//------------------------------//
// All We Have Left 
// Story: The Olden World 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

Shinespark stepped back into Meltdown's room, surveying the other mare quietly. Eventually, she said, "You realize what a bad situation you're in, right?"

"It would be difficult for me not to," Meltdown grunted, standing in her baggy, tightly-leashed prototype as pumps rumbled in the background. "Equestria's princess isn't playing around." She looked up, meeting Shinespark's eyes. "You've helped me regain some of my functions, and I'm very grateful. What are you going to do next?"

"Ask some questions." Shinespark stood straight. "You're not trying to protect Gazelle because you think it would be pragmatic for your empire. There could be a good outcome, and you might have to say that to Celestia as an excuse, but after all he's done it's ridiculous to even expect it as the most likely outcome. You want my help? Tell me why you're trying to protect Gazelle."

Meltdown evenly met her eyes. "If one of your friends was accused of doing the same, what would you do?"

"This isn't just an accusation," Shinespark replied. "Half a dozen witnesses and a destroyed library are testament to that. But if I knew for sure one of my friends had done this... yes. I would wish ardently for them to come back to the right path."

"Then can you understand my feelings?" Meltdown simply watched her.

"That you want to help him? Yes." Shinespark dragged over a work bench, unloaded a toolbox, and sat down, squarely across from Meltdown. "But what we want to do and what we let ourselves do isn't always the same thing. I can afford to devote all that I have to my friends because I no longer have Ironridge to watch over. In my old life, if I had to choose between a friend and my city?" She shook her head. "I had already dedicated myself to my duty. And you have the Empire to think of."

"...I wouldn't be so sure that I do," Meltdown slowly replied. "The generator has likely been permanently crippled or even destroyed by your stunt in the mountains. With no more power, there is no more Power Distribution Agency. With no more Power Distribution Agency, I have no public avenue to exercise my authority from Garsheeva. Previously, much of my practical authority over the continent came from my ability to make deals and control rates for local lords, which is gone now. And if Garsheeva herself has failed to resurface after these events, I would hardly be able to count on her help reinstating myself."

Shinespark listened patiently, her mane flickering slightly from the breeze of a nearby ventilation duct.

"I could try to win back control," Meltdown continued, "either through force against the provinces or as a hero who protects them and earns their respect. That's what I was several years ago, when I first made a name for myself, though the image faded with time. But I was the prime enforcer for Garsheeva's heresies as well, and with no one providing an overarching law of the land, creatures will likely have started ignoring them... most notably by building mana wells. The more of those appear, the less ability I have to rebuild my old authority structure. And since I would lack a power source either way, enforcing the rules without providing an alternative would do major harm to the Empire's recovery and cement me as a tyrant in the citizenry's eyes."

"You've given this a lot of thought," Shinespark commented.

Meltdown nodded, a tiny hiss of steam escaping from the collar on her suit. "I've had a lot of time to think."

Shinespark nodded in return. "Go on."

"I was nearly finished," Meltdown replied. "The important part is that the Empire and I have paths that would be difficult enough to reconcile already. And so, regaining control seems like a relatively pointless use of my time. I didn't owe them anything. Do you recall my story of how I earned my position?"

"Your village was breaking heresies?" Shinespark gave her a neutral expression. "And you turned them in."

"To be executed," Meltdown finished. "My point is twofold. First, I always had more reason for the Empire to be my enemy than my ally. Garsheeva didn't seem to care when she promoted me. She thought I would judge it as I saw fit. My friends were a large part of why I was a better head of agency than I could have been, in fact... I had two close friends. One was a stallion named Lighthooves who went on his way a long time ago. The other was Gazelle."

She stopped for breath, fiddling with a connection cuff around one of her hooves, and continued. "The second point is that you could place the death of an entire village on my shoulders. It is hardly the only thing, either. Many sarosian pirates perished because I decided Gazelle could hunt them. Pirates who only existed because the Night Mother guided their lives into believing it was acceptable or right. Why did they die? Because I said so. Nothing less and nothing more. So when Gazelle injures ponies here, consider that it is less an act of wild abandon and, in fact, simply what Empire royalty do. Celestia is familiar with the Empire, and she knows this."

Shinespark slowly sighed. "I've commanded ponies to their deaths as well. And there's a difference between making decisions that have consequences and being a predator."

"I didn't say there wasn't." Meltdown shook her head. "And I also didn't say we don't live at the expense of others. Garsheeva accepts her sacrifices. I cause ponies to go without power at night by extorting their lords to keep them in line. Gazelle obtains what he wants through force. That may not be the way of Equestria, but it is the way of the Empire. It is the system Garsheeva allowed to arise. And it likely sounds completely contrarian to your own leadership principals. But, Shinespark... does that mean we are completely incapable of doing good in the world? Do you think our manner of rule would be better than a society without laws altogether? Or one that was more lawful, and eliminated creatures like us altogether?"

Shinespark stared through her, parallel visions of a destroyed Sosan crater and an irrelevant Sosa of shuttered factories drifting together in her mind's eye. "Just because some worlds are better than others doesn't mean those worlds are ideal."

