Ultra Violet - 12th of Thanksgiving, 4 EoH
Hackamore Valley Observatory - Evergreen Falls
Violet hummed happily as she typed away on the observatory’s maneframe interface. With June busy working on CARE’s suddenly-now-a-priority project, tending to the Observatory's functions had fallen to her. It wasn’t hard work; the manuals explained everything and the work orders told her how to do it. It was, however, quite enjoyable work.
Equestrian computers were so simple and pleasant to interact with. She always felt calm and at peace, even though protocol dictated she had to type the commands in rather than directly talk to the computer for whatever reason.
The mainframe room was loud, hot, and suffocating. Violet barely fit between the mainframe’s cabinets to reach the built-in access terminal. An organic pony would have felt trapped. Violet felt like part of the machine, which, as a machine herself, she quite liked.
“Is that everything?” She asked herself, squirming to get her physical clipboard and check the task list manually, as per protocol.
A quick glance showed everything should be ready. While most of the observatory’s time was devoted to mapping the night sky in full, occasionally, another institution rented time for whatever they wanted.
Today’s special project was a request from SkyTech, a Zebrican megacorp that was interested in some of the Equis Systems’ orbital debris.
I wonder if they know that’s an old space habitat. Violet mused, checking her database to see what she knew about it. Mom scanned it… No life forms were found, but it’s also pretty heavily shielded… Could be some interesting things up there.
She rechecked the terminal screen. As far as she could tell, the mainframe was set to coordinate all three scopes to run the missions she’d programmed them for.
One complete, hopefully, clear 3D map of your old space ruins coming right up, Mr. Trigger… I wonder if he asks for everything with those little personal notes rather than formal letters. I hope so. It’s a nice touch.
Violet reached out and clicked in the sequence, which would start the custom script she’d created that would execute the new mission before automatically resuming the previous general mapping behavior, and hit enter. The terminal chirped, and a green line of text appeared saying the commands executed correctly. White lines under it displayed the new parameters loading in for execution.
Violet nodded twice and began scooching out of the cabinet space slowly and carefully to avoid damaging anything when the observatory’s intercom crackled to life.
“Scuze me, Mr. Subtractor…” she murmured to a reel-to-reel storage device as she bumped a flank against its cabinet.
“Vi?” June asked through the intercom. “Can you come to the general purpose lab when you have a minute? I need some programming help.”
Violet’s ears perked instantly. Yay! A chance to spend some time with her outside of a few minutes in the evenings. Maybe she can finally tell me what Object 92 is.
She squirmed free of the maneframe and jogged out of the telescope control building through the radio telescope heat as she crossed the campus and into the central building. The laboratory building was perhaps Violet’s least favorite building on campus. Rather than exposing its tech for decoration and ease of maintenance, everything was sealed behind bulkheads for no good reason.
At least with the dorms, trying to replicate an ordinary house for organic comfort is an excuse… She grumbled while making her way to the second floor to the general purpose lab.
Arriving at the simple iron double doors, Violet pushed them open, grateful for their smooth, soundless motion (unlike half the doors in the complex, which squeaked). The general purpose lab was, well, quite general in purpose. It had its own dedicated computer, which occupied one wall, a small chemistry station, a small workbench for fabricating odds and ends, a big central table for big central table stuff, and, of course, easily washed tile floors and walls.
June sat at the central table in one of those rolling office chairs that inevitably break down after a couple years requiring you to fix the piston in place with a bit of pipe because you can't be arsed to replace the cylinder. Her wings drooped slightly from focus as she leaned over the source of her project.
A bronze astrolabe? No…
It looked pretty simple at first, like an oversized pocket watch, complete with a mainspring winding knob and four small studs for adjusting the time and activating special functions or controlling the movements. Unlike a watch, the astrolabe, being basically an astrolabe, had many hands for pointing to different distances from the center point.
The odd thing about this astrolabe-adjacent device was its face. It didn’t have one. Instead, the device's interior was an extra-dimensional space containing an entire orrery. Many tiny carved crystals and gemstones drifted within rings, held in place by the device’s arms, where they made repeated precise motions along clearly defined tracks.
Violet looked into the astrolabe’s depths with interest. The centermost gemstone never moved… But she swore sometimes it flashed red for just an instant as if the emerald occasionally seamlessly switched out for a ruby for just a millisecond or three.
Huh… It’s like this is showing whole systems, rather than stars. Violet mused.
June looked up at the sound of Violet’s entry. She had bags under her eyes from the all-nighter she’d just pulled, and her lab coat was stained with ink from the copious amount of notes and sketches she’d made that now lay strewn all over the table.
“Vi! Great!” June said, smiling shakily. “I did a thing!”
“What’s the thing?”
