Hours had passed, but Shinespark and Dior were nearing the top of the Stone District. Shinespark knew if she looked back, she would be greeted by a sprawling forest far below, intermingled with settlements and plantations and the distant smokestacks of Sosa, many of which had gone silent. But she kept her gaze steadfast and forward, to the point where the ponies in the streets started giving her concerned looks. None of them recognized her. None of them saw her as anything more than a young mare with a mission.
"The map said there was a tunnel this way that led to the Water District," Shinespark puffed, her legs and lungs burning. "It should be right..." She stopped, pointing to where the road dead-ended one more zigzag up. "There."
Dior stumbled up beside her, rasping for breath. "What are you attempting, an uphill marathon? This is a mountain, for Sosa's sake!"
"A mountain with our enemies on top of it." Shinespark stared up the mountain wall, where the winds buffeted the cliff face and made it unpassable and up to the snow drifts above those. "Our comfort is the last thing I care about. Let's go."
"You do realize," Dior gasped, stumbling after her, "that it's going to be guarded, and we'll be significantly more able to smooth talk our way through if we aren't this short on-"
"Who said anything about it being guarded?" Shinespark rounded the last corner, pointing at the empty entryway. "If you're short on breath... save it!" She was panting too.
Dior warily followed as Shinespark reached the entrance without incident and stepped inside. "What kind of organization would leave their front door open while actively generating bad feelings among the populace?"
"Well, the Stone District can afford not to care," Shinespark grumbled. "They're the ones who benefit from all this. It's all friendly territory for them..."
"Funny you should assume it's friendly territory."
Shinespark jumped and spun around, her spine raising. "Who was that!?"
A hoof poked her barrel from below. Shinespark jumped again, looked down... and there was a face in the floor grinning naughtily up at her. "BOO!"
"Aieeeeyaaagh!" Shinespark flew backwards in surprise, hitting the wall and collapsing against the ground. "What the-!?"
"Nyaaah ha ha ha ha!" A pony fell out of the floor, rolling over and pounding the ground in a fit of laughter. "Gotcha! You scream like a filly!"
Dior stared with the widest possible eyes. "What in the entire city...?"
The newcomer was also a filly, maybe a pinch shorter than Shinespark, though it was hard to tell when she refused to get up and stop cackling. Shinespark quickly narrowed her eyes and remedied that with a burst of her horn, and soon the filly was captive in her aura, emerald mane and tail dangling. She giggled and shrugged, showing off wings that didn't look like any pegasus's either of the two had ever seen. "Got you!"
"What even are you?" Shinespark turned her over in her aura, noting differences on her head and face as well. "And why are you in my way?"
The filly blew a raspberry. "Wouldn't you like to know. The name's Valey, and I'm here because this is my tunnel."
"Valey, hmm? And your tunnel?" Dior took a step forward, eyes narrow. "Whatever do you mean?"
Valey carelessly shrugged. "It's like this, right? I wanna meet someone important. So I'm looking around, and find a guy guarding this tunnel, and what does that mean? There's something important here. So I made him go away, and now it's my tunnel, because if there's something important, then someone important is gonna come check on it." She folded her forelegs in midair and raised an eyebrow. "So who are you? Looks like average-class kids to me."
"Your planning and perception are remarkable," Shinespark deadpanned, holding Valey in her aura. "You aren't from around here, are you?"
"It's that easy to tell, huh?" Valey frowned. "Well, let me tell you two things. First, fruit is delicious. And second, I'm hungry. Hint hint?"
Dior blinked at her. "Whatever does that have to do with anything at all, you hooligan?"
"'Cuz it's my cave." Valey gave him a suspicious look. "And you look like you wanna go through here, which is making me think I should make it a toll road. Do you have any fruit?"
Shinespark glanced at her saddlebags. "No. We have water bottles, but they're for us and not for you. And you're currently stuck, so there's nothing you can do to stop us."
Valey gave her a noncomprehending stare, still trapped in the telekinesis.
"Come on," Shinespark sighed, trotting off down the tunnel. "Let's leave her to her business."
Dior followed, and soon Shinespark got far enough away that she was forced to let her horn go out. "Whew," she sighed. "Now we need to-"
Less than a second passed before she was flying through the air back toward the entrance. Valey flew along with her in an acrobatic suplex, knocking Shinespark onto her back on the stone. Valey landed atop her, hooves on her cheeks and tail wagging. "Who's currently stuck now, huh?"
