Grey Wind felt the temperature. The air around her had warmed up to approximately three hundred Fahrenheit. It was the radiation of the sun. This indicated that it was morning, the time when most citizens of this settlement would wake up. So she opened her eyes, rising into the room that doctor had settled her into. A warm current coursed through her body as the subunits making up her limbs came into motion. She used a few seconds to run a detection program on her surroundings. No foreign nanomachine signatures. This meant that she was safe--at least within a three-kilometer radius.
She could’ve increased the range of the scan—flexibility has always been the greatest advantage of nanomachines. She could easily dispatch some subunits from her mane and send them away for scanning tasks, but it would be insensible given the situation. According to her calculations, even if she had ordered her subunits to imitate the physiology of ponies down to every last blood cell, the encounter yesterday still raised her risk of exposure by approximately twenty percent. Some features of a nanomachine aggregate were just inconceivable. Normally this wouldn’t have been a problem. The ponies would not be able to do anything about her even if they discovered her true form, yet a new variable introduced yesterday had forced her to recalculate her chances.
Quite unusually, her wings shuddered without an order, forcing her to recalibrate their positions and generate another error log. That mint-green unicorn in the forest, the one named Lyra Heartstrings. The free energy she controlled, “magic” as the ponies called it, had the ability to disrupt the electromagnetic links between nanomachine subunits and disable them completely. A means to destroy the nanomachines, the elixir her creator had searched for so long was lying right here, in a world that is not even properly charted. The entirety of her database could not offer an explanation for this. For her, this served as proof that exposure was not an option. If that unicorn was to find out the truth about her, considering the incidents of the preceding two solar cycles, there was a more-than-half probability that she would use her magic to dispose of her on the spot.
And that was not the only thing strange about her.
Grey Wind concentrated energy into the subunits acting as her brain, initiating another round of calculations. It was meant to determine the intentions behind Lyra Heartstring’s actions yesterday—shielding her with her own body. As expected, the result was an unexplained scramble. Her processor gave out more than a hundred guesses, all with ridiculously small chances. Either there was another system bug, or what that unicorn had done was completely illogical: to survive should be the first priority of any organic life form, and to think that one such creature would give up her life for another? Pure ab—
Wait. Her hooves stopped mid-air as if they’d just been zapped. Reaching into her database, she quickly sent an order to look up the word “absurdity”. The results came in immediately:
Absurdity: a thing that is extremely unreasonable, so as to be foolish or not taken seriously, or the state of being so.
So there was another system error. This was out of her program. She was not built to classify actions as “extremely unreasonable”. She’ll have to fix it before it further corrupts her codes.
A soft knock on the door interrupted her system scan. Doctor Warmhoof appeared at the door and went up to her.
“Good morning, Grey Wind,” he sat down on the bed beside her, “feeling better today?”
“A bit,” she answered. Warmhoof flicked away her mane and checked her forehead.
“Looks promising,” he said, “should close in a day or two. Now let’s get your wing checked up, shall we?"
She wrapped the scan as Warmhoof took the X-ray shot for her. No system errors found. The bug must either be very deep or very well-hidden. She’ll have to put extra attention to it from now on. Warmhoof finished the examination by trying her wing ankle.
“Oh my…” he muttered, “I’ve always wanted to ask, how did you manage to recover so quickly?”
“Am I ready to go?” Grey Wind asked.
“Well, your wing joint appeared to be fully healed,” Warmhoof chuckled, “you must’ve got some solid cell division there, young lady. But I’d still suggest keeping that board on for a day or two. Make sure nothing goes wrong.
The doorbell rang downstairs. Warmhoof stood up.
“Excuse me,” he said and trotted downstairs. Grey Wind tried to use this time to finish another analysis on the odds of winning against the subunits of the Gray Tempest she’d faced on this world, but it was not long until she was cut off by Warmhoof’s call.
“Grey Wind, come downstairs! Your friends are here to pick you up.”
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Lyra asked, uncertain, “I think it’s a good idea, but to get half the town to—”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Nightjar smirked, “just you wait and see.”
And that’s when the front door of Warmhoof’s clinic opened. Nightjar and Lyra sat straight, watching Warmhoof walking out onto the street, Grey Wind following close behind him. Together their sights fell onto her flank, then their brows furrowed together.
Grey Wind’s flank was blank. She had no cutie mark.
The two friends quickly exchanged a glance. Grey Wind’s cutie mark was supposed to be a final testament for their guess, but now…
Let’s just try it. We have nothing to lose. Lyra read it out from Nightjar’s shimmering violet orbs. She nodded and put up a big, happy beam.
