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// Come Along With Me 
// Story: A Clash of Magic and Steam 
// by law abiding pony 
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Ponylands

The scars of the age of strife and enstripement ran deep, and in spite of the efforts started with Pinkie and Rarity,  Equestria and Lunaria never could reconcile their past to reunify. Their efforts did however prevent wars from ever happening between them again. Everything changed once ponykind reached into space over three hundred years later. The United Pony Space Initiative spearheaded the construction of local colonization and space based infrastructure. Seizing the opportunity, Celestia, Luna, and Cadence molded their respective nations to be under the UPSI’s governance once the need for such a body became apparent with the advent of civilian space stations and industries. In doing so, they at last ruled side by side as their subjects spread their wings to the stars and beyond. 

Griffin Aviaries

The civil war went poorly for Emperor Geraldy. Tired of being sidelined and her advice ignored, Gilda defected to Warlord Char’s host during a critical battle that saw her father’s armies crippled. While Char proved to be a capable administrator in his original lands, his governors proved far less so. In the decades to follow, the Aviaries floundered economically and socially now that they had no great enemy to focus on. 

With the Union reluctant to acknowledge Char’s right to rule over the empire due to the damage his civil war caused when it spread outside of the mountains, it was actually Luna who proved to be the first to recognize Char as the legitimate ruler of the empire. As a result, Char abandoned the old isolationist tendencies and instead began to exploit the aviaries’ mineral wealth of the mountains. It was a move that ultimately saved the aviaries’ economy. Between exports to Lunaria and the Union, the Aviaries experienced centuries of modest prosperity until resources from space eclipsed them.  It was not long after that they agreed to be subordinated by the Union under miserable terms in order to survive the space era.

The Union

With the threat of the Emerald Horde lifting off their shoulders, the Union felt cheated by how exorbitant the Lunarian basing tax became. It led to multiple protests outside of those very bases and Union government buildings. Tension nearly came to a head right before the griffin civil war unexpectedly spilled into Union territory where multiple villages were burned to the ground.  Novos formally asked the Lunarian garrison to aid them, only to be surprised that the soldiers were already preparing to march.  It was not long until Char was driven from Union territory.  Afterwards, the garrisons were not as contentious as they once were, and the Lunarians were begrudgingly praised for their protective efforts.  Even so, the garrison contract was not renewed.

The Union slowly coalesced into a formal single nation, and maintained open relations with Lunaria.  Eventually, when the Unionites joined the ponies in space, they were the only other nation able to negotiate a mutual accord due to the ponies’ early entry and prosperity breeding xenophobia in the other nations of the world. 


The Emerald Horde


Under Kateno’s leadership and reforms, the horde gradually morphed into an effective militarized state. Often called an army with a nation, they conquered several more countries before the cultural shift Kateno started evolved into a more secure and defend mentality.  Soldiers and veterans became the only people with more than basic rights and the impetus of war became less about individual glory and shifted to professionalism and honor to the state and one’s unit above all else. 

Their neighbors to the south and east would not experience peace for more than a decade until the day a pony landed on the moon. With the stars above now a very real battlefront the Horde had no presence in, the wars stopped, the armies halted. And in their place, the centauri reached their hands up to grasp the heavens.  

In the decades leading up to the formation of the space initiative, the horde suffered a long period of social upheaval as the thirst for glory had not been entirely snuffed out, and their enemies realized they could do more harm by not starting a new war. Ultimately the first military space station belonged to the Horde, and it was used to on itself as a civil war erupted.  Three kingdoms emerged from these would-be late-comers to the stars, often having to take what dregs everyone else had not yet touched.  Many centauri and their joint species turned to mercenary work or piracy after realizing there were only scraps left for them in the system in the decades before a means of faster than light travel was discovered.  It became a lasting tradition among mercenary and pirate bands to adopt unit monikers from the Horde’s own heraldry whether they hailed from the Emerald Horde or not.





Twilight Sparkle

House Sparkle stood as a beacon of technological progress, forward thinking, and an advocate for peace among ponies. On the first anniversary of Pinkie Pie’s passing, Twilight founded the Pinkie University and Research Enterprise in Manehatten. There she gathered the brightest minds of both nations, an act that breathed new life to the ruined city. Through the efforts of her university, Manehatten eventually grew and prospered until it became the host of the United Pony Space Initiative. Twilight was instrumental in the Initiative’s creation, and the university hosted the first mission control and astronaut training program. 

