Iron Mountain

by computerneek


Sweetie Ding

Creakcreakcreakcreak…  Snap-popple-ding!

Sweetie bell smiles at herself.  She finished fixing the walls, ceiling, and roof an unmeasured amount of time ago- and now Fluttershy’s floor is back in one piece.  That should make everything- that she’s aware of, at least.

“Sweetie?” Fluttershy asks gently but unexpectedly, from where she’s stood watching in the door behind Sweetie for the last fifteen minutes.

“AAAHH!” Sweetie screams, bolting for cover.

“Eep!”  Fluttershy also disappears, back out the door.

A few seconds pass, and Sweetie steps back out of Fluttershy’s cabinet, checking her back- still a unicorn- as she goes.  Also, still a blank-flank.  Drat.  “Fluttershy?” she asks, walking towards the door…  Which is still on the floor from Pinkie’s assault, she realizes.  It shoulda been her first priority- then she’d have known when Fluttershy showed up.

One wide-eyed eye, surrounded by yellow fur topped with a pink mane, slides into view for a few seconds before the rest of Fluttershy follows.  “Sweetie Belle,” she mutters, her smile audible.  “Thank you.”

Sweetie looks back at the inside of the cottage, mostly to hide her blush.  She eventually does turn back towards Fluttershy- one does not keep friends waiting long.  “You’re welcome,” she smiles, and allows herself to be drawn into a hug from the gentle mare.  Her dreaded wings twitch slightly as the motion disturbs them, but she determinedly ignores them, just like the rest of the day.  She’s a unicorn, not a pegasus, nor an alicorn.

“Thank you so much,” Fluttershy coos.  “I was worried I’d have to find a new home.”  While she holds Sweetie in a tight hug, she strokes her pelt, her gentle hoof finding hidden contours to ride down.

Sweetie shudders more than once when Fluttershy’s hoof unerringly finds the upper edge of her left wing and follows it down her back.  This produces just the right balance of strange new feeling on a wing she hadn’t had before and the blissful comfort of the stroking- even on the wing in question.  Just the right balance for her to be uncertain of whether it’s a torturous experience…  Or a wonderful one.  She can’t seem to decide which.  Because of this preoccupation, she fails to notice the hug lasts longer than one from Fluttershy ought to have.

Fluttershy rocks gently side to side with the unicorn…? In her hug.  She sees a unicorn, at least- but she’s certain that’s a wing she’s feeling, twitching away from her hoof whenever she touches it.  Not that she sees anything there.  Sweetie couldn’t have gotten wings of her own- Discord once told her ascensions are very specific events with a very specific flavor to them.  She’d even mentioned them when he asked her about the weird power surges he’s detecting on this side of Equestria- but no, the flavor was completely different, and besides, he can trace ascensions to the millimeter.  He’d commented on still being able to feel the points where Celestia and Luna had stood when they ascended so long ago.

Momentarily, she considers the possibility that it’s a prank on Zeus’ part.  He certainly has those nanites- and whatever he’d done to completely reconstruct her left foreleg overnight without regrowing it.  He’d told her it was easier and faster to use a ‘prosthetic’, but hadn’t explained his reasoning- or even what that word meant.  Twilight had yet to find it in her library- either that, or she had yet to tell Fluttershy she did.

Whatever happened, every time her hoof touches the wing, she senses a shudder travel through the young unicorn’s body.  She’s still going to need to come to terms with whatever happened for as long as it sticks around, unless she plans on shuddering every time a breeze ruffles her…  Well, she doesn’t know that it’s a feathered wing just yet.  So, every time a breeze strikes her wings…  Wing.  She hasn’t checked the other side for one, and doesn’t want to be quite that blatant out where other ponies could see.

Come to think of it, where had Sweetie gotten the power to rebuild her roof?  She spends a couple seconds of idle stroking- the shuddering is dissipating- thinking on the problem, and realizes the answer is a facehoofer.


“Don’t jinx it!” Applejack had cried.

“I’m not,” Zeus had replied.  “I’m acknowledging the inevitable.  I would be jinxing it if I said they couldn’t do it.  Which is- theoretically at least- the case.”


And that’s what jinxed it, Fluttershy decides.  She must have gotten into one of those canisters.  “Would you like some dinner?” she finally offers, looking down at the tearful unicorn.  She needs some excuse to get her somewhere private in short order, like inside her house, that won’t look weird to anypony that happens to be nearby.  Zeus had taught her much…  Wait, tearful?  That isn’t a happy expression, either!  “Is something wrong?”  Her hug releases itself.

