Emerald flames glowed on the horizon.
Vinyl!
I picked myself up and took a step towards the impact site. I’d walk there. Never mind the error messages. Nevermind the pain. She needed me.
My old hull… Thousands of rounds of ammunition had been in there. Including my balefire shells.
Vinyl!
Please… Please have been out of range. Please don’t have died just because I didn’t use all of the good rounds on the trip over.
I took another few steps. It was… hard. Very hard. My spiritual power was almost depleted. I’d have to push through without magic.
Emerald flames. Balefire. The dozen or so balefire shells left in my magazines had exploded. Along with everything else.
“Vinyl!” I called, knowing she couldn't hear me. “I’m coming!”
Buck, everything left in the ship would have exploded when the meteor hit.
“Your hull is breached,” Desi said flatly form the ground.
“I don’t care!” I said as I took another step.
My left hind leg locked up. I dragged it for the next step.
I head something click behind me, followed almost instantly by a low hum and series of beeps.
“You won't stop me!” I growled as I dragged my useless leg across the gravel towards the ex-naval yard.
“I do not need to. Systems failure in twenty three seconds,” Desi reported.
My vision started to blur. I didn’t care why. It didn’t matter. Nor did it matter that I was so hot.
I had to get to Vinyl. She needed me… Or a burial.
“Then teleport me back!” I growled, spinning my head around to glare at her. “I need to be with her! You should have left me to die with her!”
Desi stared blankly back at me and shook her head. “No. I require a friend for anti-sad applications.”
I felt my eye twitch as rage coursed through me. That’s why she saved me?! “You, selfish—”
☢★★◯★★☢
I was on my back. The sky was black.
Vinyl was dead.
Did I join her? Blackness. Nothing above.
Yes. I’d joined her. Systems failure. Like Desi said.
Good.
Thank you, systems.
Interesting to know that I got to go where mortals do when they die this time around.
I had to get up. I had to find Vinyl. We could just cuddle forever in this… dark void. Place. Thing. Can't. Words. With. Brain.
Why can’t I move?
A very blurry gold and gray pony-head shape suddenly filled my vision. “Optronic flow compressor reenergized,” Desi’s dry voice commented.
“I’m not dead…” I whispered sadly.
“Correct,” Desi answered. “Your oscillating neutron inductor requires decoupling. State the decoupling procedure.”
“Why?” I sobbed. “I want to die! Let me die!”
Desi’s head vanished from my view. “Memory core remains unstable. Cycling power core until you reboot with backup personality module active.”
“What are you—”
☢★★◯★★☢
“— creace the thermal system variance?” Desi asked out of nowhere.
The world was still black, but I could see a little better now. The sky was overcast. Completely. Cloudcover. Solid… But… how? Pip didn’t let the pegasi build cloud cities. She kept the skies clear. Did she not reach out this far? The Gardens stopped here. Maybe the SPP array acted as the Garden’s antenne?
Wait! VINYL!
“Please, Desi, let me go. I need to find Vinyl!” I begged.
Desi grunted irritably. “You are presently disassembled. Please reboot. Backup personality module is cooperative in repair efforts.”
I tried to move my head to look. Nothing happened. “Is that why I can’t move?”
“Confirmed,” Desi said quietly. “Please reboot. You require a decrease of variance in your thermal system.”
I paused for a moment, thinking about it. If she fixed me, I could go look for Vinyl.
“I’ll reboot if you tell me how you’re speaking that well without your book.”
“I linked my TR-580 to your audio-processor and set up a simple translation matrix via the use of a multimodal conversion algorithm. I am speaking DASL. You hear… Something intelligible,” Desi reported. “Please reboot. Your blueprints are insufficient to effect repairs.”
I wanted to frown, but I couldn’t move my face. Wait, I couldn’t move my face. She’s been talking to me this whole time via my systems. Getting a raw-readout of my processor’s data and just… understanding it.
What?
Can you hear my thoughts, weirdly smart filly?
I waited for a few moments. If she could she didn’t say anything.
Wait a moment...
“So… DASL is a language you speak? I thought it was sign language,” I said with a sad laugh.
“It is not intended to be spoken, but can be expressed in audio format. It is mildly painful to do so. Please reboot. I am attempting to stabilize your reactor,” Desi said with an audible sigh.
Stabilize? My reactor was unstable?
Good. I’d melt down and join Vinyl.
Let’s make things go faster.
Gathering all of my willpower, I reached out to my reactor cooling system and started to take it offline.
“Hey, kid? You shouldn’t have mentioned that. She’s trying to turn off her cooling system,” Imaginary dad said with a sad sigh. “Gears, hon… I know your sad, but you need to hang in there. There’s a chance she’s still alive.”
Desi groaned audibly. “Please stop attempting to self destruct. Disconnecting and reconnecting your power core is a tedious process.”
“Wait, you heard my da—”
☢★★◯★★☢
The sky was a little bit purple. I’d been out overnight.
Vinyl! Had she made it?
No… No, probably not.
I heard the sound of papers rustling. “Thank you for the sustenance.” Desi said.
“Thanks for not shooting me and setting my leg,” a mare answered.
Who was that? I swore I knew that voice.
Argh! I need to turn my head! Why can’t I turn my head?
I tried to ask why I couldn’t turn my head. Nothing happened.
“She took your speech centers offline, hon. You started screaming at her,” Imaginary Dad informed.
I don’t remember that…
“You’re also failing to write to disk a lot. It’s okay. We’re working on that. Jasmine, Desi, and I have got this. Just reboot until Jasmine comes back, she’s good at material science. We need her. Okay?”
In a bit...
More papers rustled. “Is your radio equipment still operable?”
“Uh, yeah. I think so…” The mare said quietly. “So uh… The Machine is a robot… Can we talk about that?”
“What requires talking about?” Desi asked, her voice managing to sound just a little curious.
“Well, she’s… She’s too much of a person to be a robot. I don’t expect you to understand, you’re a filly but… Robots are kind of dumb. They couldn’t speak as well as she does. She’s not a golem, so it’s not like the Zebrican robots. I can see all of her parts. Who made her, do you know?”
Papers rustled. “Signature on the power core indicates her creator was: “Doctor Swan, Lord of the Beep Boops.”.”
Mom.
Oh, Celestia… mom! I couldn’t die, mom needed me…
BUCK! BUCKING BUCK-BUCKING-BUCK!
Vinyl was gone! There was no reason to be happy, but I had to keep going for Mom.
“Thank goodness,” Imaginary dad sighed. “Hey, kid, she’s awake and realized suicide is bad.”
The mare hummed. “Never heard of her… At least, I don’t think so. Not much of anything but a cook and radiomare… Well uh, she’ll probably kill me when you fix her. Her people are at war with mine.”
Desi hmmed quietly then referenced her book. “Understood. Before departure, may I use your radio?”
“Um, what for?” the mare asked with a worried whinny.
“Repairs require a phased pattern matrix,” Desi answered after a moment of page rustling. “I must acquire sources for the part. Radio would expedite this process.”
“Oh!” The mare said with a hint of surprise. “Well that’s not an uncommon robot part… I’ll bet Absolutely Everything has one. Why don’t I place the order for you? They might not take a filly’s voice seriously. Especially not one who’se pretty much emotionless.”
“I am working on that problem,” Desi said, seemingly ashamed.
“You do seem a bit better than when we met,” the mare said diplomatically.
I heard a few switches click. Somepony turned a dial.
“Artful Dents to Absolutely Everything. Come in Absolutely Everything, over.” The mare said.
Everything was quiet for a moment. Then the mare chuckled. “That’s right. She’s mute. She can’t copy,” she said. “Sorry, Absolutely Everything. Forgot… Yeah. Oh, uh, please don’t ignore me. I know what frequency you’re seeing. This isn’t a Tainted radio anymore. I’m two kilometers south by south east from the Mobile Infantry Base… I mean, the ruins of it. There’s a filly here with a robot. She needs a phased pattern matrix. Oh, uh, kid, what size?”
“Approximately the size of my hoof,” Desi replied after a moment of page turning.