It was also through her efforts and those like her that pegacorns were officially recognized as ponykind’s sixth tribe after the rediscovery of the crystal ponies. After her death, the UPSI would always have at least one station be named Sparkle, and an explorer or flagship spacecraft by the name Twilight. 

Pinkie Pie

Pinkie found her true calling as a peace envoy, and went on repeated tours back to Equestria. Although her contemporaries claimed it was an exaggeration to say, she was accredited to reviving the Equestrian spirit.  She did this all while keeping the warhawks from gaining purchase among political circles. A statue of Twilight and Pinkie Pie was raised in the courtyard of Canterlot castle.  Twilight for her championing the return of the Royal Sisters, and Pinkie for her herculean efforts as the envoy. Twilight first coined Pinkie as being a titan of character. Pinkie’s passing was mourned by the entire pony world, and became a shared holiday to champion Harmony among ponies. 

Rainbow Dash

Captain Rainbow Dash retired as a three star general due to her efforts in taming Lunaria’s new territories. With her husband Sorian, she became the founding matriarch of a military dynasty famed for their dogged loyalty and bravery that lasted long past the day ponies climbed to the stars. Her name was first honored on the destroyer LINS Rainbow Dash which distinguished itself magnificently in the war against the Storm King.  As a result her name became traditionally tied to fast warships even long after the mare herself was lost to history. 

She spent her retirement making a nuisance of herself among high society gatherings.  An activity Luna refused to put a stop to, citing with tongue in cheek, ‘far be it for me to try and reign in the firebrand that could give my sister a bloody nose.’ 

It gave the old soldier no end of amusement to see her face in the news and gossip rags for all the wrong reasons.

Applejack

Always taking pride in a modest life, Applejack and the rest of the Apples took to life among the farm fields surrounding Talon Point with quiet dignity. Yet the sea always called to her.  It wasn’t long before she bought a small steamship to take on frequent pleasure cruises or sell her produce to the old world. A longing for the sea became a trait that seemed to stick to her family line. While the Apples never made it into the history books as a whole, their name became synonymous with hearty farmers and stalwart sailors of both the blue and later the midnight sea. Having an apple serving aboard was seen as good luck and a promise to return home. 

Rarity Belle

As with her time as a justicar, Rarity took to her duty as peace envoy with unwavering fervor. She turned the manor she was given into the ‘Sunrise Boutique’, and after some initial hesitation on the part of Tranquility’s populace, the lure of her exotic styles soon found her becoming a nexus of fashion and culture.  Given the separated nature of the envoy estate’s location, businesses cropped up around her, spreading Tranquility’s urban reach along what would be called Belle Street.  Barely a decade after taking her post, Rarity found herself being invited to soirées and various other social functions. It wasn’t long before a saying spread throughout the capital: ‘An Equestrian has no place in Tranquility, unless she’s Rarity.’  

The mare decided to remain in Tranquility until her dying day doing what she loved. She was the first Equestrian to be buried in the new world with full honors. A statue of her joined that of Twilight and Pinkie in the castle courtyard of both nations. The three mares standing together became a common symbol among ponykind after the founding of the UPSI as a demonstration that the divisions and scars between them on Equiss did not follow ponies into space. 

Fluttershy 

Following Rarity’s retirement from the Justicars, Fluttershy opted not to join a different one, and at last felt ready to found the Holistic Order. Given that she did not require her neophytes to give up the comforts of the modern world, recruits soon became more than she could handle alone. Slowly, but steadily, Fluttershy grew into her role as the order’s matron, and with her, the Holistic Order soared in strength and numbers. 

The order specialized in melding nature and urban life together so that from the air many Equestrian cities looked like buildings poking out from a forest.  The order also focused on finding the means to harvest or exploit natural resources in the most sustainable and productive means possible. Such great success drew Tranquility’s attention, and Luna signed a treaty so that the Holistic Order could operate within both nations. It was through the order’s many successes and good will that Twilight felt the time was right to resettle to Manehatten and accelerate the renewal of the city that her university had started.  It also allowed her to visit Cadence and Flurry Heart more frequently. 

However, by tying themselves so closely to the civilized, the other druidic orders became openly hostile to the Holistic Order, and anyone they saw as their allies. They spurned Fluttershy’s name and either further withdrew from the civilized world’s territories, or began undermining her order whenever they could. Eventually these disruptions culminated in all other orders being expelled from ponylands. 

Nevertheless, the Holistic Order followed ponykind to the stars where they became unparalleled masters of terraforming.


