Cold ripped the respirator from his muzzle, and flung it hard against the alley wall. Breathing as much of the city air as he could, he bit back the rising wave of bile. His eyes teared up in the process, but that was hardly the issue. Beside him, Fokienia peeked calmly out into the sky. A few of the pegasus pursuers had doubled back to the dead-end clinic after a short sprint and chase, but at least one was still out there. Were they circling? It wasn’t his job to know, or at least he wasn’t in any state to be looking. Grimacing, he spit, and wiped at his slobbered mouth.
“They’re regrouping.” Fokienia hugged close to the alleyway corner, but gave Cold her attention. “Good example of a fatal funnel back there. They got sloppy, and they paid the price.”
As a reply, Cold coughed and heaved.
“We need to keep moving… but just catch your breath.”
Cold’s PDA chirped anxiously. He knew what that sound meant.
“What was that?”
Not now... “N-Nothing,” he managed. After a few more shuddering breaths, he waved a hoof. “I’m… good. Let’s get out of here.”
Fokienia gave the sky one last check, before undoing her own respirator. She let it fall to the ground at her hooves. “This way.”
Nopony’s interest dawdled too much on them as they galloped down the Cupresso streets. Hugging close to the buildings, Fokienia drove them back toward the outer-edges of the city. After two blocks of traveling, they slowed, slinking to the edges of the crowds once again. There were substantially less ponies than before, but more than enough to give Cold reason to stick right by Fokienia’s side. She wasn’t bothered by the lack of spacing, but he figured there were currently more pressing matters than an invasion of personal space.
“Can you see them?” He didn’t bother to whisper; his lungs were burning.
Trotting further away by the moment, Fokienia was forced to stop bending her neck. “No. But we still need to leave.”
Again, Cold’s PDA chimed. “I can look up a map. It’ll… take a bit.”
Fokienia’s hoof landed on a nearby pony’s withers: she tapped them once. The stallion spun, only to come muzzle-to-neck with the looming earth pony mare, and her holstered disabler. His indignant look swiftly gave way to shock. “Y-Yes…?”
“Where is the nearest access point to the main bus transportation system?”
He snapped a hoof down the road. “E-Elevators are that way. At the wall.”
Fokienia tracked the sign, and wound back around to the stallion. She smiled sharply. “Thanks.”
As they trot briskly in the indicated direction, Cold kept his eyes on the road. “…That works, too.”
‘The wall’, as it turned out, was not quite what its name implied. Rounding around the last bend of the road, they slipped past the outer residences of Cupresso, and stood before their destination. The crowd of ponies behind them fell out of notice, and the worries of the chase dissipated. Fokienia stared. Cold could only imagine what thoughts were going through her head; even with his own experience with station transportation, he hadn’t expected the solution the engineers of Cypress had settled upon.
“I can’t believe they give everypony access to this.”
Fokienia tilted her head his way. “Elaborate.”
“That’s a gravity tunnel. A utility gravity tunnel.”
They both watched as an ‘elevator’ departed: with ponies on-board, a metal shuttle was magnetically un-clamped from the moorings of the transport station’s docking platform, and lifted upward into the abyss of the station interior, all without power. The tunnel itself was sealed from the atmosphere of the station and city, further isolating it from external forces. There were no visual indications of force at play, and still, the shuttle soared upward, passing behind a towering transparent shield, then behind the metal walls that separated Cupresso from the expanse beyond. Up and away, the ponies ascended, succumbing to the whims of their gravity-operated vehicle.
“Well, at least there’s no way they can shut it down.” Cold pointed, and Fokienia followed. “See that? They’ve got ten of those shuttles. But two of them are on their own side of the grav-tunnel.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re utility. Notice that nopony’s riding them. Even if this part of the station were to lose power, those would still be active. They maintain a zero-g atmosphere for this whole tunnel. Probably even keep a good bit of gravity and magnetosphere management along that access corridor.”
“So they can’t remotely prevent us from escaping.”
“Right, but they also can’t…” He paused, and glanced at her. “That’s… not what I meant, but—”
“Cold. We need to keep moving.” She started walking down toward the transport station.
