Starlight hunkered in the dining hall of the Immortal Dream, sitting atop the reinforced glass floor and watching the battle unfold below. A lump gathered in her throat as she realized it was too broad for Valey to contain without simply defeating everyone: she had her back to her friends on the beach below, while the sarosians were trying to rally despite obvious injuries atop the cliff and blocking the path the remaining Varsidelians needed to flee. A need burned somewhere in her to climb up on the deck, lean over the railing, and pour everything she had into a massive crystal bolt, immobilizing the battlefield... but the fight was too spread out, she wasn't sure if she had it in her and her crystals hadn't proved effective at holding batponies every time she had used them before.
"Why the long face?" a voice asked beside her, and Starlight looked up to see Jamjars. "You have a plan, right?" The filly tilted her head. "Or are you just letting me do all the work again?"
"Letting you do all the work?" Starlight frowned. "I'm stronger than them, but not stronger than that many ponies all at once. What are either of us going to do, sneak in and stab them with Gerardo's sword? That kills batponies! And I don't see Grenada, which means there's probably even more reinforcements on their way. Maybe the best we could do is find a way to rescue Shinespark and Felicity, so at least our friends are safe, but I can't teleport other ponies! What do you think you can do? Are you saying you have a better plan?"
Jamjars bit her lip. "...Half of a plan." She looked briefly embarrassed. "I don't have a lot of time to work with, okay!?"
Starlight's ears perked. "Half a plan? Is it the kind that involves us getting in the way and becoming more liabilities the moment it fails? I can teleport down and back up, but with two teleports, I'm not sure how much else I can..."
"Not about your own magic," Jamjars interrupted, confidence quickly returning. "I think we could use moon glass."
Starlight felt her eyes widen, memories harkening back to the crate full of the stuff they had stolen from Kero's house long ago in Ironridge. She didn't remember or know if it was full or empty... "Moon glass!? We're trying not to completely kill off one side!"
"Oh, I didn't mean the glass itself. I meant what's inside it." Jamjars coughed, then levitated a tiny black chip out of her mane. "This piece in particular."
"What?" Starlight squinted at it. It was far smaller than most of the naturally-occurring moon glass she had seen, a little bigger than one of Valey's batpony fangs as opposed to the size of a hoof. "Where'd you get that? And how do you know what's inside? It looks different from all the others..."
"It's been cut," Jamjars said, floating it close. "Haven't I showed you this one before? I stole it from Chauncey."
Starlight frowned in confusion. "When did you steal anything from... Wait, that earpiece?"
"Yep." Jamjars smugly nodded. "The first time we were in Izvaldi. I'm certain I showed you. He stepped on it and walked away. This was inside. So I tinkered with it for a while, and it turns out he mostly just broke the case. There was some stuff inside, but I figured out how to put it back together."
"...What?" Starlight blinked. "What does that have to do with anything?"
Jamjars gave a self-satisfied flick of her wig. "It probably runs in the family. Apparently Mom had an aptitude for these things too. Anyway, it plays music! That concert we went to, remember? Where Melia and Sirena were asking their fans not to fight?"
Starlight's ears slowly rose, though she still frowned. "Either you're making a leap of logic, or I'm not seeing how this is useful..."
Jamjars briefly looked hurt. "Hey! I'm their biggest fan and this is my treasure. Don't call it not useful, please and thank you." Her grin returned. "So, ask yourself: Ironridge has had audio recorders for a million years. What's the point of sticking moon glass in when it already works fine?"
"Errr..." Starlight's ears went back down.
"Come on, don't think I haven't overheard Valey complaining to everyone else about how these things work. I'm not that bad of an eavesdropper." Jamjars huffed. "Moon glass stores some kind of information that's only useful to batponies, because their bodies are like machines. And you." She raised an eyebrow at Starlight.
Starlight suddenly took a step away. "What are you implying?"
"No, no, listen!" Jamjars floated the obsidian back away, matching Starlight with a step closer. "Remember the concert? I didn't feel it, but everyone was saying Melia and Sirena singing sounds like the Night Mother to batponies. That their song is magical and batponies hear it with more than their ears. And then remember when we were getting attacked by pirates, and Melia and Sirena were here themselves? Melia said the ship's harmony extractor looks exactly like a thing Chauncey has as part of their sound system. Harmony magic, moon glass is obviously related..." She put on a pout. "You see what I'm saying, right?"
"...The moon glass records the song's harmonic magic?" Starlight tilted her head.
"Yes!" Jamjars grinned fiercely. "Probably. I think. It traps cutie marks, right? And those are supposed to be harmonic, according to all Shinespark's research notes in her library. So why couldn't it trap other kinds of harmonic magic as well?"
