"So, final checklist of anything that could remotely be messing with their harmony machines." Valey stared at a sheet of paper with Amber, the latter holding a quill at the ready. "Windigo hearts? Definitely. Moon glass? Probably. Starlight's sword? Probably. That bit of metal? Probably. My cutie mark? Well, it was doing weird stuff to their machines earlier. Starlight's cutie mark? It's an artifice too, so why not? Starlight herself? Bananas, who knows how she works? Maple's cutie mark, since it currently holds another Starlight? Why not? While we're at it, let's throw on Sparky and Meltdown's cutie marks too, since Sparky's is unusually harmonic and Meltdown's was literally made by a goddess, and hey, you wanna add yours to the pile just so we can blame every last one of us? Uhh, then for all I know my pendant could also be a thing, and who knows if the scrap left over from Braen or Meltdown's armor does anything? Our ship is obviously a thing, it's got an entire harmony extractor and engine. And let's not forget how most of us have been in a crystal palace, and that could leave traces or something. You think I got it all?"
Both of Amber's brows were already as far up as they could go. "You know," she said casually, "I have a funny feeling trying to isolate all this out is going to be a lost cause."
"And Gazelle!" Valey clicked her teeth victoriously. "He was doing weird stuff, add him!"
Amber sighed and got back to writing.
"Actually, if we're suspicious of sphinxes, Felicity's got one of her own," Valey continued. "So maybe she's suspect too. You know, I wonder if batponies in general are-"
"Valey." Amber grinned, rolled her eyes and slapped a hoof on Valey's shoulder. "It's a lost cause for the scientists. They'll have to make do without their instruments."
"Nyaah, whatever. Maybe they will." Valey slumped backwards, ignoring the paper. "...So, what do you wanna do now?"
Amber shrugged. "I didn't have plans. I just stayed to help you with this."
"Classic." Valey rolled her shoulders. "So, uh, how's things going with you and Felicity?"
"After our talk the other day?" Amber blinked. "Well, they're... good. We hung out and got into trouble... the kind of trouble you're really mad about at first but laugh at the next day, you know? I think the two of us can really get along."
Valey waggled her eyebrows. "Have you kissed yet?"
Amber blushed. "What kind of question is that?"
"An honest one." Valey grinned smugly. "Were they bat smooches? Good ones?"
Amber swatted at her. "No I haven't, for your information. What happened to you being shy about this stuff?"
"I got better." Valey shrugged, but calmed down. "So you haven't, then? Huh. I'm kinda surprised. She's pretty needy, and you're, like..."
"A floozy?" Amber cut in.
"Uhh... yeah?" Valey winced. "I mean, you're the one who always has some story or other about a random mare from Riverfall."
"Well, this isn't Riverfall." Amber gave a shrug of her own. "Back home, 'Wanna go out with me?' is equivalent to saying, 'Hey, I want to get to know you.' For me, at least. It was part of how I socialized and made friends. Here, we're traveling buddies. We're going to know each other and live together for a while, whether we like each other or not. It's a long-term arrangement, so you have to do things differently."
"Huh." Valey sat back down.
Amber settled in as well and folded her forelegs. "Since you're bringing it up, though, how's things on your love life's end?"
"Eh." Valey stared off into space. "I know I've been putting on a show for the students, but it's honestly not my biggest priority. I almost don't actually want one."
"Really?" Amber leaned forward, playing with the list she had been writing. "Wouldn't have figured that, looking at you now."
"Yeah, well..." Valey licked her lips. "Face it: I'm an immature hooligan. Any relationship I somehow get in, I'm gonna treat just as seriously as the hundreds of students out there with relationships I'm not in. I need to grow up, settle down and take things more seriously first. And while I know I can do that, 'cause I did it in the Empire, it was really lame and I did it because of fear, and not because I wanted to. And right now, I still don't want to."
Amber gave her a look. "If you're aware of all that, you're a lot more grown up than you think."
"Nahhh." Valey waved a hoof. "Knowing some good advice and giving it the time of day are two completely different things. I told you, I did try it, back in the Empire. And I will be sweet and loyal and responsible when and only when I decide I want to."
"Huh." Amber shrugged.
"And, I mean, there's other issues too," Valey continued. "Sparky's in no shape for flirting right now. She's like a mummy of emotional bandages. And Felicity really likes me, but she's kinda desperate and there's absolutely no way we'd be equals, and I'm down if she wants to hang out but don't really... like her back, you know? And then obviously all the students here have no life experience and are out of the question, and then you're, like... I dunno how to put it, but I enjoy what we have going on already?"
