Rarity scanned the orbit around Terra with her hundred thousand eyes and no opposition forces could be found. She searched inside her hundreds of holds and no boarding parties could be detected. She finally relaxed. Her engines dimmed, and she let her boiling plasma cannons cool. Now came the test that she'd been dreading.
She opened her physical eyes and saw S.P.I.K.E. watching her. She sighed in relief. She tried to move her physical hand and it responded. She'd done it. She'd not lost herself to the machine. She slowly stood up and S.P.I.K.E. suddenly lurched forward and squeezed her tight. "I was so worried! I thought I'd lost you."
Rarity smiled gently and patted him on the back. "Now now S.P.I.K.E, none of that." She rose and climbed out of the mech unit. She attempted to climb down the ladder but her foot slipped. She began to fall, but S.P.I.K.E. caught her. He carried her down the ladder and placed her on her feet. Rarity walked upright but still rested an arm heavily on his arm.
"Thank you S.P.I.K.E." rang out on every speaker in the whole fleet. Rarity's eyes snapped open and she turned shakily towards the towering mech unit. She blinked and realized she could see herself from four different points of view. Even when the sync drive was powered down, she was still inside the fleet's computer. She broke down weeping in the deck and the launch bays sprinkler system activated. It was found that Rarity could still control any system in the fleet, but if she went out of range of Twilight's mech she would enter a vegetative state. Her mind was literally trapped in the Damocles.
On the beach Twilight dreamed of a beautiful woman with long pink curls blowing in the sea breeze, the tropical sun shining off of her. She approached the woman expecting to receive joy and love. Then the woman turned, and Twilight saw she was crying. Before She could ask what was wrong the woman drew a glowing sword and slashed her across the face.
Twilight's eye snapped open and pain greeted her. Her face hurt horribly and she couldn't see out of her right eye. She rolled painfully to her side and cried out in agony. She blearily looked around and screamed for the woman she loved. Then she remembered, it hadn't been a dream, Pinkie had attacked her. She gasped and her head snapped heavenward. Her remaining eye grew wide at the destruction and death she saw there. Blood and tears ran down her face in equal measure as she surveyed the damage.
Her aura began to grow and rise in luminosity. Twilight pounded her fists against the sand in rage. She screamed and her aura continued to brighten. Her hair resumed its ethereal quality but began to glow like a supernova. All that Twilight knew in that moment was rage. The woman she loved had betrayed her, her military was in ruins, her planet had been attacked and she hadn't been there. The sand beneath her began to melt into glass and the sea boiled as it approached her crouching form.
Celestia had just confirmed with S.P.I.K.E. that the battle was indeed over and was on a shuttle on its way to the Damocles when she felt Twilight's rage. Her joy at finding her lost friend died instantly when she felt the seething rage emanating from the woman she'd been so proud of. Celestia exited the shuttle and flew as fast as she could to the spot.
She had to put a hand to her mouth in shock when she saw Twilight.
It was a mirror image of her manifestation. In the sand, crouched, and screaming at some horrible wrong done to her. Celestia was heartbroken at the sight. She always remembered that rage and wouldn't wish it on even her worst enemy, now the woman she respected most in the galaxy was reliving her fury.
She brightened her aura and stepped into the blazing inferno. Her tears boiled off of her in Twilight's psychic fury as she closed the distance between herself and the screaming woman. She stopped less than a foot from her beloved pupil and layed a hand on her shoulder. Twilight's face snapped up to her and she saw nothing but animalistic snarling anger there. She knelt down and gently put her hands on Twilight's wounded face. "Twilight, I am here. Be still." She whispered.
Twilight's snarling face slowly softened and the furnace slowly cooled. Her expression slowly relaxed and soon her eyes stopped glowing. Celestia was shocked to see the wound to Twilight's face didn't reassert itself when she calmed. Twilight's rage turned to utterly broken weeping and she buried her face in her mentor's neck. Celestia held her favored pupil and softly cried in sympathy for one so noble brought so low.
On the Damocles Rainbow Dash had to be restrained in a cell in the ship's small brig. She was strapped down head to toe and her augmetic arm had to be welded to the wall.
Applejack had been beaten so badly that her face required reconstructive surgery and she was sent planetside with the other wounded. A full fifty percent of the Terran armada had been reduced to casualties. The dead had to be loaded into funeral barges and the wounded were ferried down to the planet by any ship that would take them. There was scarcely a hospital on Terra that didn't have at least one wounded soldier in it.
Thirty percent of the Terran armada had been knocked out of action and one in every ten ships was irreparable.
After Twilight had calmed enough to think clearly she had only one question on her mind. She teleported onto the bridge of the Damocles and locked eyes with S.P.I.K.E. She growled through tightly clenched teeth, "Where. Is. She?" S.P.I.K.E looked at her and sadly shook his head. Pinkie Pie had disappeared in the confusion and had stolen a ship in Rainbow's invasion fleet. They could neither find a tracking signal from the ship, nor from Pinkie's mech. She was simply gone.
On the I.N.S. Cloudsdale Pinkie Pie sighed as she plopped down into a seat. She'd sounded the evacuation alarm so every crewman on the ship thought that it was sinking and she was the only one left onboard. The coordinates to the Changeling's homeworld were still in the navigation computer, so her ship knew which way to go, all that remained was the week-long trip. She inhaled hard and said to herself,
"Step one. . . Complete."