He sighed, and continued after her. “Just trying to show that if there are ponies waiting for us to try and leave, we’re not out of options.”
“How would they be waiting for us? Do they have a monitoring system around here?” She glanced around fruitlessly. “I haven’t seen any cameras.”
“No, Cypress doesn’t employ cameras in public areas. No need to.”
“Why?”
“Nopony wants to be a criminal at a sovereign station. Only criminals you’ll find are the spacers at the docking hubs… and the white-collars behind businesses. I’ve been using Cypress as a home station for about three years now, and have never seen a crime committed, just quiet reports.”
There were a few lines of ponies attached to some of the elevators and empty docking clamps: all were short. A majority of the ponies at the station were resting around the seating spaces, but one couple was speaking to the one pony attending an information kiosk. All of them wore outfits—suits and dresses—a familiar sign that these were more business, corporate, and maybe even governing ponies. Ponies typically didn’t have a reason to travel between the different parts of the station, so Cold wasn’t surprised to see a lack of locals among the small crowd. If he had to hazard a guess, most of the ponies coming and going were from the residential sector above, the same place he’d passed through while on the main bus a day prior.
“So there’s no security?”
“Well…” Cold pointed out the kiosk attendant. “That’s the most ‘official’ presence we’ll see. But I can guarantee you that pretty much everypony here has the ability to call Concord.”
They both stood and watched as a shuttle descended from above, its rapid descent halted easily by the humming of the grabby magnetic clamps. Seals hissed, and after a brief moment, the pneumatic doors leading into the tunnel cracked open, and the ponies aboard stepped off.
“Shall we?”
Fokienia looked back at Cupresso. She sat still. “We have to.” She turned away.
They stepped aboard the shuttle. There were seats, but they both stayed up. As they waited for the doors to seal, nopony came aboard. The whole time, Fokienia’s eyes were on Cupresso’s false sky. Cold stood on the other side of the elevator, watching with her.
And then, the doors shut.
With a whir and a growl, the clamps released the shuttle. A weight settled across Cold’s gut as an invisible current guided the gravity-less shuttle upward. Fokienia stayed staring through the glass windows, unmoved by the shift in gravity.
“Is it possible for you to commandeer one of these shuttles?”
Cold blinked. “Can you?”
She sighed, relaxing as she turned away. “Yes, Cold. I know I can. Through the hatch in the floor is an access point. A terminal that can operate this shuttle. Along with the rest of what I can only assume is the life support system responsible for why we’re currently breathing. My question is, can any other pony access these systems?”
Momentarily, Cold remembered to breathe. He hadn’t even considered that they were essentially in an independent craft. They were completely isolated from the station. “Huh… maintenance crews would, I think. I’m not sure how Cypress manages their gravity tunnels. Most stations don’t even have the liberty of using shuttles like this.”
“There are currently projectors on all sides of us. They are responsible for the propulsion of the shuttle. If somepony could access these systems, they could easily alter our course, or expose us to the vacuum outside.”
They were both silent.
Cold sighed. Fokienia probably didn't intend on fostering paranoia, but he was starting to feel it. “Let’s hope that nopony’s waiting for us, then.”
The ascent was broken by an ear-piercing buzz from Cold’s jacket. Fokienia flung her head his way. She seemed impassive, but Cold could see the turmoil roiling beneath the waves. Dutifully, he reached out with his magic. There was no use hiding it anymore. The PDA slipped free from his jacket, and came to life. A corner of it flashed with red. He tapped the symbol with his magic, and turned it away before the screen could change. He didn’t need to see it.
Fokienia looked at the device levitating in front of her. After a long moment, she gently pushed it away. “Does this change anything?” she asked, voice quiet.
Cold pulled the PDA back. “Think it means I’m sticking to you for the foreseeable future.” He put on a light grin. “That’s not so bad, right?”
“You’re a criminal.”
He closed his eyes. His smile fell. “I’m just trying to help somepony out of a bad situation.”
“Some ponies… can’t be helped. They can only be punished.”
“Guess that makes us a pair of masochists, then.”
