"I moved." Kiera's voice came to both formerly human ponies through their implants (that had amazingly survived the transformation). "Not far from where I landed initially, just enough to get out of sight of those railway lines. Such a delightfully archaic form of transport."
Dustin tossed her mane, a gesture she was getting more used to doing than she would like. "So… Princess," she looked at Twilight Sparkle, "how long will it take before you can undo… this." She poked her own chest for emphasis.
"Well, first I need to identify what caused the change, and why it made you a mare instead of a stallion. Honestly, it would probably be easier to reverse that first." Twilight quickly pulled out a book from her pack. "If I just reversed the… it might take a little study to work that bit out."
"How long?" Dust knew his voice was carrying some desperation. "I just… I figured… it was magic, you can do magic!"
"Dust, back off, she is trying to help." Belay got up from where he was sitting and approached his fellow brawn. "The Princess said—"
"Twilight, please just call me Twilight." Twilight blushed a little. "I only became a princess recently, and I still don't know everything that I need to about it. The worst part is, I feel like telling my friends that would be letting them down." She suddenly realized she was unburdening herself, dumping all her problems on the two important visitors.
Belay reached out a hoof, raising it to the Princess' shoulder and gently resting it there. "You became a princess recently? It isn't a title from birth?" When his touch wasn't refused, he started to rub a little circle with it.
"Title? Oh, uh, I guess it can be, like my brother's daughter. But she is the first ever, most princesses 'ascend' by doing something associated with their destiny. I created an entirely new spell, well, finished one. But it was amazing!" Twilight's eyes lost a little focus as she stared into the past. "The spell fixes destiny. When my friends all lost theirs, it straightened things out."
Dustin murmured, "Destiny?" with a subvocalization.
"Don't you dare start. You are dealing with magical pony princesses, and you dare challenge their beliefs?" Kiera's words were soft, only in the ears of the two brawns.
Ignoring his skeptical partner, Belay pushed ahead. "So you fixed their destiny with a new spell, and Princess Celestia rewarded you with becoming a princess?"
Twilight giggled. "No, it… it was the magic itself. It pushed me to another place, then gave me my wings." She ruffled the two appendages for effect. "Princess Celestia was there, but she was my guide, not the source."
"It sounds like you need to relax, just calm down. I am sure if you are needed more, that destiny will help you. Hasn't it done pretty well so far?" Belay wanted to poke his tongue out at Dust. 'It isn't like it is hard to keep open to someone's beliefs.' What Belay didn't expect was the horned-and-winged mare to push closer, rearing up and hugging him. There was nothing else he could do but hug back.
"Thank you so much. I just… I needed to hear that." Twilight's brain didn't click that she was hugging a stallion, she just felt a connection to the visitors. It was at that moment the train began to slow at the bottom of the Canterlot Mountain. "We must be almost there."
"You are about three-hundred meters from me. If you would disembark and head west-wards around the mountain." Kiera's voice came from both the brawns' comms buttons clearly.
"How can you tell that?" Twilight looked to the two ponies. "It's not magic, so there has to be something you can do to…"
"Triangulation." Kiera relished the chance to show off her science, not that precise geometry was really science. "Before we knew the full nature of this planet, I released a few micro-sats… satellites…" Kiera fumbled for the words to use. "Little boxes that I can send commands to. In the sky."
Twilight furrowed her brow. "But how would… oh, do they tell you how far away something is?"
Both brawns stared at Twilight Sparkle in shock. Slowly, they turned to each other. Dustin was the first to recover. "Kiera, did she just understand spacial triangulation after a few seconds of thought and the roughest description I have ever heard?"
"If they had the inclination for space travel, something tells me these ponies would already be up there, and would have been greeting us." Belay poked his partner in the shoulder. "So just relax, they aren't primitives, they just don't value the same things we do."
"I get the feeling you are talking, but you aren't saying anything. Do you talk mind-to-mind?" Twilight got her bags sorted, ready for the little walk to find Kiera.