Celestia and Luna

The Sisters never chose to retire. As the years turned into decades and centuries, the pair slowly allowed the bureaucracy to handle the day to day until rumors of corruption, gross  inefficiencies, or negligence held sway, and the sisters would uproot it all and start again. When calls for more power to the people resurfaced, they would step back bit by bit until they had their vacation. It would all cycle again eventually. The only constant, was that the Sisters always retained their authority and power to usurp the government when the rot returned. 


Mi Amora Cadenza

Cadence learned much more on how to rule from Celestia than she ever did under Queen Corona. So much so that when the Crystal Empire resurfaced and King Sombra was defeated, she led the empire into a respected state, and turned to Twilight to help drag it’s time-lost people into the modern world.  

Leveraging the unique resources of the crystal regions, the empire became leaders of several key industries which proved instrumental in facilitating the UPSI in its early decades. 

Much to Cadence’s bemused chagrin, Shining Armor used his total authority over the Crystal Corps to finally implement miniskirts into the uniform. 

Lockstock

Following Rarity’s departure, Lockstock remained with Fluttershy. Though he had no talent for druidic magic, he helped her however he could. He used his contacts to find potential recruits, organize a training regiment, and obtain enough start-up funding to allow Fluttershy to focus on tutoring and codifying her philosophy. Eventually, he worked up the courage to ask for her hoof in marriage, and was accepted. 

Lyra Heartstrings

Lyra was ultimately the only one of Rarity’s retainers to remain with the justicars, joining up with Sweetie Belle. She became both Sweetie’s second and confidant, helping the younger mare refine her education with Lyra’s practical experience. Though she pined for a life on stage, Lyra felt her past binded her too tightly to the justicars to ever feel comfortable retiring until she suffered a broken leg that couldn’t heal right.    

She never looked back at the mirror world from whence she came. Not that she had an opportunity to do so, as the portal on the other side was inadvertently destroyed during a controlled demolition. 

Lyra ultimately settled alone near the fringes of Rainbow Falls, and was visited on occasion by her old compatriots.  One day, Sweetie Belle and Fluttershy dropped in to present birthday gifts, only to find the terracorn was missing.  In spite of a month-long search, no sign of Lyra was ever found, and she was presumed lost to the various waterfalls.

Sweetie Belle

Sweetie Belle ultimately couldn’t grasp the same zeal that had gripped her sister, and her love of the job faded.  Nevertheless, she served the Justicars with distinction for the full thirty years required for a pension. She led a quiet life after that, visiting her children and grandchildren, save for having a modest amateur singing career in Ponyville’s various lounges.  

Gallus

Gallus was indeed cured of his poisoning and petrification, and none too soon as Char was already on the warpath.  Following the death of his father and the sundering of his armies, Gallus fled to the southeast and gathered all of the followers he could to escape. Char was expected to execute him as a rival claim to the griffin throne, so he took who he could into the Union for asylum. 

In respect to his father, Queen Novos and Summer Flame welcomed the refugees. When Char eliminated all remaining sources of resistance, he turned his gaze to finish off Gallus.  Still on a strong war footing, Char did not believe the Union would stand up to him in defense of the erstwhile prince, nor that the Lunarian forces would care to interfere since he was not the Emerald Horde. He was bloodily wrong. 

The following conflict was a brief one. With his army defeated in the field, Char retreated to the mountains, a place no one truly wanted to besiege. 

As for Gallus, he opted to settle his followers in the Union itself and they became the glue that enabled the Union to fully come together. Relations chilled between the Union and Char in the years to come, claiming Gallus and his followers as traitors and cowards.  It was a pervasive sentiment that ultimately led to the Aviaries never capable of being more than a source of mineral wealth or mercenaries for distant wars. 









…



Twilight awoke with a start, and instinctively jumped to her hooves. She found herself not on her deathbed surrounded by friends and family, but a large ceaseless meadow. Swaying tall grasses and sunflowers filled her view as the sunless blue sky stood above her. The sky was not empty though, as countless distant figures were slowly drifting off over the horizon. 

It took her a moment longer to realize she was standing unaided. She looked down and realized she was no longer plagued by the frailties of old age, and that she was mostly transparent. Her skin was barely a ghostly blue outline at best, yet burning at the center of her chest was a small but steady ball of purple flame with embers circulating around her extremities and back again.  I died… She blinked slowly as her recent memories came back in patches.  The dozen crying faces were gone, but their sobbing still echoed in her ear for a few moments more until the wind and grass took their place. 

“So this is the grassy meadow Luna talked about. But I don’t understand, shouldn’t I have needed to take the potion to still be conscious?”

“Twilight!” cried an unsettling voice from within the tall grass. It sounded eager to see her, but was composed of five different voices, each of them frightfully familiar. 

