Jamjars sat surrounded by parts, Glimmer and Grenada before her, the trio illuminated only by the light of unicorn horns.
"Sound stones take magic to activate," Jamjars said, holding the inert stone Gerardo had called with in her hooves. "We use unicorn horns, but Gerardo and Slipstream don't have any unicorns with them. And if what you've told me is true..." She gave Glimmer a don't-make-me-look-bad look. "All they need is mana power, and our horns provide that. So I want to know why we're spending so much effort looking for ways to dig mana wells when they must have a perfectly good source of power nobody told me about."
Grenada cleared her throat. "They are using Valey's modified flash club, which is a weapon Sosa made for the old weapons contract. Its power comes from the Sosan Black Box, one of the projects that went into making the Braen armor. The Black Box is a hoof-sized harmony extractor with the limitation that it only generates mana energy from brands instead of harmony itself, built to use an obsidian core instead of a living pony. It was originally made so that Braen could be powered by Shinespark's encapsulated brand."
Jamjars frowned. "Well, why didn't you say so? We could just use Braen's old extractor to power the ship!"
"That will not work." Grenada shook her head. "Shinespark's brand was powerful enough that a single pony-sized machine could be active during the normal hours of a waking pony. The power of an average brand is only enough that, given days of charging, a mana core can be powered enough for several instantaneous bright flashes, or to briefly turn on a sound stone. Drawing the energy out of the obsidian sharply limits how much we can collect, and it is a small amount in the first place."
"That part of Braen also broke when Nyala's memories were transferred," Glimmer added. "It's not a bad idea, but we'd need to make a new one from scratch. I doubt the apparatus in the flash club is built for high power throughput."
Grenada hesitated. "We might have the parts for it. They were the kind of things Shinespark would keep around. But what would we even do with one?"
"We still have all that moon glass from Kero." Jamjars stuck out her tongue, her mind fixed on a more secret, far greater concentration of cutie marks in moon glass. "Hooking multiple ponies up to your main reactor explodes, but regular mana power can run in series. There's no reason you couldn't build ten flash clubs and wire them together, and if that works, why not build a giant one and see how many pieces you can stick in at once?"
Grenada stared at her, searching for a hole in her logic.
"You have to have power consumption charts on this ship somewhere," Glimmer piped in. "How much the lights use, the heating, the water propulsion and main terminal."
"You would have to ask Shinespark. I could not say off the top of my head." Grenada looked away. "The lighting, controls and infrastructure will be cheapest. Heating and sea propulsion vary. We could get by with very little, or use a lot. Thankfully, it has not been raining, and we are out of the mountains, so the cold is not a major concern."
Jamjars rolled her eyes. "And Shinespark is still being ornery, right?"
Grenada immediately stiffened. "If you want my help, do not mock my sister's grief."
Glimmer jumped in before anything could escalate. "She likely wouldn't be interested in helping us, but that's perfectly fine. Grenada, if you were involved with the Black Box project, you could help us make a proof-of-concept version for testing multiple pieces of obsidian at once? To see if they generate more power or destabilize?"
"...Perhaps." Grenada sighed. "But not now. We have griffons to prepare for."
Jamjars raised an eyebrow. "Because we're all sooo helpful preparing that other ship with who knows what when we can't even fly out there. It's literally going to be Harshwater carrying everyone. Because no one is stupid enough to fly with Howe. Come on, just a prototype! How long will it take?"
Grenada returned the look. "If we are trying to be stealthy from a group of griffons, having lights on in a darkened ship is counterproductive. Why does it need to be now, impatience aside?"
Jamjars cutely rubbed her chin. "What if they turn out to be legitimate greedy traders? It's not like we're doing anything with our money. If we knew having a ton of moon glass would help, maybe we could buy some from them."
"I do not think that is a safe assumption to make," Grenada deadpanned.
Jamjars chuckled. "Says the mare whose goon squad spent years selling the Defense Force weapons and then stealing the weapons back to rob them of their money. Come on, we're professionals. If they try to rip us off, we'll get the better of them. But we have something they want, and that gives us the power."
Grenada just sighed. "It was all Shinespark, Dior and Arambai's plan. I wish we had Shinespark back. Especially for this, we could use her expertise..."