“Well, I finished reading the documentation fou— five days ago,” she began, getting up from the table to cross the lab to a coffee pot and the bag of ‘Buck to the Brain: Super Caffeinated Bean Juice’ sitting atop it. “I was going to check their base observations because, well, a year of study with four years of theoretical work based on text descriptions and myth analysis… And they got nowhere. So I figured they’d made an error.”
“And now you need computer work,” Violet noted, trotting towards the table. “Can I look at it? It’s neat! I promise I won't touch it.”
“Yeah, that’s fine, it’s inert… Unless you’re Enox.” June agreed, reaching the coffee pot and debating just eating the beans before putting three servings in the grinder. “Anyways, I started by checking their claims that the runes around the edge of the case are either decorative nonsense or part of the arcane workings.”
Violet cast an eye over the elaborate glyphs, which had no business being called runes, that ran around the case in a ring on the front and back of the astrolabe. “These look… A bit too simple to be just decorations.”
“That’s what I thought. They don’t mesh with the rest of the elegance and mastercraft,” June commented. “Also, they’re all real Amilic rune convergences.”
“Rune convergences?”
June took a deep breath and held down the grind button for several long seconds so she wouldn’t have to talk over it. “Amilic is a language named for the Old Gods, who apparently are real… Dusk, please answer my info request prayers… Uh, anyways, it was used by the First Kingdom’s noble castes as their state language and language of magic. You can condense words, phrases, and sometimes entire statements into a single set of overlapping converged runes. Just as long as each rune remains legible and follows some simple grammar rules, it doesn't matter if they overlap or touch. See?”
Violet nodded, then blinked. “Wait, then… This could be more than one or two sentences. This could be like, use instructions. Or a dedication.”
“Or a warning,” June commented as she dumped the coffee into the pot to brew. “Because remember, the ponies who retrieved this are all the dead.”
“Wait, don’t you read Amilic?” Violet tasked, turning her attention towards her pseudo-adopted sister. “You read it on the Wendigo statue’s instructions.”
“Yes, I do,” June agreed, staring at the brewing coffee drip like a mare on life support. “It’s a rare skill, but the language wasn’t lost. It’s just… It's rarely important. Most First Kingdom relics are rubble or rotted away by now. I learned it to understand transcriptions other cultures made after the First Kingdom was destroyed in the First Thaumaturgic War. That’s kind of my Master’s field. Like the First Kingdom in general. Particularly their Great Sages.”
Violet nodded and turned to the astrolabe, desperately wanting to fiddle with its knobs. “Okay… So, what’s this say then?”
“No clue,” June said with a happy whinny. “It’s a ciphertext.”
“A what?”
“The runes are all valid, but they’re encrypted. I have no idea why! Isn’t that cool?” June asked, still staring at the slowly increasing amount of Brown Potion of Wake in the pot, which she intended to drink directly from because she had no time for mugs.
“It could be one of four ciphers I know the First Kingdom used. They’re similar, and their results all look the same, so I need to check four different cipher methods,” June continued. “If I were to decode them by hoof, it would take me several months. But I thought you might be able to help me with the grunt work by programming a decoder. Then I could just read every result till I find the ones that produce readable text.”
Violet’s tail swished happily. “I can super do that! Heck, I could probably run them internally and—” Her smile fell as she realized, “Oh, I don’t read the output language…”
“Mhm, and it's complicated. Took me four years to learn,” June agreed, wondering if she could connect the coffee pot via IV, then quickly realizing she should probably get some sleep and take tomorrow off lest she wind up pulling a Sam.
Violet trotted over to the coffee pot to make the conversation a little less awkward. “I might know the ciphers. There are only so many ways to encrypt text. What are we dealing with?”
“There’s no way you’ll recognize them by name,” June scoffed. “Like, even if you know what the Medeis Cipher is, you won't recognize it by that name.”
Violet raised a hoof to object, but her database politely informed her there was no Medeis Cipher on file, so she lowered it. “Point… What’s a Medeis cipher?”
“Well, given the sheer age of this thing, it’s the most likely cipher to be in use. Cuz it’s front he lifetime of the First Sage of the First Kingdom, Medeis of Hereca,” June explained, her heart skipping a beat as the pot finally produced one mug’s worth of coffee. “It starts with a simple substitution cipher. One rune is mapped to another rune picked at random. This continues till all runes are randomly mapped to another rune, but never the same rune twice. A special machine is used when encoding and decoding the cipher. Clockwork shuffled the rune map with each character used, but it would do this the same way every time. So if you put the encoded text through with the same starting rune map, you’d get the deciphered text back.”
“Oh, an Enigma Cipher!” Violet exclaimed as her database connected the dots. “I know… Well, I know how a similar one worked. But I have an idea. What about the other three?”