A warrant. A warrant for his arrest. Not just a fine, or a ban from station services: a straight, grimy, warrant. Deep down, a part of him was terrified. But another part of him… was proud. And it drowned out that terror from the deep. He’d never been one to callously dance around the law, but he did pilot circles around them. Cold was a courier, a captain, a pilot. Fokienia was a mare in dire need of deliverance, and the first pony he’d ever met that truly skimmed the law while seeking justice and absolution. As far as he could tell, Fokienia needed answers, and hope. If there was ever a time to question if he was doing the right thing, it was now.
Her voice was soft: nigh-melancholic, nowhere near the flat intonation she usually exhibited. In this precious moment, they weren’t two ponies cross-threading moral fibers, they were just two ponies. She looked at him. “You really trust me?”
“Yes,” Cold admitted.
Fokienia’s eyes lingered on him. She dragged herself away to a corner of the shuttle, and sat down on one of the cushioned seats. The earth pony watched him as he watched her. “You’re a good pony.”
The kirin breathed. In a flash of the gravity tunnel’s lights, he saw wings, wings for her. But it was no illusion. “Have faith, Fokienia. There are more ponies out there who will see the good in you.”
“…I hope so,” she said earnestly. “But there’s been little hope in the… life, I’ve known.”
“Even in war, there is hope.”
“Even if a war must be waged for the truth?”
“Yes. The answers to life do not necessitate death as sacrifice. You’ll find truth, so long as you believe and trust in the inherent good of ponies. Be kind, and help those in need. Even if you never know them, they will know you. And where ponies like you stand, hope will exist. And hope always finds history.”
“If ponies are inherently good, then why was I created?”
She knew he couldn’t answer that. Cold didn’t speak.
“…I was promised a future.” Fokienia’s gaze wandered upward, through the roof of the shuttle. “Not a second chance at life, but a promise for a future I would help build. My body was broken, but whole. They engineered me in the pursuit of the future, and they led me and others in the path of their grand design. A future to mend the broken, and create the unbroken. The Project and the Facility were established to root us all in life, and ensure a lasting future. That is what I learned, and that is what my hope relied on. And then, that path turned. Perhaps some goodness was tainted along the way, or perhaps some natural poison seeped into the well. Peace turned to war, and I was blind to it. Raised on that goodness and hope, it all seemed a part of my good fate. And it would’ve been so, had I not made my choice. Made my destiny.”
The shuttle began to slow. Fokienia looked down from the ceiling.
“If ponies can be inherently good, then they have shown themselves to be prone to self-corrupting destinies. We may be born equal, but we are made unequal. War is the most accomplished source of imbalance for ponykind.”
The shuttle hummed low, and the rooted tunnel of Cypress drew them to the final branch of its concourse.
“I have studied war. I have practiced subterfuge. I understand inequality.”
The elevator arrived at its stop. The hull outside clunked as magnetism swam through metal. A hiss erupted from the doors, and a growl wound through the stale shuttle air; the doors kissed.
Fokienia pulled the disabler from the front loop of her jumpsuit. She placed it gently in her bag. “But in spite of my history, I want to be seen as an equal.”
Finally, the shuttle doors opened.
They shared a look. She spoke one last time. “You’re a good pony, Searing Cold. You followed me. Now, I follow you.”
There was nothing he needed to say. He just had to act.
The kirin led the pony into the world that had loomed above her for so long: a burrowed bastion of a former asteroid outpost, founded by Equestrian pioneers, and hope. The roots of five cities led to its trunk, and from it, branches of hope and prosperity had spread across its corner of the galaxy. In peace, Cypress Central had brought a great deal of life to the species of the Cloudsdale Quadrant, and its neighbors. A shining diamond of commerce, ingenuity, and hope. In one of the most inhospitable systems on the rim of the Equestrian Core Worlds, Cypress had fostered an example as a new Equestria. The prospective grounds for a new paradise.
But ponies had never been very good at keeping track of history. It was easy for them to forget conflicts. Cold saw the inherent goodness in ponies, but he recognized that they had their failings. Equestria—and by extension, the systems it controlled today—whether ponies knew it or not, had been forged through war. The holistic truth of Cypress Station was that while it was untempered by war, it had not left war untouched: the Project and the Facility, as Cold knew them now, had forged for years without reveal. Ponies had suffered, and would suffer, just as Equestria had in its millennias-long history.
