//------------------------------//
// Exchanges  
// Story: Ponies Versus Starcraft 
// by ambion 
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The relic...shrine...temple - truth be told Luna didn't know what to class it as. Just as soon as she thought she had a grip on exactly what this place was, a new level would reveal itself to her, a new complexity of design made by architects on some very illegal substances. 

It was dark and quiet here, and while Luna was stranger to neither quality, this did not mean she was enthused about them being here. 

Ah, but she was focusing on the negative again. Some of the most basic functions had been brought online, by the joint efforts of the Mule's mechnical understanding and the dark archon's unexpected talent in percussive maintenance on the ancient systems. So far this really only meant lighting and heating and doors that opened and shut with an artificially induced whoosh, but it was a start. Even better, they'd gotten the Wifi up and running. 

Race making, world building, star crafting powers the original builders here might have wielded, but a good skype connection was not among them. But again, Luna reminded herself not to dwell on the negative. She could talk with her sister in the evenings - at least, what proved to be evenings in Equestria, here they could be anything, if solar measures had any value here at all - and if the video was scratchy and the audio shaky, at least they were not incomprehensibly so.

It was a reassurance, one that went both ways. You didn't need to talk about anything in particular, that wasn't how it worked. It was just knowing that she was there, and she was listening, that was key, and Luna spent the slow hours of each day pining and broody until the evening rolled around and a chance for contact swung around again.

That contact had done another thing for Luna. It had reminded her of the date. Hearth's Warming Eve. She knew she should be committed and focused to the task at hand, but could give the mysteries of this place no more than a perfunctory few moments of thought before her attention turned to the holiday once more. She had every intention to honour the tradition, and every desire to send something special Celestia's way as well.

Her small band had not been easy to cater for, but ingenuinity and more than a bit of scrouning about this forgotten place had paid dividends. For her somewhat insane dark archon (all dark archon's being quite insane by default, so to have one that merely combined the distilled cyniscism of one mind and the childish simplicity of another was, by and large, quite mild as these things went) inspiriation had not struck, it had billowed.

Certain of her privacy, Luna had torn down a section of curtain in what once might have been some entity's chambers, perhaps a resting booth of sorts. It was a dark, flowing material, dusted with age but amazingly resilient, even to magic, and Luna had worked at it for a full two hours, hemming and folding, setting and binding. It had yielded under her efforts and became what Luna was content to consider quite the trendy scarf, with tassells and everything, and even came in the same glinting, shining black as the pieces of visible under the ever-present red glow.

Mulia Mule was in some ways easier to accomdate, but in other ways harder. She at least was Equestria born, and that should have made things easier, but it prompted Luna to do even better and she had very little to base any direction of thought on. Did you treat her as a quiet spoken, easily rattled lady who incidentally could drive a quite ordinary blade through four inches of steel, or did you treat her as a warrior of shadow who happened to be a quiet spoken, easily rattled lady on the side?

In the end it hadn't really mattered, and Luna had decided that between two gifts, one was certain to strike close enough the truth. The remainder of the dark curtain had been just enough to make the most ominously shadowy tea-cosey ever devised, and the night's alicorn had been very surrepitious in 'borriwng' the mule's teapot for initial testing and design.

With it, a set of throwing stars improvised from scrapped Xel'naga materials, adapted with a spell that caused them to accelerate in a burst of speed as they were tossed.

The Mule (the mechcanical one) had been harder to think for. Luna's experience with such a thing as an automation was limited, and while the Mule was decent and civil in every feasible way, it had mostly kept to itself, leaving the mare little to go on. This, she felt, was a case best left until a quiet consultation with Mulia could hopefully provide some new thought to grasp, some different angle of approach. If not resolved, at least a course of action had been decided upon, and Luna was content to leave it at that and return to the crux of her concerns.

What to get Celestia? Admittantly, there was no shortage of ancient, mostly dead and vaguely eldritch technologies laying about here, but Luna dismissed these out of hoof. Old and creepy was not the right message at all.

For all she wracked her brains, nothing was forthcoming. There were no scarves or teacosy inspirations on this one, and Luna felt driven to poke around, further and deeper into this labyrinthine construct, and perhaps what she sought would present itself in due time.