Sweetie Belle blinks a couple times, before wiping her fetlocks across her eyes, striking away the tears.  “No, they’re, uh, tears of joy… or something.”  Of all the things she could be, a good liar is certainly not it.

Fluttershy’s eyebrow rises minutely, but she declines to comment on it.  So she’s hiding her wings.  Maybe she’s afraid of being yelled at, or bullied, because of them?  All the more reason to get her in private to bring them up.  “Um, how about dinner?”  Very smooth, Fluttershy.  Very smooth.

Sweetie seems eager for the change of topic, though, and completely misses Fluttershy’s mistake.  “Yes please!” she yelps, behaving for all the world like herself.

Certainly not an impersonator, Fluttershy smiles to herself, leading the way back in- and to her never-crushed kitchen cabinets, where she starts pulling out ingredients for a good salad.  “Could you close the door, please?” she asks offhand, as if it were still hung- hoping Sweetie would think she wouldn’t notice it going up.

“Uh, sure,” Sweetie Belle replies, hopping off of the door in question- and Fluttershy notices her horn does not glow until after the door returns to her frame.  The matching aura floats around the hinges and latch for a second, while the popping and snapping of mending wood is heard before the eggtimer-like dinging noise indicates completion.

“Thank you,” Fluttershy indicates, using one wing to carry the bowls as she trots over to the kitchen table, there to deposit them in front of a couple adjacent seats- one that she takes, and the other that Sweetie takes before they dig in.


Two minutes later, they’re reaching the bottoms of their bowls, and Sweetie seems eager for more distraction.  Fluttershy notices a small shift in her fur, right around the wing area- a form of nervous fidgeting prevalent in all winged races, she believes.  That is, if that shift was caused by the particular wing motion she suspects just happened.  Unfortunately, she has to bring it to light, rather than disguise it.  If nothing else, she can help the young unicorn cope.  “Sweetie…” she begins, and pauses.  She never was very good at tact- at least, until she met Zeus.  He’s so good he could probably subjugate Equestria with words alone if he wanted to- and he’s also a good teacher.  She looks over at the worried unicorn, then reaches out a hoof to trace the outline of the near wing.  “What happened?”

Sweetie sits stone-still, caught between shock and terror.  How had Fluttershy known exactly where her wing would be?  Then, she realizes what she’d said, and processes the worry in her tone.  She thinks it’s bothering me…  Which is true.  She wants to help.  Tears well up in her eyes as she considers this, contemplating the dangers of taking the offer.  Only, she can’t seem to think of any, aside from Rarity finding out.  The possible benefits…

Fluttershy is wholly unprepared for what happens next.  Sweetie hurls herself out of her seat at Fluttershy, catching her in her hug- and knocking them both on the floor.  The landing doesn’t even phase Fluttershy as she returns the embrace, catching a glimpse of a semitransparent but feathery white wing before her own foreleg hides it.

“Please tell me it can be fixed!” Sweetie cries.

“What happened?” Fluttershy asks again.

“I-”  She pauses to cry for a minute, before looking back up.  “Please don’t tell?”

“It’s our secret,” Fluttershy smiles comfortingly.

Sweetie spends another long while crying into the pegasus’ coat.  Eventually, she calms down enough to form coherent words once again, and climbs off of her wordlessly.  “I… played with those cube things,” she mutters.

Fluttershy, upon seeing the painful-looking state of Sweetie’s wings, sets to work preening them more neatly.  Sweetie shudders on every touch, but eventually stretches it out to let her get the whole thing.

“Stomped on one a bit too hard or something.  Whatever happened, I broke it- and the mana flowed into me.  Only, it didn’t, but it did- like it went through me.  Then I had a restless night…  and woke up like this.”

Silence holds for a long time while Fluttershy works, straightening feathers, relieving tension.  She finishes with one wing and moves to the other, which Sweetie holds out for her without delay.

“Do you mind if I tell Zeus?” she eventually asks.

“No, please!”  She winces has her frightened movement strikes her wing against Fluttershy’s careful hooves.

Fluttershy blinks.  “He’s really good at keeping secrets,” she mutters, resuming work.  “He’s also most likely to have a fix…  If your, um, alicornation isn’t permanent, that is.”

She blinks.  “Not ascension?”

“Nope,” she smiles.  “Discord says those are easy to identify- and he hasn’t felt any since Twilight.”

The wing droops down to the floor, the muscles finally relaxing as sweetie lets out the breath she’s been holding all day.  “So it is fixable.”

“So it might be fixable,” Fluttershy corrects.  “You never know, with Zeus’ stuff.”

