The black and white ship hurtled through a dreamlike realm: a tunnel of spellbinding colors, on its way to an unknown destination across light years of space. At the far end of the tunnel, receding ever more regardless of the immense speed of the shuttle’s flight was a circle of blue. It was deepest and darkest in the center, lightening along a steady gradient the farther out from the center one looked. At the edges of the circle, the light was a very light cyan, just a few shades away from being pure white. The halo’s edges danced like a flame, bleeding out into the other colors that were all encompassing in this tunnel. Reds, purples, greens and so much more strobed and pulsated, beams of strange energies rushing past the shuttle as it traveled through the tunnel boring through space-time. At the boundaries of the stream, the stars the spaceship was passing were barely visible, obscured by the opacity of the spectral way.
Phineas’ experiences with warping, while numerous, only lasted the smallest fraction of an instant. This was by far the longest time he spent tearing across the fabric of reality, passing the stars by instead of using them as cosmic waypoints. Who knew how much solar systems he was leaving in his wake, how many worlds they contained, how many of them were reduced to rubble… how many enemy ships still occupied their space…
But he could not clutter his mind with such distractions, as terrible a reality they were. He was bracing himself mentally for his mission. It was the least he could do, when he had no idea just what kind of foe he would be standing opposed to and where their defining battle would take place.
"As long as you still stand, there will always be two."
The chimera’s words echoed in the stallion’s mind. It seemed like the monstrosity was insinuating that he would always find himself facing things like the hybrid. Was it hindsight that gave that one statement so much weight, or was it actually prophetic in nature? Just how much did the bestial amalgamation know about the threads of fate, Phineas wondered. It was more than just a little probable at this point that there was more to this cosmic game than what the chimera told him. Could it be that Uolix was correct in assuming he was a part of an even greater scheme? That the Hoof-Talons and the chimera were just a stage in a much larger plot?
”Impossible,” Phineas thought. He remembered how the chimera spoke of his ultimate goal; that after the hybrid had secured his victory against him, he would create an even stronger force to take over the galaxy with using the pony’s genetic structure as a base for his next generation of warriors.
”Everything he said to me was… self-serving. He mentions his ‘god’ but focuses on completing his own agenda… it couldn’t have been all part of some great plan. The chimera genuinely believed in his own end and I stopped it from happening. I won… so why does it feel like I’ve already lost?”
”There will always be two.”
The silver stallion hardened his resolve. The chimera was dead. He brought that about by being smart, strategizing ahead of time and laying his trap. So what if in the heat of battle he forgot all about it? The fact was that it wasn’t brawn that slayed the beast. It was intelligence. And intelligence would be the key in winning this next fight and ending the cycle of war that the Star Terrors imposed on the galaxy. Phineas stared out into the colorful cyclone, finding affirmation in this, finding hope that he could truly win. But belief in himself was not the only thing he had to find! He had to find his opponent out of billions of stars across stretches trillions of miles across, filled entirely with the hostile undead. If there was ever a task that defied all odds, it was this one.
”Think,” the silver stallion told himself, ”There hasn’t been a single problem in your life that you could not solve with a bit of thought.”
Phineas sat at the head of the shuttle in near complete silence. The occasional beep and electronic chime of his equipment was the only sound in the cockpit, the lights of his display running across his armor and reflecting off of his helmet’s impassive yellow gaze. So he remained for several minutes, rushing through time and space. The stars continued to float past his peripherals, nearly invisible behind the prismatic filter.
“Then do not delay, pony. We eagerly accept your challenge.”
Phineas jerked in his seat as if he was hit by a bolt of lightning. Such was the intensity of his epiphany, if it could have been called such. ”They wanted me to do this…” The anxiety that he was playing right into their hand was one he could not rid himself, but it was one he had to accept and ultimately look past. He was afraid of the implications. He would have been a fool not to be afraid of the implications. The fate of the galaxy’s wellbeing was at stake. But he could not let them stop him. No force of heaven or hell could stop him. He wasn’t going to let his greatest obstacle be himself. Especially not after all he had been through, especially not after all he had done.
”They want me to do this,” he repeated in his mind, ruminating on the prospect. ”It’d be a shame if I kept them waiting long. It wouldn’t have done my reputation any favors,” he thought smugly.
“So you want me?” Phineas muttered, “then by all means, come and get me.”