The peacemaker had brought a war machine to Cypress Central. More than ever before, he saw that what would come was inevitable. The sooner that war came, the easier peace would be. The fires would be stoked by his guiding hooves, and he could only hope to be there to help quench them.
Cold was ready to sacrifice his destiny in order to preserve the ones he believed in.
It was the kirin way.
Fokienia was used to tight, cramped corridors. She was a big mare, and the world knew it. That didn’t mean it cared much for her. Ventilation shafts, coil conduits, maintenance crawlspaces: there was almost never room for her, but she made room. She always blended in. Whether on order or out of self-satiety, Fokienia had to make the narrow quarters of the world work in her favor. It was tiring, but success was paramount. In the end, claustrophobia was not an option. Fokienia had to squeeze by, or die trying.
Cypress Central was everything but cramped.
To Fokienia, if it could be found in Cupresso, it was probably five-times larger in Cypress Central. Yet, none of it seemed too different in purpose and capability, save for the ponies: somehow, there were many more ponies here, but that likely had something to do with the sky-scraping apartments around them. Even the streets of the urban polity were more spacious, and she had already thought them to be a bit of a stretch. Following Cold through the populated streets of the artificially noon-lit city, she took the moment to lower her guard somewhat. Her curiosity got the better of her situational awareness. A fierce tactical error, but that was fine: in order to properly get a feel for the city, she had to walk like the ponies around her. A kind of innocence settled over her mind as she let herself be enraptured by the wide world.
She tried not to think about where she stood in the world before her induction into the Project. At least, not often. Sometimes on the slower training operations, she was forced to spend hours in isolation, waiting for a simulated target to pass by or ‘wake up’. Alone in the vents above, or below the proving ground floor. Secluded with just the methodical countdown of her quiet breaths, and the solace to bide memories. It wasn’t as if she wanted to forget, but it was impossible to meet her regime’s standards if she didn’t keep moving.
Now, she didn’t have those limits. The only ones left were the self-imposed rites she’d grown to dance around. So Fokienia took a breath, and enjoyed a spell of ignorant bliss. The walls of the steel sky crumbled away, leaving only her infinitesimal home, the one she’d never truly known, open to the expanse of the galaxy beyond. A bit of her heart panged—she really did want to leave Cypress and explore what was out there. The cold truth was that her work was unfinished, and only just beginning. For now, the sight of the skyscrapers brought some fulfillment to her new thirst for adventure. It was good to be free.
“We could still bus the rest of the way to Cypress Central. We’ve got a bit of a hike ahead of us.”
Cold’s words brought her back to reality. “A hike?”
“A walk.” He looked back at her. “Oh, I’m sorry. You meant the actual distance. Yeah, it’s a long walk. We’re in a residential zone right now. There should be a station nearby, the buses run underneath.”
“Walking is fine.” She preferred the certainty of hooves over the next gravity-powered vehicle they could be riding in. “Harder to find us that way.”
Cold nodded. “That makes sense.”
It was almost a little hard for Fokienia to believe that they weren’t in Cypress Central already; like Cupresso, these were just the outskirts of the station’s center. “How far do these residences reach?”
“As far as you can see,” Cold replied simply.
There was already a lot in view. A ways ahead, a concrete ocean laid a berth of streets between the buildings, followed by the ever-climbing cluster of neon-lit slabs. The crowds doubled back in size there, sequestered among the high-rises. From where she stood, it was at least a few minutes trot to reach them. So Fokienia looked from left to right, observing the profoundly quiet residences. The morning time had come, and presumably, many of the ponies who lived here had gone to work. At least, she couldn’t possibly imagine why a pony would hide themselves away indoors when there was so much to see around Cypress.
The upper-floor shuttle station fell behind them as they navigated down the city streets. Fokienia’s eyes swayed back and forth, capturing as much of the place as she could. High above, orange lamps of false suns beamed from between the apartments. No pegasus dared to dart between the buildings, opting instead to fly near the searing bulbs.