“Morning! Grey Wind!” She greeted cheerfully, “geez, you got us scared to death yesterday! How are you feeling?”
“She is fine,” Warmhoof replied, patting Grey Wind’s shoulder, “her wounds are healing normally. Just rest a few days and she’ll be good as new,” he offered the pegasus a smile, “oh, and another thing. I had Nebula look through your cutie mark condition when you were sleeping. She said the magic flow within you was perfectly normal,” he chuckled, “you are just yet to find that one thing you’ll tie your entire life onto.”
Grey Wind quietly nodded.
“So, Grey, got any plans?” Nightjar quickly asked, “anywhere you can go to? Anypony we can contact for you?”
“There are no more xeomorphs around this town,” Grey Wind immediately answered, “I’ll be leaving. Many of them are still roaming elsewhere.”
“What? No!” Nightjar squeaked, “your wing has not fully recovered! Are you sure you are going to fight those magical beasts when you CAN’T EVEN FLY?!” She hopped forward and took Grey Wind’s front hoof, “I know! You can stay with me and Lyra! Rest a few days, alright? I don’t want you to get hurt…”
“I don’t want to trouble you,” Grey Wind simply replied.
“Oh, come on!” Nightjar chimed, “take it as our gratitude. We never thanked you properly for bailing us out at that lake…” she smiled warmly, “I can show you two around the town first, and then in the afternoon we can read books together, and Lyra can play her lyre for us! It will be so much fun!” She looked at the pegasus expectantly, “so, how do you say?”
Way to go, Nightjar, Lyra mentally threw the griffon a hoof-up, then turned her attention to Grey Wind, now say yes, PLEASE say yes!
Grey Wind closed her eyes and fell silent as if carefully considering the option. Even in the bright daylight, Lyra still noticed that the green stripe on her mane was glowing faintly.
“I want to see this town as well,” she said, smiling meekly, “it’s my mom’s hometown after all.”
Grey Wind still said no words. Lyra didn’t know how long the silence was held. Subjectively it was only around ten seconds, but to her it felt almost like a century. Finally, Grey Wind opened her eyes and softly nodded.
“Fine. I’ll stay with you.”
“Great!” Nightjar shouted happily. The two of them both let out a secret breath of relief, “a tour of the great town of Memento, starting right now!”
Before Lyra trotted up to follow Nightjar and Grey Wind, Warmhoof leaned close to her ear.
“I lied,” he whispered, “you are on the right track. ‘If that sample came from a pony, then I’ll eat my own horn’, that’s what mayor Nebula said, down to every last word. Keep up the good work, Lyra. I’m curious to see how this’ll turn out.”
Lyra giggled and solidly nodded.
They went down along Moonlit Avenue all the way to the central square, then went on and started exploring the many streets radiating away from the plaza. Lyra noticed that different from the square-shaped blocks of Ponyville, the households of Memento are distributed in many layers of concentric circles, each arc between the two streets naturally forming a block. This is a common town plan from ancient Equestria, indicating that the town’s history maybe even longer than it met the eye.
This town could date to the era before the birth of Nightmare Moon, Lyra thought, looking at Grey Wind. The pegasus had remained quiet throughout the trip. Mostly she was just looking to the front, showing no interest towards the scenery of the town, then it would not be strange if her puppet is to appear here.
“Lyra,” Grey Wind suddenly called when they were walking down another street.
“Yes?” Lyra turned to her and smiled.
“There is something I’d like to ask you,” her voice was still the same, calm like a pool of dead water, “last night, in the forest. Why did you protect me?”
“Um…well…” Lyra was taken aback by this question. She laughed shyly, “you were in trouble, weren’t you? I could save you from the xeomorphs, so why not?”
“You put yourself on a direct collision path with their assault,” Grey Wind said, staring into her eyes, “there was a great possibility that you would be met with a lethal blow.”
“Well…otherwise it would have been you, wouldn’t it?” Lyra grinned, “we can’t allow that to happen.”
A green spark flickered on Grey Wind’s mane.
“I don’t understand,” she said, “you could have died instead of me.”
“To be honest, I wasn’t able to think at the moment. All I had in mind was that I had to save you,” Lyra answered. This wasn’t part of the plan, and she was telling the truth, “My brain sort of went autopilot.”
“I…” Grey Wind blinked, then slightly shook her head, “…forget it.”
This conversation seemed to have invoked some unexpected effects. Lyra was sure she saw it, even if it was just an instant—a sip of doubt had just flashed between those pair of cold, emerald eyes.