***
The female ranger looked down at her blinking display and read the lines of symbols sprawling across the screen. She cocked her head curiously and then turned her gaze forward again. “He’s leaving warp transit,” Elysia stated.
“So it was his plan to fly across the galaxy in a straight line?” Alikir quipped.
Elysia hesitated with her response, unsure as to how to reply to the question. “Uh… I… guess?” she hazarded saying. She couldn’t understand the seemingly nonsensical nature of the Federation pony’s actions. Was this a result of the pressure and stress that came as a price of fighting wars for the greater good, or was the pony destined to resort to such strangeness sooner or later? What disaster would the Federation pony have brought to the convoy had they continued with his plan uninterrupted?
”No…” she thought. It was all too easy to doubt when things did not make sense. Perhaps cynicism was the default disposition of a soldier caught in the net of war, trying to come to terms with something disagreeable. ”Hope,” she reminded herself, “he made a promise… and the Commander believes in him…”
“I’m sure he has his reasons, Alikir,” she said with notably greater certainty.
“You know, he would make it a lot easier to understand why he does the things he does if he just… talked, and not just when it suits his purposes either.”
“I don’t think he has an issue talking-“
Alikir leaned forward in his seat to speak, “You see, that’s where you’re wrong. I suppose it’s my time to make a holo-tome on the subject.”
“You don’t think it could wait a bit?” Elysia asked.
“I think it at least needs mentioning,” Alikir replied.
“Then make it quick. I’m preparing for sub-warp transition.”
“Back when we were just a rag-tag convoy stuck out in some backwater sector of the galaxy, have you ever noticed how that pony acted? How he always kept to himself? Everyone’s grieving around him, and the Federation pony is busy putting his plan together to retake the galaxy?”
“What’s your point?” Elysia asked, running her hands across her control panel and handling the battle-pod’s controls.
“Then the day he decides to put it in action, he just steps up in front of everyone and has this heartfelt debate with me about why we need to fight? After I was still getting over the loss of my entire squad? Rangers, mind you that I had come to know as my brothers?”
“What are you getting at?” Elysia snapped impatiently. “Not everything about this war revolves around you and your squad. Yes, it’s a horrible loss but you’re not the only one who lost damn near everyone you cared about!” The female ranger’s voice cracked shouting that at the Space Ranger.
He was caught off guard and fell silent for a short moment. “Look… all I’m saying is that pony isn’t someone who can be judged solely by what he does,” the ranger began to say, “he’s done some great things but… you’ve got to consider his motives… his thoughts,” Alikir said as he sat back. He didn’t expect his partner to get as emotional as she did. “He doesn’t talk much and when he does he can get a whole crowd fired up and ready to fight a war. Something is just… strange about that. There isn’t much trust you can invest in someone who doesn’t speak unless they have some grander goal in mind and goes off on his own to complete a mission only one person really knows about.”
“Sure… sure, you’re right,” Elysia replied, calming herself. With a heavy sigh, she added: “But he’s not like us. Not like a ranger. We were trained to be open with our comrades… to trust them. The Federation pony… he doesn’t have anyone to be close with, does he? Not even his own kind? Everything he does, he does alone. What reason would he have to suddenly start speaking about how he feels, or why he does something? Who are we to expect him to trust us when he’s been conditioned by circumstance to depend only on himself?”
Alikir shook his head, shrugging even though the smaller ranger couldn’t see the gesture. “’Our best option’, as Uolix put it, is an unrelatable mental case complete with self-destructive tendencies with a splash of charisma for good measure. Joy. Again, I guess that’s why she sent us on this mission to begin with.”
“It’s best not to think about such things when on a mission, friend,” Elysia said offhandedly, passing on a small bit of wisdom to her fellow ranger. “Sorry about… yelling at you and…”
“Don’t fret about it,” Alikir replied, “I was asking for it. Everyone that was part of that convoy lost something big that day… I shouldn’t have kept bringing it up.”
“Right then; from now on we focus solely on the mission. No more distractions and tangents.”
“Aye, captain.”
The battle-sphere reentered normal space, ripples of light rushing off in all directions behind it. Located well outside of the system the Federation shuttle was currently in, the ship was coasting through the void as per their orders.
They could only wait to see what was going to happen next in order to decide what their course of action would be.