At least fourteen gears clacked against each other to help do whatever it was the tower’s mechanism was meant to do. Starlight looked at it with disdain. Clearly the result of whatever it was doing was nothing remotely observable. Twilight’s eyes, however, seemed to turn with those same gears.
“It’s a flow analyzer,” the purple princess stated almost as if she were talking to somepony besides Starlight.
She placed a hoof in the center of the room and made a circular motion. A magical aura of orange grew out of the thin air around her until it morphed into a series of holographic screens showing a myriad of data. Starlight tried not to leave her mouth open. What was impressive was not this magical device but rather how quickly Twilight herself figured it out.
She really is an egghead, Starlight thought as she followed her marefriend around. In a good way, though, she concluded.
Twilight, not hearing this, turned ever more optimistic. “This could be our big break! We might be able to use this to locate Ruby Rose!”
Starlight smacked her head with her forehoof. It just figured she’d accidentally speed things along. “Wait,” she backtracked mentally, “Ruby isn’t a unicorn.”
“No,” Twilight admitted with only a glance to her companion, “but the display here has a setting for tracing Earth pony magic. It may not be as obvious as it is with unicorns, but they also have their own unique magic that this thing can detect!”
Starlight ground her teeth.
Twilight tapped her forehoof in the air around her, activating the massive tower’s abilities. Gears stopped, clanked into different positions, and started to grind against each other with more energy. The air took on a spicy electrical tang as a humming noise began to fill the room.
“It’s working!” Twilight cried in scientific glee even as her mane and tail started to float on a static charge. “It’s picked up a pony in the city!”
“Besides us?” Starlight asked and tried to smooth out her own mane.
“Northwest,” Twilight reported, confidence in her tone. “5 blocks. You were a genius mentioning this place!”
Starlight cursed herself mentally.
“Come on!” Twilight didn’t waste a second. She jumped back from the holograms, making them vanish. Her eagerness and dash for the door made Starlight almost trip over herself to keep up.
“But what was that Analyzer made for in the first place?” Starlight tried to say anything that might slow her marefriend down. She needed to come up with a plan of action. “It’s so big! It couldn’t have been made just to find ponies inside the city.”
Twilight ran back out onto the street before she stopped and considered what Starlight said. “You...may have a point,” she admitted with a blush. It was awkward for her to have been so clearly focused on figuring out what the tower was and how to use it that she missed why it was there in the first place. “But we have to save Spike first. We can deal with studying this place afterwards.”
“What I’m trying to say,” Starlight countered before Twilight could dart away again, “is that maybe if I stay behind, I can keep tracking her and maybe even find Spike with it.”
Twilight frowned. “But it didn’t have any dragon-finding option.”
“You get to Ruby and I will worry about what the tower can and cannot do,” Starlight grinned, happy with the new scheme forming in her mind even as she spoke.
Twilight took the suggestion with a nod and ran off down the old stone street. She quickly disappeared around the corner of one of the many rusty-looking metal buildings. Starlight’s grin turned into a smirk when she did. The pinkish unicorn also turned, though it was to go back into the tower. She got back to the screen area Twilight found and mimicked her move.
If anypony could copy Twilight or even modify a complex and mysterious form of magic then it was herself, Starlight Glimmer. Suspicion hadn’t been on Twilight’s mind and she seemed to trust her marefriend. All for the better. The tower’s display screens materialized into their orange glows around her.
“Typical Starswirl,” Starlight remarked to herself while analyzing the magical displays. “His methods always follow a pattern. Just like the time spell.”
A few swipes of her hoof against the holograms made the machines begin clanging into a new order. But before the cogs on one of the far walls could finish positioning against the others, she blasted them with her horn. The heavy metal wheels fell down to the floor with a deafening crash.
“Let’s try things my way,” she hummed happily.
A warning siren started to blare from the tower’s peak. It made Starlight wince and hold her head, but didn’t keep her from fixing it.
“Quiet!” she yelled at it with sudden rage and a burst of magic from her horn.
The siren fell silent.
“That’s better,” she resumed her lighthearted spirit and cast a spell to form a new series of mechanical devices where the old cogs used to be. “A bit of this. A bit of that.”
A mess of new unidentifiable metal parts were now assembled where the cogs used to be. The cogs that were on the floor were gone now – used as material along with a few of the doors and containers in other rooms.
Starlight trot up, activated the screens once again and was not disappointed to see that one of the displays was now outputting gibberish. Her horn glowed and then stabbed the hologram, which flickered and then displayed the outline of a dragon. It was wonky, but she didn’t care much about looks. Just functionality.
Another tap of her hoof upon the hologram – really more of a swipe through empty air – and the tower once more groaned with turning machinery. The center screen showed the city at first but then scaled out. It showed the entire continent they were on and then the planet. The hologram of the planet twirled and switched focus to another planet far away, scaled in, and finally settled on a new continent and new city. Words snapped across the screen.
Equestria.
Saddle Arabia.
Maredina.
“It’s over then,” Starlight let out a breath and stepped away from the holograms, which disappeared in her absence. She had successfully modified the Analyzer to find a “magic dragon” and confirmed Spike’s safety. With their friends in Maredina, it was practically impossible he had not already been discovered. What worried her was something else altogether.
“Why would Starswirl build an interstellar detection device?”
“Stop!” Twilight shouted across the plaza. When she first found the villainous red mare, Ruby had taken off. The panic in her stride told Twilight that she had not expected to be followed. Let alone found.
