She had wondered if their relationship was dying.
They had begun as student and teacher: something which felt as if it would be true for a lifetime because it would never be possible to learn all of what the Princess knew. But then Twilight had changed, and...
The eldest of alicorns had felt that the best place for Twilight to begin learning about her new status was from her friends, and there were ways in which the librarian could almost understand that. Others where she still felt the internal rise of emotions: frustration and terror buoying each other up in near-equal measure, making it impossible to determine which one was dominant. She hadn't been told anything about how to deal with new wings, she'd felt as if she'd been left to work it all out on her own and...
Perhaps it was understandable, when looked at from a perspective which regarded the past from a near-impossible temporal distance. The Princess had felt it was best for Twilight to learn from her friends, because that was what Celestia had done. Learned from those whose shadows were forever merged with her soul, as one of what might have been the first two to change. It was possible to comprehend the choice of the eldest, if you thought about it that way.
It was also possible that they had been student and teacher for so long that neither knew how to be anything else. Equals? One might have been subconsciously longing for it, but only had a few relationships which existed on that level and didn't know how to adjust an extant one. The other looked at such self-elevation with a fear equal to making an attempt at high-altitude flight while simultaneously attempting to duplicate somepony else's trick: she could only fail, she had been stupid just to try at all, and the fall would take so long as to give her plenty of time to review exactly why she deserved it, all the way down.
Or you could see it as avoidance. The librarian had changed, and the fact that the change had taken place at all might have made Celestia question whether there was truly a soul at the core of that new assembly which belonged to Twilight Sparkle alone. If an entity she had tried to rescue (or punish, for that was still uncertain) formed the true foundation for everything which had been built. She didn't want to face Twilight because she didn't want to confront the final echo of what she had done all those centuries ago, or hear another's voice within any desperately denying words.
They were speaking again -- but they had so much trouble finding things they could speak about. Verbal hooves tried to trot across the thinnest of glass, and the nature of that surface had been disguised through coating it with eggshells.
Luna had advised Twilight to give the eldest time, because dredging up memories through the protective layers of centuries could be an ordeal. To remember on that level had the chance to turn into something very close to reliving all of it, and the pain of past sins had never completely faded. Celestia would speak to Twilight about her own change and Bearers: Luna truly believed that. But she would do so when she was ready, and to push too hard was to drive those events ever-deeper under the stone.
(Twilight had, in a moment of instantly-regretted candor and frustration, pointed out that Luna had her own memories and could tell the youngest of alicorns all about them any time she liked. It had put her on the receiving end of an exceptionally chill dark regard, right up until the moment when Luna had said only part of the tale was hers, there was an order for such things and if a supposed librarian felt the best place to begin a story was on Chapter Two, then the tree had plenty of space for a Now Hiring sign next to the book fort. Twilight had taken the too-steady response as an indication that it might be best to temporarily drop the subject.)
She didn't know what they were to each other now.
At the moment, it felt as if Celestia saw Twilight as something to be pushed aside.
If the eldest was seeing Twilight at all.
I'm not him.
She was cold, on a level too deep to be accounted for by the chill of surgery and snow. Her balcony door had locks which were attuned to her signature, because it served as a useful teleport arrival point and if she could ever get any true degree of control over her flight, might also work as a good place to land. (Rainbow frequently used it as a place to stop, which was the most charitable description available when 'land' no longer applied.) She had to get inside...
Her horn ignited, the door creaked as it shifted, she stepped into warmth which she didn't truly feel, and the living source of love's fire on the base level instinctively turned towards the sound.
"I'm sorry!" were the first words to tumble out. "I would have sent you a scroll to tell you they were coming, but I was still waiting on Davenport! I only got the shipment about twenty minutes ago! All I could do was make sure the air carriage approached the Acres on an angle which didn't let them see anything --" and now there was something of a faint scritching sound: scales rubbing against each other as the fingers of both hands interlaced and shifted from stress "-- they didn't see anything, did they? Tell me they didn't --"
She'd forgotten. Spell notation scrolls weren't an infinite resource, and her brother's trick worked best with certain combinations of rare quills, inks and woods. It was theoretically possible for him to just grab any nearby scrap of paper
I need to see more of the scraps
and try sending it into the aether, but there were proven results among the more expensive materials. And she'd been burning through scrolls at a ridiculous rate: not from friendship lessons, but trying to maintain correspondence with the party who was trying to reach the end of the currently-discussed equation from the formula's other side.
