She walks slowly through town. Both her friends have work to do today, so she can’t play with them like she normally does. … Normally did. Her sister has been so focused on the younger generation’s demonstrated resilience against this ailment that she’s even been pulled out of school… in order to learn her sister’s profession. She managed to escape this morning, before her sister woke up.
She pauses suddenly, before breaking into a gallop for a few seconds, right up to the edge of a rather large hole in the road. She’d heard an echoing boom or three last night- perhaps this is where…?
…Why is there a tunnel at the bottom of the hole…?
She makes her way carefully down into the crater, right up to the mouth of the tunnel. This could be a perfect place to avoid her sister for a few hours. She peers down the dark tunnel, and looks around. Nopony is watching.
She slips into the tunnel. She walks as far as she can see before she stops to light her horn.
This was not the first spell her sister wanted her to learn. She’d spoken to Twilight at some point, though- who had selected it as her first spell not for its purpose but for its difficulty, or lack thereof. So, she had used it to learn how to channel magic through her horn in the first place.
Correction: Is using it, to learn how. She still hasn’t mastered it, so it still takes a significant amount of effort to keep her horn aglow. To keep the magic flowing.
She walks down the tunnel. It’s taking more and more of her concentration to keep her horn lit; before long, she’ll have to put it out or pass out instead.
She reaches the end of the tunnel. The soft clopping of her hooves on the stone switches out for a more solid- and ear-irritating- clunking on this metal. There’s a reason ponies don’t make flooring out of metal; the stuff is noisy.
She steps out this end of the tunnel, looking around. It’s a large, rectangular room, lit exclusively by her horn. A bunch of… somethings clutter the middle of the room. On first glance, they look like some kind of badly deteriorated throne… But why would there be hundreds of those in one room? She looks down the row, and… and…
My first warning that I was to receive a visitor was the soft noise in the tunnel, not far from what a wooden shoe might sound like on stone. My second warning was the rising light levels; my third, the sudden- and enormous- increase in power production as the… creature reached my hull proper.
I know not what energy my armor was absorbing. The light emission produced by the creature’s horn is nowhere near the intensity of the additional power. I watch the creature step fully into Passenger Seven.
It is quadrupedal, with a gentle white fur coat. Its curly hair- or, I suppose, ‘mane’ and ‘tail’- is clearly defined in two shades- one a gentle pink, the other a light-ish purple. Upon closer examination, I find that not one strand of one color crosses into the area of the other color. Interesting.
The light emanating from the horn on its head wavers suddenly- and my extra power intake wavers with it. They can’t possibly be connected- can they? The horn glow could only be some sort of biochemical reaction! … maybe? The creature just collapsed on the ground, glow disappearing completely. My power intake returns to normal levels at the same time.
I wait for some time. I have not activated my system clock yet, but I use the creature’s heartbeat to demarcate time. Close to a hundred beats pass uneventfully before I slip a spider into the darkened room to ascertain its state.
I plug the numbers I gather into my medical databanks. The creature- a female, I believe- is not familiar, though, so I can only stand back and watch. I collect a sample and remove my spider from the room once again, to await her awakening.
I count four hundred eighteen heartbeats before another sound enters my awareness. It sounds just like her hooves did on the stone, approaching; I notice the sound is approaching faster this time, with a different beat to it. The light that accompanies this one is just light, with no additional power to my systems; the light emanating from the stone the new creature carries is far stronger and more stable than that produced by my first visitor’s horn.
My second visitor is another interesting combination. Orange fur, purple mane and tail. No horn, just wings… which strike me as too small. I avoid plugging anything into any physics equations.
The new creature drops the stone from its mouth as soon as it sees my first visitor, moving towards her and vocalizing.
I listen to the words being spoken. At first, I do not understand them; however, my language engine finds a match in Concordiat Standard after only a couple words, and I understand every word. My second visitor brushes against one of my hidden, wall-mounted sample collectors, unknowingly depositing a sample. I activate my design cores, ordering them to analyze the samples. It seems my hunch proved correct this time.