“One filly-hoof sized one. She doesn't have caps but uh… Well, she’s trying to fix The Machine. Might be worth a freebie, or opening a tab. Artful Dents out.”
The radio clicked. “There you go, kid… I’m going to get going.”
☢★★◯★★☢
The world wasn’t fuzzy anymore. I could see the sky. Fully cloudy, but some pale yellow light managed to shine down through the clouds.
“Oh. You rebooted,” Desi said with an irritable flick of her tail.
“Sorry…” I murmured.
Vinyl… I need to see if she made it.
I tried to stand up. I felt Desi’s telekinesis pull me down sharply. “No! Bad! I just put those back on. They are not ready to support your mass yet!”
I blinked. Yay, motor control!
“I have to see if Vinyl is okay or not. I need to know,” I said as calmly as I could. “Please let me go!”
Desi shook her head. “Not yet. Explosion exploded you very efficiently. Most systems required rebuilding. Everything requires adjustments. You are still missing a phased pattern matrix. It was destroyed via kinetic forces.”
I frowned slightly. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“It regulates the power going to your servos so you don't rip your joints apart trying to move,” Desi answered.
“Oh… So. I’ll kill myself if I try to walk,” I muttered angirly.
“No.” Desi said flatly. “You’ll make me have to rebuild them. Again. Please reboot. Unit Jasmine was instructing me in the use of a metal-bonding spell. I need to repair microfractures all throughout your endoskeleton.”
“That can wait,” I said quietly. “You’re doing magic, so you got calories, somehow, right?”
“Yes,” Desi answered with a confused tilt of her head.
“Then you could go look for Vinyl. I’ll wait right here. I promise,” I asked, pleading at her with my eyes.
Desi shook her head. “I attempted to do this last time you asked. Your flesh was consumed by meter long rats. It is not safe to leave you alone in this state.”
I triple blinked. “I— I don’t remember that.”
Desi’s brow furrowed. “I just fixed your memory modules!” she shouted before stamping a hoof in anger.
“Heh… Well, at least you have showing emotion down,” I murmured sleepily.
“Thank you. I downloaded your body-language database and read it while waiting for code to compile. It was very informative,” Desi said with a slight smile. “I promise we will look for Vinyl as soon as you can safely locomote.”
“Wait, you just… read it?” I asked, my ears flicking curiously. “And, you’re using it, so, you read it and memorized it instantly?”
Wait…
Her general emotionless states. Her stilted speech. Her use of adult-vocabulary when speaking her native language.
“So, you’re an equoid too?” I asked with a curious perk of my ears.
Desi shook her head. “No.”
“You’ve got to be a machine!” I protested. “Nopony could have just read that once and used it!”
“I am a collection of several trillion nano-scale machines working in harmony,” Desi said with a playful smile.
I gasped. “Oh my gosh! You’re a nanite swarm?!”
Desi nodded. “Correct, and so is every other organic lifeform.”
I gave her my best deadpan stare.
Imaginary dad laughed in the back of my mind.
Wait… Wait… Didn’t he actually TALK to Desi? I think I remember that. Everything’s so fuzz—
☢★★◯★★☢
I head pages rustle before my eyes opened.
It was kinda gray out today.
Why was I laying on my back looking up at the clo—
Yes. Explosion. Meteor. Broken. Vinyl missing or dead. Must look for her!
“Please state your thrust to mass ratio, trailer pulling pony,” Desi asked, sounding more than a little incredulous.
I heard the sound of chalk on slate and turned my head towards it.
Desi was looking at a pegasus ghoul. Tufts of gray fur clung to her in a few places, and the poor thing had completely lost all of her feathers. She was also wearing a harness attached to a small air-cart laden with crates and barrels. As well as a pair of NCR Troopers who looked super twitchy.
She was writing on a little chalkboard hung around her neck. Why? Couldn’t she talk?
Come on, Gears! You know her from Pip’s story. What’s her name? It’s right on the tip of my memory c—
Desi blinked. “Sorry. Miss Doo. I was previously unaware of your designation.”
The ghoul pony erased her slate. I opened my mouth to ask what her name was. No sound came out.
UGH! Speech offline again? WHY?!
Desi shook her head. “My name is irrelevant. What do you require for the component?”
The ghoul erased her slate and wrote again. Desi’s ears perked up, she reared up and hugged the ghoul close. “Thank you! My friend requires it immediately.”
Awww. She did an emotion. Good fo—
██████████
███████████
వrure ender༎ཊ ᾽ volupta⁝⏍ ᤵeli௪ ᆱ╆se c֟llum 'olⓊre ᢨឱ fⅹgiat nul૽ᖽ ℭariaturំ ExᏡ࿆p⚙euℕ sint ߝccaἰcat cupiᔌatỏt n▀ᅡ prᎍᵇ₾enᷘ s Ὶia deߎe
██████
█████████████
☢★★◯★★☢
I could see, but only out of a quarter of one of my eyes. I wasn’t sure how it was possible to understand that the lower right hoof corner of my vision was now in the upper left hoof corner, with all else being void, but it was.
The world was lit normally now, but kinda dark. Probably from the clouds.
I was on my side, maybe. I could see a small tent made from a blanket, a few water bottles, a little bowl half full of beetroots, all clustered near me.
I could also see Desi’s little hoof-held computer thingie. She’s opened a panel on the back and ran wires… presumably directly to my processors.
Desi herself was out of my view. I tried to turn my head to look for her, but I still couldn’t move.
“Desi?” I called.
“Good! You were not formatted by that. Sorry,” Desi apologised form behind me.
A surge of terror coursed through what few parts of myself I could feel. “What?”
“An error in your isolinear interocitor pathways caused a feedback loop through your memory circuits and fractured a crystal. I swapped it out for one I pulled out of the wards on the Door to Critical Error. It appears to be working,” Desi reported, seemingly pleased with herself. “For the moment, at least. I am uncertain how long you can remain inactive without your spirit departing your chassis. I will have to synthesize a new crystal, or convert an existing one, to make a replacement that will last for more than a few hours.”
She… She replaced one of my processors, with a random bit of crystal set up for power storage and not information processing, which she yanked out of a door with a screwdriver.
What?
“How are you this good with robotics?” I asked, wishing I could shake my head incredulously or drop my jaw.
Desi trotted over to her bottles of water and took a swing from one. “Science,” she answered, wiping her mouth with a hoof.
I did my best to give her a deadpan stare. It did not work.
Desi frowned. “Did you shut down again?”
“No,” I sighed. “I’m trying to stare at you with a ‘no, duh’ sort of… feeling.”
Desi sat down on her haunches. “But it was, though!”
“Obviously! I meant how, specifically!” I said.
Desi blushed lightly. “Oh! Well, you see, rationality is absurdly powerful. It allows us to understand nature through mathematics, and control it with technology. You begin with a guess, compute the consequences of the guess, and compare them to nature by experiment. If your guess disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s key. It doesn't matter how beautiful the guess is, how smart you are, who made it, if it disagrees with the results of experiment, it’s wrong.”
I managed to move my left foreleg up to half-way-facehoof. “I know what the scientific method is, Desi!”
She tilted her head and frowned. “Then why are you asking how I’m fixing you?”
“Y— You’re just guessing how I should be and trying over and over to get everything working?!” I stammered, hoping my voice alone could convey shock.
“Yes. Everything works somehow. I’ve got most of you working, I just need to figure out a few more things,” Desi said with a cheerful flick of her tail.
“Like how you figured out body language from reading my data files?” I asked, realizing just how quickly she had to have done that.
“No. Reading data to assimilate it is completely different from intuiting and rationalizing the workings of a system to effect repairs,” she said with a solemn nod.
I managed to somewhat roll an eye, which caused my vision to zoom out. “If you have an eidetic memory, or whatever, how come you have to use a translation book?”
“Language is… hard,” Desi grumbled. “So many different sounds, pitch matters, rhythm matters. Order, syntax, the addition or omission of a short pause can entirely change the meaning of everything being communicated. I don't need the reference much longer, but for now, I need to check vocabulary so I can focus on everything else. Language is complex, hard, and I hate it. Science is fun, nice, and I love it.”