She'd been sending them out too fast: she'd known that. But there was a problem to be solved, she'd kept going anyway, and it wasn't as if she would run out for more than an hour or two, not when a grumbling Davenport sent the unwelcome, 'not my normal intent or inventory' supplies to the tree as soon as his shop opened, all the better to get the unnatural out of the building all the sooner. Twilight being out of scrolls for a little while didn't prevent the palace from sending her a message, and so there was no worst-case scenario. They could live without them for a single morning.
It explained why there had been no warning from her little brother. It was something which was in no way his fault and at any rate, even if he'd had scrolls handy... given what she'd seen in the surgery, no true warning would have been possible.
"It's all right, Spike!" she hastily called down, forcing her hooves to shift towards the ramp as her ears began to twist, listening for the presence of patrons -- and then stopped, as she recognized that he never would have said so much if there had been a single other pony about. Spike knew something about keeping secrets, and had even mastered an aspect which Twilight was still working on: how to comfortably sleep while they remained in his custody.
He lived with so much, and nearly all of it felt as if it was her fault.
"They didn't see anything," Twilight quickly added. Applejack chose practice sites which were shielded from sky view as an automatic matter of course anyway: temporarily losing the majority of the Acres' leaf canopy to winter just narrowed the selection down.
She heard the little exhale. "Okay..." Along with the nerves which were still audibly humming along behind it, and she accelerated a little. "What did the doctors want? They looked really upset. Like the biggest thing in the world was wrong, and they didn't know what they were supposed to do. But if it was really bad, mission bad, and they called for you --"
It was warm in the tree, and that state was reinforced by his concern. Something which, on the good days (and there were more of those now), she understood to rise from the gentle fire of his love.
But he'd just seen her, and everything was banked by the sudden chill of shock.
"T-t-twilight?"
He hardly ever stuttered. Only when something was horribly wrong, when everything was wrong --
"-- you look like -- like you..." Claws squeezed at each other, trying to force out words as his crests wilted and vertical pupils (only strange when she made herself remember that they were) stared up at the top of the ramp. "...saw something bad." And now the sounds were coming faster. "The worst thing, the worst thing you could ever see, and your fur -- Twilight, your fur, your tail --"
There might have been some vomit left in the fur around her mouth: it was possible that she'd missed that much. A hard-lashing tail could certainly disrupt its natural flow.
Or she'd simply seen the worst thing she could ever see, and everything about her reflected it. Perfectly understandable. It was just that she had to explain it to Spike --
-- I don't have time.
He needed to know, and she hated herself for that because it would be one more burden to carry. But she'd thought about how much time it would take to find the words which would mitigate any degree of impact, and then she'd realized that those were minutes she didn't strictly have. There was a clock running, it had started ticking at the moment Celestia had teleported back to the palace, and she had no way of knowing when the alarm was going to go off.
The Princess didn't want her involved. But she was already part of it. You couldn't be a pony if you didn't respond to witnessing what had happened to the stallion through devoting yourself to making sure it never happened again.
When it came to the most personal level, Twilight didn't know what she and her former mentor were to each other any more. But for the most immediate and practical aspects, she had a definition. They were competitors in a race, and any headstart possessed by the small mare was fragile indeed.
"-- Spike!" The word had been jolted out by the impact of her hooves as she sped down the ramp. "I'm going to tell you what happened, I promise, I swear. But I have to go. I have to go right now. It's nothing you did, nothing you could ever do, and I swear I'll tell you what's going on as soon as I get back. But right now, I have to get out of here. Please don't worry --" and she was passing the atlases, automatically swerved a little to avoid The Ridiculously More Than Complete Guide To Mazein before she banked a fetlock into the sturdy volume "-- if you can." Because she knew that making the request would accomplish exactly the opposite. "Please, just look after the library for me until I get back. And --"
"...Twilight?" Helpless. He always sounded so young when he felt helpless, and she hated herself all the more for making him feel that way.
"-- the scrolls came in?"
"We've got a few dozen," he quickly said, because it was something he could say and there was a chance she might stop to take inventory. "Why --"
Heading for the door. "If Celestia shows up, make an excuse, get out of sight, and send me a warning immediately."
It had been necessary to tell him that. It had also been a mistake.
"The Princess is part of this, and -- I have to warn you?" His walking claws were starting to pull in on themselves now, leaving tiny scratches in the floor. "Twilight --"
"Please!"
He was her little brother. He loved her and did everything he could to watch over her, regardless of how much it had cost him over the years. It didn't matter how seldom she'd even noticed his effects within the shadows of Gifted School and Archives: he'd never stopped.
Her protector. Their Protector.
It meant he carried burdens. And every time she added another one, she waited for the small body to break.
