Wham!
Rainbow Dash smashes to a landing in front of Twilight, her sparkling contrail beginning to fade. “Twilight!” she demands. “Somepony’s ripping off my Rainboom! Did you see ‘em?”
Twilight sighs. “No, Rainbow, we didn’t. Pinkie ran off, though- she might…. Know.” Rainbow had already taken off.
One of the unicorns in the team blinks a couple times. “Uh, shall we get started?” he offers.
Over ten minutes after the Rainboom clears the field, the Cutie Mark Crusaders snap their jaws shut. They’d seen Fluttershy’s whole show.
“Cutie Mark Crusaders Rainboomers!” Scootaloo announces.
The other two look at her. “But we can’t fly,” Sweetie Belle objects.
“None of us can,” Applebloom chips in.
Scootaloo, not to be dissuaded, smiles widely. “Come on- teaching an Earth pony or Unicorn to fly ought to be easy next to getting Fluttershy to do THAT!” She indicates the clear skies above the meadow.
She’s met by a couple of thoughtful stares.
“True,” Applebloom agrees.
Following a repeat performance of Scootaloo’s earlier announcement, this time accompanied by hoofslaps and excited yells, the three board their wagon and zip off towards the hill they’d seen her heading towards earlier. The hill that borders the blast zone they really don’t want to get too close to.
They don’t find anything, either.
“Good morning!”
“Good afternoon,” the sky blue pegasus smiles back instantly, trotting casually into town. “I happen to be looking for somepony in the candy business- could I get a pointer?”
Roseluck raises an eyebrow. “You not from around here?”
Headshake. “Not really, no.”
“Ahh… You’d probably be looking for Bonbon’s Candies, then.”
“Ah, yes, please.”
“Okay, let’s see…”
Two minutes later, one red-maned earth pony returns to her work, while the pegasus trots in the direction she’d pointed. One meeting down, one clue acquired. Preliminary target, Bonbon’s Candies.
An additional ten minutes finds the pegasus gazing longingly at a closed glass door. Above the door hangs the title of the store, Bonbon’s Candies, superimposed over an image of three wrapped candies.
A Unicorn mare pauses briefly behind her, on the roadway, before trotting over. “Hey, ya lookin’ fer candies?”
The pegasus makes a startled turn, golden mane flying about. “What-! Oh, um, yes, something like that. I… don’t have any money, though.”
“Well, that could be a bit of a problem,” the mare states.
Fortunately, I can confirm that whatever damage my old antimagic screens did was not life-altering damage, at least yet; the mare is sitting behind the counter in the candy shop, waiting patiently for new customers. Now, I need only fit in and, eventually, make inconspicuous contact, just to be certain.
Several hours later, Twilight is the last to leave the excavation zone. She yawns massively into her hoof as she ambles across the hillside, heading in the general direction of Ponyville, after which she will route to her castle and bed. She’d pulled one too many all-nighters already, studying her library for anything like it during the nighttime hours. She’s more than a little worried that, combined with her recent magical exhaustion, she might not even make it back to Ponyville before she falls asleep- and if she does, she’ll be at the mercy of the Everfree all night long.
Those fears, of falling asleep, are calmed quickly when she falls into a small cave opening, the resultant adrenaline rush driving off her exhaustion for a moment as she leaps back out. Her worries begin afresh almost instantly; her mind is already getting groggy again, after only a few seconds. She’d spent far too much time and energy venting her frustration today. Even after her order, all the other unicorns had been going really light on the terrain they had been plowing today, rather than with the force and energy they’d gone at it with whenever something was found and needed revealing. Overall, the unicorns had pushed the terrain back about an inch in three hours’ time.
Two hours ago, Twilight had informed the Pegasi and the Earth ponies that she appreciated their efforts (Together, they had disposed of almost six inches of terrain) and sent them home an hour early, on account of that they deserved it after such hard work. No doubt they knew that wasn’t the real reason; especially when, two minutes later, they heard her raging at- and firing- the unicorns, before the crunches of flying terrain began and a wave of panicked unicorns came over the hill. No doubt, the Pegasi and Earth ponies decided, Twilight had wanted them out of the danger zone while she vented. They had unanimously decided to stand and wait for her to finish, at least until their shifts were over, and offer to resume work once she did.
It had taken Twilight two hours to finish venting- and even then, she wasn’t done. By the time she had exhausted herself beyond belief and spent every last ounce of her magical power, the hardworking ponies had long since gone home. She’d spent the last fifteen minutes on adrenaline alone- and, overall, at least doubled the cleared space, alongside the discovery of a few more shapes to investigate later.
Either way, her adrenaline pumps are also quite exhausted by now, so her newfound wakefulness lasts hardly six seconds before she slides back to her half-asleep stupor.
She ambles slowly inside, stumbling slightly as she goes. Finally, she trips over the doorsill, landing roughly in the darkened room… And vanishes into the blissful grasp of sleep.