The city itself had a distinct sound. In the Facility, there was a rhythmic thumping that tended to coil behind her ears, worming its way deep until it followed her into her dreamless sleep. In Cupresso, the industrious grind of metal and bustling airflow had been a constantly assured feature, audible even among the toiling crowds. Here, even on the edges of Cypress Central, the crowds were much more reserved, but the cracking of hooves echoed through the plates of concrete and steel below her hooves. Thunderous and cantankerous, the density of Cypress Central exacerbated the mellow march of the ponies who lived here. Cupresso had choked out much of her awareness of the working state, as there was still plenty of good feelings amid the smoke and steel, but even without the acrid black clouds that drifted barely overhead, Cypress Central was still marked by pocks of industrialization and economic prowess.
Halfway to the looming towers of white and gray metal ahead—notably sleeker than the concrete apartments—Cold gently pried her from her thoughts. “What do you want to ask when we get there?”
She didn’t quite know yet. She just wanted answers. “I want to speak with an authority. A pony in power.”
Cold shook his head. “I don’t want to rain on your parade, but I really doubt the governor, or anypony else for that matter, would be willing to see you.”
“Why?”
“Well… for one, I’m a criminal, now. Even if you’re not a criminal in their eyes, you’d be guilty by association… unless it doesn’t count if I wait outside.” He smirked lightly. “Plus, I don’t know if a busy pony like the governor would be around.”
Fokienia frowned. “I am certain that they are responsible for the orders I receive. They’ll make time.”
The kirin didn’t reply.
Internally, she huffed. He didn’t need to hear all this in the first place, she was the only one who should’ve been involved. “Tell me about the governor. What is their role?”
Cold rolled his withers as they walked. “I’m really scrambling my brain today. Okay… so, governorship covers a lot of matters for a station. For Cypress, the governor’s pretty much the de facto owner, like an old Equestrian vassal in servitude to the Crown. It’s not supposed to be a permanent role, but it might as well be seeing as how Cypress is still classified as a station and not a hab. And sure, he could be traded out at any time, but none of the corps have proposed a referendum for the role in say… the last ten years?” He paused, then shook his head. “Sorry. Anyways, he keeps tabs on all things station, and system-related. Files reports and communications for the Core Worlds. Regulates everything traffic-related, too. All of that with plenty of corporate backing, of course. Advisors and the like. A business council is what Cypress really needs, but again, it’s officially a station, not a habitat.”
“What forces does he command?”
“Forces?” Cold hummed briefly. “On the security side of things, he’s just about the ultimate authority on all matters for the star system. The headquarters for the Cloudsdale Quadrant Concord is stationed a dozen systems back toward the ECW, so as far as running system lockdowns and authorizing permits for pilots, local Concord are region-level enforcers under his office. So, station and system security, and then some.” He thought for a little longer. “It’s a neat gig, but I wouldn’t want to spend a day in his horseshoes.”
Fokienia looked up at the gleaming citadel. Above them, the ceiling of Cypress Central crawled upwards, opening up further. The pegasi seemed to come back down, tucking into straight, laterally constricted lines. “Why?”
“I already have to keep up-to-date with all station and system regulations. If I had to make them, report them, and disseminate all of it, well… I’d go insane.” He finished his profession with a low chuckle.
“Are there no other stations in this ‘star system’?”
“Just a fuel outpost orbiting our gas giant, but that’s technically a subsidiary of a corporation here in Cypress. Nowhere near the size of the station, either. Maybe a few dozen ponies working there? I’m not sure.”
The buildings around them fell away. Fokienia blinked rapidly, and stepped closer to Cold. She’d been caught up asking for and processing Cold’s answers. Suddenly, they were in the midst of another crowd, and the quiet murmur of voices surrounded her. Her heart briskly beat twice in succession. They passed through the fetlocks of the city streets boxed around the city, and truly entered the heart of Cypress Central.
Cold stopped, and she did as well. He pointed with a cloven hoof. “See that up there?”
Following his hoof led her eyes to a place deeper into the city. Past a few squat buildings, the rising towers disappeared, leaving a vast swath of empty air between the ground and the raised station ceiling. All across the roof at that point, much of the asteroid shell had been left unreaved, and all the metal about the ceiling met an end at the stone. Implanted to the belly of the natural roof was an enormous cube of blue-green metal. It jut outwards and down, blooming like a swelled bruise. From a distance, it was hard to tell what exactly it was, but there were several wide windows that glowed in bright whites, bleeding out onto the city below.