"When you get back," he desperately tried to confirm. "You'll tell me. You swear."
Almost at the exit -- and she stopped. "Yes! Please, Spike, please --"
He swallowed.
"-- go."
And thus blessed, she was freed.
How long did she have? There was no way to tell. The Doctors Bear had taken pictures, and there was probably a written inventory somewhere because physicians were the sort of ponies who generally kept backup documentation around...
It all depended on what Celestia did. Would she order the Royal Physicians to complete their examinations and then present her with a full summary? If so, Twilight might have all the time she needed. But the Princess sometimes chafed at the restrictions which her position placed upon her: the little mare understood that now. The oldest alicorn might insist upon going back into the surgery and looking over everything personally. Drawing on centuries of experience to try and form her own conclusions.
(Had this happened before? Would the Princess know? The solution might already be locked within royal memory, and Twilight was doing nothing more than wasting time...)
If so -- if she looked over the pictures and compared them to the contents of the surgery -- she would eventually spot what was missing. She might ask the doctors about whether it had been stored somewhere else, or sent to the palace's own facilities: that would take a few seconds. After that, Twilight couldn't be sure whether the stallions would try to cover for her or, just about as much to the point, if they would be any good at it.
Assume she realizes it's missing and that I have it. What does she do next?
The irony hit her with somewhat more force than the majority of Applejack's launched snow.
...possibly exactly what I'm about to do. She could be waiting there for me. Or she would have gone herself all along, to see if it was possible. She just wouldn't want me to have the information.
For him to have it.
I'm not him.
Lumens from her corona's light scattered across the snow (or what was left after she'd scrubbed around her mouth with some of it), and all she could do with the energy was desperately smooth the visible portions of her fur, try to straighten her mane and tail without benefit of mirror. Unicorns grooming on the run tended to draw attention because the results were frequently comedic: for Twilight to do it had the few ponies she passed on the street turning to stare after her. A mare trying to groom in a hurry was a potential subject of gossip: a Bearer in that kind of rush had the potential to indicate fast-approaching disaster.
A few ponies called after her: some of that came in the form of attempts to check on her, others were trying to get ahead of the news, and her path took her past the toy store and so found its owner once again slamming a sheet over the doll display. But she didn't have time to answer. She didn't have the time to do anything except gallop.
It had to be a gallop. Her mind was spinning, she was trying to think of a thousand things at once while holding off on looking too closely at her memory of the worst thing, and being in a state where her thoughts were effectively spiraling in on each other seemed to be the perfect mindset for calling on the aspect of Twilight Sparkle. Flight was effectively impossible, and when it came to the other form of faster movement -- it was winter. Early in her stay, Twilight had memorized a number of just-about-always empty spots around Ponyville to serve as relatively safe teleport arrival points. Her first winter in Ponyville had subsequently taught her that when you had an outdoor space which was reliably empty, that was where somepony was going to pile the snow. So all she could do was gallop as ponies stared, while Roseluck went into preemptive lockdown and Twilight desperately tried to figure out what she was going to say.
Because the librarian needed the mare who worked at her destination. Needed her for what only she could do. And that would be the last thing the mare would ever want to hear.
You couldn't teleport to the interior of Ponyville's only fix-it shop. Or rather, you could -- but if trying to reach what had once been a safe point near the little building risked recoil, appearing within guaranteed it. The best-case scenario would have Twilight slamming into a wall, the worst involved several very sharp things, and the most likely finale was having most of the ceiling-hung tools raining down on her.
It was, in many ways, a rather typical example of such shops. There wasn't enough room to hang all the tools from the ceiling, so there were going to be some on the walls. Rare oils were carefully stored within enchanted vials, and those went into racks which had a few protective effects of their own. Devices would be scattered about the place, all in varying states of repair, and that would only appear to be a state of scatter until somepony looked.
Individual components would be labeled. Small numbers indicated the order of reassembly. You always got spools of silver wire, there would be platinum somewhere that wasn't spotted immediately because it had to be isolated, and if it felt like moving one excess hoofwidth in any direction was going to collapse most of the shop into the small of your back, then the owner was arguably doing their job.
But there would always be at least one clear path. It would lead directly to the door or, for this shop's owner, a very large window. You didn't teleport into that because it was where normal hoof traffic took place and if things happened to be something other than normal, then nopony would ever want to be in the way. Repairing devices for a living had multiple requirements: the list started with the possession of the appropriate mark and if you couldn't also check off 'fast reflexes', then there was no point in looking at the rest because the remainder of the scroll would already be on fire.
