“Well.” Second Chance looked over the wreckage with gradually watering eyes. Twilight had told her on the way that “the library wasn’t in good shape,” but she hadn’t expected this. It was as though the very hand of God had swept down and burned the building from Equis.
Gone were the solar panels, gone was her bedroom and the generator out back. The ground around their lot was still littered with books, with covers in various stages of decomposition.
Without a word exchanged, Chance leaned up against Twilight, with Spike doing the same from the other side. They stood alone on the street for a few seconds, sharing a few tears and a great deal of solidarity.
All around them, the rest of Ponyville was a little better off, though little of it was undamaged. The little town had been briefly occupied, after all. The sound of hammers and construction was all around them. Ponyville’s citizens had sympathetic glances for them, but… they were not the only ones to suffer this way.
“My brother—” From above her, Twilight sniffed, her body still tense. “He said he and Cadance—sorry, Princess Cadance. They’ve already sent some of the Crystal Empire’s best engineers.” She gestured vaguely towards the edge of town. “Already got a spot picked out. They said they were going to take this opportunity to build me a proper castle.”
Chance felt her shiver, and she looked up. “You don’t want them to?”
“I…” Twilight looked down, obviously forcing a smile. “I want the Golden Oak Library back. But an enchanted tree like this takes hundreds of years. Applejack’s grandmother planted this one actually, during Ponyville’s founding festival.” She sighed. “And there aren’t any spells to put it back together, either. I searched Canterlot’s entire library.”
Chance leaned briefly against her again. “Sorry, Mom.” She frowned down at her little saddlebags, stuffed with the accolades of their adventure. Sweetie Belle had her family, or at least Rarity and the Boutique. Where would home be for Chance? Didn’t castles take generations to build?
“You think the basement’s okay?” Of course, Chance didn’t just ask out of academic interest. Truth’s power had run out, but he had been running for several days after Tirek’s invasion finally ended, manipulating what remained of the drones and Tower hardware. Between him and the princesses returning to their power, there had been no incidents of violence with what remained of the “Great Pack.”
A few of the “squires” had even been allowed to stay, using their powerful armor and new knowledge in service of Equestria. With their knight gone, they couldn’t find any other masters worthy of service besides the princesses he had apparently loved in life.
“Oh!” Twilight’s smile looked genuine this time. “That sounds plausible! I’ve read basements often survive hurricanes and other disasters. I should’ve checked that earlier!”
Chance opened her mouth to say she had known this whole time, then closed it again. She didn’t actually know what condition the basement was in, only that Truth had survived. That didn’t really prove anything, seeing as Truth had survived the fantastic forces of the universal gulf. Fire magic probably wouldn’t even scratch him.
Even without the magic of all Equestria’s Alicorns, Twilight’s power was impressive. Chance watched from behind her, as a great wave of dust and rubble blasted away to either side, clearing a path all the way to the entrance. With a grunt of effort Twilight shoved against a pile of charred wood and branches, and they exploded out of their way. She blasted upward, scattering ruined furniture and piles of burned books until she had cleared the way to the basement door.
It was still there, charred black. As she swung it open, the door fell sideways off its hinges, landing with a crash at their hooves. Twilight tensed all over, brushing the dust off her chest with a little wave of magic. “You two wait here.” She gestured at the doorway. “If it looks safe, I’ll call.”
“You’re a pony, Twi!” Spike protested. “No rubble’s gonna be able to hurt a dragon! I should do it.”
“Maybe.” Twilight shrugged. “But you can’t teleport if the ceiling caves in.”
Spike looked like he might argue. Instead he just nodded. “That’s fair.”
“I’ll see you two in a minute.” Twilight turned, flicking the light switch. Nothing happened. She grunted, her horn starting to glow as she made her way down. The little flicker of lavender light vanished around the corner, leaving them alone in the wreckage.
“How was getting foalnapped?” Spike asked, conversationally. “More fun the second time?”
She shoved him in response, glaring. “I dunno.” She shoved again. “Was that more fun the second time?”
