Fallout: Equestria - To Bellenast

by Sir Mediocre

10. Ruminations

Chapter Ten

Ruminations

It was a small divot in the rough shape of a triangle just below my ribs on my left side, barely noticeable beneath my coat unless one knew where to look. In the small, cracked mirror on the bench in front of me, it showed only as a slight irregularity in my fur, a patch of blue where hide was slightly more visible under the light. The very center of the mark was pale and smooth, and appeared somewhat stretched. The triangular divot sank perhaps three or four millimeters into my skin, and was around one and a half centimeters per side.

I flicked my hoof up and down, hiding and revealing the blemish with my fur. I stared for a minute more, twisting around to view the similar, smaller scar on my back, then pushed the cracked mirror away and placed a thin, freshly cut disc of brass into the second product of my forays with the smaller of two lathes in Maximillian’s vehicle bay: A precise, circular die welded to a steel plate. Clamped on and bolted to the workbench was a tall, vertical pipe, inside which was another pipe, heavily lubricated, that ended in a shorter rod of hardened steel.

Affixed to the top of the piping was a square tube of steel, stained and pitted with corrosion, which nevertheless served as an adequate lever when I telekinetically pulled it downward. Mild resistance accompanied the motion, and the rod forced the brass disc through the die and drew it into a short cylinder.

I pushed the lever back up, pulled the brass cylinder off the punch, removed the die and punch from the workbench, replaced them with slightly smaller ones, and pulled again. Faint wisps of smoke rose from the brass as the forced deformation heated and discolored it. I repeated the entire endeavor twice more.

The finished product was a brass shell half the length of my horn. I levitated it into a waiting bin to join seven identical shells, then moved to the other end of the bench and the next portion of my bespoke assembly line, a smaller, though similar, manual press, which consisted of a cylindrical block with a hole drilled into the center of its top face, a lever, and tiny punch held by the lever above the cylinder, slightly narrower than the hole in the block.

I fitted the first shell onto the waiting block and pressed the lever with both forehooves. For the comparatively trivial effort, even my meager body weight was enough to do the job.

“Your emissivity appears to have stabilized.”

“Huh.” I set the second shell on the press, punched the cavity, then moved onto the third. “Is that good, or bad?”

“Good, relatively speaking. It would take slightly longer now for a non-alicorn in your vicinity to succumb to necromantic poisoning than it would have before.”

I finished pressing the primer cavities in all eight shells before I responded. “How long?”

“Ten to fifteen minutes for the onset of systemic organ failure, if within one meter of you in an enclosed space. Perhaps thirty before treatment becomes ineffective… although, it occurs to me that the Impelled Metamorphosis Potion is an ideal treatment for those suffering from acute balefire exposure. You are perfectly healthy in conditions that are otherwise lethal to the vast majority of living creatures.”

I snorted. “I mean… not such a great option for stallions, but otherwise, yeah.” Pushing a part of my mane away from my eyes, I murmured, “Miracle in a bottle…”

“Curious. Was the Potion formulated exclusively for females?”

“No, but radiation screwed up the whole thing, I guess. Any stallion that drinks it turns into a mare. I don’t know exactly why. A megaspell futzed the original potion batch, and nopony can make any more of it, so Unity is stuck with what they have? That’s my guess. You’d have to ask Blitz, but she’s kinda touchy about Unity.” I carried the shells to the drill press next. “How long before I can go outside without killing anypony or poisoning the air, then?”

“I am uncertain. Your rate of decrease in emissivity is easily measurable… but I have no data on the metabolic process that is responsible for internal generation of balefire energy, as Night Cloud described it, beyond what I have observed thus far. I have only two data sets. Night Cloud’s emissivity is also hazardous, but significantly lower; whether this is due to her personal exposure to Balefire being lesser, her proximity to you, her metabolic and biothaumic characteristics, or a combination of factors is difficult to determine. I cannot give a precise answer.”

“How about a guess?” I powered on the drill press, which I had disassembled, cleaned, polished, and reassembled prior to my ammunition-related endeavors; all it needed was a fresh coat of paint. The hum of the electric motor and rasping of a hardened bit on brass were music to my ears. The first shell received a flash hole the width of a pinhead. “A few days? A week or two? Months?” I chewed my lip instead of continuing the list.

“Perhaps several months; again, I cannot be certain. The rate at which you absorbed radiation while adjacent my reactor chamber was approximately five hundred times your current rate of emission, but the emission rate itself decreased rapidly over the prior twelve hours, and the rate of decrease has slowed, as well. I estimate that you will continue to be emissive until your body reaches a state of equilibrium; exactly how long this will take, and what state of equilibrium, depends on factors I cannot extrapolate from available data.”

I swept the drill press clean of the coiled shavings of brass left over from my project, dropped the scraps in a tin can, and once again levitated the eight shells to another part of the workbench. “Sooo... the rate of decrease has slowed down, and it keeps slowing down?”

“Correct. The rate appears to have reached a plateau.”

I took a tiny burr from the bench and, one by one, cleaned the edges of the flash holes. “So I’ll be radioactive… forever? That’s impossible.”

“Pretend that the balefire energy you have absorbed is contained in affected atoms present in your body. You cannot split these particles; only release a certain number at one time, at a certain rate. You are now releasing one particle at a time, and the time between each release continues to lengthen.”

“Oh. Okay.” Licking my lips, I grabbed a nearby magnifying glass to aid my filing. “What if you could split them?”

“It was merely an analogy. Balefire does not conform to conventional particle models, and does not behave exactly in the matter that I have described. In any case, I do not recommend that you attempt to split atoms.”

“You can do that?”

“I cannot.”

I giggled. “No, Max, I meant generally… is that possible?”

“To split an atom? In theory, yes, but to my knowledge, it has not been done. Balefire radiation is so named after the phenomenon of nuclear decay, an event wherein one or more subatomic particles are released from an atom’s nucleus, such as occurs because of atomic instability or energetic collision with another particle. Exposure to such radiation can cause tissue damage and cancer.”

I paused while fitting the first shell onto the lathe to cut an extraction ring. “Wait,” I said, having to halfway shout over the whirring of the lathe. “There’s another kind of radiation?”

“There are two, including electro—”

“Electromagnetic, yeah. I know about that one already. Radio and visible light, ultraviolet, infrared, x-rays and stuff. Wouldn’t that make three? Electromagnetic, balefire, and… nuclear?”

“Balefire is not truly radiation, but a necromantic corruptor; however, its mechanism of propagation and its associated dangers share some surface-level characteristics with nuclear radiation, such as cellular damage and mutation. Describing the characteristics of balefire energy as radiation is technically inaccurate, but generally accepted by experts of the field. Rather, it was accepted while those experts were alive. I cannot say whether it remains an accepted term.”

I looked over at the wall speaker for a few seconds. “Um... I mean, if everypony calling it that is considered generally accepted…” I chewed my lip for half a minute, guiding the carriage of the lathe carefully into place to cut into the base of the shell. “So… do you think I’m immune to that, too? Particles, I mean. Atoms. The ones that cause cancer.”

“Are you immune to bullets?”

“…okay.” I adjusted the lathe carriage to the proper position and muttered, “Good to know, I guess...”

“The likelihood that you will encounter such materials is so low as to be mathematically redundant. My records are limited, but I am unaware of any laboratories or natural deposits containing such elements in this region.”

