Starlight stood in the living room of Generosity Two, watching as her friends fussed over Felicity and tried to find a better way for the batpony to sleep. One for all and all for one indeed... it almost could have felt cozy, watching the scene. But a lingering sense of unwellness that probably just came from her being herself kept her from basking in it, and so she stood on the sidelines, her thoughts of the crystal palace and her missing memories shelved as best as they could be.
Valey had told her they might be all staying together on Kinmari after all. This might be her future. This wouldn't be so bad.
"Bored?" an insidious little voice whispered beside her.
Starlight flicked her ears and her tail. "What do you want?"
Jamjars dropped her camouflage and shrugged. "Just extending an invitation. You look like you've got a lot on your mind. Why not distract yourself by coming over to my place?"
Starlight frowned. "They finally let you have your own room? I thought they weren't going to do that."
"What they are and aren't going to do has no purchase in the face of determination," Jamjars preened. "It's in the Laughter dorms, though. You know the place. Just had to make the right connections, and they were happy to let me camp out."
"Oh." Starlight looked away. "I didn't have the best time last time we were staying there. Thanks to Gazelle and that pony who tried to frame us..."
Jamjars chuckled. "Weight on your shoulders? Come see him now. It's pretty sad. He's broken into the archives so many times everyone has given up on catching him, and just reads the night away. Nothing puts your old problems into perspective like seeing how pathetic they've grown to be."
"I felt bad for him!" Starlight protested. "Don't make me feel worse."
Jamjars shrugged. "Well, it is pretty tragic. But come on! You said you had some bad memories and experiences there, right? Old problems, things in the past? Then what you have to do is go stare them down again, here and now. It's like getting braver by spending a night in a haunted house that used to scare you when you were younger."
Starlight folded her ears. "I don't even know if your advice is good or not."
"Tried and true. Your loss not believing." Jamjars stretched, accidentally hitting the wall behind them. "Ow. But I'm also just inviting you to hang out and do secret things. You need to take a load off. Come on, have some fun with me!"
Starlight hesitated. Jamjars was weird, but maybe she was legitimately trying to be nice...? And it was true that she knew her better than any other ponies her age. While Starlight didn't particularly like her, the peace offering was oddly tempting. Maybe she was just that desperate for friends.
"Fine." Starlight stood up. It wasn't like she had anything remotely pressing to do anywhere else... "Maple?" she called, stepping across to her friends. "I'm going to follow Jamjars tonight and make sure she doesn't get up to anything."
Maple blinked back at her. "Oh? Thank you!"
"See? Easy." Jamjars smirked. "And rude, but it was classy so I'll let that one pass. After me!"
Starlight followed Jamjars along the not-so-lengthy walk to the Laughter dorms, a familiar location from the start of their stay at the island. They entered from the back, ascending staircases and climbing back to the hearth-strewn commons.
"Hey, kids!"
"Hi, adventurers!"
"What's up, cute one?"
A few friendly greetings met them as they entered the lounge, but most of the students who were still up looked either too tired or too engrossed in homework to do more than wave. Jamjars basked nonetheless, while Starlight looked around at how the room had changed. Someone had rearranged the couches and tables in the last two weeks, probably for a fresh look. A big lock, slightly twisted, hung open on Doctor Lost's office door, as if someone had tried to secure the place and eventually given up. The trophy case had... one more bronze, or maybe it was unchanged. Starlight couldn't tell.
"So now what do we do?" she asked, absentmindedly following Jamjars as her fellow filly strolled toward the wall between the two hearths.
Jamjars squared her shoulders. "First, I show you my secret room. And then we do secret things just for the sake of it, and it'll be fun. I have the best place in the dorms, even. Behold!"
Starlight stared at the area between the hearths. "...This lounge room? Or do you mean the empty wall?"
Jamjars fluffed her curls with a hoof. "Well, on the one hoof, I wouldn't say no to a bedding selection like all these couches. But I meant the wall."
Starlight blinked... and Jamjars pushed smugly on the wall, until a cleverly-concealed crack opened and part of it swung inwards. She actually hadn't been lying. It was a real secret door.
"What's this even doing here?" She gaped at the entrance.
Jamjars shrugged, holding the swinging wall section open. "It used to be a private room for using some old technology that's obsolete now. I think. And they weren't doing anything with it and gave it to me when I asked for something cool."
"That's... Huh." Starlight strolled in, looking around.