Unsure of what to do about the voices, Twilight readied herself for anything and was about to call out. However, she felt a tug pulling her towards the source of the voice. It was as if gravity was coming from two different directions. “I’m here.”

The grass rustled wildly as something raced towards her.  Bracing herself, Twilight wondered if she could even be harmed. 

Emerging from the grass was a rather strange willow wisp. It was like her in many ways. The wisp was more spherical, but it shared the same thin transparent blue skin and a purple flame at its core. “Twilight, I knew all I had to do this time was to wait!” It cheered manically, the flame convulsed with every word. 

It was then that Twilight recognized the five voices. They were all of ponies that she had held closest to her heart, and the voice she missed the most was there. “Pinkie Pie?”  Dared she hope?  “It’s it really you?!”

“That was my first life, yup yup!”

Twilight raced to hug her long lost sister and was grateful her legs and wings didn’t phase through her like the ghosts they were. “I missed you.  Damn it all, I missed you.”

Unable to be more than a ball, Pinkie could only float there and accept the embrace. “Twi, you silly filly, we’ve only been apart for ten years total.  You recognize all of my -ah- other voices, right?”

“A bit,” Twilight confessed as she started focusing on Pinkie’s multiple tones and manners of speech. 

With a bit of a wistful hum, Pinkie started to sing a heart aching song. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy, when skies are gray.”

Tearing up, Twilight joined in together. “You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.”  She couldn’t go any further, and Twilight squeezed Pinkie even tighter as the pain of loss and joy wracked her body. She didn’t care that Pinkie lacked the means to reciprocate, only that she stayed close. 

Pinkie gave her time for the tears to dwindle away into sniffles. “During my second life and on, I wouldn’t know why to sing that song when I met up with you again, but it called to me.”

The bittersweet tears renewed, but Twilight was able to speak through it. “I sang it to you as you passed away. And I did so every time after that.”  Twilight finally let go and tried to wipe away the tears, but as a ghost, there were none to be had. “I had hoped you would remember it since it was the last time you heard my voice as just a Pinkie… I know you came back, but you never remembered growing up together. You were my dearest friend, my son one time,” Twilight was still a bit wigged out by that one. “Even a kirin once. But it…” She sighed and shook it away. “But it doesn’t matter, you were with me all the same.”

“You can blame the kirin on me,” came a heavy, new voice that made Twilight’s very core shake and shutter. A broken window appeared out of thin air with a single obscured head that was barely visible, save for the eye peering through the crack in the glass. “I was curious to see if your bond would survive transcending species. You proved to be correct, amusingly.”

Twilight felt like she was being pressed down, like her aged weakness had returned in full. Even Pinkie dropped to the ground and was compressed into an egg shape. The eye narrowed in annoyance and the crack in the glass mended a bit. The pressure on the ponies slackened, and they stood or floated once more. “It seems despite retaining your form without cheating, you are still not ready for a prolonged conversation, a pity.”

“You must be Terra,” Twilight stated with nervous reverence. “The ahh… Celestia and Luna spoke highly of you.”  As the lone eye focused intently on her, Twilight felt paralyzed.  Over her life, she stared down the barrel of more than one gun, two cannons, and more than a few flying sprays of molten metal, and of it combined paled compared to that single green eye.

A rumble of tired amusement shook Twilight to her core. “I’m sure they did.”

Searching her memories for the stories Luna spoke of the entity, Twilight gingerly stepped up to the floating window.  “I apologize for any inconvenience, as I understand it, I - really shouldn’t be awake, should I?”

“Inconvenience?” Terra’s humorous rumbling laugh did not come from the window, but the very ground itself.  The grass and flowers shook with it.  “Child, conversing with others is why I do what I do.  Even though I removed my capacity for boredom, conversing with what few beings that can reside here for any length of time can become tiresome since only a few species have come as far as even you have.”  The window and the great eye behind it focused on Pinkie Pie. “This one used medication to remove herself from the current above. Reshaping her into a sphere helped preserve her strength for a time.”

Adopting a thankful tone, Pinkie bounced on top of Twilight and nestled herself on her sister’s withers.  She also exerted some effort to only speak in original voice.  “In my last days as Chill Breeze, I knew you were close to passing away. So I took Luna’s potion to ask Terra here to delay my resurrection until you arrived. He offered to protect my spark for a year before sending me back to life. And that he would pull you out of the current so we could see each other again.”