Starlight felt her breathing slow, finally seeing where Jamjars was going. "So you think that particular song, since it was about making up and not fighting, could distract the batponies or make them leave if they heard it?"
As Starlight's hope rose, Jamjars' quickly fell. "Yes... and that's about as far as I've planned. The earpiece sort of works. I can't feel the magic or tell if it's actually there. I remember when the pirates were here, Melia thought we could use the ship's harmony extractor somehow for them to sing and try to stop the pirates, and Shinespark made some changes to try to make it work, but they never got the chance to try it. And I have no idea how to connect the earpiece to the harmony extractor, anyway." Her eyes snapped to Starlight. "So, I've helped. Your turn! Any ideas to fill in the blanks?"
Starlight swallowed, dearly hoping that wasn't rhetorical. She did, in fact, have a way to fill in the blanks: touch the moon glass, turn gray, hope it would give her the song in a form her moon glass voice could use, then hook herself up to the harmony extractor and trust that something would happen. But she didn't want to turn gray, didn't trust that magic she didn't understand would magically work her way, and above all had promised Maple she would never use the harmony extractor ever again. It wasn't even in question; last time she had nearly died, if not all the way. And they didn't have a Tree of Harmony anywhere close to bring her back if history repeated itself. Granted, her horn wasn't so badly overused as to render her blind, this time around, but did she even want to know what would happen if she hooked herself up while gray?
"I'm... not sure I have anything. Sorry," she lied, averting her gaze.
"Really?" Jamjars gave her a frustrated look, then pointed down through the glass. "How about them? Do they look like they have anything to you? And what should I have? I had terrible parents and any time I try to help with a problem without doing it all by myself, it's always, 'Jamjars, you're just a kid! Jamjars, you're too young, you wouldn't understand!' Starlight, you really have nothing to offer?"
Starlight folded her ears. "We're almost the same age, and I didn't have good parents either. That has nothing to do with-"
"What it has to do with," Jamjars interrupted, "is that nobody has any better ideas! There's nothing anyone who's actually down there can do except fight and kill each other for stupid reasons, and that's not good enough! So if someone like me who has nothing and no one to rely on can get this far on her own, why can't a windigo-slayer like you come out with another miracle!?" She jabbed a hoof into Starlight's chest, looking legitimately upset. "Don't you 'I don't have anything' me, Starlight! You're not my rival because you sit around and tolerate things how they are when they aren't good enough!"
Starlight winced, feeling the lump in her throat grow. "No, I... Jamjars, I can't!"
"Can't what?" Jamjars grabbed Starlight's head in her telekinesis and turned it to look at the window floor. The battle on the clifftop was the fiercest, with several ponies unconscious or... No, they were definitely unconscious. Starlight squeezed her eyes shut. "Well!?"
"Give me that," Starlight demanded, pointing to the moon glass. "Go get Maple and all the windigo hearts and harmonic fire we have. I'll be in the engine room."
Jamjars nodded and set her jaw, a note of fear in her eyes now that she had an answer. The moon glass shard dropped into Starlight's waiting telekinesis, and Jamjars raced off, skidding around the landing at the top of the stairs and out of sight.
"This isn't going to work," Starlight whispered, holding the tiny shard before her. "It shouldn't. There's too much guessing about what will happen."
"Well, it has a pretty appealing alternative," a voice said behind her. Starlight's ears slicked back; she didn't need to turn to know who it was.
"You could do nothing. You were going to do nothing." Glimmer was there, and Starlight wasn't about to look at her. "You could trust in Valey and your friends to sort all this out for you. Valey is strong, isn't she? You know what she can do."
Starlight swallowed. "Nothing feels right to do. I don't want to... don't want to do nothing, but I can't do this to Maple, either. And I don't know what will happen! There's no way it can be safe!"
"So don't do anything," Glimmer murmured, tone softening as she paced around into Starlight's vision. "You have capable-"
With a loud boom, the entire ship shook, throwing both fillies off their hooves. Glimmer actually yelped in surprise as she hit the ground; Starlight managed to roll with Valey's training, but looked around wildly for the disturbance.
"Attention, everyone!" Gerardo Guillaume's panicked voice sounded over the intercom. "Someone appears to be firing a trebuchet at us! The ship has just been struck by a boulder!"
Starlight paled, pressing against the glass and staring at the scene below. "Also, there are at least ten sarosians descending from the clouds!" he urgently added. "Whoever's on deck, get back inside at once!"
The warning was very late. Less than two seconds later, Starlight saw the batponies descending on the cliff, all looking in various states of injury or incapacitation. Had the first seven been the best they had? Was this everyone left in their tribe capable of flight? It still would be enough to overwhelm the merchants at the top of the cliff, she realized... until the forest rang with activity, and another wave of Varsidelians arrived, these ones bearing crude weapons. Grenada was with them.