"Our speech method here is complicated." Kiera's voice, in perfect Equish, came from the comms buttons. "They have little sensors in their head that lets me hear what they are saying, even when they don't fully say it. It is called subvocalizing."
Climbing down from the train, Twilight pondered this. "Okay, so they can talk to you, but they seemed to be talking together?
"The sensors also let me communicate with them, so I relay what they want between them. It got a little more tricky for talking to you. They subvocalize to me, I translate and play back for you. Then when you reply, I translate back and whisper it to them."
Twilight smiled. "That is really clever, but doesn't that keep you busy?" The three walked together, Twilight following the edge of the mountain around until, at last, she froze in place. She wasn't sure what she had expected, but the enormity of "Kiera" was more than everything she had planned for. Like an elongated, flat ball, the hull of the spaceship was mostly featureless. There was a set of landing struts planted down against the ground, as well as two large bulges leading to the other end. "Wow."
"I have stored all our atmosphere from within the ship, and flushed it with Equestrian air. It should be safe for the Princess aboard." Kiera's voice cut into the moment, she could see twin images of the mare, one constructed from Dustin's comms button, the other from her own sensors.
Walking up to the ship in silence, Twilight watched a platform lower down from the belly of it, stopping just as it touched the ground. She took a step towards it, then paused. "Kiera," Twilight looked upwards, at the ship looming over her, "may I come in?"
"Aboard, Princess Twilight. And yes, you may." Kiera's tone was tickled pink at the question. Just to her brawns, she spat a raspberry of static.
Twilight looked down when she stepped onto the platform. Her hooves made soft clicks against the surface of it, it felt both soft and hard. Her mind began to race, thoughts bouncing around as to how each and every thing she could see worked. There was some kind of panel on the side of the box-like platform.
"Breathe, Twilight." Belay stepped up onto the platform beside the alicorn. "If you want to ask anything, just do so. Kiera has… relented, regarding what you are allowed to find out. Weapon information is restricted, as is the details of FTL… faster than light travel, but everything else is on the table."
Dustin stepped up on the other side of Twilight, having to contend with a wing flying out when her partner mentioned "faster than light." She was just about to comment when the lift started to rise and Twilight started to wobble a little.
"Relax, please, this lift can handle a lot more weight than you three." Kiera's voice held a warm chuckle. 'So much easier talking with real equipment, those comms buttons are terrible.' Drawing her lift to a stop, she cycled the built-in airlock used her voice from inside herself to beckon the Princess inside. "Welcome aboard the KDB-one-three-two-nine. That is Kiera, Dustin, Belay. One-three-two-nine is the year I graduated."
Twilight followed the much more "alive" sounding voice until she was in what she had to assume was the control room of Kiera. There were two chairs—neither of which looked pony-friendly—and so many controls that her head spun just from looking at them. "H-Hello?"
"I am over here, Twilight Sparkle." Kiera used only the audio directly from her column. The mare turned and looked at her titanium-wrapped self. "It is good to finally meet you in person, as it were. It is custom to talk to my shell as if it were me, but if you are elsewhere in me, or are busy with something, I won't take offense if you don't drop everything to address me here."
Stepping up to the metal column, Twilight lifted her hoof and paused, when no warning was given, she touched the metal plate. "Are you… are you trapped in there?"
Kiera would have laughed, but for the tone in the mare's voice. "No, I am no more trapped than you are trapped in your own body. The whole ship is me, linked directly to my mind through wires. I can see everything, hear everything, and with the last refit, feel the touch of everyone within me."
On the verge of nerding out completely, Twilight had to rein-in her excitement. "I really want to learn everything about… well, all of you. But first I have to restore your friends." She drew her hoof down the titanium column, dragging it down to the floor.
"When you are done, then." Kiera actually chuckled at the mare's enthusiasm. "How long do you think it will take to restore them to human?"
"Back to… well, it would undo all the changes and restore them, thaumically, to their original selves." Twilight lifted a hoof to tap her chin. "If that goes well, I think about a month, maybe two. I don't want to get their hopes up, so I am making allowances."
