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The changeling stirred slowly, letting out a quiet whine as she curled up tighter.
"Hng… five more minutes, mom," she groaned, rolling over on the hard, cold floor.
"System is offline. Please reboot."
"H-huh?" she murmured, forcing her eyes open.
That wasn't right. Her hive walls were notably not made out of metal.
The changeling's eyes flew open, and she shot up onto four hooves, nearly falling over in the process.
She was standing on a slightly raised platform in a small, cold metal room. There were lights above her, faintly on and flickering an off-white.
This was certainly not her hive.
"To reboot the system please interact with the console," came a monotone voice from the other side of the doorway.
Her breath hitched, and she took a half step back.
She couldn't hear her hive; she was in somewhere strange and darkly lit and there was probably a pony in the room next to her.
Her cyan glowing eyes frantically darted around the room, spotting a blank panel extruding from the wall, as well as a roughed up looking sword leaning against the wall.
She quickly hobbled over to it, her horn lighting up as she attempted to channel a levitation spell.
Her horn shorted a moment after it lit up, and a white hot pain arched out from it to the rest of her body, causing her to scream.
She immediately crumpled to the ground, tears stinging her eyes, her horn aching.
A soft whimper escaped her as she sniffled, her eyes cracking open slowly, blinking several times to clear them.
"Wh-what's wrong with my h-horn?" She tried her best to look up at it, only able to see the point of it.
Using a hoof to carefully feel around it resulted in another pain spike, albeit a duller one, prompting a yelp, the appendage pulling back to her chest quickly.
She bit her lip out of an anxious habit she’d picked up from somebuggy. If her horn didn't work, that meant she wouldn't be able to use magic.
She whimpered. Far away from the depths of her hive, with no communication, no magic? She didn’t stand much luck with whatever had stolen her away.
After a moment, she pulled herself back onto her hole filled legs, shaking her head to clear her thoughts.
"Please reboot system," came a monotone voice that she couldn’t pin down the gender of.
Her head flicked back to the doorway where it had come from, ears flicking up.
As quietly as she could, she crossed the remaining distance to the sword, her eyes glancing over the details of it, her eyes adapted for the darkness.
It would have been quite a fine work of art many years ago. But since the time of its creation, the sword had seen many a battle and had more than its fair share of scars. It had a matte black metal handle, with a metallic bronze handguard and pommel. The blade itself looked to be made of steel, and had lots of little chips missing from the edge, and a crack or two running through it.
She leaned her head down to the grip of it, and tentatively picked it up with her mouth, shivering at the coldness of it. The cold steel was unnerving, but at the same time reassuring, despite the way it sapped the heat away from her maw.
Now ‘armed’ with a weapon, the changeling made her way towards the other room.
Stepping through the door, she found it was nigh identical the same as the previous one, though it was longer.
That is to say, it was basically pitch black.
She slowly moved forward, her gaze flicking about from corner to corner, as to spot anything coming at her from the darkness.
A small stretch of wall ahead of her suddenly lit up, casting a dull blue glow across the area in front of it.
"System reboot required," the voice spoke again.
The sword was pointed in the direction of the light, and the brave little bug spoke up. “W-who a-are you? What d-do you want?”
A clatter of metal on metal made her yelp, jumping up and back, her little wings buzzing in distress.
In her haste to ask questions, she’d managed to forget that her only defence - the sword she had been holding in her mouth - needed to be held in her mouth.
She went stock still, her gaze now fixed on the panel, which lit up after a few seconds of silence.
“Please reboot system.”
She couldn’t stay still forever, no. Curiosity eventually took a hold of her, so she shuffled forward, raising a hoof to the panel that kept lighting up.
The raised hoof gently pressed against the cool, glassy material, causing the screen to go dark.
While Changelings like herself were brought up in the darkness of the deep underground, there was almost always some source of illumination.
Here, though? There was no light; there was nothing.
Everything went quiet, the gentle vibrations of whatever she was on petering out to nothing.
Her hoof retracted to her chest, and suddenly she was hyper-aware of how much sound she was making, her heart beating loudly, the ichor pumping through her veins, her breathing; everything sounded so much louder.
Never had she felt such lack of anything.
With a gentle buzz, the screen she had touched began to scroll white text at a pace she couldn't even remotely keep up with. As time went on, the minutes feeling longer than they had any right to, the sound and light slowly returned.
The lights flicked from what was well under quarter-power to full, and she hissed as they burnt her eyes.
"Reboot complete," a mare's voice spoke this time, clearer. "Greetings Captain, I am S.A.I.L., your Ship-based Artificial Intelligence Lattice. I manage the maintenance of your ship."