“Soooo, don’t worry about it?”

“You are much more likely to die of thirst while standing in a river than you are to run into any lodes of fissile material around Bellenast.”

“Huh.”

“Do you expect a visitor?”

I glanced to my right, at the door to the observation room. Frowning, I shut off the lathe. “You mean besides Zephyr?” I said as the spindle slowed down. “Can you see her, by the way?”

“She is flying at relative altitude of four and a half thousand meters. I refer to a pony approaching us now. Check the observation monitors.”

“She lost most of her feathers last week,” I said as I passed one of the speaker grills along the wall on the way to the door. “Guess she’s making up for the restlessness…” I stepped on the floor panel to open the door and entered the observation room, telekinetically flipping the power switch for the array of projections. The room brightened as multiple views of the white landscape around Maximillian came to life.

I looked to my side first, at the octagonal pyramid of magic beneath which rested Carbide, in his noctium cradle: An amalgam of arcane enchantments, esoteric technology, and necromancy, which, apparently, was meant to house a lich.

“Carbide?”

My soft inquiry languished against the background hum until another synthetic voice answered.

“He is asleep.”

“Huh.” I set my hoof on a face of the pyramid and murmured, “I didn’t know he could sleep. Didn’t think he’d want to… considering how long he was stuck that way.”

“He is capable of many things; among them, great focus, to the exclusion of such necessities as rest. I convinced him to take a nap, and have muted his external audio inputs.”

“A workaholic, huh?” I murmured. I snorted and turned to the bright projections again. “Sounds like Eagle.”

The undergrowth that normally would have magnified the depth of shadows under the forest canopy was now a pale, powdery sea of frosted bushes that dazzled beneath the evening sun. The plain beyond the tree line fairly gleamed, golden and blinding, for the storm had broken again, if only for an hour or two.

Beyond the plain, farther along the valley and at the head of the frozen river, the city of Bellenast stood. The immense wall, visible even from many kilometers away, hid the majority of the city from view, but the Amber Palace rose high above that on its island in the center of the metropolis, tall and bright and proud beneath a blanket of pristine snow. No sign of the flying serpent of golden sand remained.

The valley was quiet.

“Do you see her?”

“Her?” One of the projections on the left, a view from high up on Maximillian’s torso, panned downward and zoomed in smoothly on a figure approaching from a few hundred meters to the east on hoof, through the snow: An alicorn, with a coat of midnight blue almost exactly my own shade, a deep indigo mane styled into a braid all the way down her neck, and brown eyes. “Whoa.” She wore a burnished green, tightly-fitted jacket made of scaly hide, matching full-length, armored leggings and boots, and she had a set of white saddlebags similar to Night Cloud’s own. “Damn.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Ha! No… but I think I’m biased.” I backed away from the displays, making for the door to the crew cabin. “That’s… Orchid Wisp. She, um… well, I’m pretty sure she pulled a sword out of my chest.”

“Biased? A non-sequitur; I do not understand. Biased in relation to what?”

“I’m pre… um… predisposed? Yeah. I guess I’m predisposed to be attracted to tall mares. Orchid is really pretty. Friggin’ gorgeous. Not as gorgeous as Night Cloud, but that’s hardly a fair comparison.”

“Greater physical stature is a determining factor in most animals’ choice of mate. I am uncertain of the relevance in this context. Why would you be attracted? You are both female.”

“Um…” I stopped and leaned on the refrigerator, which, after a little cleaning and inspection hours earlier, hummed away in a satisfactory cooling cycle, though there was nothing edible inside it. “I like mares—as in, I’m not really, um… attracted to stallions. Some ponies are just different, Max.” The much more impressive testament to equine engineering and magic around me was quieter. “Max?”

“I apologize. I have few records of this subject.”

I giggled. “Some animals are a little different, Max… in ways we can’t choose. I guess I can’t fault a robot for not knowing about that.”

“I do not have extensive knowledge of the subject of equine social organization, or mating habits. I assumed that your behavior would be similar to that of other species of mammals.”

“I mean… if that’s how you want to put it?” I scowled briefly, though not in response to Maximillian’s bluntness. “Yeah, I can tell you from personal experience that there are ponies out there who will just pick whomever they want and start mating, like animals. Sadistic freakjobs, that is. Jerks.”

“A sadist: One who—”

“Somepony who hurts others for fun. Like a rapist.”

“I know what it means.”

“Then why—okay, hang on.” I glanced up at the nearest speaker. “You know what sadism is, but you’ve never heard of two mares being together? Or two stallions? Seriously? That’s really friggin’ common.” I snorted and muttered, “Unless you’re a Réklat, I guess, but they sound like a bunch of jerks to me…”

“I know its meaning… but I do not understand it conceptually.”

“Yeah, well, the last conception I had to deal with didn’t make any sense to me, either, and it was a real pain, too.”

Maximillian paused for a few seconds. “I apologize for being unclear. To clarify: I referred to the first subject of your statement, the concept of sadism. Why would one derive enjoyment from willful harm done to another without purpose? It is wholly illogical.”

I shook my head and wondered whether he had a camera in the compartment with which to see me do it. “I don’t know, Max. Ask the stallion who bashed my skull with a wrench.”

“Is he in the vicinity? I can apprehend him.”

I snorted, laying my head against the fridge door to listen to the humming. “With what, your hydraulic claws, or your cannons? Thanks, I guess… but I was being sarcastic. That was two months ago. He’s dead… and over a thousand klicks away. Don’t think he’d have much to say, even if he were alive to say it. I don’t really care.”

“He was tried and executed for the crime of assault? That is not a commensurate judgement.”

“No, Max,” I muttered, my tail and ears drooping and my featherless wings clenching at my sides. “He didn’t get a trial.” I pushed off the humming fridge, straightened up, and trotted through the kitchenette.

“That is unusual. That a court of Equestria would regress to the practice of summary execution is… troubling.”

I scowled, tossed my mane back, and said firmly and clearly, “He didn’t get a trial because I killed him.”

“Why?”

Silence and my own hoofsteps replied. I gritted my teeth and took slow, deep breaths.

“Could you not have sought a different solution? Your telekinetic ability is more than sufficient to allow you to subdue an assailant.”

“And I can’t grab a full-grown stallion with my magic when I can’t concentrate, okay? Look, you don’t friggin’ know what—” I blew out the breath through pursed lips and blinked quickly to clear my eyes. “Max… I wasn’t just giving a friggin’ example. The stallion knocked me out with a friggin’ pipe wrench. Those are really big and heavy. Gave me a bad concussion, and a sub… a sub-dural…”

“A subdural hematoma, intracranial bleeding?”

“Yeah. That’s what the doctor said. I think. If he’d hit me harder, I’d be dead, or have permanent brain damage. Might even be a friggin’ vegetable. The only reason I’m alive is that he force-fed me a healing potion right after that, and he didn’t even do it to keep me alive, just to hide the fact that he’d done it. Does any of that sound logical to you, Mister Robot?”

“I do not live by logic alone.”