Ratchette possessed the mark for the job. It was something which most of her clients didn't recognize (and she had as much trouble explaining it as she did in vocally defending herself) -- but in a way, that lack of comprehension was reasonable: Twilight hardly expected the laypony to be capable of identifying an Equiportent diagram on sight, let alone tracking the flow route of thaums through the complicated icon. Regardless, the mark said that the shop's owner was capable of doing the work.
The wings said something else.
Ratchette repaired devices. Not wonders, for she had no skills for dealing with the enchanted creations of pegasus magic and referred all such requests to a specialty shop in Canterlot. Devices. And there were things she couldn't do because in all but four known cases, wings meant a lack of horn and so spells could only be fixed when adjustments to the physical aspects of their housing would suffice. She couldn't cast, would never enchant, got stared at by just about every pony who came into the shop for the first time and so many of them trotted right out again...
She repaired devices, as best she could, as a pegasus. Twilight was one of the first ponies the shy mare had met after moving to Ponyville from Cameo Cumulus, because the search for any settled zone which might accept her had led her to the strangest. And Twilight had...
...seen her mark.
Recognized it, because she was a researcher and of course she was going to know what that oh-so-rare icon meant.
Accepted it.
Yes, it was more than a little unusual for a pegasus to manifest a talent for devices, but -- the dual hip-placed proof was right in front of her, and who was Twilight to argue with a mark? It was much more pleasurable to speak with that mark's possessor, because Ratchette had the instinct for devices. Twilight had a similar soul-deep recognition of magic, and it meant they could --
-- well, based on the way it usually worked out, they could mutually send Spike to the pharmacy to refresh the library's ever-dwindling supply of headache medicine. Twilight understood magic, Ratchette devices, and there was some intersection there: enough to let them camp out on the library's warm floor for hours while anypony who made the mistake of getting close enough to get hit by the words wound up reeling away, suffering from severe wounds to the vocabulary. But there was only a little overlap to their skill sets. Twilight had the understanding of devices which came from a devoted amateur who had eventually memorized roughly half of the tinkering-triggered pre-explosion warning signs. Ratchette could study workings as much as she wished, and no amount of reading would ever tell her what it felt like to have a corona play across a horn which didn't exist. Migraines were more or less inevitable.
They spent time with each other. Not as much as Twilight had with the other Bearers, but... hours spent basking in sunlight while fast-moving theories disrupted the gentle flow of dust through the rays. There had been times when each had made an effort to help the other, sometimes without being asked, and... Twilight had come to think of the mechanic as a friend. She worried about the pegasus, because the mare had so much trouble convincing new customers to take a chance at all. And it was more than just concern about whether the business could stay open, because being a repairpony for devices was one of the highest-risk professions in Equestria and even with the mark, Ratchette still didn't have a horn. The mechanic was a notoriously poor flier: one of the very few who could make Fluttershy's anemometer reading look spectacular on comparison alone. No defensive spells, a dubious capacity for speeding towards the exit...
But Ratchette was always careful. There had been no explosions. No showers of light and sprays of randomly-moving objects created by discharged thaums. She never even cut herself on the sharp edges of exposed housings. In fact, the first time she'd ever been injured within the shop had been due to thieves.
It was something which had happened on the same night as Gentle Arrival's presentation. And so by the time the palace contacted her, as one of the few whom the false physician had named directly...
Every hybrid had their own reaction to receiving the news. Denial was common: no, the mark accounted for everything, or they just had a unique trick. It wasn't their fault that their natural magic was so weak, or... that their strongest aspect expressed itself through what might appear to be an unusual outlet. It was the mark...
Some reached acceptance with surprising speed: they'd always known they were strange, and now they had a reason. A few were openly relieved. Others started to take pride in themselves. Any youth going for a freshly-foaled superiority complex usually wound up living in Fancypants' mansion, where the other hybrid children he'd taken in would laugh at them accordingly.
More than a few were looking for a cure. For those, all the palace could do was gently tell them that trying to make somepony into something they weren't was what had led to everything in the first place, try to provide emotional support, and watch to make sure they didn't hurt themselves. Or anypony else.
Some went deeper and darker. As far as Twilight knew, every attempted suicide had been stopped.
Ratchette had been one of the first to be contacted by the palace. (Twilight had read the interview's transcript, and it was so easy to hear the quiet tones of the mechanic's voice: a mare who was almost always careful about what she said, because a single wrong word might send a prospective new client out the door forever.) She had, in exacting terms, told the staff exactly what had happened on that night, when she had been injured within her own shop for the first time. Described the full effect, followed by asking if she was free to go. And upon receiving the affirmative, she had silently trotted out of the room and...