It was small and dim, lit only by a single light source and mostly taken up by a desk, though there was room enough for some other affects. No bed, though. "Where do you sleep?" Starlight asked, frowning at the furnishings.
Jamjars yawned and stepped after her, letting the secret door swing shut behind them. "Under the desk," she said, pointing to a pile of blankets stashed below. "You can sleep on top of it. It's like bunk beds, only you're pretending to be Shinespark. But the night is young! Who's tired now, anyway?"
Starlight almost said it looked like Jamjars was, but then the rest of the room's decorations caught her attention: or rather, the lack of them. Jamjars' prized poster collection sat as a bundle of rolled-up tubes in a box, not slathered over the walls in a show of colorful mares.
"What happened to your posters?" She stared at the box, too confused to think about anything else.
"Oh... those." Jamjars gave a regretful sigh. "Look, I get it. I'm the one who's weird for liking them, not you for not caring. But I have a reputation to worry about now and I can't just step on anyone who says I'm the weird one anymore, so I have to mare up and step up my game. Improve yourself, improve your image. Yadda yadda."
Starlight tilted her head, still staring at the posters. "Huh. But you're still keeping them around?"
"For when we move out again." Jamjars shrugged. "You know it's going to happen. You know your friends won't be happy staying here. And even if we don't, it's hard to throw away your friends."
Starlight almost protested, saying that her friends would never abandon Felicity... and then she stopped in her tracks. "Throwing away your friends? What?"
"Don't judge me," Jamjars snapped. "So what if the stories I tell myself are better company than any of you? I'm not a charity case and am not going to grovel for attention when I could steal or win it instead, but... still. When you've got one incompetent mother and your dozen-odd siblings are dweebs, you have to do something to stay sane."
"The posters are your friends?" Starlight asked.
Jamjars' face shadowed. "Stop looking at me like it's weird, captain obvious. I was being nice to you. You don't have to make this awkward."
"I didn't say it was weird," Starlight protested, the faint idea crossing her mind that Jamjars could be talking to herself. "We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. I was just curious."
Jamjars didn't seem to notice. "Well, they are my friends," she went on, ignoring the permission to hold her tongue. "You know how many times I've embellished the story of how I saved Melia and Sirena from the Spirit hideout to myself? It's... Whatever." She glowered. "Like I said. It's just a coping mechanism. They're not real friends because they can't do anything for me in return, except make long, boring flights less boring. And I need to shore up my act by clinging to less wimpy stuff like that so I can make a better impression on real ponies and get them to like me."
Starlight wanted to rebut. She really did. Because by that logic, friends who couldn't do anything for her, whom she was that much more powerful than...
"Well, I..." She swallowed. "I don't think that's right. If they make you happy, you shouldn't have to give them up just to get others to like you."
Jamjars stared at her in abject confusion. "You're not celebrating? Really? Aren't you the one who's always the least enthusiastic about my posters?"
"Only because you were always shoving them in my face." Starlight shrugged. "I didn't realize they were your..." She trailed off, blinking. "You invited me over here because you're lonely, didn't you?"
Jamjars looked at a wall. "Whatever. I sure didn't do it to get picked apart like this."
"But you're the one picking yourself apart..."
Jamjars growled.
"Sorry." Starlight stood up, shaking her head... and paused. "I really don't think you should just throw away something that makes you happy, though. Not if you feel this bad about it. That's not moving on, it's just hurting yourself. And don't take this the wrong way, but they're not really the weirdest thing about you."
Jamjars gave a painful sigh. "You want to know why they were a problem? Because when you live entirely in your own head, you aren't constrained by time. You can skip over the bits you don't care for, do over the ones you aren't happy with until they turn out fine, and relive the good ones as long as you want. And let me tell you, my head is a whole lot more entertaining than floating around with a bunch of identity-crisis mares on your ship, so it's where I do live most of the time. But this is the real world, and when the going gets tough here, you don't just get to choose to succeed when you feel like you deserve it, or give yourself setbacks you know you can overcome to make a good story. You get one shot, and if you're lucky, someone else will give you a chance, and you can try again. Someone else, not you. I have to change my whole mindset if I want to succeed, or else I'll spend all my time being self-absorbed and taking stupid, flashy risks and then being stuck when someone walks out on me and I don't know what to do."