June hummed, then walked to the table to grab a spare sheet of paper and the pen that hadn’t exploded on her. “Here, it’s best if I just show you them.”
June’s demonstration of the ciphers took her nearly half an hour, not counting the minute-long break to chug down an entire pot of coffee (Violet was still horrified and awestruck at the lack of burns June experienced from this feat). With the lecture completed, Violet felt confident she could program decoders for each cipher.
“Okay, let’s get to coding!” Violet said with a cheerful smile, then flicked the computer’s power switch.
The lab’s computer fired up for an instant before dying amid protesting crackle and EM discharge across several capacitors. Violet winced. June eeped.
“Oh.. uh, I guess that’s a no-go then?” June asked, ears askew.
Violet shook her head. “Nope! Several computers in the observatory control building did this. It's the power supply. Your capacitors rot over time. I can fix this. I have the stuff on me,” Violet mentioned as she slipped out of the computer chair and under the wall cabinet while reaching into her saddle bag for her stupid-organics-forgot-maintenance-again tool kit.
“Oh good,” June said, sighing as she sat in the chair to watch Violet work.
“Can you tell me about your project while I work?” Violet asked. “I’ve been interested, but you’ve spent all week either working or boning your alien girlfriend. Which, you know, fair!”
June blushed and kicked her hooves. “Uh, sure! Where do we start?”
Violet disconnected the power supply and began extracting it from the cabinet. “Where did they even find this thing? It should be all dirty or corroded if it's as old as you imply. Even if it is enchanted.”
“Not true,” June corrected, switching back to academic mode with practiced ease. “After reaching a certain thaumic charge level, around a third of a Solar, enchanted items stabilize to practical indestructibility. At least as far as simple aging is concerned. I think that’s why alicorns are immortal, personally. They just have enough magic that physics sort of ignores them unless something directly interacts with clear intent…”
June cleared her throat. “According to the reports, the rumors about a First Kingdom palace having been here long ago are true. There are ruins of such a structure under the town, with access via an uncovered natural tunnel in the quarry. There isn’t much of interest to CARE in the ruins, but they found a second set of ruins in an entirely different architectural style a ways beneath the First Kingdom palace’s throne room!”
Violet blinked, one ear drooping. “And they went in there? Your people have horror novels, right?”
June rolled her eyes. “Vi, we live in a world where demon-centaur kaiju can pop out of another dimension and eat your magic, all while free-balling enough to make the biggest stallion feel inadequate. Horror novels are just historical fiction through a directorial lens, and I’m tired of pretending otherwise.”
“Point.” Violet said, wondering why the hell June needed to bring the second part of that sentence up. Note: June’s filter breaks if she’s up too long.
“Anyways, these mystery ruins were pretty extensive. The team studied them and found all mentions of them in folklore, records, and myth before exploring them. The logs of that exploration are missing… But they discovered the astrolabe in a perfectly intact chamber within the ruins, preserved in a crystal case. It was retrieved for study because clearly, they didn’t read their Daring Doo novels as foals.”
Violet squirmed out from under the cabinet to look June in the eyes, all unamused. “Really? After just saying horror is not a thing?”
June rolled her eyes. “Those are adventure novels and also, like, true stories. Just embellished a little, and apparently, with all the straight love scenes removed for… Reasons? No clue.”
Violet humphed and scooched back under the cabinet to return to work.
“Anyways, they got it out, but an unspecified ‘accident’ killed everypony.”
“Then how did it get up here?”
“One of them survived the trip to the base camp before keeling over from…” June frowned and thought as hard as she could, then shivered. “Uh… So… It’s really gross, but a curse made him kinda just… Pooped out all of his moisture content at once. He mummified in seconds by expelling all water in his body, including within cells.”
Violet shivered and retched despite being a machine. “Gross!”
“Yeah. First Kingdom boobytraps don’t buck around, and apparently, this was what inspired them to do what they did,” June said with a shiver.
Violet finished extracting the power supply and popped the case open. Sure enough, the same three capacitors that leaked and blew up on every other computer had leaked and blown up. She began replacing them.
“Soooo what’s this thing do? I mean, yeah, we don’t know what it's for, but what do we know it does?”
June shrugged her wings. “It moves of its own accord. The movements are random, but the timing is regular. We're not at the center, based on the little reference markers around each gemstone. We’re the watermelon-colored tourmaline on the outermost edge. Sometimes, the emerald in the center turns into a ruby of equal mass and volume. Sometimes, a small golden path of light traces out from the tourmaline representing us to one of the other crystals at random, but never the center one if the documentation is correct. At least, it hasn’t done that in a year. Also, I’ve noticed the light path vanishes instantly if the emerald goes ruby, and it won't make another path if it stays ruby until it switches back to emerald. Kinda like a game of red-light green-light.”