Amber nodded. "Me too."
"Really, though, the biggest thing is still that I'm like seven or eight." Valey's shoulders briefly slumped. "I mean, obviously not biologically, and I definitely didn't spend years learning to walk and talk, but still. I don't think I fit any remotely common scale of age."
"Is the reason all this is on your mind because you're getting tired of flirting with the students?" Amber asked, folding her hooves.
Valey shrugged. "Well, uh... not really. I'm just probably going on a two-week boat trip with no one but Starlight and Ironflanks real soon, and figured I should say anything that needed to be said."
"Right. I doubt either of them would be the best conversation partner for this, would they?" Amber grinned and turned in a circle. "So, you're committed to this crystal palace trip, then?"
"I mean, unless something stops us, yeah." Valey leaned back. "I went ahead and told the scientists they better start getting ready. Ironflanks and Starlight have given me one last all-clear. I think Ironflanks is looking forward to getting her cutie mark back. Still gonna have to say see ya to all our other friends, but I think Birdo and Harshwater and Grenada are enjoying themselves enough that they won't be too sad to see us gone."
"Shinespark's got her armor project she'll be busy with," Amber said. "And I heard some students are actually getting the Immortal Dream fixed up?"
Valey nodded. "Yeah, I went to take a peek. It's pretty snazzy. They've got a lot of work ahead of them, but those kids sure know how to organize themselves and properly plan out a big job. I could practically smell the competence."
Amber giggled. "Well, I'll see if I can't supervise a little while you're away. Boat talent, remember?" She patted her flank. "Good for building and maintaining sea and airships of all kinds."
"Yeah, you got this."
Amber snorted. "You're the one who needs encouragement, having to ride in a tiny submarine like that. I'll go start putting together a care package for you. You'll need it."
"This is my latest revision," Shinespark said, holding out a large blueprint that had been enchanted to resist the steam and shower spray. "I found the hoof conductors you had been talking about, and think I can replicate or recycle them. What do you think?"
Meltdown leaned forward, the temperature in the room increasing slightly as she heightened her focus. "I'll have to trust your judgement," she eventually said. "But I don't see anything standout wrong."
Shinespark nodded. "I've tried to fabricate a few parts using my tools in the ship's hold, but we're too low on supplies to even do proof-of-concept. But I've been talking to some engineers in the space department and have a lab and workshop with my name on them the moment I produce a final design, along with several assistants. There could be a day or two of downtime while I familiarize myself with Equestrian technology, but from the drafts I've showed them so far, we should be able to put our heads together and get a prototype finished by the time Valey and Maple get back."
Meltdown's eyes narrowed in surprise. "You think you can finish this in two weeks."
Shinespark shrugged. "I have leftover parts from both Braen and your damaged armor. Your internal cooling loop was complicated, but could save us a lot of time on research."
"My last one took a month of fabrication time alone," Meltdown replied. "With the resources of an empire and a goddess hurrying the work along. I had already completed the design as a hobby prior to needing it."
Shinespark smirked. "But I'm used to working under the pressure of having only the resources my guerillas can steal. Tight conditions, lacking materials and poor odds are my specialty. If I can't do what I say I can, we'll tally that after I've failed. But this is something I can do."
Meltdown bowed within the bathtub. "...Thank you. I don't deserve someone like you."
Shinespark paused. "If you're down about Chrysalis and the Empire, I'm exactly what you deserve. From one failed, runaway teenage ex-leader to another. If I'm helping you, you're helping me, too."
"Stay a moment?" Meltdown motioned for her to stay.
Shinespark stayed.
Meltdown took a breath. "You wouldn't have heard... about how I got my wish and came to lead the Empire, because it's not a story I share with anyone."
"...Is that so." Shinespark edged the bathroom door closed, sensing this deserved to be private. "But you want to tell me?"
"I am the one at your mercy," Meltdown said. "That doesn't happen to me often, but since it has, you should know who you're judging worthy of a new body."
Shinespark's ears tilted forward.
"The village I came from... It was a remote one in Goldfeather," Meltdown began. "The province north of Everlaste, if you never visited it. It was very small, set farther to the east than ponies can usually survive, because the village founders and elders took issue with Garsheeva and wanted to live were her gaze would never reach."
"But they did survive?" Shinespark blinked impassively, listening.
Meltdown nodded. "If the world has a true edge, no one has seen it. But the first condition that stems the eastward growth of civilization is that birth rates decline. It becomes difficult to conceive. Perhaps something in the air affects our bodies, or perhaps the magic that normally allows for the creation of new souls fails to function there. But we lived well, well past the event horizon, where there were sandstorms, and fissures in the ground that would glow with colorful mana at night. A few of our members supplied us with food and water through caravans back west to the Empire, and our ponies would leave two at a time when they wished for children, stay elsewhere and come back once they had conceived. That is how I was born."