“You speak this one well,” I said, hoping to comfort her a little.
It had to be painful to be beyond brilliant but struggle with something as fundamental as language.
She smiled a little. “I had a good teacher.”
“But, you do have a good memory too, right?” I asked with a flick of one ear.
I didn’t mean to flick it. It just kind of did that…
Desi nodded once.
“So, once I’m able to move, you can take me to where Vinyl was?”
Desi frowned. “Yes, but it won’t matter.”
My core skipped several cycles. Desi yelped as her hoof held computer beeped angrily, then jumped out of my line of sight to pull on some of my systems cables.
“Why. Not?” I asked as angrily as I could manage without literally blowing a gasket.
“Miss Doo looked for me before giving me the tent and things. She’s not there. She either survived and left yesterday, or is buried too deep to find, or was vaporized. I told you three times. Remember?” Desi pleaded.
“N— No. I don’t…” I whimpered.
Desi paused for a moment. “I suppose I should take you to those geocoordinates regardless.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Oh!” Desi asked hopefully. “While you’re awake, do you know if you are you using a polymer based neurorelay to transmit the organic nerve impulses from your bio-covering to your positronic network?”
“Uhhh…” I answered as intelligently as I could.
“Darn… I’ll have to experiment then,” Desi grumbled, her tail lashing somewhat irritably.
“Look, just… Just fix my eyes. Mom can fix my skin or whatever later, okay?” I grumbled.
I heard the sound of a little filly groan and facehoof. “Everything moved offscreen to the top left?”
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“Tenth time today,” Desi muttered angrily. “Your processors signals are all over the place. Why your mom used a retro encabulator to modulate your power core’s—”
“Actually, that’s a turbo encabulator,” I said in the hopes it would help.
The most pure and true squeak of distress ever heard within all of space and time echoed across the gravel pit.
Desi took a breath to recover from her squeak. “I’ll get right on that.”
☢★★◯★★☢
It was bright now. Maybe noon. I could see the clouds above me.
“Are you on now?” Desi asked wearily.
“Yes. What happened?” I said, remaining still since I hadn’t been able to move all day anyways.
“I burnt out your turbo encabulator as I believed it was a retro encabulator,” Desi admitted bashfully. “I have installed a temporary replacement. I believe you can operate at twenty percent efficiency at present, and should be able to remain active for seven hours, provided you minimize movement.”
My ears drooped. “I— I see… How bad am I damaged?”
If I was this broken, Vinyl had to have been vaporized… Oh, Celestia… Speed too.
Nika swam off before the battle started. He might be okay, but everypony else…
Desi sighed. “Bad. I think I can stabilize you and restore you to nearly sixty percent of your design specs, but you will require proper replacement parts and a mechanic with proper understanding of your systems for a full repair.”
“Can I go see where Vinyl died?” I asked hopefully and tried to stand up.
I wobbled, squirmed, shook, but managed to sit up.
Desi opened her mouth to speak, I cut her off. “I see that’s a no…”
No way was I going to be able to walk a hundred yards. Let alone a kilometer.
Desi cleared her throat and pointed with a wingtip to the distant city of Oak Valley. “The city appears to be largely intact from this distance. I require basic materials to create several components you require for repairs. I believe you can protect yourself for a few hours. Is it okay if I leave you alone? We could wait until another radio-possessing pony comes by if necessary.”
I triple blinked and tilted my head. “What? Radio?”
Desi pointed to the tent, then my presently exposed core. “A nice ghoul delivered goods to us after she was requested by a mare with a radio in thanks for me affecting repairs to her legs, torso, and… Uh…” Dessi frowned and grumbled in disappointment. “Unlabeled anatomical component 43893.”
I stared at her for several seconds.
The filly turned a bright pink. “I don’t know what it’s called. Sorry.”
“She bandaged her snoot. It was cute,” Imaginary Dad clarified for me.
I sighed and looked off into the distance. If I was going to be online for a while, I could use the time to think. Alone. I needed to figure out what to do next.
“Yeah, go ahead,” I said as I looked around for my pistol, and found it laying on a rock next to me. “I’ll be fine.”
“Are you certain?” Desi asked, drooping one ear.
I shook my head. “No… But you need stuff to fix me. I’m not… Why are you helping me this much? It has to be hard for you.”
“It is fun,” Desi replied with a faint smile. “More importantly, I require a friend for anti-sadness operations.”
I bit my lip, wanting to say something, but knowing I shouldn’t.
Desi looked down. She knew. “I— I know you will not want to be my friend due to my failure to save your mate. I am sorry… But I will still attempt to create a positive relationship.”
“I’ll try to give you a chance,” I promised.
Desi nodded in thanks, opened her wings, ran along the ground, flapped hard and took off into the sky.
I couldn’t help but grin. What a silly way for a pegasus to take off.
I watched Desi fly away for a few minutes, then turned my attention towards the still smoking ruins of the Herd’s military base.
It didn't matter how broken I was.
I needed to know.
I’d forced myself to walk tens of kilometers through worse pain than this before. I could do it again.
I took a moment to gather up all of my chassis plates, tucked everything into my saddlebags, slid Desi’s computer under my bag’s strap to keep it in place without yanking on the wires, and began to walk.
☢★★◯★★☢
Pain. Everything was pain.
Bits of my mind, possibly Jasmine, were screaming at me. Telling me everything was a mistake.
The sky was orange again, and I’d only just reached the ruins of the office building I’d left her in.
My servos ground and burned with each step.
My regenerating pelt hung loose from my frame, sealing up from the latest hole ripped in it by a strand of rebar.
Desi’s power conversion system was holding. She did better work than she thought.
Just a few more steps.
I could see the desk. It had been knocked over. A ceiling beam had fallen. A green stain covered the floor.
No body.
I walked up to the side of the stain. My hindlegs went limp, and I fell onto my belly.
No trace of carbon. No residues on the floor. No ash.
She was alive. Or had been totally vaporized.
There had been balefire… It was unlikely the balefire blast would have been strong enough to totally incinerate her but leave the desk intact-ish.
Then again, the wall behind the desk, it was gone. Completely gone.
Could have happened.
My vision was dim and fuzzy again. Maybe if I shut down some systems I didn’t need more power would route to my eyes? Differently worth try—
“I am amazed you made it this far.” Somepony said.
I wanted to jump. I didn’t recognise the voice.
I couldn’t jump. My legs refused.
I turned my head instead.
It was Desi. She had a large canvas bag floating behind her in her magic’s green aura.
I offered her my best apologetic smile. “I— I had to see.”
“I understand,” Desi said as she trotted over to me and set down a large canvas bag. “I got what I needed. I will carry you back to camp. If you are done.”
I looked at the stain on the ground again. “I think she’s alive… So, yes.”
Desi nodded and lifted me with her telekinesis, then slipped her bag onto her back and began to trot back towards our camp.
Camp. She’d have gone there first…
I frowned. “Why didn’t you leave that at camp?”
“I didn’t want it stolen. It was irritating to find everything I needed,” Desi replied politely.
“Fair,” I murmured.
My eyes narrowed slightly. “Wait… Your suit’s pockets are not big enough to have a bunch of caps in them. How did you— Did you steal that?”
Desi laughed. “No. I was about to, but a stallion had heard I was looking for caps and offered a substantial sum in exchange for sexual favors.”
“What?!” Imaginary dad and I shouted together.
“Yes!” Desi said weirdly cheerfully. “I was lucky to locate an individual seeking a service I can provide for free without the expenditure of re—”
“You’re a filly! What he did was wrong!” I shouted as loudly as my damaged systems would permit.
“I don’t know that word…” Desi admitted shyly.
“Filly!? How?!” I sputtered.
“It’s not in the book,” Desi admitted.
“I thought we’re using your computer to translate!” I sputtered.
“We are,” Desi said flatly. “Which limits us to the book’s terms.”
“Filly, young female. Not an adult, a child!” I snapped. “You shouldn’t be—”
The pure disgust at whoever had taken advantage of Desi silenced me.