"I told you it's no fun for anyone when she's holed up on the bridge." Jamjars rolled her eyes. "How about you start building a prototype, and I'll go give her a motivational speech."
Grenada's leg shot out, blocking her progress. "You will do nothing of the sort. I will make you a list of parts I need to start with, and if anyone is going to speak with my sister, it will be me while you search for the parts amid this mess."
Jamjars predatorially winked. "Deal."
The bridge was one of the lightest parts of the ship, thanks to its abundance of windows, but it felt like the opposite. Shinespark's pilot chair sat with its high back to the entrance, though there was no denying it was occupied. Grenada stood in the open doorway for a full minute, receiving no acknowledgement she was there.
"It has been two weeks," she eventually said. "You have had time to grieve, sister. But everyone who is still here still needs you."
"Like I can afford to care," Shinespark rasped back, voice dry from disuse.
Grenada didn't break her stare. "All it costs is hope. You are out of that, then?"
"Hope for what?" Shinespark growled. "Seeing all my friends and everything I love torn from me shred by shred, time after time after time? In Ironridge, I led poorly, and it cost both of us our friends and our home. And then I made the mistake of caring again. You weren't there. We were all powerless against her, watching as Valey's life force was ripped away and everyone else was crushed like trees before a flood. She looked at how much I cared about Valey and thought it was amusing."
Grenada stepped through the door, but stayed at the entrance. "There were many survivors."
"Don't try to pretend that makes an inch of difference," Shinespark hissed. "Valey was... We never... She..."
"However much you had left unsaid to her, I have been there," Grenada interrupted. "Lest you forget my long-quashed feelings for you, and how I thought you perished higher up in that control tower in the skyport."
Shinespark sucked in a breath. "If it weren't for Garsheeva and her heresies... before the end, we might have..."
"Stop," Grenada commanded. "You saw where I was when you found me in Mistvale. You loved her, and whether you did not say it, did not show it, did not let her see how you meant it or anything else, there is only one place that kind of blind devotion leads. What if she returned from the dead just like you did for me and saw you giving no aid to their friends when they needed it? What if she saw you poisoning their cause and her cause because you are in whatever spiral currently traps you?"
"Blind devotion? You think I'm blind?" Shinespark shuddered. "I wish I was blind, but she's all I can see." She rotated in her chair, horn cracked and healing yet very much disfigured and unusable. Both of her eyes burned with a faint sapphire spark that was a mockery of her usual resolve. "Her dying to that laughing monstrosity. You think her soul is in a better place now, in that thing's crown? I dream of crumbling bridges, falling rockets and green flame, and it never ends. If you think you've been where I've been, then show me the way out, because there are none for miles on end."
"Time moves forward whether you have a way out or not, and takes you along with it," Grenada replied. "You cannot wait here. Half of your friends are planning to protect this ship from opportunistic griffons, and the other half are trying to improve our lives and rebuild the systems we will someday need to get out of here. We are doing it with the help of former traitors like Felicity, Howe and myself, because anything is better than languishing here forever. But even with ponies and griffons of all colors, we have no leader and nothing to hold us together except thin trust and the will to survive. If you cannot stand up for yourself, stand up for us. Please, sister. We need you."
Shinespark stared at her. "Where are you even moving forward to? This happens again and again, and you know it. I made myself the hero of Ironridge, severed my cutie mark and built an empire of lies all to fight Yakyakistan and the Sky District and still couldn't stop my city from being erased. I sat back and believed in my friend and was equally powerless when her fated day came. No matter what I do, it's the same. It's fate."
"So what?" Grenada stomped a hoof. "Is the journey along the way not more important than the end? None of us are immortal! We all die someday. But that is no reason to sit back and waste the rest of the life you still have."
"I lived my journey," Shinespark said, voice even. "I followed the rules. I did my best. And what did all of it get me? There were so many times and so many talks when Valey knew how I felt, but because we listened to those rules... we..."
"And I felt the same," Grenada urged, "after all the time I spent as your loyal subordinate, and you died before you could finish the war you taught me so heavily to believe in! You have to get up, Shinespark. Please..."
"...Stay for a while." Shinespark turned back toward the windshield. "Your words don't ring anything in my heart, but I believe you mean well. Please."