I snorted at the reproach clear in the synthetic voice. “Well, after he cracked my skull with a friggin’ pipe wrench, Aurum Bannister raped me. Do you even know what that is? Because I didn’t until he gave me a demonstration. I can’t really describe how… how it… I… why am I even… listen, Max, I wasn’t really thinking about trial by jury when it happened. I was just… so angry I couldn’t think. All I wanted to do was hurt him back, and…” A weak laugh crawled up my dry throat and found its sickened escape. “And I did,” I whispered. “I killed him. I’m sorry you don’t understand why, Max, but…” I touched a speaker grill on the wall nearby and mumbled, “I really don’t think you can.”

“Perhaps.”

I rubbed my eyes, cleaning the tears from my muzzle, chuckled, and stepped away from the speaker. “You know, it does make a twisted sort of sense…”

“What does?”

“You can see in infra-red just fine, but you can’t see red.”

“Perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” I muttered. “Sure, Max. Sure…” I crossed the cabin and opened the door on the interior wall, lighting the darkened room beyond with an emerald glow from my horn. It was far from spacious, the ceiling was no higher than elsewhere, and the bunk bed sagged halfway to the deck under the weight of the winged mare who had claimed it. She had curled in on herself to fit within the confines of the bedframe, and her rear hooves hung over the side of the mattress.

I padded around to the edge of the bed and stopped with my hoof raised to touch her foreleg. Instead, I brushed her mane away from her muzzle. Slow and silent, I climbed onto the cramped bed and pressed my cheek to her chest; for once, she didn’t smell like lilac.

I stretched my wing out, wincing at the subsequent pain that spread throughout the entire limb, laid it across her side, and listened to her steady heartbeat. Then, her ribcage swelled with a deep intake of breath.

From my viewpoint, one electric blue iris appeared in the dark, gleaming in the light from my horn. Night Cloud blinked and smiled at me. “Hey,” she whispered, nuzzling my cheek as her magic lit the room. She lifted me gently and pulled me closer to her chest, covering me with her wing and forelegs. “Mmm… you’re still hot.” As she rubbed my back and took another deep breath, she stretched her legs out, then cracked her neck and yawned, and finally tucked herself in around me. “One nice side effect of a good dose of rads,” she said, voice low and husky, “You don’t really need blankets… but it makes detecting fevers and actual hyperthermia rather difficult.”

“But… isn’t fever being hot?” I patted her chest and gave her a nonchalant smirk. “Or, you know, hotter than usual.”

“Immune response,” she murmured. “Higher body temperature helps fight infections, and while most infectious bacteria and viruses can’t survive long enough to harm you at our current body temperatures, some can, and those are the ones even alicorns can’t easily fight.” She stroked her hoof from between my ears to the back of my neck and began to rub my withers. “On that note… if you’re ever bitten by an animal while you’re heavily irradiated, tell me immediately, or find a doctor if I’m not available. A ghoul, like Doctor White Patch, if you can find one; they usually have the most experience, and the medicines needed for the treatment you may need. Even if it’s just a scratch and you heal from the rads. Some forms of rabies survived the early decades of balefire contamination, and every now and then, you’ll run into a strain that has taken on a necromantic nature. Your own metabolism can fuel them. Understand?”

“Okay.” I giggled. “Um… two things. One, I know it’s not morning, but your morning voice is sexy.” I cleared my throat, sat up, and, while grasping her forehoof, said, “I would friggin’ love to lie here with you for the rest of the day, but… Orchid Wisp is outside. She’ll be here in a minute or so. She was about a quarter klick away when I looked.”

“Oh!” I fell backward as she jolted up, and she promptly stabbed her horn through the supporting wire mesh and mattress of the bunk above her.

I folded my forelegs over my chest. “Nice.”

She sighed, glaring upward. “Speaking of fever…” She pulled her horn free and said, “Orchid is probably here for your follow-up.”

“My follow-up…”

“Follow-up appointment. She needs to ensure you haven’t suffered any unexpected side-effects from surgery. Anything that might not manifest immediately, but could turn up within a day or so afterward.”

“So… an examination?” I frowned. “Couldn’t you do that? I’d rather, um… not be poked and prodded by… I’d rather it be you.”

“I can’t. I’m not your physician, and I’m not qualified or licensed.” Night Cloud sighed, smiling down at me. She straightened her mane somewhat and set her forehoof on my chest. “And… I’m romantically involved, which makes it a conflict of interest, which, in general context, means that my relationship with you could influence my decision to provide treatment, or negatively affect my judgement otherwise. That by itself doesn’t absolutely mean I can’t, but it would be… highly inappropriate, professionally speaking.”

“You drew my blood at Cliffside, though.”

“Doctor Patch asked me to help out while I was there. I was acting as a nurse at a licensed physician’s request.” She gave a wry smile and murmured, “And I wasn’t romantically involved quite yet.”

I set my forehooves together behind my head and said, “You expect me to believe that Doctor Patch, a stallion, asked you to draw my blood… specifically for a pregnancy test?”

She raised one eyebrow. “Baby, Doctor Patch has dealt with plenty of mares; he’s the only pony in the Kingdom older than Ivy, so he has more general experience than any ten doctors put together. That stallion didn’t push Zephyr or Eagle to ask for the test because he’s sensitive enough not to. You can’t just dismiss his expertise because he’s a stallion.” I snorted. “Don’t give me that; it’s exactly what you were doing. If it concerns you, Zephyr asked me, I told Patch, and he asked me to take care of it… and besides, the blood sample was for more than just the pregnancy test. Never mind that.”

“The point, Crystal, is you’ll have to endure somepony else giving you a checkup. I will be the first pony there if you are ever injured, but I’m legally forbidden from doing anything else outside an emergency. Bellenast isn’t some degenerate hovel filled with blood-letters and miracle peddlers. There are laws here governing medical care, many of them complex.” She took a breath, biting her lip, and looked away from me briefly. “Most of those laws are there to protect those who can’t do it themselves, or simply don’t know any better. Many types of medicine are extremely dangerous if they are taken at the wrong dosage, or in combination with other medicines or certain foods, which is why it is important to never take anything unless you know what it does, and a doctor has told you to. Like Med-X; it’s addictive, and as small as you are, an overdose could easily hurt you.”

“The dose makes the poison,” I mumbled.

Night Cloud’s ears flicked. “Yes, exactly. Did Eagle teach you that?”

“Yeah, when he’d take me out in the forests around Cloud Loft.” I shrugged. “There are twenty-eight species of poisonous plants in that area, last time anypony counted. He wanted me to know which ones, and how much, and he’d always say that when we came across one.”

“He’s a smart stallion.” She gave me a terse frown. “And he’s not the only one you’ll have to trust, including doctors.” Her eyes grew weary, and she lifted her hoof to touch my cheek. I leaned into her touch in response. “Don’t judge all stallions for the actions of one. That isn’t right, and you know it.”

“Mmm…” I lightly kicked her flank with my hind leg. “I’d still rather it be you.”

“Oh, relax. Orchid Wisp won’t bite.” She gave my chest one final rub with her forehoof and ran a tendril of telekinesis through my mane, spreading it out around me. She tilted her head. “Hmm…” She rearranged my tail similarly, then nudged my forelegs apart loosely.

I giggled. “Are you posing me?”