“That’s Central Command. That’s where Concord HQ and the upper offices of station administration are holed up.”
“How do we get up there?” Her eyes stayed locked to the location.
Cold set his hoof back down. “We’re not uh… we can’t go up there, Fokienia.”
“Why not? If that’s where command is, then we’ll go there.”
“It’s a restricted area. We can’t just go…” Cold stopped, and she felt his stare on her. He scratched at his ear with a hoof. “Look, station administration has offices down here. We’ll just go there first before we… get drastic, okay?”
Fokienia opened her mouth to object, but as she turned to face Cold, she halted. In his eyes, she could see fear broiling. That vile feeling crept up her throat, and she swallowed before her neurostimulators could intercept it. “Okay.”
A small part of Fokienia felt like a filly again; she let Cold guide her completely, letting her optical augments ‘rest’ for the stint through the central city. Even with all the activity she’d seen across Cypress so far, all the flashing lights and sounds here proved there was no shortage of things to find and experience. The sounds of life amid the residential zone paled in compare to the inner streets of Cypress Central: while the street sat on a flat level, cheery voices called out on loop from glowing signs and screens. It was a constant barrage of information that looped over each other a hundred times a second. Ponies in the crowd around her chattered just as energetically, acting as if the noise overhead was permissible. Beside her, Cold was impassive, save for a light smile stretched across his muzzle. How could he handle such a shift in volume so easily?
“Is this why you sleep with music?”
Cold tilted her way abruptly. “What?”
“There’s so much noise, here. Do you enjoy it?”
All the befuddlement on his face disappeared in an instant. He laughed, his head dipping before he replied, “A little bit, actually.” His focus was still largely on the road and ponies ahead, but he tried to make eye contact with her as often as he spoke. “But no, I sleep with music for other reasons entirely. How’d you know that, anyway?”
“When I was using your computer, you slept with music. I heard it playing.” It was probably best that she didn’t mention how her early suspicions had brought her so physically close to him. A sharp laugh from a passing pony caused her to swing her head, but she returned soon enough. “Why do you enjoy this?”
He looked to his right, where the main thoroughfare and flow of ponies bubbled by. “I guess I just like knowing that ponies are doing well.”
“And your music?”
Cold didn’t answer immediately. “Space is a lot of empty quiet,” he began, much of the gusto having left his voice, “It’s good for my mind to have some kind of noise to process. Makes it all feel real.”
“Feel real,” Fokienia repeated. She let the words hang in the air between them.
“Yeah.”
A deep cold bowled over her senses. It wasn’t emotional, but it wasn’t indicative of external forces. Fokienia shivered, and turned a corner with Cold. What had settled in her that made her feel so… unwell? Before she knew it, her neurostimulator buzzed away, and the shiver dissipated. She kept walking, waiting for the feeling to return, even though she knew it wouldn’t.
Until she shivered again.
Her eyes caught a glint of green in the distance. She was galloping before Cold could reply.
Cutting across the street, and through the crowds, Fokienia ran. Whatever words came from the ponies’ lips, they fell futile against her deafened senses. The pervasive cold doubled over, and she pressed harder into the ground; it shook beneath the tremendous full-weight of the augmented mare at a dead sprint. The tapping of servos and motor neurons alike dug cavernously, shrouding away from the cold as it tried its damnedest to control her. In the vision she held, all she could see was that great green glint, not taunting or jeering, but calling, waiting for her. Great thumps of steel and ‘crete turned to soft soil and brush. The earth crumbled beneath her, and she breathed calmly, not the least bit winded by the exercise. Now, only the cold and the colorful visage remained.
The path came to an end abruptly. The enamored colors billowed around her. Her hooves buzzed angrily, but not all of her felt the same. As she slowed, feeling soared back into her hindhooves. Warmth sept in, trickling like a babbling brook, a warm spring. She glowed while eyes fell across her. She didn’t care, she wanted that warmth to stay. Tilting her head upwards, she breathed, and let her eyes fall shut. The warmth crawled in so very slowly, but there was still such strength behind it. Up along her body it traveled, until even the rooted stumps beneath her cold steel forelegs teemed with life.
