw his hooves in the air.  "It was really that bad?"

"It itches!"

"Yeah, they do that sometimes, but it's better than having a retrovirus rewrite your  DNA."  Radio took a deep breath.  Arguing was getting him nowhere.  He needed to try a different tactic.  "Look, as soon as I check your teeth out, and make sure you don't have any cavities, I will move the shuttle four meters to the left, just like you asked."

"Five meters," Berry corrected, peeking out from behind a seat.

"Alright, five meters."  Radio sighed.  And as a bonus, I will throw in..."  He thought about it a moment.  "Ice cream!  You've never had ice cream before, have you?"

She pulled back into hiding.  "Is that another one of your nasty medicines that hurts even though you say it won't?"

Radio hopped out of the chair and walked into the back, ignoring Berry as she stuck her tongue out at him.  He headed into the far back, stepping over the electronic debris that had been swept out of the way.  In the combination sleeping quarters and kitchen, there was a food synthesizer built into the wall above the hideaway table.  It could only make simple foods, restructuring them from preloaded vats of basic proteins, chemical compounds, and artificial colors, but what was more simple than ice cream?

Radio keyed in a simple vanilla ice cream, then flipping through the options, found that it could be made just a little more complex.  He selected the options he wanted, hit start, and waited as the machine worked.

Berry heard the beeping of a control panel, but stubbornly stayed put.  Then, the whirr and hum of machinery started.  No longer able to suppress her curiosity, she poked her head into the aisle.  Radio glanced back, saw her, and shifted so he would block her view of the synthesizer.

With a teeny tiny growl, Berry crawled to a different chair, hoping to get a better angle.  Again Radio moved to block the view.  She climbed over that chair, into the next one, getting closer to the machine.  The pegasus yawned, stretching his wings, completely blocking the earth pony's view.

"Hey!"  She jumped out of the chairs and stomped towards him.  "You're doing that on purpose!"

"Sure am," Radio answered with a smile.  With the tip of his wing, he hit the button that controlled the door to the sleeping quarters, closing it in Berry's face.

She took a deep breath, and was just about to yell something mean at the colt, when the door opened up again.  Centimeters from her face, there hovered something she couldn't quite explain.  She could feel the cold surrounding it, but also smell warm, sweet bread.  A swirl of clean white on top of a golden brown bowl, all topped with colorful specks that rivaled Radio's mane and tail.  All this sat on a plate that was as white as clouds, next to a metal spoon that was polished more than she thought possible.  She stared at her distorted reflection for a moment, then looked up at Radio.

"Ice cream is served," the colt said with a smirk.  "Good old vanilla in a toasted waffle bowl, topped with sprinkles."  He pulled it away, and Berry followed it for a second.  "It's yours, if you stop giving me a hard time about the dental work."

Berry sat down and crossed her hooves.  "Stupid head," she said with a pout.

The colt rolled his eyes.  "Fine, here.  You're just as stubborn as Ribbon."  He held out the plate.  "Eat it before it melts."





Twilight crawled out of bed carefully.  It wasn't really a bed though, just a mat made from layers of dried leaves, grass, and hydra leather.  The mat's other occupant was still fast asleep, but until now had been holding on to her.

Twilight stood next to the bed for a moment, watching Fluttershy sleep.  Her mouth hung slightly open, and dried grass moved with each breath that passed her fangs.  Both eyes were closed, but the image of them was burned into Twilight's mind, mismatched, red and blue, both of them filled with tears.

"I'm so sorry, Fluttershy," the alicorn whispered.  She pulled a lock of frayed, tangled mane out of her friend's face.  "I'm responsible for all of this."

"At least she's alive," said a quiet voice.

"Astral?" Twilight whispered.  She let herself out from behind the heavy curtain that separated the bed from the rest of Fluttershy's shelter.

She didn't see the grey unicorn at first, only the roots and dust that made up the structure.  The whole thing reminded her of Fluttershy's old home in Equestria, built around a tree as it was.  Then again, her own home was pretty much a tree as well.

After a few seconds of looking around, she saw him.  His dark blue mane was just barely sticking up from the other side of the table.  She walked around to talk to him, but found him asleep even though he was sitting up against the table.

Twilight rubbed her eyes.  She must be more tired than she thought if she's hearing voices that aren't there.  Opening her eyes, she noticed the ground in front of the unicorn.  Scratched out on the dirt floor were several steps of multiplication and division, ending with an answer of seven point seven six two five.

She reached over to wake Astral up, so she could ask him what the numbers were supposed to be, but saw something that stopped her.  There was dried blood on his neck, almost completely hidden beneath the collar of his jacket.  She pulled back on his collar, lightly, trying not to wake him.  But, the jacket stuck, dried to the cut he received from the centipedes.

