Chapter 19
Sparky's eyes opened, and she discovered that she was lying on the grass. She looked up at the blue sky, and watched as the clouds passed over head. She stretched out her legs and let out a loud yawn. She looked around and discovered that her MIP, her FutureTec utility vest, and her saddlebags were oddly missing, though what was even odder than that, Sparky was only vaguely aware that they had even existed at all.
She got to her hooves and continued to stretch; she let out another yawn and rubbed her eyes. 'Ah... that was a nice nap', she said as she began to walk around. She trotted onto a dirt path and followed it. Only vaguely aware of what was down the path, Sparky continued to trot along, humming as she went. Eventually the path led her into a small town. It was Ponyville, but it was no Ponyville that she recognised.
Sparky was in a dream world, though she was only vaguely becoming aware of it. The Ponyville she was in was based upon old photographs that belonged to Grandma V, with her own imagination filling in the blanks. Things in town looked like a town should, of course, there were a few things that were particularly zany and completely out of place. Ponies in blue robes trotted around the town aimlessly, and even odder than that, were a number of large, bulky robots on tracked wheels that rolled around behind them.
'Hi there!' one of the robots said, Sparky looked up at it, and discovered that it had a television screen on the front of it, and on that television screen was a smiling face.
'Mister Happy?' Sparky asked. 'What are you doing here?'
'That's a really good question Vinyl Scratch!' Mister Happy said.
Sparky waited for him to give an answer, but naturally, the AI did not, then Sparky realised what he said. She looked down at her foreleg, it was not the lilac colour that her coat was; instead it was white. She brushed a hoof through her mane, and discovered that it was a two tone colour, a dark blue, and a light blue, not the dark purple and yellow that belonged to her.
Sparky wasn't actually Sparky, she was Grandma V when she was young.
'Well, I got to go, you have fun!' Mister Happy said, rolling away.
Sparky... Grandma V... Sparky? Whoever she was, she continued on her way towards a tall building in the centre of town, Sparky recognised this to be Olde Towne; she trotted up to the building and pushed open the door. Hanging from the ceiling was a large banner; Sparky looked at it for a moment, as if the words took some time to form into something coherent: 'Parliament of the Equestrian Republic'.
'This session of the Parliament of the Equestrian Republic is now open', said a voice from the interior of the room.
There were three ponies in the room, two mares and a stallion. The stallion was an earth pony that had a red coat and a light brown mane; the two mares sitting across from him were a unicorn and a pegasus. The pegasus had a bright pink mane and a yellow coat, while the unicorn was violet coated, and had a darker purple mane with a pink streak in it.
The unicorn looked over towards Sparky and waved. 'Hi Vinyl', she said.
'Hey there Twilight!' Sparky said. Wait, Sparky didn't say that! Grandma V's younger self that she happened to be possessing during the dream was acting on her own.
Sparky's view shifted; suddenly she was sitting on one of the rafters looking down upon the scene.
Grandma V... no it felt weird to refer to her as that. Vinyl Scratch, rather, trotted up to her friends. 'Fluttershy, Big McIntosh', she said nodding towards them.
'Vinyl Scratch', the earth pony said with a nod.
'How's it going?' Vinyl said with a grin.
'Not well', Twilight said with a frown. 'Trying to figure out a way to get everyone on board with the Republic, Manehattan's hard lining us, Fillydelphia wants to know what's in it for them. and the landed aristocracy everywhere has tightened their control over their duchies and earldoms'.
'Rough', Vinyl said. 'You could always use FutureTec'.
'Pardon?' Twilight asked.
'Use FutureTec, out compete Manehattan and Fillydelphia economically, they'll have no choice but to join up. Everyone else will fall in line after that’, Vinyl Scratch said.
'Vinyl... that's brilliant!' Twilight said with a smile.
'I have my moments', she said with a grin.
Sparky started to hear a small beeping noise, it started quietly at first, and then started to get louder and louder and Sparky turned around to look at it.