Violet nodded, interested but focused on work.
“Oh, and when Enox accidentally touched it, it projected the Amilic rune for ‘No Entry,’ and a male voice said, ‘I’m sorry, but you guys do not get to use my stuff anymore.’ in Amilic. This happened every time she touched it,” June added. “Which makes sense, cuz it turns out she’s from, like, a quarter billion years ago. So her people are older than this thing. She got time-catapulted. Somehow. Doesn't like talking about it… Though she apparently came here to try and find more fireflies? Not sure why.”
Violet snorted. “So she is just the token nice one of some kind of horrible monster race?”
June laughed and shook her head. “I have no idea. She could just be kind of a misanthrope. Some people just don't like their birth cultures.”
Violet nodded and slipped the last capacitor in place, connecting it with the no-heat solder she’d invented but refused to tell anypony about until the patent office got back to her. “Okay, fixed. Just have to plug it all back in.”
“Great!” June bounced excitedly in the chair and stood up so Violet could take it once everything was fine.
Violet quickly connected everything, secured the power supply to the cabinet, then sat down and flicked the computer on. It quickly hummed to life, happy and healthy once more.
Just call me Doctor Violet, Violet thought to herself triumphantly. “Okay! So… What are the odds of this computer having characters for Amilic runes?”
“It super won’t. Here, let me make a number chart. I can convert the outputs from numbers to runes by hoof. It will still save me a lot of time. Like, a lot of time,” June said as she went to get a sheet of paper.
Several hours later, everything was complete. All four cipher systems were ready to go, with the cipher text hardcoded into them, and each line of code made to run as efficiently as the alien robot mare could make them run on this particular archaic almost-not-a-computer.
The setup was simple: every time the system ran through one permutation, the potentially deciphered text would be output to the lab’s dot-matrix printer, which would type an indexed header and footer in Equish to label and isolate each result and then print a long series of numbers that would correspond to individual runes.
“You’re sure you want it like that and not saved to memory so you can save paper?” Violet asked, her hoof hovering over the button to start the computer running each cipher system in sequence.
“Vi… This thing has less memory than…” June trailed off and shook her head slowly. “I don’t know? A potato? I think it could store maybe twenty outputs with the memory we have in use, and also need free to run your code.”
Violet’s eyes narrowed. “A distressingly true point. I’ll bet Enox and I could make you a way better computer. In a cave. With a box of scraps.”
“Please do,” June sighed. “This thing is two generations old at least… So yeah, print it live. The sooner it finishes, the better. But for now, I think I’ll chill and then nap. Then dinner. Then sleep. I don’t want to become Sam, and I figure one breakthrough is good enough for a week.”
Violet nodded in agreement and hit the go button. The computer hummed to life, the green confirmation line flicking into existence almost instantly.
“Right, looks like it’s working,” Violet commented with a satisfied nod. “I think I’ll go find Dew and continue our Lego battle. Come get me if it bucks up.”
June gave Violet a hoof’s up and then a quick hug. “Hey, we should find something fun to do later. Like, on the weekend. Okay? It’s taken me a bit to get used to you, but now that I am… I feel bad we haven’t hung out. Gone to the mall or something… I don’t know what sisters do to bond, but we should do something, you know?”
Violet smiled brightly, ears and tail perking. “Totally!” She said, returning the hug before waving bye and leaving the lab at a brisk trot.
Violet quickly left the lab building and trotted to the common room. She stopped to pick up the afternoon’s mail from the gate. She’d asked the postmare to stop walking into the compound to put it at the dorm door when she noticed the poor yellow pegasus mare walking while sweating a probably deadly amount.
I wonder if Sam knows there’s a new flier in town? She’s been looking for a friend to go on her evening flights with. Violet thought while checking the mail. Sam, Sam, Sam, Dew, June, June, me, June— Me?
Violet blinked at the small yellow envelope for a moment. It was indeed addressed to her, but the return address just read ‘The Postmare.’
Violet opened the envelope. The letter inside was written on expensive, thick, custom-printed stationery paper with a flower and woodland critter theme. Either the manufacturer or the postmare had additionally perfumed the paper with lemongrass, and whatever the buck scent people insist is what a fresh breeze smells like, making the letter smell the way an organic imagined a lovely spring day smelled.
Charmed by either the effort in making the letter nice, or the fact they just kept something this fancy around for any old letter, Violet turned her attention to her first letter ever.
Dear Miss Violet,
Thank you for being kind enough to be willing to get your mail at the gate. I can’t remember why you said it’s so hot on the grounds, but I have a health condition which makes it very hard to remain energetic when I get too hot, even if it's only for a few minutes. A bottle of water and ten minutes rest won't quite make it all better. I need a night’s sleep.