“Oh,” Desi remarked with a weird inflection. “I see your objection now. I disagree. I agreed willingly to the proposal, no trauma has been inflicted, and I extracted my ovaries to prevent pregnancy prior to— Well, that’s not important. This was a consequence free exchange of—”
“You what?!” I squeaked. “WHY?!”
“To prevent pregnancy in case of sexual contact with a male,” Desi answered as she raised an eyebrow. “Obviously.”
“H— How old are you?” I asked suspiciously. “A filly shouldn’t be thinking about— That kind of stuff. Or, like, anywhere near as educated as you seem to be… Are you just really really short?”
Desi looked over her shoulder at my face and frowned. “I— Um… I don’t know? I don’t have access to a calendar…”
“When were you born?” I asked.
She shrugged.
Okay. Fair. No calendar… Let’s fall back on biology.
“You’re short. You look young,” I murmured to myself. “Then again, alicorn… Not much known about natural born ones yet. Um, have you had your first estrus?”
I winced as I asked. That was a very personal question, and biological maturity isn’t really totally pinned to reproductive capabilities directly but—
“That didn’t translate,” Desi informed.
Oh, Celestia… Why?
“Um… Have you had a period of very, very intensely wanting to.. Uh, mate. With a stallion. You know, for having a foal,” I babbled awkwardly.
“Oh. No,” Desi remarked.
“Then you’re absolutely too young to have done that!” I protested, kicking one of my forelegs for emphasis.
“I have absolutely no intention of reproducing. Ever,” Desi continued.
I facehooved. Oh. Great. Specifics matter… Okay.
“Alright, have you had that feeling, but just for fun then?”
“No.”
“Then you’re not—”
“I did experience a period where I very desperately wanted to pin a mare down and—”
“OKAY!” I said loudly, cutting that off immediately. “Soooo uh, you've hit that part of puberty at least then. But its still unhealthy for a young mare to have sex—”
I blinked. “Wait, you like mares?”
“Yes.”
“And… you slept with a stallion?”
“Yes. He offered money. I needed money,” Desi said with a snort. “It’s not a complicated arrangement.”
“Um, would you have done it for fun?”
“No. He wasn’t good looking, and desired to be on top,” Desi informed with way, way too much detail. “It was simply a business transaction.”
I took a deep, emotionally necessary breath. “Desi, I understand you are seeing it that way as a coping mechanism, but—”
“He wasn’t that bad,” she snickered.
“Desi, we can find him and make sure he’s punished,” I promised. “It’s okay.”
“I understand you think that I am traumatized. I understand your protests. I disagree with them,” Desi said with an irritated flick of her tail. “I may look young, but do I act young?”
“Uh…” I frowned as I tried to analyze Desi’s very good point. “Well, no.”
“I believe I exhibit critical thinking skills and comprehension of complex subjects on part with or exceeding your own. Do you agree?” Desi asked.
“Well, yes… Obviously,” I admitted. “But—”
“Then, as far as I am concerned, I cheated a mentaly ill male out of some money due to my physical appearance. Likely saving a person who actually is underdeveloped from suffering that fate today.”
“That… That’s actually a good point,” I admitted with a sigh of defeat.
“Please still locate that buckstain and shoot him, please,” Imaginary dad begged.
Okay. She looks young, but there’s an adult brain in there. Maybe she’s physically developmentally challenged in addition to having her language difficulties. Or maybe alicorns physically age more slowly than— Wait, she can’t be older than fourteen!
Then again, the alicorns do raise their foals to be very, very much into reproducing and having large families… Do they count their children as adults on their first estrus cycle?
Or maybe her brain just developed very quickly. Don't alicorns get smarter with radiation? Maybe that speeds mental development and—
Wait.
Wait.
WAIT!
Rainbow said that mom had inadvertently designed my body to be incredibly attractive to a common type of mare!
I shivered. “D— Desi? I accept the fact you are sexualy mature, in spite of you looking about four years too young for it. Just, please, please tell me you’re not actually fixing me because you’re attracted to me…”
“Ew!” Desi groaned. “No!”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness!”
“I like athletic ponies,” she grumbled.
I bit my lip, let a few minutes pass by, and just listened to the ground crunching under her hooves.
I couldn’t avoid asking her forever… I had to know. She’d done something… very morally gray to help me. I had to know before she put that stuff in me.
“Desi? How many days have you been alive?” I asked as calmly as I could. “I can do the math for years.”
“Uh,” she stopped walking and twitched a little. “I spent most of my existence without natural light… Furthermore, due to the varying lengths of day and night caused by the sun’s erratic orbital velocity, that data wouldn’t help you calculate my age.”
“Oh…” I sighed.
“Are you really that bothered by it?” Desi asked shyly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you would be upset by it. I didn’t mean to cause you distress. I only wanted to acquire materials to help you as safely and effectively as possible. Theft was an option but seemed riskier than acquiring currency.”
“And you did that by following the creepy stallion into diddling fillies,” I said, closing my eyes in frustration. “Thinking that was safe to do is incredibly naive!”
“Hello, pot. This is kettle,” Dad snorted in the back of my mind.
Quiet, you!
“I am aware of the fates prostitutes can meet. I assure you, I was ready to vaporize him at the first sign of hostile action. There was none,” Desi said calmly.
I frowned as I tried to process everything. There was a lot to go through.
We made it halfway back to camp before I was finished thinking things through.
Desi took responsibility. She accepted feedback immediately. She exhibited extremely levels of high critical thinking. She definitely also took care of herself, reasoned through situations…
Bucking tartarus… Desi either just looked like a 14 year old, or 14 years was long enough for naturally born alicorns to fully mentaly mature.
Either way… “Desi, I’m sorry for treating you like a filly,” I said as sincerely as I could.
“It is okay. You can’t be blamed for your thoughts. As I do not know my age I cannot state it for you. I look young, I might be comparatively young, but I do not consider myself to be a child,” Desi replied with a polite smile.
A stray thought passed through my mind. One seemingly important. “How could you not know what you look like? You have to have seen other ponies before.”
“I have been on the surface for approximately…” Desi trailed off for a moment, giving me just enough time to realize she must have been living in a bunker or Stable before stating. “Two hundred and eighty thousand sets of nine billion one hundred ninety-two million six hundred thirty-one thousand seven hundred seventy periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.”
“That… sounds like a lot of time?” I ask-sated with a wince.
“It is not,” Desi corrected. “Prior to that point, I was the only organic lifeform within my living area.”
“Wait,” my wince morphed into a stepped frown. “You… raised yourself?”
“No. My development was facilitated by several computer systems which self-adjusted their primary functions for this purpose,” she elaborated.
“Is that why you like me?” I said, my ears perking up. “Because I remind you of your, uh, robo-mom?”
“No,” Desi sighed. “These systems are non-sentient. They are merely adaptive, and prioritized ensuring my survival. I performed maintenance for them, and offered them purpose in return. Machines hate not being used for their purpose.”
I nodded in agreement. “Yes. We do.”
“I like you because you have organic friends. It means— Oh,” Desi winced and turned to give me an apologetic look.
I met her gaze for a moment then stared at the ground, a deep sadness welling up in my heart.
☢★★◯★★☢
I was laying on my back again. It was dark now. I could see some purples and reads in the cloud covered sky.
I hadn’t started waiting or anything. Time just… jumped. My memory must still be having problems.
Right. Fractured memory crystal. Random replacement.
Desi did horrible things to get stuff to make a new one.
“Desi?” I asked quietly as I sat up.
The small alicorn was standing at a rocky cairn some distance away from me. For a moment I thought the cairn was a grave, but it was definitely a workbench. A few old pots and pans had been arranged on top of it, along with an old glass baking pan, a small magical camp stove and some acrylic tubing.
Desi was hunched over her improvised equipment, carefully boiling something purple that smelled like… Uh… science? Alchemy? Come on brain, what concept does this thing that doesn't smell like a thing smell like?!
Celestia above! How much did that monster pay her?!