“I’m not sure.” Spike stuck his tongue out… but seemed to think better of escalating further. “How’d you save Canterlot, exactly? I may’ve been dozing a little during the medal ceremony.”
Chance glanced briefly back at her saddlebags—they had been through her whole adventure, through the kidnapping, and now apparently held her only surviving possessions.
Holy crap losing a house was awful. She hadn’t even remembered it the first time, with everything else she had lost that day. “Sweetie Belle got the shield down with her singing. Well… Lyra and I tried to help, but neither of us had magic, so…”
Spike nodded, any trace of amusement gone. “Yeah.” There was nothing funny about the kind of suffering they had seen. Some ponies drained, the ones Tirek had taken from the other tribes after leaving the changeling hideout, had been weakened and left in the elements to die. Some of them had.
“Well…” She lowered her voice. “You gotta keep this between us, but we didn’t know the leader of the diamond dogs was planning on capturing Canterlot for herself.”
“She… she what?”
Chance nodded. “Celestia didn’t want that part getting out… With as weak as Equestria already looks to its neighbors, letting the news get out that we were conquered twice in the same week would be really bad.”
Chance shivered, imagining the harsh deserts of the dragon lands and the fearsome creatures who lived there. She imagined the huge griffons with their airships and gunpowder, or the minotaurs said to enter battle rages and fight until they died. Would Equestria’s neighbors see this as their invitation to try what Tirek and his changeling allies had tried?
If they did, it wouldn’t be because of her. She kept her voice down. “Anyway, because the dogs didn’t actually hurt anypony or fight other cities, it wasn’t that hard to keep quiet. I don’t really know what her plan was. Truth and I tricked her into letting us…” How the heck was she supposed to explain systems penetration to a fire-breathing dragon with no concept of computers? “Break all her machines. We did some computer magic, and that was that. Without their leaders, or any of their machines… they thought it was a bad idea to fight Celestia and Luna in their own city.”
“Makes sense.” Spike looked awed. “Glad you had more luck than we did. Getting tricked by evil changelings must run in the family or something.” He rolled his eyes, though his grip was suddenly tense, one claw digging into the wood of the entryway. There was more fear there than he let on.
“Was she evil?” Unlike Spike, Chance had payed attention to every part of that ceremony. “Didn’t she reveal herself? Refuse to hurt a princess, and… tell Twilight where to find the place the changelings were…” She whimpered, unable to continue. She’d had nightmares about that place the last two nights in a row.
Spike nodded. “Still seems pretty evil what she did.” He kicked angrily at the side of the library. “Pretending to be you… lying to ponies… guards died when changelings took Ponyville during that dumb plot.”
Chance took another few moments to recover enough to speak. “Well, how was it like? Didn’t the princesses put Twilight in charge of all Equestria’s Alicorn magic?”
“Yeah!” His expression brightened. “You should’ve seen her. She didn’t say a word to anypony at first… something about that being even worse or whatever. But she was a nervous wreck!” He made a gesture with both claws over his head, which Chance recognized immediately as imitating Twilight’s mane. It wasn’t the first time he had done it for her.
“Blowing up doors, teleporting all over Equestria, shooting through the sky faster than Rainbow Dash… I’m sure she probably wrote a few books in there somewhere. Guess they exploded with the rest of them.” He sighed, slumping sideways against the wall.
“Maybe… we won’t be in a tiny little closet in the new house?” she offered, forcing a smile. “You might even be able to persuade Twilight to give us our own rooms. If the engineers haven’t planned everything yet.”
Spike nodded, face brightening a little. “That does sound nice. Not that… Not that I didn’t have tons of fun sharing!” He grinned with embarrassment. “But dragons grow up slower than ponies. Soon you’ll be too old to share. You’ll want your own space, somewhere to share with your ‘special somepony’ or whatever.”
Chance shoved him again, a little harder than last time. “Not a chance.”
