//------------------------------// // The Wanderers // Story: "Somepony! Help! Princess Celestia Has Lost Her Memory!" // by Kevin Lee //------------------------------// In the morning, Chrysalis approached the marshal's office, accompanied by the changeling who had brought her his message that he wanted to speak with her. "You wished to see me, Marshal?" Chrysalis asked when she entered his office. In addition to the marshal, there were two other earth ponies sitting whom she recognized, and they stood upon her arrival. "Yes, Queen Chrysalis," Mack replied who also stood. "Thank you for coming. You remember Agents West and Gordon?" "The two treasury officers?" Chrysalis asked, nodding to them. Kwik Khoppi gave them both a very fond smile. "Hi Pappy! Alika!" Kwik Khoppi happily greeted, making the two ponies blush slightly. "Hello again, Kwik. And nice meeting you once more, Your Highness," West said, speaking up to offer his hoof to her with a genuine smile. "Agent West," Chrysalis formally replied shaking his proffered hoof. "Please," Agent West replied. "Call me Pappy." "And me Alika," Gordon added as he offered his hoof as well after his partner fished shaking hooves with her. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" Chrysalis inquired after introductions were completed. "After our talk the other night," Mack said, speaking up, "I got to thinking about the logistics of moving those rails from your hive. How close do any of these lines into the mountains come to your hive? It occurred to me that with their train still on this side of the gap, we could use it to begin ferrying the rails back here." "Hmm," Chrysalis considered as she stepped up to look over the detailed map of the local territory. "Yes, But as I mentioned, it will still take several years to undo all the damage we did when we pulled them up. Plus, my old hive is more than a dozen miles beyond the last mine on this spur," she finished, pointing to the end of the rail line in question. "And if we tossed in as many of the townsponies as we can to assist as well?" Mack proposed. "Interesting…" Chrysalis trailed off, looking down at Kwik Khoppi. The smaller changeling tilted her head as they both conferred on the problem. "Every ling working in shifts to transport the rails over the hills…" Kwik Khoppi initially muttered. "And with the train limited to the time to run to load up and return here before repeating…" Chrysalis added. "We're assuming you would work only during daylight hours?" Kwik Khoppi inquired to Mack. "Mostly the daylight hours, except for the height of the day" Mack confirmed. "Of course, we'll be able to start before sunup and work quite a bit after sundown." "And what is the maximum capacity your train can carry down from the mountains?" Chrysalis asked Agent West. "Our engineer can give you more specific numbers to what she can haul," West told her. "But the Nimrod's plenty strong enough, more than twice the power of any of her contemporaries that were running back when all this happened. Plus, we can uncouple our private office cars and replace them with the half-dozen flatbeds sitting on your sidings. She'll do quite the job for this." "Twice the power of other trains, you say?" Kwik Khoppi inquired. "Impressive. If that's true…" "The couple hundred miles from here to Bugtussle, and of course the hundred or so miles beyond there," Chrysalis muttered. "And there's the problem about getting through Bugtussle, itself. We did have quite the fight on our hooves as we were tearing up the tracks when we got there," she added wryly. "They won't be happy to see us return." "We'll take care of that," Mack said, chuckling. "If all that's so, putting back 30 lengths of track per day…" Kwik Khoppi muttered. "It's doable…" Chrysalis finished, nodding. "It could be done in a little over a year—maybe two…" "Fifteen months at best," Kwik Khoppi confirmed. "Assuming we don't run into any of those other problems out there to delay us," Chrysalis agreed. "But yes. Fifteen months, or so. It can be done. It might be able to be done," she amended turning to face them. "How about your changelings?" West inquired. "How will they work laying the tracks back down?" "I'll have them working in shifts around the clock," Chrysalis explained. "We'll start by having a quarter of them moving the rails from the hive over to the mine and to help load the train. They'll continue to transport the rails to the mine as your train runs the maximum loads down here. From here, the townsponies will offload your train and start laying down the tracks as you go back for subsequent loads. Once that process is completed, my changelings will come back here to help in the re-laying of the rails." "A quarter of your changelings, all around the clock?" Gordon asked incredulously. "They'll get worn down pretty quickly at that pace." "They'll still be working the brothels," Chrysalis replied with a shrug. "Moving tons of steel for hours AND working the bars!?" Gordon exclaimed. "You forget, Alika," Chrysalis said, smiling. "Their time in the brothels is really their relaxation and feeding period. The work will actually do them some good. More than a few of my changelings are getting a little pudgy in their carapaces," she said, giving a poke with a hoof at Kwik Khoppi, who visibly blushed a little. The five of them continued to discuss the logistics to restore the rail line well into the day. That afternoon, Filly escorted Celestia to the farrier. "Okay, Princess," Foaly said, setting down the second of the four anvils he had made to replace the two Celestia was wearing on her front hooves. These two were for her back hooves, if she was still insisting on wearing such things. "Why don't you give these a try?" Celestia nosed at them, and then moved to set her rear legs