...had never spoken about any of it again.
Twilight had tried. She'd managed to get the mechanic out of the shop all of once, when the Flim-Flam brothers had set up a new con within the Everfree and it had been understood that she'd simply wanted a mechanic's expertise. But when it came to the truest capabilities of Ratchette's talent, a power which Equestria had never previously witnessed -- the pegasus wouldn't talk. She avoided any situation in which that kind of talking might manifest, and so the stockpile of unused headache medicine in the tree was starting to approach its expiration date.
The mechanic went to her shop, took in whatever work was available, carefully trained Apple Bloom in the art of invention, and... that was all. She acted as if nothing in her life had ever changed, perhaps because that existence was strange enough and nothing in her wanted to venture one final hoofstep across the line into freak. She didn't come to the tree. And Twilight could still go to the fix-it shop, she brought in damaged items whenever she could, but one wrong word would see the pegasus vanish into the back room and it was so easy to say the wrong thing...
She needed Ratchette on that winter day, for that which only the hybrid could do.
She also missed her friend.
And so when a rustle of steel-grey feathers announced the start of the retreat, with the lank short-cut copper tail hanging limply as its owner turned away, Twilight's horn ignited. Closing the back room's door before it could ever be reached.
She'd closed it as gently as she could, and yet tools were vibrating on their ceiling hooks. The pegasus' head slowly turned to face her, and she looked at the familiar inward swoops of a Roamer snout. Ponyville generally agreed that Ratchette was pretty: small for a pegasus, without a particularly streamlined form -- but there was something graceful about her features, and more in the care she put into every movement. Looking at Twilight across the mostly-grey flank (because she had been at work for a little while, and there were always stains to be found in the shop) and the strangeness of that mark. Strange at the very beginning, but accepted -- and now stranger still.
The mechanic was seen as pretty. She'd told Twilight that it was something which only held true until ponies got to know her, and then she was just pretty weird.
There had been a tiny, sad laugh at the end of that statement, in the days when they had still talked.
"Please." 'Sorry' was the weakest word in the world. She didn't feel much better about having to rely on the occupant of second place. "Please. Just... listen. Please, Ratchette. Listen, and then if you don't want to -- I'll leave. I..." She swallowed. "...won't come back. I'll just send Spike to drop things off and pick them up again. I just..."
Her head dipped. A half-restored mane did its best to fall across her eyes and came up short.
"...I need to talk, as much as anything else. I need that..."
"You have the Bearers," were the first soft words. "Spike. The palace --"
"-- not the palace. Not today. They might be right behind me --"
The copper eyes blinked.
"...what? Twilight, what did you do?"
There was concern in that, as much as there had been in Spike's words. It gave the little mare hope.
"Let me talk, Ratchette. Please. If you don't want to do it, you don't have to. But..."
Some of the tears had been held back for moons. Others had been trying to overflow the dam for less than an hour.
"...we used to talk. At least... at least tell me we can still talk..."
The mechanic turned. Silently walked past Twilight, with just barely enough space in the narrow aisle to allow the passage of a second small body. It was still something which had their feathers intermesh, and then the the hybrid was clear and trotting for the front door.
Twilight didn't look. Made no attempt to close it, because that would have been imprisonment. Stared down at the oil-marked floor, watching as the tears failed to disperse any of the old stains.
It meant she only heard the inner locks shut.
The small pegasus was shivering where she sat, in the too-cool, nearly-as-crowded back room. Ratchette had absolutely no talent for pegasus techniques: she relied on outside services to maintain the shop's ventilation system. But words carried their own chill, and perhaps no amount of heat ever would have been enough.
She was small for a pegasus: well below the species average for height. Twilight wondered about that, just to have something else to think about for a moment. Unicorns were the smallest of the three pony races: there were some rather significant outliers, but when taken as a whole, they had the least height and bulk. Did gaining unicorn essence affect the adult size of the recipient? Was Snowflake so large in part due to the infusion of earth pony essence within the shadow of his soul?
The librarian didn't know. Just that it was something to think about other than what she'd just relived in the telling.
"Disease?" Because there were going to be questions, and naturally that was the first one. "Something which killed him, and finished the job by..." The copper eyes briefly squeezed shut, and failed to block out inner visions. "...erasing --"
And then those weak wings flared, nearly knocking several small tools off the left-side table. The familiar object on the right was too heavy for such minor jolts.
"-- Twilight, you could be a carrier! You could be spreading this right now --"
"-- no blood to blood contact," the librarian quickly said, because a growing panic on that level had to be stopped immediately. "Nothing riding on the breath when somepony -- can't breathe any more. The covering was enchanted to be sterile and I never touched the body. The doctors had already checked for pollen and particulates. That room is protected, as much as magic can protect anything."