Cold approached, his voice calling her name with worry. She didn’t reply, and instead brought her head back down. This was right. This was well. She needed this, and had waited so long for this.
Finally, there was a pulse. That slow, syrupy warmth she desired. It filled her completely. Her neck dripped with warmth, and a sweet fragrance drifted by. A bubbling laugh rose in her chest. Almost panicky at the feeling, she tried to hold it close. Soon, she realized, it was meant to be free. She laughed, bright, happy. The giddiness was new, and she relished in it. Her neurostimulator, for the first time in so many years, waned. Fokienia had control.
Something reached out to her. She didn’t push it away. It was ephemeral, but just like that warmth seeping through her, it was no mere stimulation of her senses. This, she knew, was real. A tangible touch. A force. Magic.
She looked up, eyes open. Needle-like trees ascended toward the steel sky above, all proud. They were trimmed so finely, sharpened to a point. Together, in juxtaposition to a circle of water and grass, they enveloped a central tree. Giant, gangly roots, and a lithe, yet sturdy trunk. It towered so high above her, maybe even reaching above the low buildings surrounding the enclave she’d entrenched herself in. The strange trees touched at her through the soil and roots, and she knew for certain that they had spoken to her. The warmth in her hindlegs thrummed, and the leaves of the great tree seemed to wave back.
For a moment, Fokienia’s thirst was quenched. Her eyes fell to a gold plaque at the end of the path, a few lines of inscription centered on a small podium.
CYPRESS GROVE
THIS GROUP OF CUPRESSACEAE
DEDICATED TO THE COLONISTS AND SETTLERS
IN FOUNDING CYPRESS OUTPOST
Once more, she looked to the trees. They stood so out of place with the silhouette of polymer and steel in the distance, completely out of their element in both environment, and history. They were woefully underdressed for the place they’d rooted themselves, but they were prideful, and had grown so strong in spite of the differences. They did not merely loom, towering above the ponies here, but projected strength in droves, sharing it with the station-dwellers through their mere presence alone. A pulse waved through her hindlegs, and she smiled to the cypress trees.
Fokienia recognized Cold by her side. He had stood with her, gazing at the trees as she had. He looked to her, analyzing. She opened her mouth, closed it. Said nothing.
Cold didn’t. “How do you feel?”
She asked herself the same question. Among the myriad of artificial answers at her disposal, there was only one natural, organic outcome. “Alive.”
At this point, Fokienia had compiled enough data to form a solid scale.
Cold was infatuated with the expression of life: despite all signs otherwise, the destiny he’d formed was neatly attuned to the continued flourishing life of ponykind, and maybe all things living. A courier bringing life together, like that of the blood cells beneath her skin. Through his business, he helped maintain the connections that threaded ponies along cosmic strings. He hadn’t deserved to be put through her ordeals, but Fokienia could see that he wanted to help her. It was the destiny he chose.
Fokienia sought the existence of life. After so long held away from Cypress, she’d seen herself in Cold, but that hadn’t turned out to be true: he was a complement to the destiny she wanted to create. The skills she’d fostered through fate were all built to discover, and posit the existence of life’s hidden aspects. Yet, even if it was ill-fated, war was still life. Life that she knew how to control, and enhance.
In the spring of cypress trees, Fokienia found her place in that life. War and peace: she could destroy, but she could also create. As both life and machine, she saw everything. The fields were here, and she could plainly see that they yielded what she desired. But the water that fed them was tainted, passed down by some authority above, seeking to break life for their own creation. She, too, had seen her purpose tainted by that force, but the words of the grove cleansed the final vestige of that creator’s control.
Now, she knew that she could morph her destiny. She was not so sealed in fate, and she was still a pony. Right now, she didn’t know who or what was responsible for her life, but finding out was the easy part.
Fokienia spared a look to the kirin captain. Cold smiled at her. He knew where to take her, and she knew what had to be done.
“Are we close?”
“It’s not much further. You ready to go?”
Fokienia was trained to collect secrets. Soon, she would share them.
“Yeah.” She rolled her withers, then beamed. “I’m ready.”