beside them. One by one, she lifted her back feet and stomped down on them, sinking her hooves into the mass of metal. "Hmmm! Still warm!" she happily exclaimed. "Well, I only did just finish quenching them," Foaly started just as the now giddy alicorn began dancing about on all four hooves. Except at that moment, Celestia's front right and rear left legs burst through the floor to the ground beneath. "Ooops!" Celestia sheepishly apologized. "Are you sure the Long Tree is sufficiently reinforced?" Foaly muttered to Filly. "We'll find out," Filly sighed as she and Foaly went to assist Celestia out of the holes she had made. Once out in the main street, Celestia resumed her happy dance, mixing up pronging, flapping her wings, and spinning about with the anvils covering her hooves thudding onto the ground in a complicated pattern that was too involved for Filly to follow. Filly wisely kept her distance—at least a couple of body lengths away—just for safety’s sake. "I know alicorns are supposed to be the embodiment of all the three tribes, Princess," Filly spoke up, "so naturally, you've got the strength of us earth ponies. But how can you just walk—no—how is it possible for you to dance with an anvil on each hoof? Even Foaly and Mack find it difficult to move just one about and they're the strongest ponies I know." "I—I don't know," Celestia cheerfully replied after stopping to consider the question. "It—it just feels right. It feels like I had been missing something and just found it again." "Weird," Filly muttered. "But, with all that weight, will you still be able to fly?" "FLY!?" Celestia stared at Filly as if in shock. She looked back at her wings that were still partially unfurled from her happy dance earlier. "I—I—I don't know how to fly," she sadly whined, her cheerful attitude suddenly deflating. "Oh," Filly winced in consternation. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel bad. I'm afraid there's no one in town that can help teach you—except maybe the changelings. I'm sure that once you learn the motions, it'll come back to you." "I—I guess it might," Celestia finally shrugged as she set her wings back to her sides. Then she experimentally stretched them out to their fully reach, moved them up and down, forward and back, and tilted them first one way then the reverse before folding them back to her sides again. "I supposed so," she concluded. Filly could tell her sadness had departed and was evidently replaced with puzzlement. "They don't hurt and they seem to have a full range of motion. But they just feel so odd." "I see," Filly replied. "And what about your magic?" "Magic?" she asked with curiosity. "You—you don't remember how to do that, either?" Filly timidly inquired, to which Celestia shook her head. "Hmmm, I hope that won't be a problem," Filly said, sighing. "I'm no unicorn, so I don't know how to even begin teaching you something like that. But at least we do have a few unicorns in town. Hopefully, they can teach you again. But if your innate magic is as powerful to them as your physical strength is to us earth ponies, I shudder to think of what might happen should there be an accident." At that moment, the sun began its final shaky journey toward the horizon to mark the end of the day. At the same time, the moon quickly rose in the east before pausing to hang in the sky for its first hour of the night. "That—that—somehow, that just seems so—wrong," Celestia muttered, still looking to where the sun had lowered. "Well, so far as I know, it is supposed to be you raising and lowering the sun," Filly put forward. "According to what Chrysalis said, it may be your sister who's been raising and lowering the sun while you were wandering the desert." Celestia merely tilted her head at that before turning to resume their walk back the Long Tree. "So, what sort of things will be going on in the saloon?" Celestia inquired, getting her cheerfulness back. "Nothing that we've not been doing for years on end," Filly replied with a smirk. ******************** Once the sun set again, they broke camp and flew high in the night sky for the greatest dangers dwelt in the lower altitudes. And they flew throughout the night to travel the furthest they could for the day was not without its own horrors, least of which was the oven-like heat. Speech was kept to a minimum since they had little to say to one another, but they did occasionally chitter as they traveled. It was next to impossible for non-changelings to learn their language, as they communicated on at least four different levels, one of the major used being chittering. A few clicks could at one moment be as profound as the greatest orations of history, while a dozen minutes of chittering could literally mean nothing at all. Only a changeling could tell the difference. The four kept their thoughts to themselves throughout that first night. Doup LeQat, Klauxn, Phauxtaux, and Xerox knew their mission. Their Queen, the Mother of the Hive, depended upon them to complete the instructions she commanded: deliver the message to the Princess of the Night. It was a mission they all knew was fraught with danger. After all, they had taken this route once before, when the entire Hive was mobilized in full force to invade Canterlot. Then, it had taken the thousands and thousands of changelings a week to travel from their hidden caves in the mountains west of Dry Gulp to the Equestrian capitol. It had been a dangerous undertaking crossing the desert even then as several hundred battle-ready troops were lost to the hazards along the route taken, only for them all to be blasted nearly all the way back to their lair in a matter of hours on that fateful day. Now, they were once more heading to the place where they had met their doom. But they first had to get there….