"And if it wasn't enough?" The wings were arching now, seeking room to flap. "If it's something new --"
She was forcing herself to sound calm. She knew it, and wondered just how audible the effort was.
"-- then we can't guess at who it affects," she made herself say. "For all we know, it could only target brown earth pony stallions and if that's the case, Ratchette, there's still Time Turner and Mr. Rich and Caramel, just for starters. There's ponies who need to be protected. Helped. We have to understand what happened, so it never happens again."
"You should have quarantined yourself." Froth was starting to appear in the mechanic's coat: oils shimmered oddly on its surface. "You --"
"-- I'm sorry!" Because she hadn't thought of it, because there was a chance Ratchette was right -- and she'd just galloped through Ponyville. There was guilt to be found for days, if she cared to look, and if Ratchette was right... "But the doctors thought it had something to do with magic. They checked his blood before they came to me, as best they could. There was nothing unusual. The full autopsy is later. Not all diseases spread, Ratchette: Poison Joke requires direct contact with the flower's fresh oils. And if it was breath, then he was alive for a few seconds before he..."
The Princess went into that room.
No. She wouldn't let herself think about that. It was a scream which had to wait for the nightscape.
"...died." And then her head was down again. "You're right. I should have thought about it. I should have at least washed up before I came here." And Ratchette had touched her. If it was a disease, something new, and the spells in the room hadn't stopped it...
...what have I done?
The tears were back, and they never could have been enough.
"Something which makes marks vanish," the pegasus whispered. "And you came to me..."
The wings slowly curled in. Folded into the rest position, and twitched lightly against the mare's sides.
"Maybe I'd be better off."
Twilight's head shot up.
"...what?" Hollow enough to feel as if it was adding a new carving into the wound which the pain had been inflicting on her own soul.
"With the way ponies react to me," the mechanic quietly said. "Always having to explain myself, and never being able to explain enough. Especially now. Maybe blankness is easier. I could always just wear a lot of dresses..."
She was starting to move towards the pegasus, desperate to comfort while not knowing how to do so, when the words didn't exist and she couldn't touch. "Ratchette...!"
Just above a whisper, "...it's a joke."
Twilight froze.
"It's not a funny joke," the mechanic softly added. "It's probably the darkest thing I've ever said out loud. But I've had worse thoughts than those words, especially after -- that night. Things which make those words feel like a joke. Hearing you talk about that stallion was like going up as high as I could into the air and... locking my wings. Letting gravity bring me down, one last time. But it didn't happen then, and it won't happen now. I wish you'd thought about disease, Twilight, and I just hope the doctors are right: that it isn't one, or can't spread from a corpse. But if they're wrong... then it's like being a hybrid."
"I'm --" and the next word would have been 'sorry.' Which made it feel both as if it had been the wrong one, and that any word would have qualified for that lack of status.
The mechanic silently raised a foreleg: stop.
"It already happened," Ratchette told her. "I can't make it not have happened. I can try not to think about it. I can try to pretend everything is normal, at least as far as that's ever applied to me. But this time..."
She slowly shook her head. A small piece of metal shaving fell away from the mane.
"...this time," the mechanic finished, "maybe I shouldn't. There's a hot shower in the back for the bad days, when I need an extra rinse just to leave the shop without putting oil into the snow. You'll use it. I'll use it. We need to have enough time for that, just in case. And if nopony's come -- then I can try."
The librarian's next move forward took place on instinct.
"No nuzzling until after we're both clean."
"...sorry."
They were sitting on opposite sides of the partial rod, and simply having gotten that far didn't quite feel like a triumph. Part of Twilight's mind insisted that the palace was waiting to break in on them until the moment something interesting started to happen.
Ratchette's left forehoof was just barely touching a partial jewel. And on the visible level, that was the only thing which was happening at all.
"I don't recognize the design," the freshly-cleaned mechanic said. "And you didn't have the time to look it up?"
"It's nothing forbidden," Twilight responded. "Not even a really small piece of one, because I've got the outlines memorized. But that's all I know."
The pegasus nodded. "Okay. I..." The slender throat distorted from the pressure of another gulp. "...know we may not have a lot of time. But there's still something I have to say. This is part of a device. It's not broken in a way where I could repair the physical aspects without a diagram. I can... sort of intuit what the rest might have looked like, but I wouldn't want to try rebuilding it just from that."
"You might have to." The tones had been stark.