"They cannot understand you, Twilight; I am not translating for them. If you can't do this, tell me. I will break it to them." Kiera's tone was even, almost mechanical; she didn't want to let the real emotion, worry, color her words.
"No!" Twilight shook her head. "I can do it, but it is going to take time. I can probably restore their genders in a week, but they will still be ponies. Their race will take longer, but I am sure I can do it."
"Kiera," Dustin looked at the column, "what is she saying? I can hear her, but not your translation. Did something go wrong with the translator?"
"Yes, Dust, it conveniently broke when Kiera was asking Twilight about our treatment. Ugh, men." Belay shook his head, then froze and tittered. "Okay, that might be unfair. Can I just curse Dust instead?"
"Of course you can, Belay. I keep a log file that is full of just me cursing him." Kiera sounded more relaxed. 'It will be alright, the pony princess can save my brawns and we can be on our way, with a new potential member for the FSP. Mission success is still possible!'
"Are you two done?" Dustin gave one hoof a firm clop on the deck. Then she realized that the action amounted to a girl stomping her foot in exasperation, and blushed. "How big is this log file, anyway?" She had to ask, she just had to. It made her the straight-man… or mare, of the joke, but it was so perfect.
"Calculating…" Kiera used a deliberately mechanical voice, pulling one of her smaller artificial intelligence systems to make the audio. "Error, system cannot calculate numbers with sufficient accuracy."
Belay and Dust both were giggling at the implication, but Twilight stared at the two confused. After a few moments, their infectious laughter caught her and the alicorn was grinning along too.
"For your information, Twilight said it would be a week if you wanted her to just correct your gender as ponies, or two months to get you back to human. I did push her a little about it, but she seems confident, and while it would be easy for someone to lie about such things…" Kiera trailed off, her own thoughts having trouble contemplating the mindset of this pony. She continued without translating for Twilight. "I don't believe she would even think to lie, not on something this important."
Twilight noticed a drawer open to one side and walked over to it. Inside she could see little discs of silver. "Oh, what are these?" She waited a moment before picking one up in her magic and examining it.
"Those are comms buttons. Through that," Kiera transferred her voice to the activated comm button in Twilight's magical grip, "I can talk to you, hear you, and see through it."
"Is that all?" Twilight started delving into the device as much as her magic would allow, but the thing seemed quite dense with what felt like glass. She turned it around and pressed it to the edge of her saddlebag that faced forwards.
"You can have a second one, too." Kiera made the light in the drawer flash once. "So you can take it apart and I can watch. You guessed right, they do detect other things. I don't know what this magic is, but I am going to try to scan for it while you work."
"Well, I should get started on this fix. Thank you, Kiera, for letting me see you." Twilight smiled brightly at the column. "I should probably get back to Canterlot before I lose myself and start examining everything."
Kiera couldn't help but gush a little at the manners and inquisitiveness of the Princess. "You are very welcome, Twilight. Now, will you need these two good-for-nothing brawns to help you? I can assure you, they are mostly trained, and can even do tricks for treats." This prompted Twilight to lift her hoof and snort through it.
"Hey, we aren't that bad, Kiera!" Dust's actual voice came from down the hall, not that Twilight could understand until Kiera repeated it from the little button. At last, each of the two brawns returned to the cockpit of the ship, their ship-suits gone to reveal their full colors.
Dustin's fur was a soft yellow, set off by a bright green mane that the earth pony mare kept reaching up to adjust. Of course her tail matched her mane, and kept flicking in worry. "I can't handle this, I am… naked… but not."
"Oh get over yourself, Dustin." Belay was pure white, with an exquisitely pale orange mane and tail. Unlike Dust, he was a unicorn with a proud horn on his head. "Even the Princess doesn't wear clothes, and this is a diplomatic meeting!"
"Should I ask?" Twilight looked to Kiera, then back to the brawns. "Anyway, we should go… if you are coming, that is?"