“Maybe.” Her eyes darted down along my torso, to my tail and back up my abdomen. She took a deep breath and climbed carefully over me to set her forehooves on the floor, which gave me a stunning view while she took her weight off the bunk and swung her hind legs over me one at a time. “Nube altua, you could be a centerfold with a mane like that,” muttered the alicorn as she left the creaking bed. She flicked her tail at me as she made for the door, prompting me to stare past the headboard at her lean hindquarters as I rolled over. “Orchid isn’t going to poke and prod you, anyway… she’ll probably take your temperature and blood pressure. Neither of those requires a needle, and either way, Orchid is gentle, and skilled in her profession.” I shivered and hopped off the bunk to follow her. “Come on; the least we can do is meet her in the main cabin.”

“Night?” I swallowed, mostly failed to keep my eyes off her rear, and trotted up to stand by her side opposite the interior airlock bulkhead. I cleared my throat and took a moment to breath and gather my thoughts. I began slowly. “Was that one of those times you say something, um… you think I won’t understand, because… I’m a filly, and it’s a grown-up thing, and… um… you just sort of… pretend it didn’t happen?”

Night Cloud shuffled a little to her left and looked down at me. “Baby, what are you talking about?”

I struggled not to burst out laughing. I stepped in and held her foreleg, snapping my tail at her belly. She jolted. “Night Cloud.” The creaking of an opening hatch came from beyond the interior door. I bit my lip, giggling softly, then took a deep breath. “Did you assume I don’t know what a centerfold is?”

Her response was a soft, strained chuckle. Close-together, shuffling hoofsteps reverberated in the airlock. “I suppose… asking me that implies that you do know… um, yes. I assumed exactly that.”

“You know, I had my own small library, in my room, at Cloud Loft.” Letting out an impish giggle, I leaned on her foreleg and shifted my hoof up to buff it on her chest. “Lot of technical manuals for armor and AER series components, spell matrices, machining manuals, old tool catalogues, stuff like that… a lot of it was Eagle’s, but I had a lot of magazines, too, from Neighvarro. Over a hundred of them. You think I’d build a collection like that without finding a few issues of Playcolt?”

She nodded slowly. “Now I understand.”

“What?”

“Exactly how it feels when somepony says, ‘You’ll understand when you’re older.’ Except, I said it, really, and I wasn’t even trying to, and I’ve been trying not to treat you like a child all this time, and… now I’ve embarrassed myself.”

“I’m not embarrassed.” I snapped my tail at her belly, once again causing her to jolt and glance down at me. I then grabbed her foreleg and pushed off the deck with my hind legs to lightly bump her side with my hip. “So, what makes me a centerfold?”

“It’s your mane, and your coat, partly,” she said hurriedly, shuffling her hooves. “Grew out a lot, during the transformation.” She looked back up at the airlock door, but tossed a smile down at me briefly. “It’s sort of a wild look. I like it. Really, I do. It was already to-die-for, sweetheart, but after it grew out… I almost asked Zephyr not to trim it, and… when you were lying on your back like that, it reminded me of… well, models often have their manes spread out that way on… um… well… those magazines… it’s meant to be provocative and—I’m rambling. Sorry.”

“Well…” I shook my head. “It feels really friggin’ good, to hear that from you.” I nuzzled and kissed her shoulder, then whispered, “What about the rest of me?”

The airlock opened, and the auxiliary shield rippled as a midnight blue alicorn stepped carefully through it.

Snow fell from Orchid Wisp’s back and lowered head as she ducked out of the entryway and proceeded to take up the entire deck height. Even with her head bowed low, the back of her neck bumped against the ceiling.

Night Cloud and I backed quickly out of the way as she cleared the airlock. She stomped her hooves to shake ice and snow from her gold-green boots, then sidestepped and sat on her haunches. I couldn’t help but stare at the mare: Slightly taller than Ivy, and of a more generous figure, Orchid Wisp was a sight to behold even before accounting for her exotic barding and mane styling. In a contest of sheer size, she was second only to Blitz, although still by a significant margin. Orchid Wisp, in comparison to Blitz’s statuesque figure and Night Cloud toned, athletic physique, had the voluptuous curves of a pinup model.

The softness distracted only so much from the stout legs, magnificent wings, deep ribcage, and powerful hindquarters hiding under the snow-speckled barding. Orchid Wisp might have been shorter than Blitz, but she was almost certainly heavier.

She wore on her foreleg both an aluminum-bodied scanner of the same make as Night Cloud’s own and something I had not seen for myself since leaving Neighvarro: A PipBuck.

“Um…” I waved. “Hi. I’m Crystal.”

“Hello, Crystal,” said the alicorn, with a voice like warm honey. “It’s good to see you well. And you, Night Cloud. Welcome back to Bellenast.” She nodded to us both, then lifted her foreleg to look at her PipBuck and manipulate one of its dials with her orange field of magic. She pointed her forehoof, and her scanner, at each of us in turn, glanced at the PipBuck again, and looked to the still-open airlock door. “It’s safe to come in, as long as your armor remains sealed. Your dose should be good for several hours, but I’d limit yourself to one, to be on the safe side.”

Heavy hoofsteps and a black helmet came through the shield, and I bolted forward and leapt.

“Wait—”

I crashed into him, and the force of impact reflected into my chest and the deck plating, taking my breath away and causing a resounding bang and sharp pain in my ribs. I gasped and sagged against his chest as a grinding sensation spread through my breast, then hugged him with all my strength. “You’re okay,” I said, coughing twice. The grinding from my ribs dissipated quickly in favor of an unsettling movement. I rubbed my chest with one hoof. “Think I cracked a rib… and it’s… okay, that feels friggin’ weird. Now it’s… gone. Nothing. I’m good. Never mind.” I put my hoof back behind his helmet and laid my head on his collar. “Whatever. I’m glad you’re okay…”

“You triggered the kinetic dampers.” Eagle set an enclosed forehoof on my back, patting me gently while I squeezed around his shoulders. “And spiked the pressure warning a tick.” I jerked back from him and chuckled, smiling up at his visor as the reflective, golden outer layer slid up to reveal green eyes behind enameled quartz. “Aaand you cracked a rib tackling me and it’s fine, just like that? Night Cloud, you might want to put up a missing poster for your marefriend, because this is a bear cub.” I giggled brightly, and Eagle set his wing around my back. “You had me worried, kiddo… now you’re stronger. That what rads do to you now?”

“To some extent,” said Night Cloud. “This is the first time she has absorbed a significant amount of balefire radiation. She was super-saturated earlier, but it’s bleeding off slowly. It helps that she’s been exercising her telekinesis strenuously for a while, in the vehicle bay.” She trotted closer to us and touched my back, smirking at me. “Otherwise, she might be glowing, and possibly quite a bit taller. Right now, she could probably chop off a leg and regrow it.”

“I don’t recommend testing that,” said Orchid Wisp, glancing up from her PipBuck. “Eagle, back off now.” Eagle stepped away from me, and Orchid Wisp lowered herself down to the deck in a comfortable position and lay with her forelegs folded before her, close enough to reach out and grab my hoof if she wanted to. She gave me a smile that jumpstarted my heart.

“Professional opinion, dear, and speaking from experience,” she said, and her silky-smooth voice made me want to hear all about that experience, despite the morbid subject. “Yes, while you are irradiated as heavily as you are now, if you were to find yourself in a violent confrontation, you probably could survive anything the other pony were to throw at you except for a rapid decapitation or other grievous cranial injury, and, based on your recorded biothaumic power potential and your current Graubaum level, your magic would be an order of magnitude stronger than that of anyone but a sufficiently irradiated alicorn… but sitting there and taking the hits would be quite painful, even if you survived any sudden loss of limb. You’d also lose a dangerous amount of blood before the regeneration finished, so it’s no certain thing that you’d remain conscious and able to defend yourself.”