The mechanic's lips quirked. "Rebuilding a device I don't know anything about, on instinct, Twilight. It's probably not a good way to die."
Twilight forced the shudder back. "I don't want you getting hurt. You know that --"
"Too late," was the too-calm reply. "'Hurt' was guaranteed when I said yes."
Almost frantic again, "Ratchette --"
The pegasus sighed. "-- I'm just... scared, Twilight. I get kind of dark inside when I'm scared." And before the librarian could try to find anything which would fail to help that, "The other thing is... I haven't exactly been experimenting. But I'm still looking at part of a device. It could be like trying to question a pony with a severe head injury. There might not be enough left to answer."
Normally, the image of that kind of injury would have been too horrible to hold for long: on that day, it almost served as a welcome distraction. "I understand."
"So," the mechanic quietly offered, "we're both going to find out what happens the hard way. And if you see something going wrong, Twilight -- you have to get rid of it. Fast. Put a hole in the ceiling with your field if you have to, because that's better than losing everything. Okay?"
She nodded. The pegasus shifted position slightly, tilting her head towards the right and the familiar-yet-strange mechanism which rested there.
It was designed to be mounted on the head and snout. Multiple little dials and switches were within tongue's reach on an inner jaw-proximity surface. Several small clamps, spring-arms, and flexible joints protruded from the forward edge. It was possible to identify several tools and Twilight, who had tried to use the thing all of once, had never figured out exactly what had to be done to all of those dials and switches in order to get any result other than the abrupt removal of all personal nostril hair.
Ratchette had invented the machine: something which didn't have a single thaum anywhere. It allowed her to pick up small objects, put them down again. Twist here, adjust there. Fine manipulators, with the emphasis on fine.
It substituted for the telekinetic manipulations of a field, for weights up to two-tenths of a bale. It let her be a mechanic.
It also made her look as if she had a giant steel spider eating her face, but ponies generally stopped mentioning that after the fourth visit.
"There's a camera on that shelf behind you." Her voice wasn't muffled. The designer had left plenty of room for normal jaw movement.
"That shelf? I don't see --"
"No, the other -- right, that one. It's one of mine. I was just tinkering with it a little. Seeing if I could get the inner reel to advance a little more quickly. I want you to use it. I think the doctors had the right idea there. If anything unusual happens and you've got time, take a picture."
Twilight nodded, and her corona gathered the little machine: something else which operated without magic, as the typical camera wasn't rigged to capture sound. A little off to the side, so it's not blocking my own view, but it's capturing on something close to the same angle. Keep the forward edge of the lens outside a receded portion of the bubble, so my hue doesn't influence the shot: that's what the doctors did... "Ready."
Ratchette turned again, and a small clamp went left. A tiny bottle was carefully taken off the table, smoothly opened by miniature artificial steel limbs.
"What's --"
"-- sterilizer," the mechanic quietly said. "For the device." She poured a little of the fizzing clear liquid onto the metal: drops clung to sundered silver. "And for me."
"For --"
"-- you read the transcript. You know what happens next."
It was Twilight's turn to swallow.
The foam lasted a little longer in the grey fur before fizzing into nothing.
"Saving brown earth ponies," the mechanic said. "Like Caramel."
"Um..."
With only half a smile, "I went out with Caramel. With the usual results for anypony who's ever gone out with him. Are we sure about this?"
"Um...."
"You're right," the mechanic decided. "Mr. Rich is worth it."
A long, jointed length of thin steel moved towards Ratchette's lower left foreleg. More fluid was poured onto it, and sharpness slid forth.
She didn't want to watch, and yet there was something in her which forced Twilight to inspect that foreleg. Looking for the thin lines of scars under the fur, and so she gained a moment of relief when she didn't really see anything: not beyond the normal minor distortions which came from a natural life. As Ratchette had said, the mechanic hadn't exactly been experimenting --
-- until now.
There was a soft hiss of air, drawn between the pegasus' teeth.
Automatically, "What does that feel like?"
"I just cut myself, Twilight. It hurts."
Abashed, "I meant --"
"I know what you meant," Ratchette quietly interrupted. "This is the part you wanted to ask about."
She moved her left foreleg forward, angled the knee. Blood dripped onto the broken device. Spread across the surface like a thin sheen of oil.
Twilight had been bracing herself for the smell of that blood: something which could set off a flight reaction in the weak-willed or for ponies who were already on the edge. She thought she'd been ready for the coppery scent. But it was Ratchette's blood, it was flowing from the wound of a friend, a wound she had asked to see inflicted, and...
...there was something strange about that scent. Still copper at the base, like just about all blood. It was just... more coppery than she was used to.