My second visitor has managed to awaken the first, and they’re both walking back out the hatch, by the time my design cores finish their task. I decide that any natives injured by the initial tunnel release likely won’t be headed down here, and occupy my medical nanovat with the results.
An unmeasured time later, this task is completed. Natives have been seen in and out of my troop compartment, sometimes with glowing horns and sometimes with glowing stones, during this time. None have stayed long, nor passed out. None have gotten close enough to deposit samples. None have spoken, much. None have bled so much power. I have not gained anything useful since.
But now it changes. My medical nanovat slides open, releasing my project.
At the same time, I engage my TSDS link with it.
I open its eyes… My eyes… Ugh. If they would hurry up and open already.
I try another synapse. I’ve figured out how to breathe in… my “subconscious” programming locks on and starts my breathing. I won’t be needing to pipe fresh oxygen into my lungs, the nanovat draws out those tubes.
Another. My tail twitches.
Almost fourteen thousand, six hundred twelve heartbeats pass before I successfully open my eyes. Both of them, simultaneously.
In the process, I have learned how to manipulate almost every muscle in my new body. I gently contract the muscles in the left side of my neck, raising my head off the bed of the nanovat. Not far enough, though; I can’t see out.
I release those muscles, wincing as my head lands roughly on the metal surface once again. At least the onboard medical nanites I installed after the first dozen self-injuries should solve that; I shouldn’t need to re-engage the nanovat again.
It takes me another two hundred heartbeats or so to roll right-side-up and rise to my hooves. I’m now able to lift my head above the sides of the nanovat.
I blink in the total darkness, and turn to look at the door. Yes, I can see, even in total darkness.
Nine hundred seventy-six heartbeats later, I manage to escape the nanovat. And fall on my face. I really need some practice learning to walk.
Rather fortunate, then, that my action plan involves walking to- and out through- that tunnel.
Two thousand, nine hundred forty-three heartbeats later, I reach the troop compartment. Pressure equalization between the passageway and the compartment goes instantly; I’ve already equalized my entire hull’s interior pressure with that outside, through this tunnel. Slowly.
Pumping compressed atmosphere into my fuel tanks helped.
I walk to the exterior hatch, behind which the tunnel stands. I take a deep breath, and start the long walk up. By now, at least, I’ve figured out how to walk without falling on my face.
Wait one. What is that, flowing down the tunnel, towards me? I close the hatch at the bottom, walking up the rounded side a little bit, to climb up the tunnel next to the mystery flow.
A significant quantity of sludge-like liquid has already passed me, pooling against the hatch below, when I realize what it looks like.
Concrete.
I scream before I walk as fast as I can manage up the tunnel- and trip, landing on the fast-moving sludge with a splat. Twelve heartbeats later, I’ve been submerged in the pooled material. My heart only beats three times after that, before being crushed to death.
I disconnect. If I still had a hoof, I would have facepalmed- or, I suppose, face-hooved.
But I still have an exit. The armor patch that has been serving me solar power for I know not how long happens to include a Light VLS Launch Cell. If I get the missiles out of the way, I can climb out this hatch.
I set my nanovat back to work.
The paramedic shakes his head. “She’s dead.”
Twilight drops her gaze from the concrete-covered filly she’d recovered from the tunnel. Perhaps if she’d been closer, and heard the scream herself, she could have saved the filly.
The workers had heard a scream from the tunnel while they were filling it with concrete. One had been willing to dive in after the filly- but another had spotted Twilight and called her over. He had assumed- correctly- that Twilight could displace the moving concrete far easier than even an earth pony, to be able to reach and retrieve the screaming filly faster. Unfortunately, it had been about six seconds between when the scream was first heard and when she found out about it. Had she been with them, and heard it with them, she could have entered the tunnel as much as eight seconds sooner- and reached the filly those same eight seconds sooner, possibly still alive.
“How recently?” She asks.