I returned a nervous smile. “When you say ‘speaking from experience,’ um…”

“I mean just that, dear.” She partially extended her left wing and tapped her left foreleg with her right hoof. “My duties around Bellenast did not always take place in a hospital, and occasionally involved… grievous injuries.”

“Oh.” Still smiling, I said, “Were you a guard, or something?”

“No.” Orchid Wisp gave me a questioning look, then matched my smile with a patient one. “An emissary… for a group of ponies I once represented.”

“Unity?” I glanced up at Night Cloud for a second and met her guarded gaze. “Right? Did you, um… I mean, are you still…”

Baby, she doesn’t like to—

“I speak for myself, Nubiála Noča. Now and forever hence.” Night Cloud pursed her lips as Orchid Wisp stared intently at us. “But I appreciate your sensitivity.” The midnight blue mare crossed her forehooves and shook her head. “No, Crystal, I am no longer a part of Unity. My sisters and I had… a disagreement, of principles and philosophy. My mind, my perceptions, even my emotions, had become…” Orchid Wisp’s smile turned to the floor. “More, greater, but… less my own. An unavoidable consequence of sharing those things with my sisters, for many years. Seeing Ivaline, and Blizziera, and little Nubiála…”

She glanced to Night Cloud again, then gave a short laugh and looked back to me. “Yes, I know, that must sound odd to you, dear… seeing them as their own mares, independent from the others, made me curious once again, and put other questions into my mind. Those questions led me away from my sisters. Now, I work for Claraby.” She chuckled softly and said, “But before that, I occasionally found myself in nasty situations and unpleasant company, as an occupational hazard. Diplomacy failed me, now and then, and more than once, my wishes to avoid violence were ignored. I’ve had to regrow a leg, just once. It is decidedly not fun.”

“Okay.” I swallowed and looked to Night Cloud, taking a breath to steel my nerves. “So, um… what do you normally do? In that sort of… um… situation.” Night Cloud sighed and closed her eyes; her neck grew tense and her jaw tightened. “Um. Hypothetically speaking.”

Orchid Wisp chortled. “You mean if some foolish pony decides to threaten me? Ideally, dear? Negotiate.” She tilted her head to Night Cloud. “Or allow someone more gracious than you to do the negotiating, if you believe you might make the wrong decision in haste, or anger. If, that is, the situation allows it.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Crystal,” whispered Night Cloud, holding my shoulder, “Please…”

“Now, Night Cloud,” said Orchid Wisp, silencing the smaller mare with but a word. “She is free to ask… after all, it may be because of her resolve, quick thinking, and will to act that you three are alive now, and she has the chance to ask the question. I believe she is asking for more than simple curiosity. Be polite, and let her hear the answer.” The midnight blue mare looked first to Night Cloud, then to Eagle, and finally turned her brown eyes to me.

“Ideally, dear… if someone intends to harm you, for any reason, try to negotiate. Give them a chance to back down, a reason to leave you in peace. If they refuse to see that reason, if they give you no choice… if you or those you love are in danger, and you can’t see any other way out but to end the conflict as swiftly as possible… then you show them why you don’t pick a fight with an alicorn.” She smiled and set a large forehoof on my chest. “Whatever choice you make, do not make it lightly… but most especially do not forget it… or regret it.”

Night Cloud set her own hoof on my side, tugging me backward ever so slightly. I stood suddenly, spun around, grasped her shoulders, and kissed her, causing her to jolt. I held her there, ignoring Eagle and Orchid Wisp both, until Night Cloud lifted her snout and nuzzled me. I leaned into her embrace, prodded her, and murmured, “Do you regret it?”

“No.” She wrapped both wings around to hold me. “Crystal Dew, you are a scheming, rotten, devious little filly… and I love you.” She kissed my head, trembling briefly as she breathed. “And Doctor Orchid Wisp, you are absolutely incorrigible.”

“Why?” The larger alicorn laughed and said, “Because she asked the question, or because it was the answer you wanted to hear?”

Night Cloud nickered and stomped the deck. “You know very well what I mean.”

“Oh, little one…” Orchid Wisp stretched her wings out briefly and sighed. “It’s wonderful to have you back.”

I pushed gently off Night Cloud’s chest and stood beside her. -So, she seems really smart, and holy hayfries. She. Is. Friggin’ gorgeous. Why didn’t you two ever hook up?-

Night Cloud affixed me with a withering glare. -She treats me like a little filly. I would think you of all ponies could understand why that’s a turn-off. Besides, putting aside that she’s nearly four times my age, just because all alicorns are mares doesn’t mean many of them are interested in other mares, Crystal. You and I are very much a minority.-

-Does she sing? She sounds like she’d sing. Friggin’ liquid gold.-

“Night Cloud,” said Orchid Wisp, drawing a sealed, metal case from her white saddlebags, “Would you like to assist me with the calibration, now?”

Night Cloud tilted her head and brushed her mane back. “Calibration? I thought you were here for her checkup.”

“Oh, no, dear; after all this radiation, the results would be terribly skewed. There’s no point. She appears perfectly healthy, in any case, so we’ll simply have to keep an eye on her.” Orchid Wisp lifted from the case what appeared to be a segmented, stainless steel ring lined with tiny, radiating circuit boards enclosed within glass bulbs. A collection of fine wires in a rainbow of colors and distinct patterns branched off the ring from sockets between the twelve tubes, ending in exceptionally narrow needles about six or seven millimeters in length and covered with sterile shields. My spine tingled, and every last hair on my coat seemed to stand straight out. “I’m here to calibrate her containment talisman.”

I gawked at the device. “Why the fu—mmm.” I swallowed, swallowed again, and said, “Needles. Why?”

“They’re very small needles.”

“And I’m a very small pony. Why?”

Night Cloud took the device from Orchid Wisp’s magic hold and brought it near us. “Look at this, baby.” She tugged one of the wires free from the delicate mass and held it close enough for me to see, and she hugged me with her wing. “They’re just pin probes … very fine, only point-three millimeters. Not like cactus needles, or even hypodermics.” She lifted a bottle of clear liquid and dropper from Orchid Wisp’s metal case and filled the dropper. “They might sting a little at first, but they won’t hurt you.”

“Why.”

“It’s only a template, dear,” said Orchid Wisp. She passed Night Cloud a full color chart of a pony with no skin and every muscle shown in great detail, along with a list of corresponding points on the body. “Once we calibrate it to your body mass and a few other factors, the telemetry from this will allow us to make a balefire containment talisman tailored perfectly for you, by tomorrow morning at the latest. That will allow you to come back to the city without bleeding radiation into everything and everyone around you, and it will work as long as you do, provided you don’t break it. Go ahead and stand up, please. We’ll use the same pattern as we did for yours, Night Cloud.”

-No needles, huh?- Glancing between Night Cloud and the levitating talisman, I rose to my hooves between the two alicorns. -Two most drop-dead-gorgeous mares on the planet, and both of you are friggin’ evil.-

“This may be rather cold, baby,” whispered Night Cloud as she squirted a few drops of clear liquid from the dropper onto a cotton ball and dabbed it first on my neck, and then my chest. My hide did, indeed, sting slightly where the sponge made contact and the odorless liquid chilled me; whatever the liquid was, it didn’t smell like alcohol.