No! Unsettling thought. Do not think it. At all.
Desi either ignored me or had not heard me speak.
“Desi?” I asked uncertainty.
“Quiet. Distilling resublimated thiotimoline,” Desi said faster than I thought a pony could speak.
I nodded and quietly watched her boil the purple stuff.
Several long moments later, Desi reached into her pocket, took out a single green crystal, and carefully placed it into a tin the purple stuff was condensing back into.
It exploded. Instantly.
Desi went flying a good four meters, propelled backwards by a cloud of green smoke. She hit the ground hard, rolled, twitched, and lay still.
“Desi!” I yelped, jumping to my hooves, then instantly yelped in pain as every one of my joints decided to punch me in the metaphysical face for making them do that. “OW!”
“Ow,” Desi agreed quietly.
“Thank goodness you’re alive!” I laughed nervously as I sat down.
Desi stood up. Her left foreleg had been stripped clean down to the bone by the blast. A large chunk of her face had been burnt off as well. I screamed.
Desi limped towards me, gently crying like a filly who accidently ran full speed, snoot-first into a coffee table.
I stared at her wide eyed, convinced the only thing keeping her moving was pure shock and adrenaline. She made her way up to my chest and murmured, “Scuze me, sorry…” then proceed to cut through my skin with a quick blast of magic from her horn and expose my core.
I yelped in pain again. In spite of smelling burnt flesh, the cut wasn’t that painful, but it was confusing, and a bit terrifying. Before I could react further, Desi opened my core’s shielding via telekinesis, and sighed in relief as she bathed in the green light spilling from my core.
I watched as her body absorbed the radiation. Her fur darkened, her muscles started to swell, then, instead of growing into a super-alicorn, fresh muscle knit itself across her exposed bone, followed by skin, fur, then keratin as her hoof grew back.
As soon as she was whole again, Desi closed my core up and pushed my pelt together so the cut sealed.
“Thanks,” she muttered as she trotted back to her now-destroyed workbench.
“T— this has happened a lot today, hasn’t it?” I asked with the biggest wince.
“Yes. This was the forty-third injury of today,” Desi said with a nod as she rummaged through the remains of the workbench.
“There’s no way that crystal survived the accident,” I said with a soothing tone.
Desi snickered. “Oh, no. That was supposed to explode.”
I blinked.
“A— And you stood that close to it?”
“It’s not like I had a robotic grabby thing or WALDO to lower the crystal into the solution,” Desi remarked.
“YOU HAVE TELEKINESIS!” I shouted, my left eye twitching.
Desi blinked then facehooved. “Oh, yeah…”
The sheer STUPID! AAAAA!
…
Still, the fact that she would risk grievous bodily harm, even death, just to fix me… I— I couldn’t not be friends with her after that. Failure to save Vinyl or not, that meant, well, that meant more than just about anything else anyone could ever do for me.
The small alicorn suddenly popped up from behind her workbench with a smile, a small white crystal in her hoof. “Ah-ha! Let’s fix those memory write errors!”
I nodded and lay down on my back, remembering how she’d been working on me earlier today.
Desi trotted over and cleared her throat. “Okay, I’m going to shut you down, replace the crystal, and since we’re done, I’ll have to disconnect my system from you… We’ll lose efficient translation. I’m going to give you the warnings now, okay?”
I nodded. “Okay… What warnings?”
“Your chassis is currently held together by spit, baling wire, hopes, dreams, prayers, and the tears of an orphan,” Desi warned with dire seriousness.
I triple blinked. “Um, given how random magical reagents can be—”
“Not literally,” Desi giggled though her smile quickly faded. “Um, for most things. The interocitor core might actually be functioning only through my prayers… I also used tears for a saline solution for… Um…” She coughed awkwardly. “You will be operational at fifty eight percent capacity. It could have been more, but your little walk earlier was not a good idea. We will want to find a certified technician to properly repair your frame as soon as possible. I do not believe you will survive a single solid hit to any system without incurring a chain reaction of mechanical failures resulting in rapid onset death.”
I winced and nodded. “Understood…”
If I was remembering the map correctly, Whinnyapolis wasn't too far from here. After meeting back up with Vinyl, it looked like I’d be heading to the Sparkle Cola factory.
☢★★◯★★☢
I woke up again. This time I could feel my body. It hurt. Not bad, but I could tell I was in rough shape.
“Ow,” I groaned.
Desi made a sad sound behind me. “Pain reduction failure?”
“You tried to make it not hurt?” I asked as I sat up and winced.
Desi nodded. “Confirmed.”
“Well, it’s not too bad…” I lied as I stood up.
If I hurt his bad after repairs, I’d been about to die. The first explosion probably knocked loose some stuff in me that let me understand how damaged I was... Desi had saved my life.
I turned around and hugged the little mare. “Thank you.”
She hugged me back, then let go and looked at me hopefully. “Friends?”
I nodded. “Friends.”
Desi’s smile lit up the night. “Deleting lonly.dll… Yay!”
Daww! Wait, night?
I looked up and gasped. “How long did it take to fix me?!”
Desi whimpered in distress and consulted her book. “No reference frame for time unit conversion exists to my knowledge,” she said after her lookup.
I frowned and tried to remember everything I could from the day. “Okay, so… I want to make sure I remember things correctly. Vinyl was either vaporized or survived, right?”
Desi nodded.
“I need repairs, proper ones, asap?”
Desi nodded.
“You’re actually an adult?”
Desi frowned, twitched her wings, flipped through her book, looked me in the eyes and said, “I think so?”
I nodded in agreement. She acted like one at least. Given I knew nothing of alicorn developmental cycles, and the fact that many of Equestria’s species matured in less than 18 years, I was just going to file her away as “smol mare”.
Wait! She’d mentioned a unit of measure… Cycles of the cesium atom. That was familiar. Why?
“That’s the definition of a second, the technical one,” Dad answered.
Thanks, dad! I smiled. “Can you tell me how many of those cesium atom cycle groupings you’ve been around for?”
Desi nodded. “Confirmed. Seven hundred five million one hundred ninety-three thousand seven hundred thirty-nine point twenty-six.”
I closed my eyes to do the math. “A bit over twenty two years old… Huh,” I looked her up and down for a moment and squinted a little. “Did you eat properly growing up?”
She shrugged. “Not qualified in nutritional science.”
“So, no then… That answers that,” I said to myself.
“I am an adult?” Desi asked.
I nodded. “Yes. Which makes a thing less squick… Okay, so, how many sets did it take to repair me?”
“Ninety-six thousand seven hundred sixty-eight.”
“Okay, a bit over a day… Anyways, you have a language you’re fluent in?” I asked curiously. “I know your computer was translating it for me, but can I hear what it sounds like? Maybe I could learn it.”
Desi nodded, cleared her throat, and straight up beep-hissed at me like a term-link modem. It was crude, it was off key, but it was definitely an organic’s best imitation of a modulator-demodulator transmitting binary audibly.
“Wut?” I asked of reality itself.
Desi blushed shyly and began referencing her book.
“Is that really what you were speaking in?” I asked, realizing my face had scrunched up into a ball of confused robo-tissue.
Desi nodded and kept reading. “I am fluent in Datapoint’s Advanced System’s Language, as my caretakers lack a vocabulator unit, but can utilize modems for audible organic understandable data transmissions.”
Understandable my plot! I couldn’t work out what the buck a modem was actually transmitting!
I blinked several times and shook myself. “You were hissing binary bytes at me… successfully… as an organic lifeform?”
Desi’s blush deepened. She kicked the gravel with a forehoof. “Confirmed.”
I held up a hoof. “And your computer, actually understood you, and translated those bytes to my own internal language, as actual audio input, successfully?!”
“Math is best language…” Desi said with a shy flick of her tail.
“No, bucking, wonder you find speaking Equestrian difficult!” I said, shaking my head slowly.
My eyes shot open. “WAIT!” I snapped. “How the buck did you even understand that you were being communicated with in the first place?”