Shinespark's pupils shrank.
"Toll road. Come on, pay up." Valey beckoned with a hoof, then frowned. "You've really got nothing, have you?"
"Get off," Shinespark threatened. "I'm here for critical business and you're treating this like a game! Get out of my way!"
Valey whistled. "Oh, so now you're important. Yeah, look, I'll cut you a deal. Free passage for the low, low price of..."
She contemplated for a second longer, then leaned in and gave Shinespark a kiss.
This time, it was Valey who was flung away, Shinespark's telekinesis pinning her against the ceiling. "I'm twelve!" Shinespark yelled up at her, furiously red. "That's gross!"
"And I'm less than one." Valey winked. "Sounds like an excuse to me. But hey, if you're madder about that than that we're both fillies..."
Shinespark gave her a dangerous look.
Valey bit her lip. "...Parents don't want you dating yet?"
Dior watched the exchange with an odd expression. "Shinespark..."
"F-Forget this." Shinespark stomped back down the tunnel. "I don't need distractions. Come on, Dior. We're going up."
"Have fun!" Valey waved, still pinned to the ceiling. "I'll call that my toll. And hey, if you see any bananas, think of me! They're the best!"
Shinespark didn't respond, fast on her way to the Sky District.
Shinespark and Dior felt the chill of the mountains before they saw it.
"Brrbrr..." Shinespark blew on her forehooves as she walked, the blue stone caverns of the Water District arching around her. "Shouldn't have used metal horseshoes..."
Dior followed stoically behind. The annoyance of her meeting with Valey was like paper on a fire, burning quick and hot next to the logs of her memories of Sosa. For speech after speech, Arambai had defended his workers, taking over responsibility for the other two factories three years earlier by popular demand and working his hardest to keep them afloat. The airy, entitled voice of the stallion he had been meeting with pricked like a thorn in her ribcage, and Shinespark walked quickly, the chill in the air only adding more of an impetus for her to reach her destination.
Eventually, her map led them true, and a door swung open to a concrete platform that had been recently cleared of a snowdrift. The sky was cloudless and the sun blinding, more so when the ground was pure white and reflective, save for a crisscross of cleared, cut roads where stallions trudged and materials were hauled between an upcoming spire and a forest of raised platforms.
"The skyport," Dior remarked, pointing southwest. "It looks more like they're making three of them..."
The terminals rose like stands of metal mushrooms, a great disk on a central spire surrounded by taller, smaller ones for each of the main hubs. Above one, a central sealing dome of glass was finished, while a second had a lattice of steel beams halfway installed that would someday support another.
"And Skyfreeze," Shinespark growled, pointing to the golden tower ahead that ended jagged and incomplete. At the surface, its plating was immaculate, gold mixed with glass, and the covering fell away as her eyes traveled upwards, its internal supports growing more and more exposed until they reached the top. "I'm sure that's their command center."
She and Dior waded through the snow, making slow progress to the ground-level entrance. The area immediately outside it was cleared, but they wound through the drifts to avoid stallions carrying materials, and by the time they reached the entrance Shinespark felt her hooves were too numb to even knock. She lit her horn instead.
The door cracked open with a rumble, parting before she could get her aura around it, and a yak stepped out, flanked by suited ponies. They pretended not to notice Shinespark and Dior, and the children were roughly kicked to the side.
"Yes, Ambassador, as I was saying," one of the ponies drawled.
"Hey!" Shinespark yelled, rising to her hooves. "Who do you think you are!?"
The yak turned slowly to face her and frowned. "Why are there foals on a construction site?"
"We have a schedule, Ambassador Herman," the other pony breathed, tapping his shoulder. "Many progress scenarios to check up on..."
"We are here," Shinespark announced, cutting him off, "because this project has been trampling our economy and ruining the Sosans' prides, and I want to see for myself what face is attached to all of it."
"Speaking," Herman replied, looking at her with an impatient expression.
Shinespark stared at him. "Get out of our land."
Herman brushed a hoof, covering her completely with a drift of snow. "Children are their parents' responsibilities, not mine. Moving on."
Without a backward glance, the trio let the doors to Skyfreeze slam shut, and they sauntered slowly away.