“You said it was a template?” I followed the garish talisman as Night Cloud split the segmented ring apart and gingerly placed the two halves around my neck. I shuddered as the icy cold steel bit invisibly into my skin and gradually leeched away an amount of body heat that felt greater than it was. “A template talisman? If that means what I think it means, that’s… really friggin’ cool.”

“I’m glad you think so,” said Orchid Wisp. She attached a long ribbon to her PipBuck, inserted a split end of it into a smaller connection on her aluminum scanner, and brought the other end to the ring now secured around my neck, much like a choker. Night Cloud lifted my mane up and held it away from the ring as Orchid Wisp attached the ribbon’s golden end to a socket out of my sight. “It’s the first of its kind. It’s a talisman blank, if you will, like a casting for a mold. Granted, its use is specific, and limited… but if we can iron out the kinks, the process may allow us to make other kinds of medical devices, some of which are highly sensitive to the characteristics of the pony who uses them, much more easily and rapidly.”

“If a talisman can be used to contain radiation inside the body,” said Eagle, trotting closer to look at the device around my neck, “Without bleeding out, so to speak, then could it be used to shield against it, to keep it out of the body? Without a spell matrix or power supply?”

“In theory,” said Night Cloud as she held the needle-tipped wires near me, each over the spots on my neck and chest that she had sterilized. “Claraby has some student groups looking into it; that particular avenue of research is still ongoing.”

Eagle lifted his foreleg out to look at his boot. “So… if that bears fruit, you could be safe from radiation with nothing but a necklace. No hazard suit, no power armor.”

“The containment talisman itself is still being refined; Blitz has the first product of it, since she was the test case. Her predicament was the entire reason Ivy asked Claraby and Mirago to make the talisman.” She brushed the hairs of my coat aside and placed the tips of the needles to my skin, then pushed quickly and secured the adhesive pads. -They’re very small needles, baby… this will take just a few minutes, I promise. You’ll barely feel it. Just be still, okay? It wouldn’t really injure you, but accidentally pulling these at an angle could break them off in your skin. Then I’d have to pull them out the hard way.-

-I’m a pincushion today.- I shivered again, swallowed past a dry throat, and took deep, slow breaths. I tried to ignore the cold, metal collar around my neck and the fine wires and pins attached to my body, lurking in my peripheral vision. -When this is done… I want to take a bath.-

-Well, there’s a shower, in the bunks, isn’t there?-

-Kinda small.-

-Oh, so you want to take a bath with me, then.- Night Cloud smiled and continued to sponge spots along my neck, chest, belly, back, and my legs, and one by one she gently pricked me with the miniscule needles, until I began to resemble a marionette. Individually, each needle was barely noticeable, but as more and more pricked my skin, and because they remained in place, some began to itch. I breathed deeply and focused on the occasional touch of Night Cloud’s telekinesis and careful hooves.

“I wish I’d been there to see it happen, kiddo… it suits you.”

I looked at Eagle, and he pointed his wing toward my flank. I grinned and looked back at the emerald flame-spewing torch on my hindquarters. I giggled and nodded. “It’s okay… it was kinda random, really. I don’t really know… I mean, I haven’t thought about… well, what exactly it means.”

“Marks are rarely exact,” he said softly. “I’m just glad it isn’t a balefire egg, because you’d have some explaining to do.”

I turned my head to him, and Night Cloud immediately forced me to look straight ahead again, telekinetically nudging my chin. “Please stay still, baby.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “What’s a balefire egg?”

“A bomb,” said Eagle. “A balefire catalyst inside an amplifying shell. Precursor to the megaspell bombs. It’s the kind of thing that can cook you alive through Steel Ranger armor, and no, I’m not going to find you any. I had to give what was left of your grenades to the City Guard for lockup, by the way. Can’t have explosives inside city limits.”

“For lockup?” I scowled for a moment, then sighed. “May as well sell them. They’re no good to anypony else.”

“The sale of explosives,” said Orchid Wisp, while telekinetically inputting a series of commands on her scanner, “At least of that variety, is also prohibited outside licensed establishments. Eagle Plume, do you mean to imply that you regularly procure grenades for a child? That is an exceptionally big no-no in Bellenast, dear. I’d keep that to yourself.”

“Out of Bellenastian jurisdiction, and she procured the raw materials to make them, herself. They’re inert, anyway; only she can detonate them.”

“And I’d be dead without them.”

“Be that as it may, dear…” Orchid Wisp looked me in the eye this time and said, “Whether or not you personally are qualified to handle explosives, most creatures around here would react poorly to discovering you had them on your person. And, as your guardians, Eagle and Zephyr would be held liable for both the crime of possessing said explosives and allowing you to possess them. If you have any more party favors hidden in your saddlebags, now would be a good time to relinquish them.”

“Also, uh…” Eagle curled the claw-tipped tail of his armor around in what at some point I had come to recognize as a gesture of contrition. “You will have to register for possession of your guns, under my license—temporarily, at least—if you want to carry them in the city. The rules are pretty strict, but clear, and pretty fair, too. Need to make sure the safeties are up to code, and you need something to cover the trigger, since it’s an external mechanism. You can’t have the AER loaded in the city at all, since your modifications to it make it a fire hazard.”

“Wait.” I scowled and stopped mid-stomp, and lowered my raised foreleg back to the deck, wincing as the needles in my hide tugged ever so slightly. That miniscule tugging caused me to suffer a full-body shiver. I swallowed and glanced toward Eagle. “That—Officer Bellows said we didn’t have to give our weapons up. And—okay, I get the fire hazard thing. Fine, cool, but what about my shotgun? If everypony is allowed to carry their own loaded weapons around, why do I need to—” I flicked my tail to the side and nickered. “Is it just because I’m not an adult? Because I saw colts and fillies younger than I am in Granite Bridge, and some of them had guns.”

Eagle raised his forehoof. “Let me finish. I have to do the same thing with my suit cannons, too. I can wear my armor wherever as long as the guns are decoupled from their power supplies, and I have an emergency toggle for that, anyway, so easy fix. You’re the only filly in Bellenast with a gun like that. Think of it as bragging rights. Besides, you didn’t run around with your rifle all the time at Cloud Loft, did you?”

I took a deep breath as Night Cloud leaned closer to me to press one of the final needles into my back. “All done,” she whispered. “Really, sweetheart, it’s just a bit of paperwork and a registration card… you can just attach a copy of it to the gun somewhere. Even Blitz had to do it for her gun, and she’s royalty.” She scooted back and stood up, then said dryly, “You both like excessive firepower; the consequence is paperwork. Now, just stay still.”

“What’s excessive about her rifle?” I said. “It looked pretty standard to me…”

Night Cloud hummed and glanced at Eagle, looking up and down his armored figure. “Your view of what is standard is… skewed somewhat. Blitz complained that it felt too light.” Night Cloud shrugged her wings and, smirking, murmured, “So Ivy made her a custom model for a larger caliber. Whatever cartridge she picked, it was… legal, technically.”

“Lady Ivaline,” said Orchid Wisp, “Mare knows her guns, and the laws around them. She wrote many of them.” She pushed a button on her PipBuck, and a tingling sensation spread through me, centering most intensely in my chest. “When I first came to Bellenast, one of the guards at the gates accidentally shot at me, with one of her guns, no less.”