The unicorn stirred, and Twilight put her hoof on his shoulder.  "Wake up, sleepy head," she whispered.

He blinked, still drowsy, and looked at the mare who woke him.  "Twi?  What did I do now?"  He rolled his shoulders and stretched, wincing as his collar pulled free of the injury on his neck.

"You lied to me," she answered softly, "you idiot."

"Yeah," he yawned.  "You're still upset that I dragged Berry along?"

Twilight shook her head.  "No, and I shouldn't have gotten upset about that in the first place.  I was still thinking about Pinkie, and didn't want to be reminded that I would never see her again."  She sat down next to Astral.  "And, I never thanked you for making me see that she wasn't gone completely, that some part of her would live on in Berry, and the friends whose lives she touched."

Astral yawned again.  "I said that?"

Twilight nodded.  "It still isn't easy to accept, but it helped me focus on moving forward."  She looked down at her hooves.  "You made me realize that, even if I fail somepony, there are still others depending on me.  I can't just shut down because I don't want to deal with the pain."

Astral reached up, and slowly brushed her mane back, tucking a few stray hairs back behind her ear where they belonged.  He looked at her for a moment, and smiled.  "Was I huffing coolant fumes?"

"You jerk," she chuckled.  "See if I say anything nice to you again."

"Wait, I must have missed something, when did you say anything nice to-"

Twilight flicked her hoof at him, giving him a light smack in the gut.  His wince and sharp sharp intake of breath startled her.

"Astral?"  She asked in concern.  "What was that?"

"Nothing."  He caught her hoof with his own when she reached for his lapel.  He wouldn't look her in the eyes though.  "It's nothing."

"You're lying again.  You said you were ok.  Why?"  She slowly used her other hoof to pull his jacket open, revealing the spiderweb of thin red lines running from chest to barrel.  None of the scratches were very deep, but there were so many of them.  "Astral, these were from those creatures you fought, aren't they?"

"Yeah."  He let go of her hoof and didn't protest as she pulled his jacket open.  "Nasty little buggers."

"Why hide it?"  Twilight looked up from the injuries.  She pulled his head around to face her.  "Astral, why didn't you tell me you were hurt?"

He pulled his chin away from her insistent pull.  "Because I didn't, can we leave it at that?"

"No, we can't."  Twilight pulled the candle closer to her with magic, letting her see Astral's wounds more clearly.  "What if those things were poisonous?  What am I supposed to do if you up and get yourself killed?"

He huffed, blowing a loose hair out of his face.  "I'm sure you'd be fine."

"How can you say that?" she asked in disbelief.

He chewed his lip, fighting back the urge to shout his next words at the purple mare.  "Because," he whispered, "I'm weak."

Twilight's mouth opened to say something, but hung there as she tried to sort through what she heard.  She never would have expected the stallion to say anything like that, much less believe it.  "Astral..."

"I know, it's stupid, but that's why I didn't tell you I got hurt.  I didn't want to look weak."  He looked down at his hooves.  His right hoof still ached from stomping that last Centipede, and his left was bruised from being caught in its jaws.  "I mean, look at everypony else.  We've got you, the demi-goddess, Mac, the giant, Radio, the child prodigy doctor and pilot, Berry, the electronics genius, and now, Fluttershy, pony of the wild.  Then look at me, the angry freighter jockey.  I'm nothing compared to any of you.  All I have is my little parlor trick for hiding my magic."

Twilight shook her head.  "And years of experience traveling through the galaxy, and the will to fight in the face of certain defeat, and the heart to give up your own safety for the sake of others."  She placed a hoof on his chest.  "We don't need your strength, we need you...  I need you."  She pulled away and stood up.  "Without you, we wouldn't have made it this far.  Mac, Silver, and I would probably be hanging up flyers on bulletin boards right now, looking for a pilot.  And even if we found one, we probably would have spent a week negotiating pay, another week debating where to go, and who knows how long chasing our tails once we got there."

She retrieved a mishapen clay jar from a cubby hole carved out of a nearby root, the medicinal paste Fluttershy applied to her leg before going to sleep.  "You made the decision to help, then followed through without hesitation.  You were able to identify the soil from Sevus, and you helped us reach a peaceful resolution when we got there.  You fought wild monsters alone, then found Fluttershy while I was off chasing some stupid bird-frog thing.  Astral, no matter who we find, nopony can replace you."  She walked back to him.  "You're the captain, and all of us chose to follow you of our own free will.  We wouldn't have done that if we didn't believe in you."