He lays the sheet over the filly’s head. “A minute, maybe.” He looks back at the hole in the road. “How’d she get down there?”
She shakes her head. It had been a good thing Doctor Horse had been passing by- the workers had stopped him while she was still in the hole, and he’d been able to look at the filly as soon as she got out. Where he’d gotten two nurses and a stretcher in the middle of what had been a leisurely walk, she’s not entirely certain. “I don’t know. She must have slipped past our line at some point. Do we know who…?”
One of his nurses- Snowheart- shakes her head. “We don’t know, yet.”
I climb out of the nanovat far faster this time. I… still fall on my face. I need to work on that.
I plot a course to that Light VLS hatch.
My journey is not uneventful. I fall off the ladder a total of twelve times, breaking bones three of those times. Once, I even had to send some spiders in to deliver myself back to the nanovat. Fortunately, I have managed to hold onto my life each time, if only barely. Once at the top of the ladder, I walk down several more walkways.
The stairway proves to be a similarly difficult obstacle. Who knew? By the time I surmount it, I’ve mastered walking, but fall on my face fairly frequently when I trot.
I send a spider up with food, which comes in the form of a dozen or so pellets and a glass of water. They go down the hatch easily- but they taste absolutely terrible. Hmm, good thing I don’t plan on living in here.
I manage to climb the ladder to the launch cell serviceways the first time, only nearly falling off once. The access hatch, normally intended for manual loading of missiles when the automatic fails, is plenty large enough to fit me. I curl myself up carefully inside the base of a missile I have prepared for this duty and cycle the repaired magazine to place myself inside the launch cell proper. I unfold and climb the ladder I built into this missile casing, popping the launch cell hatch when I reach the top.
I climb out onto the surface of my war hull, allowing the hatch to slam shut behind be again, and let out an exclamation, pumping a hoof in the air. “Yes!”
… Well, at least it was an exclamation. I haven’t learned to speak just yet.
I fall on my face.
I stand back up, looking around. It seems I have ended up in some kind of crater… Looks like one made by an energy weapon. I-
Aaah! I let out a scream as I attempt to dodge the attack. Since when were wolves made out of wood, anyways?
… Its bite punctures my sides with disdain, crushing my ribs. I think I catch a glimpse of something at the top of the crater before my little heart stops beating.
I set the nanovat working again.
The earth pony twists around and breaks into a gallop when she hears the scream. It’s coming from…
It’s coming from the crater, formed when two of Tirek’s blasts through the forest had crossed.
She screeches to a halt at the top, searching the crater-
Timberwolf! She’s been in this crater before; she knows she can get out. She leaps down on the beast, smashing it to fragments. It takes her almost two full seconds to gather up the wounded filly… and notice the lack of a heartbeat. She sheds a few tears while she makes her escape, bringing the filly with her. She brings the filly straight to the hospital, heartbeat or not.
Doctor Horse confirms her initial suspicions; the timberwolf had, in fact, killed her.
Nurse Snowheart, after messing with their files for a few seconds in what was reportedly an attempt to identify the filly, mutters something along the lines of being a relative of the one that ended up in the concrete.
I almost manage a canter this time. I use a slightly different launch vehicle this time; no ladder, but yes booster. I launch myself into the air, the hatch cycling shut in hardly a second.
Unfortunately, with no guidance systems, the vehicle twists slowly in mid-air, loses control, and slams into the ground. I don’t disconnect, I lose signal. I hope I didn’t hurt anyone… other than myself, that is.
I try again. This time, I install standard guidance systems, set to keep it upright.
Unfortunately, eighty-three kilometers is rather higher than I intended to go before the booster died. I activate my analytical routines for a moment, to sate my curiosity… I will be landing on the moon. Oops. I get the nanovat busy again, and wait for my heart to stop before I disconnect.
“Another one?” Twilight asks, watching as the workers pull fragments of a pony out of the smoking wreckage of… something. She’s not sure what it was supposed to be.