I’ve been able to do my whole route without needing a break all week. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but it is for me. I volunteer at the local veterinarian’s after work when I’m not too tired, so I’ve gotten to volunteer as much as I’d like too.
I want to thank you for the kindness. It can’t be easy to walk so far in that heat while wearing a silicone body glove. So I appreciate it.
Would you like to go to dinner with me this Moonsday at seven? Leave a note in the mailbox for me with your answer, okay?
With love,
Fluttershy
P.S.
Are you a burn victim? I’ve been trying to figure out why you wear that every day. I hope it's for fun reasons and not because you got hurt. Do you only have the gray one? Would you like other colors? I make stuff with silicone and could do a body cast for you. It’s a hobby, so I can do it at cost.
Violet found herself smiling at the letter.
Aww, she’s adorable! I guess I should go to dinner if only to explain that I don't need to eat and that it's okay. I’m not hurt, I’m just a robot. She decided, tucking the letter away to keep and quickly writing a confirmation note down on some scrap paper she had in her saddle bag.
I wonder if my skin is swappable? I’d love to be able to change it. I’ll check my blueprints later so I can get back to her with that offer verbally one day, Violet decided as she slipped the note into the mailbox and trotted across the parking lot and into the dorm’s common room.
The common room had been greatly improved over the last week. June’s first paycheck had cleared and that meant everything got a nice cheerful sky blue paint job, a new synth-cloud couch, a rug with a plush cloud pattern, everything one might imagine a pegasi dominated group would want to decorate a common space if they didn’t live in a cloud house.
Violet personally found the simulated cloudscape a little extra, but given she entirely lacked any real sense of aesthetics or decor yet she felt she shouldn’t complain or judge. Besides, they liked it and that was enough reason for it to stay.
Dew sat on the couch next to Sam, cuddled up flank to flank as any mother and daughter would be while reading a book together. Albeit with the charming inversion of Dew being the one reading to Sam.
“— like orchestrating a symphony within. Imagine the energy as vibrant notes, flowing through your limbs and core. With focused intent, you become the conductor, leading the harmonious dance. Each movement, each breath, shapes the melody, drawing upon your inner reservoir of power. It's a delicate balance of control and connection…”
Dew trailed off as she noticed Violet arrive, wait a moment, then start to turn around since Dew was busy. She lifted a hoof to wave. “Hi, Vi!”
“Hey! You’re busy so I’ll go find something else to do,” Violet said over her shoulder apologetically.
Sam cleared her throat. “Uh, actually, Dew? Can we stop here for now? If we go over any more theory I might start forgetting things. I’d like to try out what I think I’ve internalized so far.”
“Sure!” Dew said, closing the book and putting it away in the new end table. “What’s up, Vi?”
Violet turned back around. “Uh, well I have nothing to do for the moment. June might need me to fix some code later, and the scopes are all programmed for the SkyTech job and I made it so they’ll automatically go back to their previous job once that’s done so… I was wondering if you want to continue our Battle for Somewheria?”
Dew’s little wings fluttered excitedly. “Totally! But uh, mom? Didn’t you say you wanted her help practicing physically?”
Violet tilted her head and looked at Sam. “Practice with what?”
“Dew’s been reading me the book Dusk found about this,” she said, tapping the gemstone in her bare chest (Sam refused to wear anything but her hat while on her two weeks of medical leave). “You’re right. I should be able to tap into it in a similar way you’ve described your magic working. I know you’ve been practicing for months and I thought you could help me get started on that myself.”
Violet jumped from hoof to hoof in a good approximation of Enox’s happy dance. “I can do that! I have a cool place in the woods and everything!”
“Oh cool! I was worried about having to work out in the yard… It doesn't seem safe to practice some of this stuff indoors,” Sam said as she got up from the couch, stretching a little like any middle aged pony would after an extended sit.
“It’s super not,” Violet agreed as she turned to lead Sam to her hidden workout grove. “I collapsed half a starship moving a door with it once.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yea. The one I was made in. I’d take you there but it’s full of horrible horrible butt slime. And would probably finish collapsing the second I entered it, and I doubt Dusk would save me from the same thing killing me a second time.”
“Fair enough.”
Violet led Sam out of the sweltering compound, across the road, and up a bike trail that circled the town. Sam made a bunch of smalltalk while they walked, which Violet ignored, having tasked a subroutine to handle that sort of time filler and just give her a summary of the conversation later. Apparently Sam wanted to comment on the weather for some reason.