Shinespark stared. "Does this have anything to do with your...?"
"Condition? Yes, but not in the way you think." Meltdown looked away. "They were not a group that advertised themselves to the outside. They had a mission to live by themselves, not a cause to spread. As a result, they never gained new ponies. And after several generations... they became dangerously inbred. My condition is a birth defect that worsened as I aged, and that is where it came from."
Shinespark stared.
"At a young age, I was merely slow and weak," Meltdown continued. "Worse off than my peers, though it wasn't as if the other foals were completely free of their own maladies, as this had been happening for some time. But it was difficult for me to understand things, especially as I grew... That made me a target. In hindsight, it was simple bullying. The strong picking on the weak. But all I knew was I hated it. The day my parents tried to explain to me why I was the way I was... I stowed away on the caravan and ran away."
"There's a heresy against inbreeding," Shinespark said.
Meltdown nodded. "Yes. There is. I made it back to a border town in Goldfeather, where I proved utterly unable to take care of myself. A charitable church took me in. The cleric of Garsheeva who ran the institution tried to educate me and take me under her wing. And when I learned about that heresy, I had no qualms against selling out my entire town."
She swallowed, but her voice was steady. "Everyone was captured, and all the buildings razed. They were taken to Grandbell, and offered to Garsheeva as sacrifices. I was in that line as well, given my parentage, even though I had been the one to report them. But even as they cried or raged, I couldn't shed a tear, because all I knew was that they were responsible for my life being what it was."
Shinespark frowned heavily. "That's..."
"I didn't mind that I was going to perish as well. What did I have to live for, after all? I must have been the only one who didn't speak." Meltdown shrugged. "But then Gwendolyn spared me. She was tiny. Speaking in coherent sentences was a novelty to her. But she was watching the sacrifice, saw that I was reacting differently from others, and stopped them because she wanted to know why. She didn't want Garsheeva to kill me. And so Garsheeva listened... and because the child empress had judged me so, that was Garsheeva's judgement as well. I was taken into the temple core and given a wish, and I wished to be smart and strong like the ponies around me. Garsheeva granted me this brand, able to increase my strength and intelligence to any levels I desired, so much so that the smarter I made myself, the better ways I could create to manage the heat and survive even more power. But that first night, when for the first time in my life I had the clarity of mind to comprehend my actions, I could do nothing but cry."
"If you were unable to comprehend the consequences of your actions," Shinespark said, "were they truly your fault?"
"It matters little." Meltdown shook her head. "What Garsheeva saw in me was a willingness to condemn my entire hometown and everyone in it over what I saw as right. To her, none of the other circumstances mattered. She may have granted me my life and a wish because of Gwendolyn's intervention, but that I was a pony who had passed judgement on her entire world... That is why she gave me the Empire and placed me in charge. Once the existing head of the Power Distribution Agency, a stallion called Temperantia, met his end... the backbone of the continent was all mine."
Shinespark didn't blink. "Garsheeva cares that much about this?"
"She cared because my real purpose wasn't to rule," Meltdown sighed. "It was to act as a check to her. My brand is a brand of judgement. Because, as Garsheeva has told me, sealed somehow inside it is a weapon designed to render any sphinx mortal, strip away all the power she had amassed over two thousand years and make her just like Gazelle or any of the normal royals. The Empire has always had a pony like me at its head. Each and every one of them has had their own brand given by Garsheeva and containing this weapon. When we die, Garsheeva finds our body and takes back our brand, and then a new judge takes our place. The point was that if my heart ever told me to cross her, she believed I would, and would use the intelligence she gave me to unlock the secret of this weapon and strike her down."
Shinespark slowly exhaled. "That's a lot. I don't know whether it would be preferable to having judged your people worthy to live, and then being unable to give it to them."
"I didn't tell you that to get you down," Meltdown said. "I told it because you were determined to help me even though you didn't have a shred of context about who you were helping. You decided I deserved it. Garsheeva always refrained from passing judgement on my actions. She said that was my job... but in the end, the one pony I never let myself look at one way or the other was myself. If even a goddess must be held accountable to others, then I'm no different. I just wanted it to be known... and for you to know before you make that decision about me."
"...Thank you for telling me." Shinespark nodded, eyes earnest. "But saving the ponies who need it is what I do. I made my decision about you, and you haven't changed my mind."