“Ahh...  Keep it vague, maybe?”

She smiles.  “I will,” she replies- and confuses Sweetie by tapping her right foreleg once with her left hoof.  “Zeus?” she asks, setting back to work on Sweetie’s wings.

Sweetie blinks.  She realizes she’s seen Rarity make a one-sided conversation once before, though she hadn’t seen how it started or ended, only overheard enough to know she was talking to somepony called Zeus.  That had been before she’d been told about him.

Fluttershy smiles, her stance lowering slightly as she blushes.  “No need for that,” she mutters.  “Actually, Sweetie Belle fixed it right up…”  After a pause, she freezes.  “How’d you guess?”

Sweetie looks up at her, alarmed- and witnesses the shocked expression on Fluttershy’s face.

“Two…”  She sighs.  “It’s the other two, isn’t it?  …  Yeah, that’s them.  What’s ‘rejuvenated’...?”  She resumes work on Sweetie’s wing, her expression going repeatedly between curiosity and disgust.  Even alarm, once.  “You can raise the dead?  …  Oh.  That makes more sense.”

Sweetie Belle is staring at her, as confused as if every word had been a different inflection on the word “Apple”, treated as language.

“Oh yes.  Sweetie wants to know if it can be fixed.  …  She wants to be a unicorn again.”

Now Sweetie is listening- though she hears nothing.  Fluttershy finishes up with her wing while listening to Zeus’ response, wherever it’s coming from.

“Ahh.  Uh, Sweetie?  Your magic…  Is it regular unicorn magic, or…?”

Sweetie blinks.  “I still have my unicorn magic,” she answers.

Fluttershy smiles.  “You don’t have any other magic, do you?”

“Uh, I do, I think…  Why?”

Fluttershy looks at the floor, speaking so low Sweetie barely hears it.  “It’s permanent.”

Sweetie’s wings droop instantly from her sides.  “What?”

Fluttershy raises her head, looking at Sweetie with great, sad eyes.  “If your magic had been unchanged, removing your wings would have been easy.  Because it’s changed, though, Zeus says they’ll just regrow every time.”

The alicorn filly’s jaw hangs open, but no words come out, her loss apparent on her face.

Blink, blink.  “Look at the bright side,” Fluttershy encourages- and gestures upwards.  “You couldn’t do that before, could you?”

Sweetie looks up at the ceiling, lifting her neatly gleaming wings back into place.  “True…”

Fluttershy smiles widely.  “And tree sap won’t be a problem anymore, will it?”

Sweetie takes in a deep, excited breath.  “Really?!?  Oh, YES!”  She jumps into the air for a second, striking one hoof excitedly into the air.  She does remember that cleaning spell Rarity taught her once, the one that she hadn’t the power to use against much tree sap.  But given the amount of power she’s already demonstrated, an entire forest worth of sap should be a piece of cake.  She’s still uncomfortable with her wings, but that alone is so worth it!

Fluttershy taps her chin, a gesture that confuses the minute fragment of Sweetie’s attention still spared for such distractions.  “So,” she smiles.  “Since having wings is rather pointless if you can’t fly, shall we go fix that too?”

Sweetie shrugs, looking back at her wings.  “I’m gonna have to face that at some point anyways,” she mutters, and looks back up to Fluttershy as her wings fade to invisibility once again.  “Why not?”

Fluttershy smiles- and breaks off, looking slightly to the side.  “Oh?  …  Good idea!”  She turns back to Sweetie.  “If we stop by Zeus before we start, we can have you flying like a pro in minutes,” she smiles.


Dome disintegration is going well, repairs underway.  I expect full operability in 1.43 months, full ammo resupply 2.73 days after that.  Analysis of the captured (and now disintegrated) comms devices- the original programming was destroyed by the Sentries before I had a chance to look- indicates they are modified low-output neural headsets.  I suspect some sort of control program was used; the Princesses’ headsets were not powerful enough to send messages to a pony’s mind, only to receive basic instructions.  Probably for communications control.

I have also recovered Twilight’s comset intact, again with no original programming, and disintegrated it.  It contained a low-power but fully capable neural headset, though also had the standard microphone and speaker of a commset- and an identical bracelet control module to the Princesses’.  At least, I assume that’s what it is, given how the Princesses turned theirs off.  I did note the presence of fewer nanites than DCC logs showed in the Princesses’ sets- no biggie, they’re old, cruder than the ones I manufactured with the nanites out of the Princesses’ sets.

My nanites will, collectively, outmass me before I am done here.