//------------------------------//
// Chapter 76 
// Story: Voyage of the Equinox 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//



Study the remains. 44%



Twilight was back in the hospital for the next few days. Considering the number of times she’d been bruised, bloodied, or otherwise injured since being first defrosted, she was starting to miss the beep of the monitoring system whenever she couldn’t hear it.

At least there was one consolation to her visit this time: she could be there to see Applejack walk for the first time.

Everypony who wasn’t involved in their research on the mysterious creature was there, though there was very little for anypony but Fluttershy and Node to do.

“That should be everything,” Fluttershy said, stepping back and sighing deeply after her third hour of work. The limb had already been assembled, so attaching it to the metal peg in Applejack’s leg hadn’t been hard. The hard part was getting the implant into her head to control it.

“I ain’t so sure about this anymore,” Applejack muttered, her voice nervous. “I wish I didn’t have to be awake for all that.” Applejack rested on firm support structure in the center of the hospital, firmly padded and with clamps to stop her from moving. Her legs dangled off the side, and her neck and head had been completely immobilized. Until now, as Fluttershy moved about undoing most of the clamps, removing them one at a time.

“You’re always awake for brain surgery,” Fluttershy answered, exhausted. Twilight’s own bunk was only a few meters away, so she’d been able to watch the entire grueling affair. Able to see Fluttershy stitch up the now-bald patch of Applejack’s scalp, then bond it with the dermal regenerator. “But whether any of that still works…” she glanced weakly to Node. “Well?”

“It works,” she said, without hesitation. “I designed the parts that could fail, so they won’t.”

“What about the rest of it?” Applejack asked. “Somepony designed that too, didn’t they?”

“The Progenitors,” Node answered, without hesitation. “Their grasp of mechanical engineering and distributed intelligence makes us all look like insects. Their work is beyond your grasp. But just because we can’t replicate it does not mean we can’t take advantage of what it offers.”

“I forget how, uh… pleasant you are to be around,” Rarity said. “How did you cope, Rainbow?”

“Just told her she was right about all of it,” Rainbow Dash said. She was watching from the cot beside Twilight’s, though with less grace. The regeneration drugs weren’t working quote so quickly on her, and she was still having trouble eating.

“We’re ready,” Node said. “Go on, equanoid engineer. Your leg will be superior to the one you lost.”

“Superior legs don’t need to be plugged in,” Applejack answered. Then she moved. The leg jerked at first, bending all the way back and smacking against her bench from below. Applejack winced, then tried again. “Well horseapples if she ain’t fast. But can you put weight on it?”

She leaned forward, lifting herself up by her good legs, and gingerly lowering herself down on the implant. It held, the plastic barely even bending.

“Of course you can,” Node answered. “It’s a hollow truss design made of a hyperdense plastic polymer. You can make as much of it as you like now that I’ve reprogramed your fabricator. I would suggest modifying your body armor, but whatever you enjoy most.” Node walked a few steps away, lifting a heavy plastic box and setting it on the empty cot beside where Applejack was standing. “There other four are here. Two front, two back. This pony is going to be the fastest running you ever knew. Except for the infiltrator. Her design is… orgasmic.”

Applejack’s neck snapped towards Node, her eyes darkening. “I am not going to hear such talk about my sister from you again, ya’ hear? Or we’ll see just how strong this fancy new leg really is.”

Twilight wasn’t sure if Node had really meant to be so crass, or just hadn’t understood the nuance of the words she used. She found it didn’t really matter to her either way.

It was another two days before she could get Fluttershy to let her out. She headed straight for Node’s lab, where she found Apple Bloom standing beside a freshly-dug grave. Her body was splotched and dirty, leaving no mystery in Twilight’s mind about what she’d just done.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, for the fiftieth time. Twilight had already given her speeches about sacrifice and duty and not being Iron’s fault. But none of them had ever meant anything to Apple Bloom.

“Me too,” she said. “But at least I can give what’s left a… proper burial.”

Neither of them said anything for a long time. Twilight might’ve left her there, if she wasn’t so worried about her crew. “I need to know what you’ve learned,” she said, voice gentle. “I’m guessing you’re finished if he’s in the ground now.”

Apple Bloom nodded.



Study of Iron Horse? Successful. 



“The really interesting data probably would’ve been in his, uh… head,” she said. “But I did learn one thing. The ghoul didn’t touch him. Whatever made him attack us… was something he decided on his own.”

“Ghoul?”

Applejack looked away, ears flattening. “It’s the name we came up with for the other creature. We needed something to call the remains, and… it seemed to fit.”

She knew the word. It was a specific class of undead, one so rarely created that ponies considered them mythological, and the frequent subject of fantasy horror back in Equestria. “So what made Iron Horse attack?”

She shook her head. “We’ll probably never know. The lower half of the body only had… a few redundant command storage nodes. I can read off the last things he wanted to do. Keep shooting us. Beyond that…” she shook her head.

“What about the ghoul?”

Apple Bloom shuddered visibly, gesturing towards the lab. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

To her surprise, Node wasn’t waiting in the lab when they got inside. Apple Bloom took them directly to one of the microscopes, beside a few biohazard-marked sample containers.



Study of the ghoul? Critical success. 



“There’s more to work with here,” Apple Bloom went on, a little of her old energy returning as she circled the lab. “You compared it to king sombra while we fought—turns out that isn’t really true. There’s no magic here, no necromancy.”

“But…” Twilight couldn’t think of a delicate way to phrase this. “You’re, uh… you’re mechanical, Apple Bloom. I thought you—”

“I can’t sense magic,” she said, voice dark. “Yes. But Rarity has bene here for all the spells, you can verify with her. I’m not wrong.”

“Sorry,” Twilight said. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant. Just…” she sighed. “Listen. What we’re dealing with here isn’t magic, and that’s a good thing. Whatever it is, I think magic is its weakness. The defense turrets—they use accelerator crystals to charge the electromagnets. The rifles use thaumic capacitors. That’s what our weapons had in common, and what made them so effective. I think if we’d use gunpowder or crossbows or some other tools, it wouldn’t have done anything.”

This is the most tactically useful information, Twilight thought. But just because it was useful didn’t mean it was what she most wanted to know. “What was it, exactly?”

Apple Bloom looked down, gesturing at one of her slides. “Nothing we’ve ever seen before. Fluttershy looked at some of these for me, and she doesn’t recognize it either. All I can tell you there is that it’s more energetic than it is physical. Whatever energy it needs, it can’t get that from anything mechanical. Uh… me, and Node, and Iron Horse too. We really are immune.”

Finally we’re getting some answers.

Not too far away, Fluttershy was finally getting to work on their other source of information: Sunset Shimmer.

1. Focus rejuvenation primarily on the brain. Almost anything else can be surgically repaired or replaced, but the ability to heal the nervous system is limited.

2. Revive Sunset using a wholistic approach, treating no part of her body more than others. At this point, focusing too much on one system might allow the others to fail during her treatment.

3. Use Twilight and Rarity to perform magical healing. While our only casters are unskilled, medical magic is the only sure way to fully repair some of the damage this patient has experienced.

4. Allow her to die with dignity under the knife. Sunset will probably be in constant pain for the rest of her life. Twilight is wrong to force her to survive like this. I’ll make it look natural.

(Certainty 235 required)