Matt watched as Twilight practiced magic again, this time using much less than normal. She was still recovering from her fight with Nightmare Moon, so Sandra hadn’t let her cast magic-intensive spells. The lieutenant herself stood next to him, and Bradford jotted notes in his abused sketchbook, which he had used to help him explore the fauna of the Dutch East Indies before the war with Japan and now dedicated entirely to the study of magic. His pencils were practically dead after the past few days, but he was more concerned with the dwindling amount of empty space in the book.
Twilight hovered just over the deck with her eyes closed, sitting in meditation. Swirls of black and dark violet circled her as she continued to hover. Some were absorbed directly into her skin, while the rest created a field of unusual light.
Matt glanced at his watch: she’d started almost two hours ago. “What was the point of today’s exercise, Lieutenant Tucker?”
“Endurance,” Sandra replied. “She wanted to extend the amount of time she can wield magic, and apparently the easiest way to do that is to actually cast spells for longer and longer periods of time.”
“It’s so fascinating, wouldn’t you agree? Of course you do,” Courtney interrupted. “I can imagine quite the potential for leadership in her future.”
“She’s a princess, Courtney,” Sandra reminded him.
“Of course she is, but she’s in a strange world where her title has no meaning other than to reach an honorary position in the command structure. After all, this is a meritocracy in your Navy, is it not?”
Matt turned to look at the massive ship in whose lee Walker currently rode. “Why do you think they ushered us out like that? Once Adar came to, he went on a jabbering fit, but there were few words afterwards.”
“We are the ‘powerful strangers’. It may have seemed odd for some of them, especially when they were obviously the lesser power,” Gray gruffly said. “Whatever the reason, they practically begged for Twilight to stay with them.”
“I think it was the paste they put on their wounds. Maybe their leader needed a break and knew it would last for at least the rest of the day,” Sandra offered.
“But still, we have a common language: Latin. They could’ve at least told us.” Matt shrugged. “I doubt any of us can understand it, though.”
“Spanky could,” Gray said. “He’s a Catholic.”
“I am,” the engineering officer confirmed, “but only enough to know that’s what it is. I never really picked it up--it might as well be Greek to me if I tried.”
“I never thought in million years that the Jap could speak it! I nearly joined Adar on the floor when he opened up.”
“Not when Twilight spoke their native language?” Sandra asked.
“No, I figured she’d do something like that. She has a spell for nearly everything, as weird as it may be.”
“Tomorrow, we’ll deal with magic again. For now, though, I want you and Nurse Theimer on the Lemurian ship with Shinya and a guard detail. Say… Silva and Felts. They’ll behave themselves if they want to keep their privileges for shore leave. Boats, give Silva a BAR and Felts can have a tommy gun. Make sure Mr. Scott knows and gets the launch ready. And please inform Mr. Shinya that he should tell them why our people are over there when he boards.”
“Aye, sir.” As he walked away, Larry Dowden bounded up the ladder to the group, breathing heavily. “Skipper, you gotta see this.”
“What is it, Larry?”
“It’s Twilight.”
Sandra immediately turned around at the top of the ladder. “Where is she?”
“Behind the ship.”
Matt reached for the railing as he practically skipped the entire ladder, landing hard on the deck. After regaining his footing, he raced aft, flanked by the other officers and crew who’d been forward. The clanging of feet on steel rebounded off the water in an odd way, perhaps as a result of the magic encircling Walker and the massive Lemurian ship.
Behind the destroyer, Twilight had summoned a massive hole in space. Swirls and dimensional echoes rippled around the otherworldly rupture, which had an eerily green glow about it even as it swallowed all light down its pitch-black gullet. Neither ship was currently in its grip, but that limit was uncomfortably close, as the water frothed not ten yards behind Walker’s stern. The sky visibly darkened as if the hole was absorbing the sun’s energy, making Matt turn his attention to Salissa Home for a moment. Lemurians scampered about the massive deck in near panic, while Adar and Keje watched Twilight’s magic unfold with cold, intense eyes.
“Twilight! What are you doing?” Sandra called. From the princess’s reaction, she almost didn’t hear the nurse.
In reply, Twilight’s voice rumbled through Matt’s mind. She’s here. I haven’t felt her magic since… since she stole my crown nearly two years ago. We’ve made amends, and she became my student afterwards, but she never used Equestrian magic in that time. I can find her. I can bring her to safety.
“Who?”
Sunset Shimmer.
“You don’t know what’s beyond that thing!” Silva yelled. “Purple, we’ll find your Sunnybuns at some point, but we gotta pertect our own first! We don’t even have fuel yet. Can you at least wait until then? Until we can actually go looking for her?”
“Silva’s being oddly caring,” Larry murmured to Matt. “I’ve noticed that she leans for Tony Scott, but Silva acts like she’s his.”
“Big brother syndrome,” Gray huffed. “Who’d have known Silva would have that?”
As they watched, again totally powerless to stop her, she nodded and relented to Silva’s surprisingly thoughtful logic. But right after she landed, her head tilted skyward and her arm reached for the fluffy clouds above. A violet ball formed in her hand and shot up, exploding like a firework miles away. “A magic beacon so she’ll find me,” she explained to Matt as she passed him on her way to the galley.