Light began to fill the room, and Sparky awoke with a jolt.
...
Sparky sat up in bed, which was something of a problem, the ceiling was low hanging and she smacked her head against it. ‘Ow! Damn it!’ she cried out, letting her head fall back against the pillow. Her MIP was beeping, and she quickly silenced it. She rubbed the spot she’d hit with her hoof, this time, she allowed herself to sit up slowly. She carefully avoided bashing her head in again and hopped off her bunk and onto the floor.
She turned around to face towards Grandma V’s bed, she must have already gotten up, because it was empty, and the bed had been made... wait. Grandma V never made her bed when they were home, why would she have made the bed here?
Sparky opened the door to their cabin and stepped outside. The door shut behind her swiftly. The hallway was completely empty. What was going on here? She was awake, right?
Of course she was, she’d hit her head waking up, if this had been a double dream, she would have woken up for real. Right? That was how it was supposed to work... right?
She pulled up her MIP and looked at the clock function. Sparky was alarmed by what it said. The local time was 1835, but then she remembered that she was on an airship over the ocean, and that they had probably gone through several time zones already, and Sparky looked at their local time zone which was RMT-2... her home time zone was RMT-5... wait, that meant that at home it was 1435! She had overslept! The cleaning crew must have come in and made Grandma V’s bed! She pulled up the map function and discovered that they were about three hours away from their destination. Grandma V and let her oversleep, probably because she thought it would be funny!
‘Granma V!’ Sparky cried out. She was going to murder her!
...
Sparky stormed into the dining hall and immediately picked out the table that Grandma V, Shortfuse, Dizzy, and DC Hopely were sitting at, as to be expected, Amarilla and Juan Carlos were nowhere to be seen. Sparky stormed over to the table and sat down at it.
‘Sparky! Thank god!’ Dizzy said with a smile. ‘I was about to come check on you!’
‘I’m fine’, Sparky said with a huff. ‘No thanks to you!’ she said pointing at Grandma V.
Grandma V raised an eyebrow in confusion.
‘Don’t pretend like you don’t know! You let me oversleep because you thought it would be funny!’ Sparky hissed at her.
‘Sparkplug’ Grandma V snapped back at her, causing Sparky to recoil. Grandma V never used her real name. ‘I did no such thing! I watched you yesterday and I saw how hard it was for you being aboard, I let you sleep because I thought it would be easier for you if you slept through most of the trip!’
Sparky blinked for a few moments at the revelation. ‘You mean... you actually did something thoughtful for once?’ she asked.
Grandma V’s scowl turned to the obnoxious grin she was well known for. ‘Don’t get used to it’, she said with a chuckle.
Sparky’s frown too turned to a small smile. ‘Yeah, I won’t... honestly; it was probably a good idea, at least this way, I minimised the chances of Juan Carlos bloodying me up and tossing me out of a cargo hatch’.
Everyone looked at her in confusion. Sparky took the time to recount what had happened with Amarilla. ‘... I had her; she had just accepted my friendship and then I went in blew it!’ Sparky finished.
‘At least you were honest about it’, Dizzy said with a shrug, giving her friend a reassuring pat on the shoulder. ‘It’s better than her coming with us to meet DC Hopely’s friend and finding out for the first time then. She would have been twice as angry’.
‘Probably more so’, DC Hopely added. ‘Speaking of, once we land and get through security, we need to make a bee line for our meeting point with Yuri, DCI Auditore will have no doubt arranged for a bulletin to be put out on us by the Police Internationale. It takes time for them to distribute that bulletin to every local police service, but we’re not going to have a lot of time’.
Sparky nodded her head in agreement. Soon enough, a waiter came by and delivered their food, same as yesterday consisting of a salad, a soup, and this time, a bowl of ice crème for desert.
‘Aw come on!’ DC Hopely cried out. ‘Not this again!’