She removed the lid from the medicine, nose wrinkling at the bitter scent.  "Take off your jacket."

With a sigh, he acquiesced, reaching both hooves over his head to grab the collar before sliding the whole thing off.  He worked his hooves out of the sleeves one by one as Twilight moved to his side.  "Tell me about the first time you saw your planet from space."

She scooped up some medicine with her hoof and started spreading it across the back of his neck.  "I told you I didn't remember."

Astral tightened his grip on his jacket.  The paste stung at first, but after a few seconds, it started to work like an anaesthetic.  "And I told you that I didn't believe it."

"Lean back."  She nudged him back with the clean hoof until he was propped up against the table.  She set to work on the myriad of tiny cuts on his front and underside.  "It was a long time ago, not just because of the whole millenia of cryogenic storage thing, but for me, it seems so long ago.  It was a few years before we left Equestria, in the early stages of our space program.  Development and testing on our rocket systems was complete, but we still needed some sort of maneuvering system, something more adaptable than precalculated trajectories and tiny chemical fueled thrusters.  We ended up with a pulse engine.  It was primitive compared to the pulse engines you're used to, and generated a lot of excess radiation."

"We couldn't test it in the confines of our atmosphere, so we mounted it on one of our rocket capsules and sent it into space.  I wouldn't let anyone else take the risk of testing an engine I designed, so I was piloting it."  She looked in the jar.  The medicine was running low, but she was almost done, and Fluttershy wouldn't need it after tomorrow.  "For some reason, Celestia insisted on coming with me.  I tried to argue with her, but in the end, her being there was the only reason I survived."

She stopped there, staring off into her memories.  After a few seconds, Astral nudged her back to the present with a light touch.  "What happened?"

"Something went wrong," she answered, slowly shaking her head.  "I don't know if it was because exhaust pressure was higher than anticipated, or if the emitter nozzles were out of alignment, but enough energy built up in the fuel chamber that it created an overload.  I was so busy trying to get it under control that I didn't notice that the chemical fuel had ignited.  Celestia grabbed me, tore open the airlock, and launched us both into space as the thrusters and re-entry engines all ignited at once.  The capsule was shredded by the engines all trying to go in different directions, and with the containment systems gone, the nuclear material from the pulse engine detonated.  I remember bright light as she shielded me with her wings, then it all faded and she let go of me."  Twilight smiled.  It was faint, but it was there.  "It was the first time I had flown in space on my own.  Until then, I didn't even know it was possible.  I was a little panicked at first, but once I realized I didn't need to breath, and that depressurization wasn't an issue, I started to calm down.  Eventually, I realized that I could control my orientation and movement, and sort of stood up.  Celestia was just standing there in front of me, in open space, then she walked towards me.  She turned me around with her wing, and that's when I saw it."

Astral smiled.  "Your planet?"

Twilight nodded.  "All of Equestria stretched out before us.  We were close to the planet, so we couldn't see all of it, but what we could see just shined.  Bright blues and greens, white clouds from the other side, sandy tan deserts, grey mountains, every color of life, concentrated below."

"It's not something you forget," Astral said softly, "no matter how many times you see it."

Twilight nodded.  "The first time is something special."  She looked down at Astral's midsection, checking to make sure every scratch was coated in dull, mottled green paste.  "There, all done."  She wiped her hoof off on his side and closed the jar.  "Need anything else?"

He put his hoof over hers.  "Yeah..."  He pulled her to him, throwing his other hoof around her shoulder.  He held her close for a moment before whispering.  "I need to thank you."

Once Twilight got over her surprise, she closed her eyes and relaxed into the embrace.  "What for?"

"I've always traveled alone," he answered.  "Even when I was part of a convoy, or transporting passengers, I kept my distance.  Working with a crew is so different, and having others I can count on is so much better than being alone."  His other hoof wrapped around her.  "That's why I was so worried about being weak.  I don't think I want to go back to being alone."

Twilight shook her head.  "You don't have to.  Even if I could replace you, I don't think I would."  She was quiet for a moment.  "You can't just replace friends."

Astral slowly pushed Twilight back until he could look her in the eye.  "Does that make us friends?"

She nodded once.  "After everything we've been through, it would be insulting to call you anything less, even if we do fight and argue over stuff."  She pushed herself up.  "Well, I guess I'm going to go sit with Fluttershy.  I don't know if she'll take it very well if she wakes up alone right now."

"Probably not," Astral agreed.  He looked down at his calculations.  Most of the numbers were scratched away, but he remembered the final result.  "She's already been alone for more than seven years."