“Say that all you want.” Spike glanced down, a little wistful. “I already saw it happen once. Twilight and I grew up together, but… now she’s all grown up, and I’m still…” He gestured at the wall. “Not. So unless you plan on being an Alicorn before you grow up…”
“I doubt that.” She grinned. “I don’t think I’d make a very good princess.”
“Looks safe!” Twilight’s voice echoed from below, audible only because of Chance’s sensitive pony hearing. “Looks like we won’t have to do the inn after all!”
Chance smiled weakly, then lit up her own horn with gray magic, leading the way down into the basement.
* * *
It was just before sunset that Second Chance found herself alone outside the ruin of her home. She was covered with dirt and grime, smearing up her legs from her vain exploration. She stared at the crater her home had been, a pile of melted solar-panels crumbled in front of her beside the burned wreckage of a book she thought had been her diary.
It was hard to be sure aside from the cover, which beneath the ash was the same shade as the one Twilight had given her a year ago. Little of her life had survived. Not the lovingly-made dresses, not the stuffed doll of a human girl she had sewed with Sweetie Belle’s help, not the (many) books Twilight Sparkle had given her. It was all gone.
“Wish the same damn thing didn’t keep happening to me,” she muttered to nobody, kicking at the ash with one hoof. She had given up trying to stay clean hours ago, and at this point she hardly noticed the grime. The acrid stench of fire burned at her nostrils, permeating every ruin and surviving relic. Not the petroleum stench of a human structure—almost like a campfire. Ponies used very little that wasn’t natural, so she was spared that stench at least.
Chance didn’t turn around at the sound of hoofsteps behind her, and she didn’t much care to. Twilight Sparkle had her own grief, probably even worse than what she felt. Some parts of this process had to be conquered alone. She wasn’t sure how long it would take her to recover. Hopefully not as long as last time; she didn’t have a big sister to help.
At least her new family had all come through this intact. Some families in Equestria weren’t so lucky tonight.
“Excuse me?” It wasn’t Spike or Twilight’s voice, not with such a reedy male voice and thick accent. “This is the library, right?”
“Pardon our dust during the renovations, Pipsqueak.” She didn’t have to turn around to recognize that voice. Were it not for the ash all around her, she probably would’ve smelled him too. “Ponyville’s library will be returning better than ever in one to six months.” She dropped her head into her hooves, moaning faintly.
“I guess there’s no point returning these then.” Something dropped onto the ground beside her—a bundle of twine with several books tightly wrapped inside.
Chance looked, glancing briefly at the titles. Fairly advanced books—not at all what she would have expected from a colt shorter than she was. “I’m sure Twilight will be thrilled you had these.” She rose to her hooves, levitating the bundle off the ground and blowing the dust and ash from the lowest book on the pile. “Three books for the new library.”
Pip stood there as she unwrapped them, shifting nervously on those white and brown hooves of his. He looked like he wanted to say something, but she didn’t try to figure out what it might be.
“Hmm.” She levitated each one into the basket beside her one at a time, beside the handful of other intact books she had managed to find. Every item on the pile was an archeological text of some kind or another. Instead of Daring Do’s fictionalized novel, he had checked out the more academic breakdown of her actual findings.
Only the last book in the pile was even a little bit fictional, one of those sensationalized “10 Unsolved Mysteries” type books. This one was called “10 Unanswered Questions in Modern Archeology.” Even after the week Chance had endured, she couldn’t help but smile at the exaggerated cube on the front cover. “Precursors, huh?”
This was not the procedure for returning books. Given the destruction of her whole world, Chance had trouble caring.
Pipsqueak didn’t look offended. If anything, he seemed impressed. “I didn’t know you liked archaeology! I thought you were into…” He glanced down at her flank, though the mark there probably didn’t help him much. “Geography?”
She shook her head, flipping rapidly through the book. It was wonderful to have her magic back, and be able to do things like this again. How did earth ponies like Pip survive?