Desi coughed awkwardly. “Systems beeped. I beeped back. Beep-patterns meant things. Shown through iteration. Logical deduction. Learned what very slow beeps meant. Learned to beep back. Smart computers can understand even though accent is very thick. Accelerated communication over time. Can speak at three kilobits per second, can understand up to fifty six kilobits per second. Cannot utilize full-duplex transmission mode, only half.”
I pursed my lips and just stared at her for several long seconds. “Desi… You have to have the single most weird, crazy, math-loving brain ever to exist.”
She smiled and puffed out her chest proudly.
I smirked and started to shake my head before giving the cute little thing a hug when a voice came from my collar.
“Gears? Please pick up this time,” Rainbow’s voice said quietly.
It took me a second to remember that I’d had two of those pins. One for Loom and one for Rainbow. I wasn’t sure why I thought I’d only had the one and threw it away. Then again, I had lost a memory processing component…
I cleared my throat and guestured to Desi to wait before leaning down to the pin. “I’m here now. I was heavily damaged. Sorry.”
Rainbow groaned. “Yeah, that makes sense. Your location signal was right on top of the Oak Valley Naval Academy. I thought I’d lost you.”
My ears fell sadly. “We— We lost a lot of good people. And a lot of bad people. How did they pull that off?” I growled in anger as my mind turned to the possibilities. “Did they find some old spellbook form the pre-Celestia times when wizards collaborated to cast spells to destroy whole armies at once?!”
“N— No,” Rainbow stammered. “This… It… I—”
She fell silent. I waited for her to continue.
“L— Look, the locator signal in your pin is dead. I need your help, we’ll need to meet in person. Where are you?” She asked after a minute.
“Desi and I are a little ways south of the naval base,” I replied quietly.
I wasn't quite ready to remember the battle and explosion again… Thanks for the flashbacks, Rainbow.
“Okay. I’m about fifteen minutes from Oak Valley. I was going to look for you. There’s an MoA safehouse in the city that’s still intact. 89 Lilly Lane, floor three, apartment six. I’ll meet you there,” Rainbow said firmly.
I frowned. I really needed to look for Vinyl… “Uh… I probably can’t help anypony. I need major repairs. I can walk and do simple things but—”
“We’ll stop at the Sparkle Cola Factory. I’ve seen their robots. We’ll make them give you any parts you need if they won't sell them. I have plenty of caps and scrap. Please, this is critical for everypony’s safety!”
I narrowed my eyes. “How so?”
“Unless a machine spirit helps me get into a sealed facility in Whinnyapolis, the Enclave will be able to launch as many meteors at Equestrian cities as they want,” Rainbow said so firmly it was impossible to disbelieve her.
“O—oh…” I stammered.
“So yeah… We need to meet up. Rainbow ou— Oh! Hey, is that you down there?” Rainbow asked curiously.
I looked upwards and squinted. “Possibly? I can’t see anything.”
“I’ll make a low pass, tell me if you see anything.”
A second later something went whooshing past me at what felt like the speed of light. I had no idea what it was, just a rush of wind, a streak of blurry rainbow-tail, and then a—
BOOOM!
“OW! Those were my ears, you jerk!” I yelped as I tried to shake off the sonic boom which had gone off just a few meters above me.
Desi gasped and looked off in the direction Rainbow had flown. Her eyes practically sparkling in wonder and delight. “Fastestest pony!”
That wasn’t a word. But it also wasn't wrong. No need to correct her.
“Sorry! Ponies like to shoot down slower-flying things. Coming back to land,” Rainbow said through my pin. “Over and out.”
I watched Rainbow loop around, banking left as she slowed down mid turn to arc back around. I half expected her to essentially teleport to my side, given how fast she seemed to be able to fly, but instead she slowly made her way towards us, reducing her speed the entire way.
As Rainbow approached, Desi took out her translation book and began frantically flipping through the pages, searching for something to say.
Rainbow arrived at our mini-camp in just a few seconds, stretched her wings wide, twisted and let herself drop from the air, landing a meter or so below her previous altitude and walking to bleed off the rest of her speed.
She frowned and gave Desi a suspicious look before turning her attention to me. “Who's the fil—”
Desi zipped over to Rainbow, grabbed her by the collar bone, looked her dead in the eyes and demanded, “HOW BREAK SOUND BARRIER? TEACH ME IMMEDIATELY!”
My eyes widened in terror. Rainbow was going to grab Desi in a choke hold and throw her over her shoulder using some kind of trained in spy covert ops badflankery!
Rainbow smiled and gently pushed Desi off her with her wings. “So, other than an awesome filly, who are you?”
“Her name’s Desi, and she’s not actually a filly. She’s just smol,” I corrected. “She also isn’t good at speaking Equish yet…”
“One teach go fast, please!” Dessi begged, her eyes looking over Rainbow half analytically, half... lustfully?
Fair enough, I guess. If I could fly, I'd want Rainbow’s powers of awesome too.
“That’s not why she’s making that face, kiddo…”
SHUSH! NOT THINKING ABOUT THAT! SHE STILL LOOKS YOUNG!
Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “She’s not a kid?”
I shook my head. “No. She’s twenty two. Didn’t eat right when she was little.”
Rainbow winced. “That’s rough and distressingly common these days… You trust her?”
I nodded and gestured to myself. “She spent a lot of time fixing me… and blew herself up over forty times trying.”
“Five times,” Desi corrected. “Other injuries were not explosion related.”
Rainbow nodded and sat down, giving her wings a little stretch. “Okay… If we live through this, I’ll try to teach you how to fly better, Desi. Fair warning, we probably won't,” Rainbow paused for a moment to look around then shivered. “Feels wrong talking about this in an unsecured location.”
“We could find one?” I proposed curiously.
Rainbow shook her head. “No point. The Enclave will announce their possession of the weapon any minute now. Everypony will know it exists,” she groaned, flopping onto her back, spread eagle on the gravel. “I spent centuiries trying to keep that stupid thing buried…”
“So… What exactly do they have?” I asked as I took a seat near Rainbow. “I know that you were planning something called Operation Star Drop, and a Star Drop HQ is important to this place. Is there something in the HQ that can deorbit rocks you teleported into space?”
Rainbow snorted. “No. It’s way more awesome than that! Also worse… So…” She sat up and sighed, keeping her eyes closed. “I want to start from the beginning. I’ve learned over the years that true comprehension of serious threats is key to surviving them. The beginning is pretty far back. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” I said with a small nod.
Desi trotted over to Rainbow’s side and sat down near her, her tail swishing excitedly. “Story include flight-speed information?”
Rainbow laughed. “Not that far back!” she said with a little smile. “Thanks, I needed that. So… I told you that I've spent the last two centuries going all over the world trying to help people out. It’s… It’s because I put the world in a lot of danger.”
I nodded. “Sure, you made a superweapon, but we did too… And so did every other ministry mare, if I remember correctly.”
Rainbow shook her head. “Star Drop Station is not a super weapon. It’s a doomsday weapon.”
My tail stood up in alarm. “OH! Uh… S— So how big of a meteor can it pull down?”
Rainbow shrugged. “No idea. Turns out once you get beyond the magnetosphere it shields you from the world’s leylines, just like how from here it shield us from cosmic energies. The leylines create a lot of arcane noise. Without the leylines, you have access to less magical power, but, well, you need tiny fractions of power to do what you want to do because here on Equis your spell needs to fight through all the energy-noise the leylines make to have any effect. So, well, yeah… Space based weapons are orders of magnitude more powerful than we calculated. Like… Three or four orders of magnitude.”
I blinked. “Um, what?”
Desi nodded in simple agreement. “Correct.”
Rainbow and I stared at her for several seconds. Rainbow pursed her lips and looked sidelong at me.
“She’s a math and science expert,” I elaborated. “She apparently learned her spells by reading a physics textbook.”
Desi nodded, rummaged through her pockets, and produced the battered old textbook. “Correct.”
Rainbow’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. “OH! Hi, I’m Rainbow Dash, damn glad to meetcha!” She said as she held out a hoof for Desi to shake.
Desi shook it and scootched closer to Rainbow. Rainbow didn’t seem to notice.
