A loud thud echoed against a door in the Stormhoof Colosseum's medical ward, and moments later it opened, Harshwater trying to stomp in and almost faceplanting as it swung aside. Maple and the Starlights were behind her, next to an unbrushed Shinespark with Grenada, Amber and Gerardo bringing up the rear. "What," Harshwater demanded, "is this all about!?"
"Ow. Hey guys." Valey sat like a rolled-up towel across a careful network of supports, two nurses in the process of cleaning her now-bare back so it could be re-bandaged. The nurses gave her noisy visitors a cross look, and were promptly brushed aside. "Look, I heard you were looking for another of those potions, but the tournament doesn't wait for anyone and I had to... Ow, watch it! Buy you some more time..."
Everyone looked like they had something to say, but Harshwater was the loudest. "Thank you for containing my wayward patient," she growled to the nurses with the most thankful nod they were going to get. "Now explain how throwing yourself into the arena when you can hardly move and letting some monk beat you black and red until that referee mercy-kills your stubborn face has any better outcome than staying still and recovering like a smart pony!"
The others pressed in before Valey could respond. "We were worried about you!" Maple exclaimed, flinging a hoof to the side. "How were we supposed to react when you ran away with a one-word note?"
"I'm trying my hardest to get over what happened in Izvaldi," Shinespark added, gritting her teeth, "I was hoping the rest of you could take care of yourselves while I worry about myself for a moment, but I guess not. Valey, please don't tell me you did this for my sake, because of that discussion we had about you entering months ago."
At the back, Gerardo cleared his throat. "And I, for one, would like to know what tampering with our store of you-know-what had to do with all this." He gave a pointed glance at the two nurses, who were ready to throw up their hooves in frustration.
"Fine! Fine. Fine." As one, the nurses stepped back, pushing through the crowd to the door. "Dress your own wounds, or wait until your friends are less boisterous. I can't work in a room like this."
Valey blinked as they left, some of the burns and lacerations that crossed her wet back still threatening to bleed again. "Uhhh... Bananas. Sorry." She glanced up without moving her head. "I did win though, you know."
Everyone's eyes widened slightly in surprise. "Do I want to know how?" Amber hesitantly asked.
"Raincoat, over there." Valey couldn't move to gesture, but the article was half-folded on a waiting chair. "Look inside."
"I don't know whether I'll be more ticked if you're lying or telling the truth," Harshwater sighed as Shinespark's aura lifted the raincoat. Out floated Valey's golden pendant that had previously been used for Nyala, now inset with a new chunk of moon glass. Shinespark frowned, recognizing it instantly, but Harshwater's face scrunched. "What's that?"
Shinespark held it up to Valey for an explanation, and the batpony managed a feeble, smug grin. "Look, it gave me the edge I needed to smash Herman, so I figured, I really need an edge again here... and with all the things we've learned about moon glass, maybe now was the time to break it out again." Seeing Harshwater's expression, she clarified, "The thing lets you... sorta... use cutie marks that are stuck in moon glass. Sometimes. It's a little weird, and I dunno if it only works for me or only works for batponies. Changes how I look a little, and you can talk to them and hear them in your head. And if they want, they can help me."
"So that mess in the ship's hold..." Gerardo nodded slowly in understanding.
Valey carefully sighed. "Yeah, I snuck off once Amber fell asleep. Sorry, by the way, Amber. Got that thing open, started sticking them in the pendant one at a time, and started getting to know everyone in that box. Didn't even get a quarter of the way through it; the sun was starting to rise and I needed to use the shadows to get here. But, like, before I was just worried they were parasites, since you know what moon glass does to blank ponies, and was a little afraid of sticking those in my head... It turns out almost all of them are really nice people. And we've just been hauling them around in our basement for months, in stasis."
Slowly, Gerardo ensured the door was closed.
"Anyway, this is Doc," Valey continued, pointing to the stone in the pendant with her eyes. "None of them know their names, so I got to name them myself. Most of them aren't even sure about gender either, so I call her a she 'cuz mares are hot. Kind of weird to wonder if I might have once been a dude myself, in a past life, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, Doc's cutie mark is, like, an anesthetic. Pain relief. Would have rather found one that lets me shoot lasers, or something, but I figured Grandpapa would be smart enough to realize I wasn't acting about how crippled I was as long as I kept her under wraps. Waited for him to make a move he never would have if I was at full strength... and I guess the dude was old and frail enough that one punch was all it took. I was banking on that, to be honest. But as much as this hurts, it's mostly surface damage, I think. As long as I could move through it, even for a second, it was enough."
Her friends watched her as she finished, faces ranging from frustration on Harshwater to sympathy from Maple and Amber curiosity and a grimace clashing on Shinespark. "So what now?" Grenada asked from near the back.
"Now?" Harshwater shrugged. "We let them do what they can for you here, get you back to the ship, and you sit out the next tournament round instead. No one's falling for your tricks twice, and the battles are just going to get harder."
"Or," Valey insisted, "you guys keep looking for that potion, or whatever? Bananas, I just busted my back to get you more time! Like, I know I snuck out without telling you, but would you have let me go if I did?"
"That's the point," Harshwater growled.