Even a sensational book like this was a little difficult for her to read. Still, she kept to the pictures, until she found stuff that looked a little more familiar to her. There was the cube all right, though the symbols depicted there weren’t the same ones Twilight Sparkle had shown her a year ago.
Chance dropped down to the ground again, letting the book slump there in front of her. “Unanswered question number six is a Norfolk four-course.” She turned the page. “And this part is asking if you’ve discovered electrical induction yet.” She turned again. “Oh look, an electromagnet. I’m guessing…” The last page showed several different minerals in vivid color, and the way to draw off conductive wire from copper. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.” She closed the book, sliding it along the ground towards him.
Pipsqueak’s eyes got wider, and he flipped hurriedly through the book. “Y-you… You just…” He shook his head. “You’re making fun of me!” There was a little pain in his voice then, however much he tried to fight it. Poor colt was too young and fragile for his own good, clutching protectively at the book.
“I’m not.” Chance pried the book free of his grip with her levitation, jerking so suddenly it came away without tearing. It wasn’t hard to take something away from someone without hands. She gestured at the page, at what looked like a transcription directly from the cube, and read in English. “Grow wheat in the first year, turnips in the second, followed by barley in the third and clover in the forth. This rotation significantly improves the micronutrient—”
She felt a hoof closing her mouth, and Pipsqueak’s breath on her cheek. “Can you really read that?”
She buried her face in her forelegs again. “Not today, Pip. I shouldn’t have brought it up.” She shivered, and without meaning to a wave of force rippled from her horn. It wasn’t really more than a wind, scattering dust and scraps of burned paper from around them. “All the knowledge in the world can’t stop the things you love from burning.”
Pip didn’t say anything, though the sound of his hooves faded. Chance didn’t look up—she didn’t have the energy to deal with a kid right now.
Something moved in front of her, something rustling in the center of the library. Twilight Sparkle had cleared away the wreckage there, spreading it flat onto the bare ground all around the library’s perimeter. “Doesn’t mean you can’t do something.” Something hit her in the face.
Chance whimpered, intending to yell at him to leave. What he had thrown was still on the ground in front of her, the ash already wiped away. It was an acorn, apparently intact despite the mistreatment. “What?”
Pipsqueak had clearly cleaned the thing off with his coat, judging from all the dark stains there. “I might just be a little pony, so I don’t always understand the big stuff. But if I’ve learned anything from all my reading, it’s that ponies can’t give up. Even Equestria can be mean sometimes. We can give up, or we can pick up the pieces and keep going.”
Chance blinked tears from her eyes, or tried. Everything started to blur again, with the light of sunset breaking into orange rainbows around a colt even smaller than she was. “Where’d you find that? Twilight said she…”
Pip shrugged, tapping one of his legs with a hoof. “Earth pony thing I guess.”
“I guess.” Chance levitated the little acorn up to her face, concentrating. With her magic restored, Chance opened her eyes and saw through the dross of matter. There, buried deep within a protective wooden shell and the tightly packed nutrition, she could see the faint glimmer of life.
I can’t believe we never invented sensors to do this. If she ever saw her world again, maybe she could change that. Just because ponies had developed down a different path didn’t mean her people couldn’t learn from them. God knew the learning worked in the other direction.
“If I were you, I’d plant it.” Pipsqueak struck the earth with one little hoof, carving an opening perhaps an inch deep and twice that wide.
Chance rubbed the acorn against her cheek, then lowered it into the opening. Levitation faded, along with her mage sight spell.
She made to turn away, but Pipsqueak caught her hoof. “Come on, Chance. Did nopony teach you how plants work?”
Without knowing why, Chance found herself blushing. “I… Nopony ever did. Unless you count slime growing in tanks.”
“Yuck!” He stuck his tongue out at her. “That does not count.” Pipsqueak tugged on her hoof, knocking the little pile of dirt and ash into the hole and patting it down. “There.” He let go, though he didn’t move his hoof from the ground. “I don’t think you can help with this last part.” He gestured at his forehead with his other hoof. “Wrong kind of magic.”