Starlight glanced up at Glimmer and swallowed. "Still think Valey can handle that before they kill each other?"
Glimmer's eyes shadowed. "I hate this part of the job," she whispered, so quiet Starlight could barely hear.
"What about you, huh!?" Starlight stomped a hoof. "I know you're not a hallucination, but you follow me everywhere you don't belong and have no explanations for anything! Why don't you help out!?"
Glimmer looked away. "...There are a lot of things I can't do. Anything that would change the course of your history, or its ultimate destination. No decisions, no making a splash. No fighting battles. The most I can do is talk to you and try to ease things on-"
The ship shook again from another boulder impact.
"Well, I'm not letting us get shot down, and Gerardo isn't flying away," Starlight decided, heading for the stairs. "Probably because our friends are down there. So whether you help or not, I'm going to try Jamjars' plan and see what happens. That's my decision. So if you want to make things easier for me, that's your decision. I don't have time for this."
"...Use the obsidian," Glimmer sighed.
Starlight gave her a look... and pressed her hoof against the shard.
The same horrible pulling sensation from every time previous instantly rose in her chest, like her body was simultaneously being drained and filled as it fought to merge with the cosmic substance. This time, the process felt somehow faster, a dark lake rising around her with no hope of floating. First, Starlight saw gray, hanging onto her memories of color as long as they would last, knowing she was about to forget... something. Nightmare Module emulation mode activated, that same cool voice said in her head.
Glimmer closed her eyes, frowning in frustration. There was a flash of teleportation, and they were both in the engine room, even though they had been standing hoofsteps away.
Starlight's transformation finished like crawling out of a mud pit and into the rain, feeling darkness wash over her body until she merely was. Lights glowed in her vision; Glimmer was bright and so was the windigo heart sitting fixed in an extractor helmet. The astral cloud overhead permeating the extractor's rails and feeding into the harmony comet glowed too, and Starlight almost collapsed, momentarily overwhelmed by a wave of desire for everything around her. But she fought it off, because she had a job to do. "Where's Maple? I'm not doing anything without her."
"Coming," Glimmer replied. "...If you're sure you have to do this... it's what I would do too. Here."
A series of tiny, flat arcane rings lit up around her horn, orbiting it with minute runes inscribed on their surfaces. Starlight blinked at the bizarre aura, feeling like she had seen Glimmer use a normal horn effect before... and then the Nightmare Module voice interrupted her, speaking coolly and calmly.
External access protocol accepted through Daydream communication socket. Eylista access level verified. Commencing system firmware update... Update complete.
Glimmer nodded, her horn growing dim. "That will help for this purpose and this purpose only. After you've done what you need to, I'm undoing everything I did, and not telling you what it-"
The engine room door rolled open, and before Starlight could even blink, Glimmer was gone.
"Starlight? Who are you talking...?" Maple stood in the doorway, holding Amber's briefcase of windigo hearts and looking panicked. "Starlight, you're gray!"
"I am," Starlight agreed, feeling the hearts' radiance from inside the case and spotting Jamjars lurking behind. "Maple, Jamjars and I have a plan to stop the fighting, but I have no idea how it will work or what will happen." Folding her ears, she added, "Just that it will. I think."
"Starlight...?" Maple frowned, worry mounting further in her voice... until the ship rocked again from another impact. "Waaah!"
"It's fine," Starlight urged. "Just let me..."
As Maple regained her footing, Starlight looked down and concentrated. Alright, Nightmare Module, what kinds of things had changed?
Daydream socket privilege level lowered. Pony-to-pony broadcasting system online. Twenty-one targets detected in range.
Starlight's breath caught in her throat. Pony-to-pony broadcasting? Did that mean some kind of telepathy? Aware that Maple was watching her with dawning realization, she reached out as if with telekinesis, trying to see if she could feel-
Don't misuse it! Glimmer's voice warned angrily in her mind.
Starlight swallowed. Did she have anything from the moon glass? Did she have the song? And could she somehow play it to everyone in range at once?
Scanning boot volume contents. One new file detected, the normal voice narrated. Daydream broadcast format identified. Broadcast to all targets?
Strongly aware of the feeling that Glimmer was watching her, gaining an uncomfortable feeling of disapproval, Starlight nodded, feeling frozen in time as Maple's reaction to seeing her here continued playing out. Then the world flickered in her senses, and she opened her eyes on a stage in Izvaldi, like her brain was split between multiple bodies and times at once. She was a filly, but also an adult, standing a head taller than she usually did, a unicorn and a mare in a spotlight before a wide-eyed audience. Starlight opened her mouth - which one, she couldn't tell - and began to sing.