Violet turned off the bike trail after a while and stopped in a large clearing somepony had carved out to make a soccer field at some point, but then abandoned. She swept a hoof across the grassy field (with a small scattering of craters and scorch marks) and proclaimed “Tadah! One nice workout spot! Trees keep it shady all day, there’s a creek over there with some buckets in case I start a fire again, there’s an entrance to the Citrine Hive over in those trees there so sometimes buggies come watch and go all cheerleader, and once they even brought me a protein shake because they didn’t know I’m a robot. Now they bring me batteries. Which I don’t need and can’t use, but I eat anyway, to be polite.”
Sam giggled, shaking her head with a smile. “They can be so weirdly nice sometimes… But also very dense. Hold on a sec.”
Sam reared up and put her hooves to her mouth to call out in the direction of the entrance. “Hey! Changebugs?”
A moment later someone called back. “What?”
“I’m working out with Violet today and I’m not a robot. Just FYI.”
“Okay, cool. We’ll get you water and a towel,” the voice called back.
Violet tilted her head. “You can just… Ask them for things?”
“Duh!” Sam reapplied, adjusting her cap slightly. “You’re grateful for the water bottle, they get a snack out of delivering it.”
“Oh yea…” Violet frowned. “It’s hard for me to remember they eat something immaterial.”
Sam put a hoof on Violet’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. They’re pretty weird as a species. I get it, they get it. It’s okay… Anyways, what’s the simplest thing you can think of? I want to start with the basics.”
“Lifting stuff,” Violet answered immediately and led Sam by the hoof a few steps away to a large fallen log. “Can you lift—”
“No,” Sam said without even trying to lift it.
Violet’s ears drooped. “But you didn’t—”
“If I’d been keeping up with my exercise for the last year, I could maybe pick up half of that or move it with a lever. I used to be pretty toned and like, girl buff. I had abs and you could see some of my leg muscles. I liked that… But you know, no time for this stuff recently.”
“I’m glad that’s changing,” Violet commented. “But will you humor me and try to lift that?”
Sam sighed, nodded, then bent down to attempt to lift the waterlogged, moss infested, four ton chunk of white oak. She got her hooves under it, extended her manipulator gauntlets for extra grip, grit her teeth, pulled up with her forelegs while pushing up with her hind legs, and…
“Nope!” Sam said, letting go. “Not budging.”
“Okay, good. We don't need to find a heavier thing, then,” Violet said with a satisfied nod. “So, it sounded like Dew was telling you about what it feels like when I focus on my magic. Is that correct?”
Sam nodded. “Mhm. That was out of the poem section of the book. It’s some kind of training manual for some ancient warrior philosopher caste. Dew can’t translate most proper nouns in the book so, we have no idea… But it looks like a long time ago people did similar implant jobs like mine to make warriors better at war stuff.”
Violet giggled at Sam’s phrasing. “You’d think you of all ponies would be more formal and respectful of—”
Sam shook her head once. “Nope! War is dumb. Fighting isn’t, but war is. Let's get started okay?”
Violet nodded, frowning apologetically. I forgot she doesn't like to talk about her time as a Ranger in her home country. Oops. “Uh, sure. So… You want to be calm and centered. Do you know how to meditate?”
“Nope.”
Violet facehooved hard enough to leave a brief imprint of her hoof on her skin. “Oh boy…”
An hour and a half of explaining, trial, error, and some “I AM CALM, DAMMIT!”s later, Sam was finally able to clear her mind of all distractions.
Violet smiled through clenched teeth. Okay let’s do this before she gets frustrated about having to not think about Trixie’s allegedly cute butt for a fifth time. Seriously, organics, learn to task-kill processes when you need to monotask!
“Okay, now, reach into your center. There will be power there. You can feel it if you look. Just, pick it up,” Violet coached.
Sam frowned sharply as she searched. Her face twitched, morphing through several expressions before she finally nodded. “Yeah… Yeah there is. It’s ‘behind’ my flight magic.”
“Now, just take that energy and push it, slowly, carefully, and not all of it, just a little, to your whole body,” Violet continued.
Sam’s brow furrowed as she went about the unfamiliar mana routing. She was well versed with this concept for her wings, but using the rest of her body felt…incorrect.
“I think I have it,” Sam said after a moment. “Everything feels like pins and needles, but good. Not bad. I— I don’t know how to describe it.”
“That’s about how I perceive it,” Violet agreed, nodding. “Now open your eyes, and just lift the log. Let the magic flow only as much as it needs to. Don’t push it or you will toss the log into the clouds and hit the cute postmare who just moved here. She likes flying around here.”
“Little twiggy for my tastes,” Sam grunted, trying to keep focused but unable to not gossip about the new girl.
Sam walked over to the log, grabbed it with both forehooves and began to pull. An aura of green light shimmered around her as a thin, barely perceptible haze as the magic within her began to bleed into the world. She pulled, the aura intensified. Violet smiled. She’s doing it!
The log lifted up half a hoof width. Sam yelped, startled and happy, breaking her concentration. The log crashed to the ground.