She just stared. For a moment it seemed like nothing was going to happen—until a faint green shoot broke the surface. It didn’t grow for long, only a little past his hoof, with a single weak-looking leaf covered in ash.
“There, that—” Pip choked as Chance embraced him, pulling the little pony into a tight pony hug.
“Thanks, Pip.” She let go. “You don’t… You don’t know what that means.” Second Chance could almost see another city, a city gray like her eyes and scarred with more ash than the library. More had burned there than books and trees.
No, Second Chance’s cutie mark wasn’t in Geography. She would make that city green again too.
She wiped away the last of the moisture, though that couldn’t do anything for how dirty she was. Dirty they both were, now. “Hey, uh… you wanna get an ice cream?”
* * *
There was none of the strut in Tesla’s gate as he passed into Richard’s office that day. The man’s dark hair had been combed neatly, his uniform pressed clean, and his eyes never went higher than Richard’s chest.
“Your Grace.” He bowed deeply as he entered, exactly 14 degrees deeper than he normally did. “If you have a moment.”
“There is always time for Tower business.” Richard inclined his head politely, though there was no requirement that he do so. Even the High Lord of the Technocratic Order was still just a citizen in his eyes, subject to his absolute authority.
But Richard wasn’t the sort of man who would abuse the authority of his office. Richard was a good king.
Or at the very least, he wanted to be. “Even if that business is bad news.”
Tesla visibly stiffened, his whole body tensing as he made his way over to the front of the desk. There was no chair, as no citizen of the Steel Tower who visited here would have a body capable of tiring. The Tower itself was on the outskirts of London, an area so heavily irradiated that not even cockroaches had been seen there since the Fall.
There was a chair for Richard, though he needed none. Like much the Tower did even today, that too was a matter of image. He gestured, clearing away the holospace above the desk of its assorted clutter. “What trouble are we in, old friend?”
“It’s about the Equestrian incursion team.” Tesla paused, perhaps expecting King Richard to make things easier by filling the silence. Richard said nothing, leaving the Technocrat to be the one to speak.
“Information is… somewhat unclear. What little we have discovered could not be worse.”
Richard did not show emotion easily. This was true of many with android bodies. Few he had ever met could match his regal baring, however. That wasn’t just in the way he could avoid showing his apprehension. Some of it was in actively appearing calm even in the presence of extremely distressing situations or information.
It was not an easy achievement. Richard kept his voice even as he suggested the worst possible thing he could think of. “She was killed by Federation agents, which had infiltrated Equestria to a degree we did not previously understand.”
Again, the way Tesla’s whole body froze was evidence enough of Richard’s success, and the stress the Technocrat was feeling. There was no sign of grief, though. Not like the grief Richard himself had shown when news of Leonidas's death had reached him.
“I… wish you were more wrong, Your Grace. We can only speculate. As you are probably aware, we make contact on a weekly basis, to exchange information and give new orders. Our recent signal went unanswered, so I queried her fleet. Last week, she had built a force of roughly ten-thousand…”
“Nineteen responded, mostly long-distance surveyors or mining equipment. All were drones that spent long periods off the network… so we suspected something had happened.”
“And you investigated,” Richard supplied. He didn’t like where this was going. Unfortunately, even being the absolute ruler of all mankind did not make him more able to shape reality with his desires alone.
Tesla nodded. “Her outpost was in ruins. No attack… every drone there had been destroyed by self-destruct or intentional overload. Her manufacturing equipment, much of which lacks a self-destruct, had been intentionally sabotaged. Extensive searching allowed us to recover a mostly intact data-module and rebuild some of what happened.”
He gestured at the table, which filled suddenly with flickering green nodes. The map represented the network of drones, and it moved in constant flux, shifting and waving about like a swarm of insects.
In a single flowing wave, all the drones changed color, and started buzzing around in agitation instead of their orderly dance. They vanished in great, choreographed flashes of light, hundreds at a time. Eventually the last light went out.