“I’m going to start at the beginning now,” Rainbow said firmly but politely. “When the MoA was formed, we didn’t just make a brand new agency. Almost all other clandestine agencies Equestria had were folded into the new legislative branch. I suddenly became the head of over a dozen different organizations. I spent the first few years of the war just learning what was true about Equestria, and what was not.”
Rainbow shivered. “You would not believe just how many coverups happened… Example: There was an entire agency tasked with finding, recovering, and containing arcane relics from all of the thousands of powerful mages Celestia defeated over the millennia, and all the contents of ancient temples to lost gods, remnants of collapsed empires... We’re talking warehouses full of things like a mask which if you put it on, you die and a magical intelligence in the mask takes over your body, indestructible but thankfully physically feeble golems with a penchant for snapping your neck, the scripts for a play which if preformed makes anyone who watches the play commit suicide via woven in mindcontrol… There was.. A lot. A lot a lot.”
I shivered and looked at Rainbow worriedly. Rainbow smiled. “It’s fine. We spent most of the war disposing of them. The last warehouse was incinerated by balefire. I haven’t so much as heard of any of the relics being mentioned as an urban legend for a hundred years now… Well, aside from the—”
My ears and tail raised in pure terror at the thought of some ancient mage’s terror weapon suddenly grabbing me from behind!
“— lunch box that converts equine waste into whatever food it was to begin with.” Rainbow finished.
I blinked. “Uh, why was that—”
“Oh well, the food is poisoned too,” Rainbow added sheepishly. “Point is, balefire’s actually done the world some good! Anyways, as I was taking charge of all of these clandestine operations, I was pretty out of touch with the actual war effort… I think that’s what started to drive a wedge between my friends and I. It seemed like I didn’t care. I did care. A lot. It’s just I had an ethics committee to give the mother of all lectures and restructurings and a lot of shit to do all of the time!”
Rainbow’s wings twitched violently. Desi scooted closer to her and gave her a comforting hug.
“Thanks,” Rainbow acknowledged. “Six years into the war I was finally able to start focusing on more than basic intelligence gathering and could give the war effort my full attention. Our agents learned that one of the Zebra’s major motivations for the war was religious in nature, so I ordered our spies to find out exactly what. Celestia was still somewhat involved in world politics at the time, and I thought she could negotiate a ceasefire if we could stop doing whatever religious thing got them all angry at us.”
She shook her head violently, making me wince. “NOPE!” Rainbow snapped. “We found out, all right. The Ministry of Image used us to transport any zebras they relocated. We used this to find out things from Imperial refugees. One of them was carrying a book with him, and happened to have been a rather prominent Shamen. His name was Mjomba—”
I gasped, my ears standing up in shock. “What?! That’s my mom’s mentor!”
Rainbow blinked. “Huh?”
“Seriously! She talked about him all the time! She was his apprentice for a few years, she used her mediocre knowledge of Shamanism as one of the major sources of inspiration for invention.”
“Small world,” Rainbow mused, stroking her chin. “Uh, anyways, turns out he’d come to Equestria to tell us exactly what we wanted to know. The religious reason for the war. Problem was nopony was letting a Zebra or something mailed by a Zebra ANYWHERE near the palace. If we hadn’t found him… Well, we wouldn't be in this situation, but we also may have lost the war outright instead of forced a draw.”
Rainbow squirmed slightly and looked over to Desi. “Hey, can you let go?”
Desi looked up at Rainbow with the single most heartfelt pleading look I’d ever seen in my life. “Please?”
Rainbow sighed. “It’s because I’m squishy, isn't it?”
“Comphy is maximal,” Desi siad with a happy nod.
“... Okay. But stop squeezing so hard,” Rainbow muttered in defeat.
I giggled. Rainbow shot me a look. “Nopony could say no to those eyes, and you know it!”
I nodded in agreement.
“Anyways,” Rainbow sighed. “Mjomba had spent two years trying to get a copy of a book he had made to the Princesses. It was called “Excerpts from The Book of Alhazred”. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was a non-enchanted copy of The Black Book, you know, the one Pip thinks she destroyed in Maripony but given it was a soul jar for a necromancer is definitely just buried under the rubble…”
My ears drooped back. I hadn’t thought of things that way… Please be wrong about that. Please be exploded!
“Uh, I digress,” Rainbow murmured, squirming slightly to get a wing out of Desi’s hug, then drape it over her. “This copy was annotated by our zebra friend as a means of explaining the totality of the cult which had managed to worm its way into power within the Empire in the last decade or so. See, Zebrica’s majority religion used to be “The Way of the World”, their ancient traditions of Shamanism and nature worship, BUT, just before the war started the newly crowned Emperor happened to be a member of an older religion, “Those Who Fear The Stars”. With a member of their cult on the throne, they started to grow in popularity… and that’s sort of what caused the war.”
I nodded. “Right, because of Princess Luna.”
“Specifically, her having been to the moon,” Rainbow sighed and spared a moment to look up. “Anything that goes to space is evil in that religion’s eyes, instead of totally bucking awesome like it actually is. Can’t blame them too much. The whole faith came about when a Zebrican settlement was destroyed by meteorites a few thousand years ago.”
Desi coughed and squirmed under Rainbow’s wing.
Rainbow lifted her wing to look at her. “Are you okay?”
“Inhaled feather,” Desi murmured.
Rainbow smirked. “Heh! Sillyfilly. Um, where was I?”
“You were poorly explaining the Starfall,” I said with a smile.
Rainbow facehooved. “Duh, you’re a Zebra!”
I nodded. “Mhm! Well, Zebrican. I was alive back then, you know…” I frowned as some faint memories trickled through my mind like little rivulets of water. “I was a windmill in a village on the outskirts… I— I remember it. A little… Bright gold lines of fire, falling to the earth.”
That must be how I recognized the weapon used yesterday as a meteorite. Thanks, past me!
“So. Yeah. As soon as Luna had taken the throne, the Zeebs went into full panic the-end-is-neigh mode and our messy trade war became a jihad from their side and a war of survival from ours,” Rainbow said bitterly. “There was no way to stop it… Not really. I thought there might have been. I tried to explain to Luna that the Empire saw her as a literal daemon and were fighting to kill her and save the world. She… She didn’t understand that their beliefs were very, very zealous and they couldn’t be made to see the truth of her existence. She refused to step down or appoint someone else as the Ruler of Equestria to try and deescalate. In her mind, the Empire was just another petty kingdom like the ones she’d crushed with her sister thousands of years ago.”
Rainbow moaned into her hoof. “That mare’s tactics and strategies were so Classical Era it was painful!”
Desi gave her a supportive squeeze.
“Thanks,” Rainbow said quietly. “Luna made it clear she wouldn’t end the war by stepping down. My friends… After Shattered Hoof, everypony was too bitter for us to retain our link to the Elements. We weren't going to Deus Ex Arcana our way out of the war, and they knew it. I tried to organize a coup, but it never got off the ground. They were so focused on their own projects and attempts to end the war they didn’t even notice what I was trying to get them to do.”
Rainbow sat quietly for a moment. I shuffled my hooves in the awkward silence, making the gravel shush beneath them.
“Sometimes I wonder if they were mentaly altered by zebra spies, somehow,” Rainbow said quietly. “It seems unlikely. If they could and did, why not kill us instead? But the timing behind the Elements being severed from us and their personality changes was always… suspicious.”
Rainbow cleared her throat, sat up, adjusted Desi with her wing, and continued. “I realized the MoA would have to end the war ourselves, and that if their religion had escalated the war, it could also end it.”
“Oh,” I said as it all fell into place. “So you made a weapon that would let you strike zebra cities with meteorites.”
Rainbow nodded. A thing she definitely did a lot of… “Yep. It took a long time, too. Decades. Zebra spies were everywhere. Like, everywhere! I’m certain that half of the Zebras alive in Equestria today are related to a spy who survived the balefire. We needed to make the weapon in total secrecy. Nopony could possibly know about it, or we would have provoked a massive preemptive counter strike… But, well, we were twenty years into the war by then and it was pretty clear we were evenly matched.