“Accidentally.” I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, right.”

Orchid Wisp gave me an appraising look. “No, dear, it really was an accident… though, certainly, you are right that some exceptionally foolish ponies would shoot deliberately, were an alicorn to appear before them.”

“Like that jerk from… whatever town he was from. Lark. Big idiot with a machine gun.”

“Yes, I heard about that. As I said, dear: Only the exceptionally foolish.” She smiled, shrugged her wings, and said, “Ivy grabbed the bullet mid-air, stopped it dead halfway between the gun and my own body; a more precise and swift feat I have never seen. She then flew straight into their line of fire and stood between us… turned a run-of-the-mill introduction into front-page news. The guard that fired the shot was discharged that same day for his negligence. Lady Ivaline would not tolerate any member of the Guard to misuse one of her weapons, accident or not. Her company used to have a slogan, you know—well, I suppose you wouldn’t.”

I rolled my eyes. “What is it?”

“An Ivaline Rifle always fires, but never first. It was once the mantra of every member of the original King’s Armory. A command, from Corio Firenza and Ivaline herself to every pony who carried one of her weapons, to use them only with great temperance. To fight only when you must. Of course, in those days, she was the only gunsmith in Bellenast, so the King’s Armory—that was the Royal Guard of the day, not a literal armory—used her weapons exclusively. She was more directly involved with training, back then.”

“Never first,” I murmured, telekinetically seizing my shotgun from within the sleeping quarters.

“Have you heard it?”

“I’ve seen it.” I levitated the gun out and held it before me as Orchid Wisp followed it, too, and the time-worn letters etched into the double-barreled gun’s receiver; though I had oil-treated the gun and polished it many times, myself, it had been scraped and pitted with mild corrosion long before I had acquired it, and only portions of the phrase Orchid Wisp described remained amidst the detailing on the receiver. “Kinda hard to read when somepony else let it rust first. I mean… it used to have a grip, for minotaurs, I’m pretty sure. I cut off what was left of it before I cleaned the rest up.” I turned the gun over, examining its weathered shape in new light. “So, Ivy made this?”

Orchid Wisp nodded, continuing to look at her PipBuck. “Or a smith from her company. Show it to her, if she hasn’t seen it already. Should have a year stamped somewhere. She’d pay you handsomely for it; she collects her older works.”

“Just how old is she, anyway?”

“Asking a mare her age?” Orchid Wisp tutted and shook her head. “Oh, dear, manners.”

“Night Cloud is nineteen, and you, Blitz, and Ivy literally all look the same age. I can’t tell if you’re twenty or two hundred.”

“Be that as it may, darling: If you really want to know, it’s a matter of public record.” She pushed a button again, and a mild jolt traveled through me. I grimaced for a moment, glancing down at the needles protruding from my upper legs. Night Cloud nudged my chin back up again before I could look farther. My heart seemed to beat harder, but no faster than normal, leaving me trembling, and my wings seemed to lift and twitch of their own accord. It was as though a fire had been lit within my breast. For a brief moment, the liquid feeling of heat surging through me was like the blood pouring from my belly not too long ago, but without the pain or draining cold in my gut. I clenched my teeth together and breathed deeply.

Night Cloud pressed my wings back down with delicate touches of telekinesis, and the mare grasped my forehoof. I relished her touch, focusing on the simple contact to fight back the rising unease in my gut. -Just a minute or two, baby. Deep breaths.-

“I’m, um… not selling.” I gave a slight shake of my head, swallowed, and said, “And I’m pretty sure it just means the bore. Twenty-eight millimeters. I didn’t know about, um… Bellenast’s calendar, ‘til a few days ago.”

“Well, given how old it looks,” murmured Orchid Wisp, “It could very well be both. If that is indeed the case… that was shortly before Corio came to Bellenast, but I don’t recall anything about minotaurs in our history books… I’d hazard to say it was a custom piece. A gift, most likely.”

“Pretty fancy gift,” I murmured. “Can’t see most of it now, but all the little details must have taken weeks to engrave.” I flipped the coach gun over in my emerald grasp and squinted at the barely-present serial number and year chiseled into the forend. The weapon shook in my grasp: My telekinetic field flickered, but with the bright strobing of poor control instead of the dimness of wavering strength. I blinked a few times and set my coach gun down on the deck, leaning it against the wall by the door. “Why does she collect her own guns?”

“They’re pieces of history, kiddo,” said Eagle. “That, and the older the parts, the less likely the tooling for them is still around. That gun is a hundred and sixty years old, and in good condition… if it really was made for minotaurs, that’s even rarer. You might have the only one left, outside a museum. Or her collection, maybe.”

“That’s part of it,” said Orchid Wisp. “But it’s primarily because she no longer owns the company. She passed ownership to her children, and they to their children, and so on. Family business, to this day. She doesn’t want to compete with her own descendants, but she’ll collect anything no longer made in Bellenast, stamped with her name or not. She restores antiques and makes replacement parts for models no longer in production, and occasionally dabbles in more… exotic endeavors. Such as artillery.”

-Crystal, speaking of weapons, did you have grenades in your saddlebags? Because I put those under the bunk.-

I bit my lip as I looked up at Night Cloud. -Um… back at that Sparkle-Cola warehouse, I picked up two Bad Apple frags.-

-Is that what they’re called? Cute.-

-Now that I think about it, one of the spark cells I found there might have made my gun explode, so I probably shouldn’t keep the grenades, anyway. Just on principle. They’re probably fine, but… you know.-

-Bombs, darling.- Night Cloud lightly poked my snout, frowning. -You kept bombs where I was sleeping.-

-They probably won’t even work; explosives don’t last forever. I wasn’t really thinking about that when I picked them up; I was more worried there would be more death bots. My beam pistol wouldn’t do much against magically reinforced steel plate, Night.-

-Yes, I concede that they are useful in that specific and unlikely scenario, but in the future, can you please keep them anywhere else?-

-Fine.-

“So what’s this about a vehicle bay?” Eagle nodded in the general direction of where he must have presumed the bay to be. “What did you find in there?”

“Plenty of toys,” I said. “A hover carriage, small cargo hauler. There’s a giant lathe, a Swarf and Pearlwick. About fifteen tons. Bigger than our carriage; three hundred millimeter working diameter. Thing’s friggin’ beautiful, and only a little damaged. Lots of tools; Maximillian’s outfitted for field repairs. That vehicle bay is practically a machine shop.”

“As I recall,” said Night Cloud, her voice stiff, “Before I took a nap, she was doing something with brass sheets and a donated cannon round from Maximillian. I can only imagine what.”

“Shell press?” said Eagle.

“Yep.” I stared down at my foreleg, where two needle patches and attached wires protruded from my hide. I raised my foreleg, briefly, and it quivered. “Night—”

“Aaa-and done,” said Orchid Wisp, pressing a button on her PipBuck once more. “My, my, young one, your heart is a veritable necromantic furnace right now. Unusually high biothaumic activity, even at rest. Radiation accounts for some of that, but your ability to use it should be proportionally magnified, so perhaps you’ll be able to drain off the radiation safely with enough spellwork, and not have to worry so much about bleeding it. I’ll have to upload the file back at the hospital to see the raw numbers. What an interesting data plot you make.”