“We created this simulation based on the few modules we were able to collect. It suggests network intrusion by a skilled hacker, skilled enough to overcome Lady Brigid and all her swarm intelligence. I feel the likelyhood a human hacker of any skill would be capable of this”—he gestured vaguely—“is near zero. We also have failed to detect the Rift being moved anywhere in Equestria, or any sort of stabilizer on the other end. This suggests the Federation did not involve living agents. It suggests they sent one of their GAIs. At least Kappa class. Perhaps higher.”
“Not perhaps.” Richard stared at the simulation, watching Brigid’s nodes fall over and over. There was no telling which one had been holding her consciousness. A child senselessly slaughtered, because to their enemy they were “just machines.”
It was no accident he allowed Tesla to sense his anger. No accident he raised his voice and clenched the desk so hard the wood strained and popped. “A Kappa core might be able to penetrate a network this large, but it wouldn’t have survived the crossing. Even if it had, it wouldn’t be able to communicate with the natives to make allies, or manufacture penetration equipment.”
“If the Federation know of our involvement with Equestria and wanted to stop us, that would not be the way. They would choose an intelligence built to last, with strength to cross the gulf, with the ability to manufacture on its own, generate its own power, and communicate easily even without technology. They would choose an intelligence with the power to widen the rift, with enough energy.”
Tesla retreated, shivering. “You think they would sacrifice one of the OMICRON cores to an uncertain mission on another world? The energy required to widen the gulf even that much… it would be astronomical!”
“Energy they have in abundance with the lunar reactor. Cores they have…” He thought only a moment, recalling his last tactical report. “Seven. Six now, if one is in Equestria. I suppose it doesn’t matter which.”
“What will we do?” Tesla’s voice was low, somewhere between nervous and eager. “Destroy a few of the shelters in retaliation? I know of at least three within five hundred miles, and could—”
“No.” Richard silenced him with a glare. “We will not strike civilians because of what we suspect to be an act of war. Besides… if we break the cease-fire on Earth, that might be the end. Even if we exterminate the population of every shelter, the Aegis could bombard our city from orbit and destroy what we have accomplished. No… if there is to be another war, we will not fight it here.”
Richard leaned down, moving his hand rapidly through the holospace. The little simulation faded, replaced with a few glittering specks. Exactly 19 of them, in fact. “We’re armed with information, old friend. Even if it cost us one of the best sages of your order. You have my word there will be justice for her.”
“Will we… send another? Perhaps someone trained in systems security this time?”
“No.” Richard rose. “Listen and hear my will, Lord Tesla. Direct every surviving drone to flee from all life, flee into the wilderness where they will not be found. They will operate as a collective swarm no longer, but instead we will compile new directives for each from this side. We will return to Brigid’s directive of growing her fleet. We will avoid all living things, all population centers, and make secrecy our priority.”
“That… would stretch the timeline by several years at least, Your Grace. Perhaps decades.”
“Perhaps,” he repeated. “Except that when we are prepared, we will find that OMICRON Core… and use its power to stabilize the rift from the other side. If the process destroys it, well… so much the better.”
Tesla nodded, and there was nothing of being forced in his salute. “It will be done!” He turned, hurrying for the door. It snapped shut behind him, leaving Richard alone.
King Richard turned away from the doorway, facing out the window. Even though this was one of the few intact glass surfaces in the tower, one of the few worth constant cleaning, it was hard not to look out upon his kingdom and see mostly filth.
He was only a few floors up, not like the throne room in the rusting tower’s tip. He saw mostly the courtyard, with hundreds of androids and thousands of drones going about their daily business. Every day the solar fields grew larger, and the rubble from further and further was cleared. Near the tower the old gardens had been “repaired”, using plastic flowers and astroturf in place of the plants that would not have grown.
Somewhere not so far away was a world with real flowers and real grass, where the water wasn’t toxic and the air didn’t burn. This setback would not dissuade him. Equestria would still be his. It would just take a little more time.
Richard was a good king.