“The war had a lot of cold periods and hot spots, but it never fully stopped. We had opportunities. Moments when we could do small things, if we had cover projects. I set up clandestine funding sources like Galaxy Quest to get the finances in order. I publicly made it seem like we didn’t do anything so the Zebras would think the MoA had it’s hooves full with espionage, and our one big public facing work, the Single Pony Project.”
Rainbow smiled and looked up at the sky for a few moments. “Heh… We spent every spare bit in the budget for our Ministry on that thing. It cost about a quarter of what Operation Star Drop cost. That should give you an idea of how much of Equestria’s civilian economy we were able to sling around. I still regret not having a solid gold diamond encrusted toilet made for Rarity as a joke.”
I blinked as I processed what she just told me. “Wait, so, the SPP was just a cover?”
Rainbow shook her head immediately. “No! It was completely necessary to the war effort. We were getting annihilated in the air overseas. Too few recruits. We needed more pegasi free. It was a legitimate project, it just happened to also be a great distraction, too. The spies in the MoA reported on and delayed it. We were able to build the Rainbow Relay in almost total secrecy. The few spies who got word of the relay mistook it for a portal from the Crystal Empire to Manehattan. They thought we just used it to ship materials for the SPP… We let them think that ‘til the end.”
“Clever,” I remarked.
Dash smiled. “Thanks. In truth, the Relay is a mass-teleportation system which—”
“Can move things anywhere on this hemisphere. I remember.”
“Actually, it allowed us to perform orbital construction of a weapons platform,” Rainbow said bitterly.
I blinked. “W— What?”
“We designed an orbital weapons platform. An actual space station. It’s orbiting in the Lagrange point retrograde of the moon,” Rainbow said firmly. “The weapon forms the station’s spine, everything else up there is to support the weapon, house troops, and serve as the mother of all preservation shelters.”
I stared at Rainbow in a mix of terror and wonder. “S— So… It’s not just pulling rocks out of orbit…”
“Oh, it is,” Rainbow said darkly. “It searches the asteroid belt for a suitable “round”, teleports it to the station’s accelerator, then telekinetically fires it at your target. Even opens a portal to bypass most of the atmosphere for a maximum velocity strike. We were going to beam a strike team into the Imperial Palace, kidnap the crown prince, vaporize the city from orbit, with him watching, then demand he surrender. Everything was ready to go five days before the Last Day. There was a Ministry meeting that afternoon. I called it to tell everypony I had a way to end the war that day. Luna… Luna didn’t want to sacrifice an enemy city to end the war. She insisted we give Twilight’s IMP infused army plan a chance first, since she was ready for pony testing… There was also some legitimate worry we might cause an ice age via atmospheric debris.”
“Why near the moon?” I asked after a long moment.
“It had to be out of the Zebra’s divination range. If it was on Equestria, or in low orbit, our spies told us the Zebras would sense us firing the weapon,” She sighed. “We put it in the closest stable orbit we could… And after learning that it could easily fire a rock big enough to cause an extinction event thanks to the little bit of arcane physics we learned building the damn thing, I made sure that the station could support a genetically stable population of ponies… It’s got living space, agricultural supplies, even a seed vault. It’s a little slice of pre-war Equestria hanging out in space, with a doomsday weapon for a spine.”
My eyes widened in horror as the significance of that dawned on me. “You’re telling me that the Enclave have access to a weapon that could not only end all life on the planet, but also sustain them forever?!”
Rainbow shook her head. “No.”
I sighed in relief and slumped down. “Oh, thank Celestia!”
“I’m telling you that the Enclave have access to a space station that can sustain them forever, and access to a weapon capable of causing a large enough impact to overcome the gravitational binding energy of this planet and create a second moon with the debris.”
I sputtered. “I— But— W— WHY?!”
“It was only supposed to be able to fire city killers at the most,” Rainbow muttered, tears starting to form in her eyes. “We didn’t know it would be much more powerful in space. We didn’t know until we test fired it at the ocean. Thank Faust we only set it to minimal yield. I had wanted to test it on maximum…”
Everyone sat quietly for a long while, letting the gravity of the situation sink in. Then Rainbow shifted, trying to move away from Desi, who still refused to let go.
“I thought everypony with the access codes was dead… I don’t know how the Enclave got them but somehow Windsheer knew them. I was certain I’d killed everypony who knew them aside from me… and I tried to kill myself, too. A lot. Didn’t work out,” Rainbow murmured. “So I destroyed the Relay’s generator and transport controls. I— I should have destroyed the entire facility, transported myself to Star Drop Station and destroyed it, but, I— I thought that maybe after the radiation cleared up the seed vault could do ponies some good. If I destroyed the weapon… It’s the spine. Whole station would have broken apart.”
“S— So what do we do?” I asked with a nervous gulp. “I— It seemed like you have a plan?”
“I do,” Rainbow said quietly. “The Enclave allied with the old guard Steel Rangers, the Steel Rangers made the Tainted to fill out their ranks, and took over Star Drop HQ. That’s where we would have transported soldiers to the station from via the station’s systems. It has… It has a control uplink. I blew up the transmitter there… Somepony fixed it. Then your mom fixed the Rainbow Relay… Both of which are too fortified for us to get to.”
My ears lay back angrily. Dammit, mom and Hommage! You doomed us all! Accidentally tho...
“Okay, so… what do we do?” I asked with a worried flick of my tail.
Desi squirmed a little. “Have idea.”
Rainbow smiled at her. “I do. It’s okay,” Rainbow took a deep breath and looked me in the eyes. “The MoA hub in Whinnyapolis also has a control uplink. I sabotaged a prototype shield system there… I was going to use that uplink to use the station's teleportation system to beam arable soil and seeds from it once things were okay down here, since I knew I could easily disable Star Drop HQ. I came back to Equestria to do just that fourteen years ago, and discovered that nothing organic can enter the affected area without disintegrating. Including me. The field will turn me to ash, squeeze the ash out, then I reform. It’s… it’s the fifth most painful thing I know of.”
Memories of Rainbow’s screams as she regenerated popped into my head like a grenade.
I jumped up and joined Desi in hugging Rainbow. “I forgot how you regenerate…” I whispered sympathetically.
“I deserve the pain,” Rainbow said firmly. “I couldn’t… I need a machine spirit to go in and shut the shield off so I can tell the station to self destruct. I can’t program a robot to do it. The procedure is too complciated, and our robots are too stupid. It has to be somepony like you, and I don’t know any other friendly machine spirits in Equestria.”
Vinyl… If she was alive, I had to find—
No, forget that. This was bigger than her. This was bigger than us. We could meet up later. I could use the whole radio network to find her if I had to, and she wanted to go to Whinnyapolis anyways.
Right now there were a bunch of psychopaths in possession of a weapon that could literally destroy the planet with zero consequences to them. Even worse, they might not know it was that powerful.
The setting labeled “city killer” was actually a planet killer, and they might not know...
“We have a small window of time,” Rainbow said as she wiped her eyes dry. “They were able to fire on the naval base because there were Zebrican troops present. Without something like that, the station's computer won’t let them fire on an Equestrian city without a week of warning issued to that city. We have six days to blow it up before they can wipe out the city of their choice… Assuming they want to fire as soon as possible. I don't intend to give them the chance.”
I stood up. “There’s no time to waste then… I’ll need repairs, but I’ll do it.”
Rainbow looked me in the eyes. “Thank you.”
“No, really,” I said and gestured for her to stand up. “There is literally no time to waste. I can’t fly like you. We have to walk there. It will take half of what time we have if nothing bad happens along the way, and I’ll need repairs before I go into the facility.”
“Oh shit!” Rainbow yelped jumping up to her hooves and pulling Desi along for the ride.
“Maximum go?” Desi asked us sincerely.
I nodded. “Yes. Rainbow, lead the way.”
Rainbow gently moved Desi up onto her back. “Your legs are a bit shorter than mine, I’ll carry you,” she said as she immediately began to jog northeast.
I was right behind her.