"But they are still better." Meltdown shook her head. "Regardless, it matters not. I'm not trying to convert you to Garsheeva's philosophy and worldview. I don't even find it very tasteful, myself. If I really wanted to build an ideal world, Gazelle and myself certainly wouldn't have a place in it." She took a deep breath, looking up. "Gazelle is my friend because we can relate to each other. He is like me. We don't have to hold pretense around each other, and throughout our years together, we've covered for each other's weaknesses. He can steal the spotlight when I require subtlety, and I can temper his plans and point his chaos in a more productive direction while his passion gave me a direction to point him in. Our dislike for the state of affairs in the Empire was shared. We were very... very close."

"So you'd abandon the Empire to protect Gazelle from a fate he's created for himself," Shinespark said.

Meltdown shrugged. "We need each other. And this is a prime case of when he needs me. Will Equestria demand justice if I take him away? I have no doubts that they will. Will they chase down my past affiliations and come to a land that knows little of the details of our machinations? Celestia herself has given her word. Is that a problem for either of us?" Her eyes narrowed. "I think the answer to that should be self-explanatory."

Shinespark slowly let out a breath. "You're not a good pony and you're not trying to be. You're just trying to protect your friends."

"An instinct you said you understood."

Shinespark looked down, counting the rivets in the floor plating and losing track after five. "I... do. I don't know if it's right, and I don't know what kind of help you want, let alone whether I can provide it, but I understand." Her shoulders slumped, and she drew herself back up. "What are you asking us to do? If you want to risk your own safety on that sphinx, I won't stop you, but I can't in good conscience advocate for risking others' and we are under no circumstances ferrying him anywhere on board our ship. I won't have him around my friends."

"...I appreciate it." Meltdown nodded. "Is there any possibility you could help me to speak with him?"

"That's a question for Princess Celestia." Shinespark adamantly shook her head. "But I'll try to bring you photographs of the damage he did to the archives, and the students' wounds. I know you care about him, but I think you're in denial about exactly what he's capable of. My friends have fought him twice now, and I've seen more than enough of the aftermath."

"Thank you." Meltdown settled back down, her pumps whirring away. "You should attend to your other affairs. I'm sorry you have so many to deal with. I need time to think."

Shinespark got to her hooves, deciding that the conversation was over. "...Right. There's a good chance I'll be back later."





The Immortal Dream was dark when Valey entered, but she was good at seeing in the darkness.

Most of the deck was missing, exposed insulation in the process of being replaced, with holes where it had been removed where the ceiling of the cabins could be seen below. The stairs themselves had been re-slatted; the wood had a faintly different feel beneath her hooves than it once did. Less wear and tear from soldiers with heavy traction boots and horseshoes, for one.

She peeked her head into the engine room, where the equipment racks that controlled the harmony extractor sat gutted, most of their components slid out on carefully-extended trays. A workbench, several chests of equipment and a few tools lay to the side, along with a bucket of dead parts someone had clearly been removing. To the side was a case, looking newer and fancier, that looked to contain new parts ready for insertion.

The library's battered old chairs were gone, and all the books and shelves removed as well. Boards were leaned against the walls to create new shelves, these ones with glass panes that looked designed to seal the books in and keep them from falling off during turbulent weather. A note tacked to one of the boards read, Missing the book crates? We took them to Lazy Leaf's place for page-straightening. Got Shinespark's OK. Cheers!

Valey had to hover down the hallway between the cabins, its floor completely removed. It looked designed to come out, most of the sections propped on holders against the walls, and a large trunk of mana conduits snaked through the space underneath, running from the engine room down through the spine of the ship. She suspected there was another above, beneath the deck, but hadn't gone out of her way to look for it while she was on the surface.

In the cabins themselves, everything had been cleaned and straightened, most of the beds removed and papers placed on all the vanities with room damage reports detailing everything cosmetic or functional that would need to be replaced. After two or three rooms of the same, Valey skipped the rest and passed into the hold, which looked about the same as it always did. Most of its construction was metal, so it showed the least damage from things banging around, and it had more secured cargo than anything else. And it was always messy, anyway.

The pantry was so empty, Valey's stomach growled... though her appetite was suppressed by the heavy scent of cleaners and fragrances spread through the room. Looking at the floor and all its stains and splotches, she had never thought before about just how much food they lost to maneuvers smashing the containers and bags. Replacing the floor in this place was probably a distant priority as well.

She had never spent enough time in the kitchen to know it truly well, but like the hold, it looked normal enough. Stripped of supplies, maybe, but she wasn't about to poke through every cabinet and cupboard to check. Instead, she stepped through into the main hall... and sighed.

The big table that descended from the ceiling was gone, probably out for repairs. All the bench cushions were as well, and the floor was almost as dented as the staircase had been. And despite just as many fragrances and air fresheners as the pantry had held, it still smelled unmistakably of desperate, unwashed soldier. This one might take a complete overhaul of the floor and walls to boot...

Shaking her head, Valey wryly grinned. "Welp?" she said to no one in particular. "Getting this thing shipshape and airborne again in a day or two, tops? Sounds like my kind of impossible. Gonna have to do something real serious to motivate those kids..."