“Ten months and two of your days.”  Terra closed in on Twilight, making her shrink back a bit in primordial terror.  “Remarkable,” Terra said as it scrutinized Twilight intently.  You just finished your sixth life, and yet your last one solidified your spark to such a degree that there is little trace left of your past selves.”  The god studied her form with more than just sight alone. “Or should I refer to you as a flame now?  That seems to be a rather unique trait among the magical species out there.”  Terra didn’t seem to care for the word, but chose what was familiar to the pair.  “Could it be because your last life was unusually long for your species?  Perhaps aided by your counterpart subconsciously using your bond to return to you time and time again?” Terra asked itself more than Twilight. 

Her ears falling flat, Twilight looked over to a wing she outstretched to see.  “That’s not a bad thing is it?”  She looked over to Pinkie Pie who floated there with a seemingly casual bobbing up and down. “Being solid, I mean.”

“Depends on how you see it, I suppose.”  The window orbited Twilight, as she was scrutinized by some unknowable metric.  “When I prepare a spark for reincarnation, I see their lives. It is almost universal that individuals who live much longer than average for their species grow discontent with existence.  Change becomes a desire strong enough that the elderly welcome death. As you did in your final years. But that passion for life did not fade until after living five lifetimes. And life molds the spark it houses. As you are now, I firmly predict your flame will be drawn to a newborn pegacorn filly.  So the only question that matters now is…”  Terra pulled back so both Twilight and Pinkie could not mistake its words.  “Twilight Sparkle, do you wish to keep your bond with Pinkie Pie?”

Summoning the iron will that saw her through four centuries, Twilight pulled Pinkie Pie into a vice-like embrace.  “Absolutely. No question!”

“You already know my answer,” Pinkie said with a knowing twirl of her inner fire.  

“Indeed. Take care however,” Terra warned with enough force to vibrate Twilight to the core.  “As I stated, your spirit will gravitate towards a pegacorn mare, and should you live such a long life again, it will be all you ever can reincarnate into.  The only way to return your mailablity is to deepen your origination, but that would certainly sever your bond. Your compatriot here is safe, as she is still malleable.”  As if to demonstrate, the eye pulsed and Pinkie’s body convulsed. She yelped in panic until she was once more in pony form, only more of a blank slate. 

When Twilight recovered from the shock of Pinkie’s change, she was so overcome by the trauma of loss that she bolted over and gave her a proper vice-like hug. Yet Terra’s words kept her from truly enjoying the shared embrace, or even hearing Pinkie’s joy. Her first thought was to wonder why Terra presented her situation as a problem in the first place.  She did not desire a unicorn’s magic, and she had long ago created a means to fly.  But then she pondered a bit more. She was already a forward thinker, her tribal nature demanded it, yet a god was far more so.  She detached herself from Pinkie who by now realized her sister was highly distracted. “Are you saying if ponies evolve past pegacorns I could be locked out of reincarnation?”

“Wait what?” Pinkie asked in worried shock.

“You understand the way of things. It is possible what happens in your next life could change this fate, but you will not remember the dilemma to act against it.  So I present you with two choices,”  Terra leaned forward, it’s growing interest in her strained the glass. “Keep your bond at the risk of never tasting life again, or I restore your malleability at the cost of your bond.”

Pinkie pulled away from Twilight’s side with terror in her eyes.  “Please don't tell me you’re considering this! We could always find each other again some other way.”

Nuzzling Pinkie with sigh as the pain of loss slowly evaporated, Twilight didn’t care if Pinkie had no fur, or even noticeable body warmth.  All she cared about at this moment was that her sister was with her once more.  “Pinkie, how many times have I nearly died in my past life?  As far as I am concerned, this is no different.”  Twilight hugged her tighter, and a tear fell off her cheek.  “A life without my sunshine, my rock, is no life at all.”  She pulled back again and gave Pinkie a look of absolute conviction.

It was a gaze not even Pinkie could ever defeat. Even after knowing Twilight for six lifetimes, Pinkie was too moved to speak.  She could only lean into her true sister and cry joyfully at the time they spent together, and the times to come.

With Pinkie still leaning against her, Twilight faced the windowed eye with that very same conviction with her featherless wings proudly flared out.  “I didn’t get as far as I did by playing it safe. I jumped off that cloud until I learned how to fly.”

“So it is decided,” Terra announced with satisfaction.  The window shattered, and the great green eye pulsed.  Both mares were launched up to the river of souls to be prepared for reincarnation.  Once there they both fell back into the blissful rest of the dead.  However unlike the other souls around them, they were the only ones holding tightly to another.  Wherever her wings would take them, it would be together.