The red Earth pony was trapped in a seemingly dead-end plaza with no routes of escape except for the direction Twilight was in. High smooth walls formed this literal corner of the city and the ground beneath their hooves was no longer stone. A hard metal made up a unique flooring with a zigzag pattern pointing to the center of the plaza.
“I’m sorry! Please don’t hurt me!” Ruby cried out as she turned to face the princess. Her eyes darted about with pools of water at the bottom. This was more than mere panic. “Please! Just don’t harm me!”
“Harm you?” Twilight’s brows furrowed in absolute confusion. She took a step toward the broken mare. “What’s going on? Why would you think I would harm you? Sure, you took Spi-”
Twilight stopped short when the mare crouched to the ground and held her head. She really was expecting some sort of aggression beyond what Twilight would ever think of doing.
“Done yet?” a voice called from behind Twilight, causing the mare to jump around in surprise.
“Starlight?” Twilight exclaimed in shock, though she relaxed quickly. “I thought you were back at the tower trying to locate Spike.”
Starlight kept walking towards the alicorn until she was only a few hooves distance away. Twilight’s coat fur stood up and her nostrils flared.
“Freeze!” Twilight shouted and blasted the most powerful ice magic she could muster from her horn. It lanced at Starlight, but the mare teleported behind Twilight with a smoothness she had not seen with her marefriend before. Not even in their duels.
The purple pony felt a harsh shove and fell to the ground with a thud. She could already feel a bruise coming on. She didn’t even have time to turn over because the mare behind her got on top and pinned her with her hooves so Twilight’s face pressed against the cold metal plaza floor.
“You picked up my scent faster than my pawn Ruby,” the supposed-to-be-Starlight said with a sickening giggle. “Not fast enough, though. And I expected more given we’ve met before.”
“Get off of me, Chrysalis,” Twilight seethed with anger.
She couldn’t see it, but the changeling transformed back into her true form on top of the pony mare. The tall shape-shifter ignored Ruby, who took her chance to run past them and escape. “You will not be so feisty after I get you to surrender the activation key to me.”
“Activation key?”
“Don’t play dumb!” Chrysalis bit out with more hatred than even Twilight felt for the carapaced villain. “You don’t know what I sacrificed to get here!”
Twilight’s brain wrestled for what “activation key” might refer to. Starswirl had built the city for experimental science and magic. Clearly, there was some device of significance that Chrysalis wanted to use for her own purposes. Her initial instinct was to try playing along until she could overpower the changeling but a last second idea put her on a different path.
“I only just got here and I know close to nothing of this place,” Twilight admitted, her words coming out almost mumbled because of her pressed face. “But if you promise you’re not going to hurt anypony then I’ll find the key for you.”
“You would trust a promise of mine?” Chrysalis asked as if she were greatly amused by the notion.
“I didn’t say trust,” Twilight grumbled. “I’ll tolerate you until we’re both out of here.”
Chrysalis squinted. “I’m not interested in Equestria anymore. I’m moving on. Find the Star Teleporter’s key for me and we’ll have the pleasure of never seeing each other again.”
“Sounds like we can have mutual goals,” Twilight almost growled.
The changeling jumped off of the alicorn and hovered on her insectile wings. “I’ll be waiting. And watching.”
Trying to ignore the audacity of the queen changeling’s lack of assistance, Twilight looked back to the tower she had come from earlier. Perhaps Starlight could configure it to find a key if she had succeeded at finding a dragon. In any case, she would need it again to find Ruby, who had run off into the city.
Starlight kept glancing over her shoulder at Chrysalis. She wasn’t a big fan of changelings even though she had only heard about the invasion in news. Perhaps it was her size or fangs that gave her worry. In any case, Starlight’s light blue magical aura swept new parts into the tower’s wall-set mechanics.
“It will be less reliable with every part I change,” Starlight disclaimed to Twilight, who was next her.
The purple alicorn was wearing an expression equally as grim. She stepped to the tower screen circle, which activated and began reporting on Ruby’s position. “Well, we’re not looking for stability here. We just need to get Chrysalis the key and grab Ruby on our way out. You sure Spike is in Maredina?”
“Would I lie?”
“The machine might,” Twilight frowned at the glitching screens around her. She could only hope to Celestia that Ruby’s position was not glitching like most of the other data outputs.
“I’m still waiting,” Chrysalis complained, the buzzing of her wings not doing anything for Twilight’s concentration.
“We’re working on it!” Twilight snapped. She had to concentrate. Chrysalis showed them the Star Teleporter on the northern side of the city. If Twilight were Starswirl then were would she store the key? Everything fit a logical pattern…
“So you drain love from others to feed?” Starlight squinted suspiciously at Chrysalis.
“You pathetic ponies have no idea,” Chrysalis seethed. She fought to keep her drool from showing. “The love between you two is so strong – particularly from you – that I’m getting a headache holding myself back. I’d drain you dry if I didn’t want that key first.”
Starlight sneered. “You better not try after we get the key for you. I’ll show you that a roasted changeling can indeed get blacker.”
Chrysalis sneered back. “As much as I’d love to kick your flat flank for that, I’m mature enough to focus on my objectives. Unlike you.”
“I’ve got it!” Twilight exclaimed while studying the flickering maps of the city on the screens. “Starswirl would have put it in the food supply facility!”
“I’m sure that makes sense to you, Twily,” Starswirl frowned at her with a dead look.
“Rationing,” Twilight explained as she hopped away from the screens and headed for the exit. “He would leave the key with the last supplies that would be gathered before an expedition. Things that would spoil otherwise. Starlight, you grab Ruby and bring her back here. I’ll get the key and we can be back in Maredina in no time!”