"Wh-what?" The nymph shook her head as her eyes adjusted to the bright light, slowly making out the blue colored pony displayed on-screen.
"I am also programmed to offer you information and advice."
"O-okay..." She murmured, tone laced uncertainty. The pony seemed familiar.
"The ship's navigation systems are damaged for unknown reasons. Our current location is unknown."
She took a step back, her brow furrowing as she racked her mind for who this pony was. Then it hit her.
'SAIL' was none other than one of the Diarchs of Equestria, Princess Luna.
With a cry of terror, she scrambled back into the other room nearly slipping twice, completely forgetting the sword.
"Captain, are you feeling well?" Came SAIL's voice, flat with a touch of concern, prompting a whimper from the little bug.
Said changeling remained silent, trying to curl tighter into herself, a gentle whimper leaving her.
"Captain?"
Cautiously, she peeked through the holes in her legs, her terrified gaze set towards the wall-mounted panel. Why hadn’t she moved?
"Captain, I know you're there."
The changeling 'eep'ed, and attempted to curl further, finding herself unable to go any tighter without pain.
The A.I. sighed audibly, a crackly sound that more than hinted to her displeasure. "If you wish to cower in the corner, Captain, that is fine. But if you don't get up, this unit will crash into the planet. Neither of us will survive."
Her eyes widened, ears perking and blood running cold. "Wh-what? What d-do you mean...?"
"With our current heading and speed, we will slowly spiral towards the planet below and impact it within approximately..." The A.I. paused for a moment to calculate. "Eighty-two hours, thirty-four minutes and three seconds. Shall I set a timer, Captain?"
She got up slowly, moving closer to the other room, where the... Luna-Not-Luna was. "Um… O-okay," she spoke slowly, peeking her head around the corner, ears flat against her head.
The image of Princess Luna onscreen ducked down out of sight for a second, before reappearing, holding a digital clock, counting down. "Timer set for Eighty-two hours, thirty-three minutes and fourty-seven seconds."
The changeling suppressed a shudder, looking away, then suddenly pausing, murmuring an “oh no.”
"Is there something wrong, Captain?" SAIL inquired, the little sprite looking at her.
"I don't know how I got here," she responded after a moment. "Last night I was in my bed at the hive, snuggled up in my bla-'' She gasped. "By the hives! Everyling else must be worried about me!"
The AI's facial expression changed from passive to a frown upon hearing her. "I find myself in a similar situation."
"Huh?" The changeling's head snapped up to the small screen.
"There is evidence of tampering with my code. I have no record of anything prior to my boot sequence. As well as that, there has been an unauthorized modification to my AI core."
The nymph blinked, looking rather lost. "I think I only got half of that," she muttered.
"Nevermind, Captain."
There was a whirring, a buzzing, and the sound of air displacement from the other room, causing the changeling to let out a girlish scream, and dart into the corner.
"...the teleporter is now online, Captain," The AI informed, a note of amusement audible. "As of current, only the planet below is accessible. I suggest you beam down and collect any resources possible to prevent planetary impact."
The changeling jolted up and into action at the reminder of impending doom. "Yes! Good idea!" She immediately headed into the room, and stood on the glowy blue pad in the center of it.
The AI let out a sigh. "Captain, you will need supplies. There is a small cache in the locker left behind by-" The last word she said came out as a garbled mess of static.
"...oh," she said, rubbing the back of her head with a hoof. before heading to the locker.
After a few seconds of fiddling with the dang thing, she opened it. There wasn't much inside. Just four labelled cans, a flashlight, a weird bronze u-shaped thing and a screwdriver.
She picked up one of the cans carefully, holding it close to her nose.
"That's odd," she murmured.
"What is, Captain?"
"I can, um, feel love in these cans."
The AI was perplexed. "Pardon, Captain? What do you mean?"
The changeling looked up at the small screen. "Well, um, you see, Changelings are a race of emotivores, and love is our main food source, g-generally."
The screen played an animation of SAIL writing something down in a book, a quill in hoof and reading glasses perched on her muzzle. "Interesting," it murmured.
A small smile made its way onto the changeling's face. "Cute," she mumbled.
"Me?" SAIL queried, not looking up from her book.
The changeling froze. "Wh-what? I-i didn't s-say anything! Nothing w-what so ever!"
The pony onscreen raised an eyebrow, shutting the book and looking up at the bug. "Right."
"Yes," she nodded in agreement, then coughed into her hoof. "A-anyway," she picked up the rest of the cans, looking around, then putting them back down. "I don't know where to put these."
“I believe I may be able to synthesize a solution,” SAIL said after a few seconds. “I have been scanning you, and should be able to adapt a bag design to your form.”
“You can do that? Here?”
“Correct, Captain.”