“Twilight? You okay?” It’s Fluttershy. She’d been searching for the cave for five minutes before she heard Twilight’s yelp, then taken five more to find it; by the time she made it to the bottom, Twilight was sleeping, face-down, on the hard, metal floor.
Twilight doesn’t wake.
“She’s deep asleep,”
“Eeek!” She casts her gaze quickly around the dimly-lit room. Right, it’s the invisible stallion… Interesting, there’s more chairs in here than there were earlier. “Oh, um… this is my friend Twilight. Um… can she use one of those seats as well?”
“Absolutely. Will you need help getting her into it, or no?”
“Um…” She glances at Twilight. “No, thank you,” she answers, and sets to work moving Twilight to the nearest seat. It takes her a few minutes to get Twilight in- and, for the first time, witnesses the sides adjusting themselves for her to place Twilight’s hooves on. Once she finishes, she looks at the headrest more thoroughly. “What’re these for?” she asks.
“The headrest doubles as a neural link headset.”
After a few seconds’ pause, Fluttershy climbs into her own seat, next to Twilight’s. “What’s an, um, new-roll link headset?”
“The headset is merely an avenue through which a neural link can be performed. When active, the neural link connects minds together; if it were activated right now, it would connect you to Twilight and some of my tactical databases. However, I have not yet calibrated the system for use by ponies; as such, it may have unforeseen long- or short-term side effects.”
Fluttershy smiles. “Twilight would love talking to you,” she mutters, before nodding off herself.
Zeus waits until after she crosses the threshold into deep sleep before replying softly. “I’m looking forward to talking to her as well.”
Perhaps my biggest worry about having Twilight in the bay right now is that she might panic upon awakening. She’s been stressing out more and more about trying to find a way into her ‘metal monster’ over the last few days; thus, at finding herself inside the aforementioned monster, she’s apt to explode.
Not nearly as violently as the cliffside on my aft hull; she’s cleared all the way forward to the facing armor of my main battery turrets, along with across far enough to discover two more of my secondary Hellbores, eight point defense clusters, numerous sensor pods and VLS hatches, and the edge of my port aft Hellrail- a weapon that would be safely usable with ponies standing next to it, even though the giant, currently inoperable railgun is largely useless against anything that isn’t in space. As such, they have the last repair priority, before unexposed armor.
Repair operations are coming along smoothly. At the moment, all additional systems repairs- and seat productions- have been suspended in favor of exposed armor repairs. I’ve managed to top off my Final Emergency Reserves, the emergency power supply specifically designed to keep my Survival Center- and, by extension, Damage Control- operable in the event of the complete failure of Main Power. I’ve had to completely disintegrate and replace half the entire bank, and their deteriorated linkages to the rest of my power grid, to allow them to reach this state; the destructive chemical reactions were too fast for in-place nanite repairs. Fortunately, though, I’ve been able to use my now fully repaired fab nanovat to produce the required cells without issue.
Now that I’ve topped them off, though, I have finally been able to release Final Emergency Repair Mode- meaning, I’m no longer limited to a mere 5% of my Personality Center’s processing capacity. My main power cells are up to about 3.71% capacity, and similarly reconstructed. I’ve been limiting repair operations to only half of active production, meaning nothing at night; once I hit 5% in my main power reserves, I plan to use any and all power beyond that point for repair operations. Five percent is enough for a brief stint of combat, if needed; enough to the point where I can worry about my physical repair state before continuing to charge.
Unfortunately, with these numbers, I expect the exposed armor repairs to take at least 2.73 days, plus some, depending on how determined Twilight is to see terrain removed from my hull.
Speaking of the focused purple mare, my scans are starting to get back from her. 0.027 seconds of simulations suggests the current neural headset programming would conflict with Twilight’s ability to perform magic, assuming the manipulation happens in her horn. I am unable to understand the inner workings of her horn- perhaps this is my first lesson in magic? I set my design cores on solving this issue; even if I am able to fabricate a system capable of manipulating magic, I will still want at least a basic knowledge of magic, such as any unicorn would have, before I start any of my experiments.
It seems Twilight has been suffering from not only sleep deprivation but moderate starvation and minor dehydration. Those are easy fixes, as is her partially obstructed pulmonary artery*. The tumor developing in her left hip is more troublesome- especially once I find it to be cancerous, and spreading. A crack in a hoof, several bruises and a couple crushed muscles; a cracked wingbone, damaged disks in her spinal column, developing nearsightedness, a frayed optic nerve… Another tumor, pressing on her pineal gland*- probably why she has so much trouble sleeping.
While these problems would undoubtedly have killed her at some point, they’re no biggie for me; hardly 5.72 hours after Fluttershy settles her into the seat, I have completed her repairs. I expect sunrise to begin in approximately 1.37 minutes; it was long after sunset that they entered the compartment.