“Buck! I almost had that,” Sam growled, kicking the log with a hoof irritably.
“You had it!” Violet said, giving Sam a quick victory hug. “You’ve got this! It’s probably a lot trickier for someone who can’t just do it once and program herself to do the same exact action on demand… So let’s keep going!”
Sam nodded and glared at the log. “I’m gonna throw you before sunset… I swear to Luna!”
Violet nodded, grinning. “That’s the spirit! But I heard Cadence is better for swearing to when mares need to handle large objects.”
Sam snorted, then snickered. “Different class of objects there, Vi.”
“Not if you’re brave enough!” A changeling called from the hive entrance.
Violet frowned, thoroughly confused.
Sam laughed and closed her eyes to refocus. “Okay… Round two!”
Sam’s brow slowly furrowed. Her tail flicked across the grass in a happy swishy motion.
“You’re trying not to think about Trixie again, aren’t you?” Violet sighed after a minute.
Sam’s left ear twitched. “Shut up, Vi...”
Yeah, she is. Violet thought to herself before quietly sitting down to wait for Sam to be ready to try again.
⁜ ⁜ ⁜
The sun hung low in the sky, nearly vanished behind the mountains. Violet was very thoroughly bored, and Sam was very thoroughly tired and frustrated. Twenty six attempts came and went, with a break for dinner (a bowl of spaghetti alfredo, thoughtfully provided by a random Changeling), and Sam had not come close to replicating her successful attempt.
“Did… Did you think about anything special that one time?” Violet asked. “Like, was there some motive? Or fantasy?”
Sam sighed and flicked her tail shyly. “Okay, so yea, my head wasn’t totally clear… I’m sorry.”
Violet shook her head. “No! Like, that works for me. But maybe it doesn't work for you? What were you thinking about?”
Sam winced and looked away from Violet. “I’d rather not get into…” She let out a short huffing breath. “Buck it. It’s probably important. I was thinking about some of the stuff I did back in Irbrand. About how nice it would have been if I could have moved a certain boulder.”
Violet hmmed, nodding slowly. “I don’t want to press you… But… Were you thinking about how you could have saved somepony?”
“Yeah,” Sam said bluntly. “And no. I don’t want to talk about it. I’m not traumatized. I’ve seen a therapist. But nobody wants to relive that stuff.”
“I understand,” Violet agreed, putting a hoof on Sam’s shoulder to be comforting.
Sam shrugged the hoof off. “Please don’t… Not right now. Frustrated… And remembering.”
Violet bit her lip thoughtfully. “Okay but… If you thought about something you could have done, and that helped it work… Why not think about how if you can do this, you won't ever be in that position again? Flip it on its head.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “Huh…” She said, frowning thoughtfully. “I mean, I clearly have the potential to go all earth pony with this thing. It’s possible, but I think we’re just using the wrong fuel.”
Violet thought for a moment. “You have a point. We’re very different from each other. Like, physically. What do you think might work?”
Sam bit her lip, hesitant to go into detail. “There’s this… Feeling. It’s not the pain of loss. It’s a type of dull anger. The desire to avenge someone close to you. When I lifted it a little the first time, I remembered how it felt when…”
Sam trailed off, closed her eyes, and shook her head. “I think this gem is a weapon. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But that’s what it is in my mind. I want to take a shot with it like it’s a weapon, not some, climbing equipment. Or a martial arts weapon some ancient Neighponese stallion has to spend years teaching you how to master.”
“That’s worth a shot,” Violet took a step to the side and gestured to the log. “Go for it?”
Sam nodded, closed her eyes, and returned to the worst moment in her life. The moment she’d wished she could have done anything, because they’d deserved everything. The instant she stepped into a puddle that used to be her best friend.
The pale green aura blazed to life, looking much brighter than before though Violet couldn’t be sure if that was because it was darker, or the aura was stronger. Sam stepped over to the log, placed her hooves on it, and with a loud groan of effort, lifted it entirely off the ground, halfway up to her pelvis, before dropping it with an exhausted huff.
“Buck! That was heavy!” Sam groaned, dropping back to all fours.
“But you lifted it!” Violet exclaimed, grinning ear to ear.
Sam paused, blinked, then smiled too. “I did!”
Violet stepped over to Sam and gave her a tight hug. “Good job! I’m sorry I didn’t think about how it might be different for you earlier. I need clarity, you need hope!”
“I’d say more like… Determination,” Sam mused thoughtfully as she returned the hug.
The two let go of eachother and Sam walked around the large log, marveling at how she’d just curled something twice her own size.
“It's good the day’s almost over,” Sam said after a moment. “Cuz this day is all downhill from here.”
Violet giggled. “Yeah, but what a milestone! Next time you want to do stuff with me we can practice doing it on demand, okay?”