It looked like normal blood. It flowed, saturated fur before reaching the hoof. But that slight strengthening for one aspect of the scent suggested the mechanic was bleeding metal.
She looked away from the wound. Focused on the broken rod, and so saw the moment when one drawn-out end of sundered silver wire sparked.
"Accessing."
Twilight's head shot up.
It had been Ratchette's voice. Exactly Ratchette's voice, except for the flat intonations and total loss of the west coast accent and --
-- the pegasus' eyes were copper, matching the natural shades of her mane and tail. For hue, Ratchette's colors bordered on the metallic: she simply lacked the reflective aspect which qualified the true.
The irises were copper: they had always been so. They were now also slightly larger.
The metal was spreading into the whites of Ratchette's eyes, and did so at the same moment glow flashed into existence at floor level.
Twilight looked, and the attempt to keep her body from pulling back was channeled into her field, setting off the camera.
Hybrids possessed the essence of two pony races. It changed their magic, and the new power found myriad ways of manifesting. Ratchette was one of the earliest hybrids, from that part of the -- 'experiment' fouled the very mind -- when Gentle Arrival hadn't been sure about what the ratios were. The mechanic was pegasus mostly in form: the essence might have been almost entirely unicorn. But she had no horn.
The device was now glowing with the copper hue of a normally-sparking field because for Ratchette, the power was in her blood.
"Inquiry: function?" Ratchette tonelessly asked the air as her eyes flushed with metal. "Charge level recognized. Authorization. Function?"
Twilight had wanted to see it. Now she just wanted it to stop.
"Inquiry: function? Channels disrupted. Flow potentially active." Almost all of the white was gone. "Charge level recognized. Inquiry --"
And then those eyes went wide.
"Abort!"
The rod flickered, and Twilight's field triggered the camera at the moment the jewels flickered turquoise, just before that color burst through the copper and the broken device vanished --
-- reappeared under the table, some six hoofwidths to the right and well ahead of the little alicorn's desperate scream.
Ratchette's head spontaneously shook, and the movement seemed to send white racing in from the edges of her eyes as the rod went dually dark.
"...we almost lost it," the hybrid whispered. "I couldn't stop it from triggering, but I managed to make sure it used the lowest possible amount of energy. We never would have seen it again..."
Desperation had become the whole of her day, and now it was the desperation of not knowing how to help a friend. "Ratchette? Ratchette, please, talk to me --"
"-- it teleports. You saw that. I think there's a secondary component outside of the missing part, something protective. It's probably supposed to work as a conjunctive unit with another device. But by itself, it still teleports, Twilight. If somepony is in physical contact, then it also teleports whoever activates it, and that could potentially be anyone. Right now..." The pegasus took a deep, shuddering breath: individual feathers vibrated out of turn. "...there's a little under one standard charge left. And it's meant as something which creates round trips: I got that much. If I triggered that thing, it would go back to its starting point, or as close as it could come. I think it would probably fall short: I can't say by how much -- but there's enough left of the charge to get most of the way. There just isn't enough left of the device to try charging it up to full capacity. You'd destroy it. Repairing, or even jury-rigging... I'm not sure that's possible without a better understanding of the construction and workings. And as it is -- one transport. Discharged, empty, and gone."
"There's no spell which tracks teleportation," emerged as both lecture and self-defense. "The best I could do was attach myself to its effect. Join my own efforts to the device and make myself come out where it went. And I'd have to learn that spell."
"Could you escort?"
Twilight quickly nodded, because it had been a normal question and just as importantly, had emerged from a normal voice. "I could bring other ponies up to my limit and since something else is making the path through, my own maximum distance wouldn't apply. But when I can't be sure where we'd wind up --"
Stopped, as her wing joints loosened and her half-restored tail twitched.
"That thing allowed a pony to teleport."
Ratchette nodded.
"Devices which enable teleportation," Twilight softly said, "are the realm of theory. You need a guiding mind to access the between. Sapience. I know somepony who's been working on something which projects and summons small objects, but she has to be close and she directs the path herself. A device would never be able to --"
"It let his mind guide it. Just now, mine."
She knew the next words would be a lie, and spoke them simply to gain what turned out to be a complete lack of comfort.
"I thought somepony had to have found some way of pushing him through while remaining behind. For a device to do it, to let him manage teleportation -- that's impossible."
Ratchette shook her head once, hard. The steel mask fell away with a clunk, and normal copper eyes focused on terrified purple.
"It's like that poor stallion's mark," the hybrid quietly, unstoppably countered, "Like me just existing, Twilight. Anything which has already happened... was possible."