Starlight slumped. Missing out on the boring, the mundane, the things that made life normal and just getting to the spice? Succeeding when you needed to, but taking every other setback imaginable? Having friends you were so much more powerful than, you almost still felt lonely? Boy, that sounded relatable. Jamjars could live that fantasy in her head, but this was practically her own real life.
"It shouldn't be our job to make that one shot count in the first place," Starlight eventually answered, feeling that she knew what to say. "We're just kids. If every kid had to succeed at everything no matter what, how would we ever learn how to mess up?"
Jamjars gave her a look. "Well, that's fine for most fillies and colts, but we have stakes, here. You think we can afford mistakes? You think I could afford a mistake when I piloted the ship for you while we were running from Crystal?"
"Were you that scared?" Starlight asked. "I was busy focusing on other things..."
"Not at all." Jamjars shook her head. "Not even a little. I was just treating it like it was all in my head again."
Starlight bit her lip. "What got you to change?"
"Hunger, mostly." Jamjars shrugged, glancing down at her stomach. "When we were rationing. No amount of doing your own thing can fix it when your basic needs aren't being met. And some other stuff, but mostly that."
"You've never gone hungry before?"
"Not for more than a day. You?"
Starlight nodded. "I ran pretty low on food in the mountains..."
"Oh. Right." Jamjars looked away.
"Yeah..."
This was the part where Starlight did something, she knew. Jamjars was worried about making decisions with real-world impact? Reality had finally caught up to her and dragged her own fantasies? Winning no matter the cost was something Starlight was good at. Jamjars had made a peace offering; she was clearly lonely. Starlight could reciprocate...
"Well, I'm pretty good at keeping us alive," she spoke up. "So if you're looking for friends, and you want someone who can help with big decisions..." Starlight was a filly too. This really shouldn't be her job either. But Jamjars was in need, and she was capable.
"Thought you'd never offer." A little of Jamjars' demeanor returned, and she rolled to her hooves, trotting over to the poster box. "I hope you mean it, because this one is a doozy."
"What...?" Starlight blinked, watching as Jamjars drew out a thick, industrial-grade envelope containing an absolute ream of papers.
Jamjars slammed it down on the desk. "I need to decide what to do with this."
Starlight frowned, feeling like she might have seen the thing before... "What is it?"
Jamjars poked the envelope. "A present from your lookalike. She gave it to me and wanted me to keep it safe for her, after we crossed the mountains. She said she'd tell me what to actually do with it later, but then... you know. I looked inside, and it's a bunch of weapon blueprints relating to some contract for the war in Varsidel. I think they need this to actually make them."
"Weapons?" Starlight frowned. "How dangerous of weapons? Like the energy guns Sosa made?"
Jamjars shook her head. "No, just one. It's called a Pavise and is a giant war machine that reminds me of her dragon. It has the same harmony extractor and everything. I bet this contains everything you need to know to make it, including how to build those special harmony extractors. And it looks like whoever designed the visuals definitely thought they were a bad guy."
Starlight didn't even need to think to answer that. If even half of what Jamjars said was remotely true... "Don't let anyone else get it," she insisted. "Especially not anyone who would actually build that, like Varsidel. She probably got these from Garsheeva in the first place to stop anyone from using them..."
Indus technology. Meant for war. That was what this so-called Pavise had to be. A memory of the nightmare cave in Mistvale flitted through Starlight's consciousness, where she fought the fake Yanavan in a dream, and he rode in a gigantic, armored machine with a generator tail much like Aegis's...
"Glad to know we're on the same page." Jamjars slowly nodded. "What about the rest of your friends? Shinespark would probably be able to reverse-engineer some of the technology, and maybe use it for good..."
"Not even Shinespark," Starlight pressed. "Not unless it becomes..." She swallowed, having a feeling it would. "Really important."
Jamjars shook her head. "Oh, this would take decades to actually make, from what I've seen. It's no last resort. But whatever." She yawned again. "You look like her, so I wanted your opinion on what she'd likely want me to do..."
"Tired?" Starlight asked.
"No. I'm so awake, I was about to put on my boots and go fishing," Jamjars deadpanned. "Talking about myself is draining, okay? Let's hit the sack..."
Starlight nodded. She had a lot to think about. It wasn't hard to guess what her dreams would be filled with tonight...
She borrowed several of the blankets, surrendered without complaint, and tucked herself up atop the desk, fighting an omnipresent feeling that no matter how many plans she had for the morning, she would never know what would come.