“Sounds good,” Sam said, before both ponies turned to look at the sound of crunching grass coming from the hive’s direction.
Trixie was walking towards the group, looking tired, a little stressed out, but happy enough.
Sam waved to her. “Hey Trix! Did you see me lift this log?”
Trixie tilted her head. “No?” She called towards the two distant mares.
Violet hopped from hoof to hoof, still quite excited at Sam’s accomplishment. “She totally did! It was awesome. Took us all day but now she can tap that gem in her chest for strength! We’ll work on stamina once we get it all consistently tappable.”
Trxie blinked. “Wait, that does something? I thought it was body jewelry.”
“It’s super not,” Sam confirmed. “Anyways, what’s up?”
Trixie finished walking up to the two and took a deep breath. “So, I wanted to get to you weeks ago on this, but I got called to active duty,” she began.
Sam tilted her head. “What about… Oh! Right. June said you wanted to talk to me. I can’t remember what about though.”
Violet frowned, not sure if she should leave to give them privacy or not. Before she could decide either way, Trixie grabbed Sam’s shoulder, pulled her to her lips and gave her a long, loving, tongue filled kiss.
“I have a stage double,” Trixie said as she broke the kiss. “You found her after our hookup, not me. She panicked. I like you. I’m stressed out, I wanna relax, do you want to spend the night at my place getting taught about a thousand ways not to sleep? Or at least, getting to sleep later than you normally would?”
Sam’s cheeks flushed. “I— uh… You’re super lucky Luna herself dropped by to help de-fatigue me, cuz if she hadn’t… Not even you could have gotten me to stay up when I could have slept.”
“Sooo, is that a yes?” Trixie asked hopefully.
Sam nodded, her blush deepening. “Only if you’re still into… Well, you know.”
Trixie’s ears flattened. “Girl, a changeling doesn't change her favorite flavors. Like, ever. You got exactly what I love the most.”
Violet snickered. “So… I guess lifting that log—”
“Is so NOT the pinnacle of today anymore,” Sam said, still blushing, her tail flicking happily. “Tell Dew I’m sleeping over at a friend’s… Actually, you two are besties. Can you help her get to bed?”
Violet rolled her eyes. She’s not an actual filly… Though she still does like bedtime stories. “I’ll get her anything she needs,” Violet promised. “You two have fun. Later!”
Trixie’s ears perked. “Oh! Hey! Violet,” she said, sounding a bit odd.
Violet turned and looked at her wordlessly.
“A yellow pegasus mare moved into our hive’s guest quarters last week. She has a thing for you because she thinks you share her kink, cuz your skin is silicone. If you’re looking for a marefriend, give her a serious shot,” Trixie volunteered, as any changeling would for any of their friends with whom they were personally incompatible.
Violet blinked twice. “What?”
“She likes you, like, emotionally and physically. Trust me. She’s next door to my house and the walls are NOT emotion proof,” Trixie promised before nodding to Sam. “Speaking of my room, I’ve still got that mattress you liked.”
“Awesome!” Sam exclaimed, eager to get to sleep on a waterbed later.
Violet frowned. “Uh, thanks for telling me?”
“No problem! Have a nice night.”
Trixie and Sam began walking to the hive, laughing occasionally as they small talked.
Violet trotted her way home, deep in thought.
I’m trying to avoid that kind of thing… Aren’t I? She mused. I mean, I deleted all of his programming, but I still get jealous when I see June and Enox cuddle. Clearly I do want somepony… You’d think the question of free will would be easier for a beepboop like me.
Violet thought long and hard, going as far as to check her programming several times to see how her neural network had adapted from her base code. By the time she trotted through the observatory gates, she had her answer.
Ah… I see, she mused, stopping to sit for a moment. So, I do have a baked in sexuality. But it's not code, it’s neural. He just made code to force that part of me to do what he wanted it to make me do. I guess… I guess the only thing to do is see if she’s okay with me being a robot, and if she is, see if I go full sex doll for her or not.
If I do, then his programming is baked into me and I can’t ever have a special somepony if I want to be me. Or it’s permanent and I’m stuck like that forever. If I don’t, well… Then I really am me. Or maybe I’ll genuinely like her like that enough to be okay with doing… All that stuff. Just for her instead of that gross jerk.
Violet’s ears perked as a thought occurred to her. June can help me! She’s dated before and she can help me sort all this out!
Her ears fell as she realized June would have gone to sleep early after her all nighter and was probably already in bed. Asking her sister would have to wait for the morning.
Violet frowned and decided to sit down at the gates and watch the moonrise.
“I’m like a month old. I shouldn’t be having an existential crisis yet. Right?” Violet said to the moon.
The moon opted not to reply.