Gerardo loudly cleared his throat. "I think this much tension isn't good for any healing processes that may or may not occur. What say you some of us get back to the ship, others make to enjoy the city, and we try to quiet things down a little so those nurses can return?"
Shinespark slowly nodded. "It's probably not a good idea to leave Crystal with only Slipstream and Nyala, just... just in case."
"Agreed," Harshwater sighed... but as the party turned to go, Maple hesitated.
"I'm staying," she decided, hanging back in Valey's room. "One pony shouldn't be too much, right?"
Amber bit her lip. "...Maaaybe two would be fine. I'm staying too?"
"Suit yourselves, in this case." With a broad shrug, Gerardo led the way away.
"Missed you guys too," Valey sighed after the door had closed, not making eye contact. "So, was I that dumb? I knew everyone would be ticked, but bananas, I didn't wanna drop out of the tournament in front of that guy. He cut Shinespark and my sister to shreds. I had to punch his stupid face if it was the last thing I did. I had to."
Amber walked up, put a hoof on a clear portion of her shoulder and sat down. "I know. And we forgive you." She smirked a little. "It was still a pretty dumb thing to do."
Maple choked on a laugh, unsure what the mood in the room was anymore. "So now that he's beaten, what now? If we haven't found a way to heal you quickly by the next round..."
Valey flicked her ears. "Eh, you've got time. There's four matches this round, and each one's a week apart so anyone with minor injuries can rest up between them. Since the fights are gonna be more intense, and stuff." She quieted for a while. "But yeah, if we don't get anything, I probably need to be finished after this one, don't I?"
"I'm afraid you do," Amber apologized. "...Hey, this is going to sound completely out of nowhere, but did you know I once glued myself to a wall? I was a kid, and no one was sure how I did it, but I was several feet in the air with my back and legs just completely plastered to the thing. They had to basically cut off all my fur to get me free, and there was plenty that got tugged out, too. It hurt a lot! Felt like I was walking on pins and needles for the next month." She chuckled into the distance. "Not sure how relevant that is. You just reminded me of it right now."
Maple smiled too. "That was the day you got your cutie mark. I remember it so well..."
"Heh heh." Valey's laugh was subdued, less because of her mood than to avoid moving her back. "Yeah, sounds about right. Look, I just don't want..." She swallowed. "Feels like if I'm gonna be stubborn about this tournament thing, you all will have to try harder to get me on my hooves for it. And tournament or not, I need to be on my hooves, because right now it's Birdo and Starlight fighting for our entire ship. If stuff goes wrong with Crystal, or those Everlaste goons, or anything else, bananas, what will we do? I'm down and out, Harshwater's limper than a noodle... Maybe it's backwards logic, but it feels like there's no way I'll heal naturally in time, so this will get me up quicker, you know?"
"Sounds like thinking with your heart." Amber glanced at nothing, thoughts still in the past.
Valey hesitated. "Hey, speaking of thinking with your heart... there's one more thing that's bothering me about the whole moon glass deal."
Maple perked an ear. "We'll listen. What is it?"
"Y'see..." Valey took a breath. "So I only tried looking in the rest of our moon glass because at this point, I'm pretty sure everything in there is made by Luna, right? Maybe, sort of... Okay, I'm not. But whether they are or aren't, I'm pretty sure they're real people, and not just space monsters or something. That's what I mean. And they've got no concept of time in there, so it's not like they're suffering by staying locked away..."
Maple and Amber looked at each other and folded their ears. Amber nodded.
"It's just..." Valey fidgeted. "All that super weird, creepy stuff we found out about with Kero and his mercenaries that Chauncey was sponsoring? The stuff with getting mares pregnant and then using the moon glass to extract the souls inside into foals, and give them bodies of their own? I still think it's totally unethical, every bit of how he did it, but... I'm pretty sure I'm happier having a body and getting to live than drifting in oblivion. And I'd rather be one of those foals with a predestined moon glass cutie mark than locked away forever without anything. So even if he was insane, and had a creepy way of going about it, I kinda... feel like he was doing a good thing." Her eyes looked up, as if waiting for permission that this was okay.
"Ohhh my. I see what you're saying, and..." Maple wiped her mane out of her eyes. "What do you want us to do about it?"
"What even can we do?" Amber added with a shrug. "Who knows how many pieces of this stuff there are in the world? Some of them might find lives naturally, but I bet there's even a ton in the ocean that could never see the light of day. And I'm pretty sure there's nothing I can do to get whoever's in there out and brought to life."
Valey winced. "Yeah, I know. And I've got no idea what to do about it either. Maybe if we could, like, somehow tell the world what this stuff is? But the Night Mother knows everything we do about it and probably more, and she hasn't. There's gotta be a reason for that. We don't know why it's here, either. Even if there's real ponies inside, that doesn't mean it couldn't be dangerous or bad. Bananas, I dunno what to do."
"Just that we want to do something." Amber sat back, keeping a hoof against her. "Well, moon glass seems to last for a long time. I guess the best thing to do is worry about what we can change for now, and maybe sometime in the future we'll learn something more?" She winked. "And by that, I mean you focus on recovering, and we'll do our best to get you a potion. Get well soon, Valey."
"Mhmm," Maple agreed with an earnest nod. "Get well soon."