“There are more sides to Silva than I thought,” Matt said. “But that doesn’t change my opinion of him. He’s dangerous and rowdy, and Lemurian society isn’t ready for him on the loose, but maybe that’s a good thing…”
Larry laughed. “You think he’s become Twilight’s guardian angel?”
“Nah,” Gray replied. “We’ll have to wait, I guess. Silva has always been an asshole, then he turns around and does something like that.”
Sandra eyed the princess as she chatted with Silva and Tony. The coxswain was politely distant, while the big gunner’s mate leaned on the counter right next to her. It took her a minute, but she let the magic dissipate from her body and looked weaker afterward. Courtney would have a field day learning about magic as soon as they had fuel, especially its physically altering properties, but for now he was content with scribbling an image of the now-gone green-black hole. She carried this thought across the water to the Lemurian ship half an hour later, and she felt in her gut that Twilight’s magic would someday lead to either disaster or triumph.
Sergeant Alden frowned as his charge Shinya motored across the water without him. With his leg still healing, keeping the Japanese officer out of critical areas of the ship was the only thing he could really do--and besides, Walker never had a Marine contingent aboard. That had been a way of life on larger ships like the old cruiser Houston before she sank, but this ancient destroyer was too small for a permanent detachment of Marines to live as part of her crew, with a battle role too selective.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant,” Twilight said, interrupting his thoughts.
“Good afternoon, ma’am.”
“It’s interesting, being with people from an entirely different way of life than yourself, isn’t it?"
“It is.” He paused. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but why do you always need to cast some crazy spell every other day?”
She sighed. “Some days, I need to feel the magic flowing through me, to know that it’s still there. Other days, it gets the better of me. Admittedly, it can happen to the best of us. Even Princess Luna. Even Star Swirl, and he died over a thousand years ago.”
“You sound like your country’s seen it many times.”
“Yeah. That’s how Nightmare Moon--that winged person I fought when we helped the Lemurians--came to be. Princess Luna let her jealousy control her and her magic went out of control. Star Swirl, we still don’t know what happened to him or his student Clover the Clever.”
“You need the will to stay strong. The Marines would definitely be a great help to your country.” He smirked and lit a cigarette. “Not that they ever were a bad thing.”
“Is it possible to become one of these Marines?”
“We don’t let women in the military back home. At least not on the front lines. They’ve somewhat become welcome as nurses, though.”
“But this isn’t your world just as much as it isn’t mine.”
Alden let out a puff of smoke and looked down at the skinny purple princess. Her arms needed work, but could easily lift a rifle with a bit of practice. Her legs were fragile but powerful--a trait possibly drawn from being a horse in her world--and her breathing had every ounce of endurance. Whether he liked it or not, Twilight’s human form was a born fighter, and he’d already personally seen her mental prowess.
“I’ll have to see what the captain thinks of it, but yeah, it just might work.”
-------------------------
Sandra tended a female Lemurian who’d taken a nasty cut to the arm, finishing the stitches while her black eyes watched the nurse work. When she finished, she wiped her hands on her uniform until an unnaturally attentive Silva handed her an alcohol-soaked rag. She’d already cared for dozens of Lemurians, and through Shinya and Adar encouraged her counterparts to use her techniques if they needed to.
“Mr. Shinya, could you please ask them for some more hot water, please? We still need to clean the other injuries. And possibly for some of that paste if they can spare it?”
The Japanese officer nodded and translated. Adar relayed the request to some Lemurian younglings, who came back with a large barrel of simmering water and a jar of paste. Silva took the jar and held on to it, presumably so Sandra wouldn’t have to, and handed it off to Felts. Meanwhile, she took a moment to check on Karen, who’d returned to autonomous mode. Seeing the nurse was fine, she walked around, eventually reaching the grove of trees that covered the amidships area just aft of Keje’s hall. There was a male tending another who had to be his sister in the shade.
The female gazed at her as she approached. Then she weakly pointed to herself. “Risa.” She pointed to the male and said “Chack.”
The nurse crossed her arms and said, “Sandra.” Silva noticed that she’d gone and hurried over, lugging his BAR. “Oh, I don’t need you to follow me like that everywhere I go,” she said over her shoulder.
“Sorry, ma’am, but the Skipper would kill me if I didn’t make sure you were okay,” he replied.
“If you must.” She glanced back and saw Shinya and Adar approaching.
“Lieutenant Tucker, Keje would like to speak with us now.”
“Very well. Please, tell her that I hope she recovers well.”
Shinya and Adar translated, and they entered Keje’s hall to speak.
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Dear Princess Celestia,
Your former student Sunset Shimmer may have accidentally come across into the world I was transported to recently. I felt her magic enter the world and know that it is my responsibility to find her and keep her safe, just as my friends aboard the USS Walker have done to me. This may take a few weeks or even months, as we are extremely low on fuel, but we will do it.
As for me, I have come to accept the fact that I may be trapped on this world for an indefinite amount of time. I know you have already expressed my feeling to my family and friends, but I must ask that you do it again so that they know that although I hope to return, I understand that it is impossible in all practicalities. As I do not plan on writing you another letter, I would like to thank you for being such a wonderful teacher that remained so even after I became a Princess and moved beyond what I could learn from you. For the final time,
Your Faithful Student,
Twilight Sparkle.