Night Cloud chortled and, thankfully, began to pluck the wire-trailing needles from my hide. “That’s one way to describe her.”

A flush came to my cheeks, along with a grin, and a brief irritation accompanied the heat rushing through my chest. “Okay, test’s done, calibration’s done, right?”

“Yes, baby,” said Night Cloud, “Just let me remove—”

I enveloped all sixty-plus needles protruding from my hide at once and yanked them free, and just as quickly did the panic stop and my breaths begin to slow. The pinpricks tingled and stung, some more than others.

Night Cloud sighed and mouthed a quiet, “Okay.”

“I hate needles.” I unlatched the talisman around my neck, released my hold on the wires, and surrendered the device to Orchid Wisp. “I’m going to take a shower now.” I stalked away from the group and levitated my coach gun along with me as I entered the bunk room. “Night?”

“Coming, baby.”

“Ah…Crystal?”

I stopped, turned around, and glared. Night Cloud jerked to a halt, stepping a little to her left to throw an uncertain glance back. “Yes?”

Eagle had raised his forehoof; he slowly set it down again.

“Zephyr said it already. Don’t you start.”

His armored stinger tail flicked down and curled between his hooves. “Your, ah… temperature is really high. As in, way higher than any pony’s temperature should ever be. Now, because of whatever weird magic effect all that radiation, or that Potion, is having on you, that might be normal for you under these circumstances, and you might feel perfectly fine, but that means hot water won’t feel as hot. You’ll want to turn it up. You might scald yourself, if you’re not careful.” My ears drooped, and I looked down at the deck. “You’d probably heal faster than you’d burn, right now, but it could hurt your coat and feathers, and those won’t regrow as quickly. So… if it’s a long shower, keep it a little cooler than you prefer, okay?”

Anger left me with a sighing breath, and I muttered, “Sorry. I thought…” Orchid Wisp looked between us, seeming to gauge us. “Never mind. Wasn’t fair… thanks, Eagle. Check on Zephyr, will ya? She’s been antsy. Flying a few klicks up. Guess she’s making up for a week’s lost flying, or something.”

“Will do, Crystal. Don’t worry about us.”

“Why does everypony say that?” I muttered. I turned around and tugged Night Cloud by her foreleg, lighting the dim bunk room with emerald. As I closed the door behind us, she lit her own horn and touched my back with her wing.

“Baby…” She came closer to me and glanced quickly back at the closed door. “What did Zephyr say?”

“Eagle—” I opened the door to the rather cramped bathroom and turned on the lights. “I thought he was going to say … you know, the usual stuff about… not doing—about sex, okay? With you. Zephyr did, right after—when I, um… went to your room last night.”

“Oh.” Night Cloud stepped into the bathroom after me, ducking through the doorway. The mare barely fit in the space between the lavatory and shower. “That is… a reasonable concern for them both to have, baby.”

I snorted and turned the shower levers. “Why?” The pipes gurgled, a sputter of air escaped the showerhead, and a spray of water followed. “Friggin’ cuddling with you didn’t make me pregnant, so… I don’t see why they’re so worked up about it. Lot more dangerous stuff going on right now. Like, I dunno, the assassins and snowstorms, and the storm nagas flying down from the mountains. I mean, look at where we are right now, what’s friggin’ happening to Bellenast.”

I sat down on slick tiles and said, “We picked Bellenast when we left Cloud Loft Peak because it seemed like the safest place this side of the mountains, based on everything we’d heard… or the most likely place to be safe, and… you know, actually made up of normal ponies, not blood-thirsty raiders and drugged-up, gun-toting maniacs. Turns out it’s not always so safe, even without the crazies. So… tough beans. I wish they’d let me friggin’ spend a night with you without… without suggesting that you might take advantage of me, or that I’d do that to you! There’s enough crap for them to worry about without… without friggin’ pointless worrying!”

Night Cloud gave a short laugh. “Crystal Dew… sweetheart. Firstly… the last few days have been a gross misrepresentation of life in Bellenast. Secondly? Consider this.” Night Cloud stepped into the walk-in shower and sat down in the cramped space. She stretched her hind legs out to the side and sighed as hot water soaked her. “Eagle is one of the most courteous and respectful stallions I’ve ever met; if he has had any objections to us taking our baths together, he has held his tongue. If he has had any objections to us sharing a bed, he has held his tongue. If he has had any objections to you being alone with me, unsupervised, on numerous occasions, he has held his tongue.”

“As for Zephyr… I recall my bean bag chair being in my bedroom, so she must have moved it out. They’re trotting on eggshells around you, Crystal. Try not to snap at them so much.” I moved closer to her and leaned onto her back, and I sighed as blissfully warm water fell on both of us. She twisted back and nuzzled my ribs just behind my foreleg and murmured, “Besides, having sex in the shower wouldn’t be very safe… slippery tile, soap… I don’t want to take that step in our relationship and immediately wind up in a cast as a result.”

“Um.” Despite the simultaneous excitement and creeping embarrassment that threatened to paralyze me, I snorted in bemusement. “You’d probably be fine, but… last time you fell on me, some of my ribs broke, and that was with sand and cactus to cushion the impact.”

“What?!” She jerked her head up, eyes wide and face stricken. “You didn’t tell me that!”

I rolled my eyes and squeezed her, kissing her cheek. I set my hoof between her ears and tugged her head back down. Nuzzling her, I said, “Eagle gave me a healing potion, I healed, it was fine. You were hurt way worse. Besides, that was a week ago, and it wasn’t your friggin’ fault. Chill out.”

Her ears fell, and the mare groaned as she laid her head down, tucked into the crook of her leg; the sound trailed off to a whimper against the hiss and patter of the shower. “Damn it, I hate being so big… I could kill you if I fell on you the wrong way…”

A growl rose from my throat. I raised my hoof. A sharp crack followed, amplified within the room, and a flare of searing light cast harsh shadows along every surface. Night Cloud yelped and jerked away from me. The tongues of emerald flame, roiling as summoned balefire, rose from my tail and scalp to lick the ceiling.

“So what?!”

The hiss of steaming water drowned out the patter of the showerhead, and my right foreleg shook. The tile under my hoof had cracked. My leg smarted, but the fire in my chest spread, and in the seconds that came after, silent save the spray of water, the pain faded.

Night Cloud looked up at me in frozen shock.

I shook my leg, gave an angry snort, and said, “So what?” I scooted up to her and seized her around the neck, pressing myself firmly to her chest. The flames died down, and my mane and tail fell once again. Steam rose all around us. “You’re friggin’ big, Night Cloud. Of course it might hurt me if you fell on me. So what? I don’t care. I’m getting a radiation containment talisman tomorrow, aren’t I? That’s the plan, right? I’ll just stay irradiated, so I’ll heal if you do fall on me and… and friggin’ break my spine, or something, if that’s what you’re so worried about.” I kissed her neck and tucked my head beneath her chin. “I like that you’re big, and strong. You can hold me and carry me, and you’re warm.”

Nickering as she wrapped her forelegs around me, I said, “You haven’t friggin’ hurt me by being big, so just… stop it. Chill the fuck out. Stop friggin’ crying about things that haven’t happened. There are a million things out there that could friggin’ kill me, that could have killed me, just on the way here from Cloud Loft Peak. Robots, bears, bandits, flying ice-spitting snakes, Kekalo assassins… and sure, yeah, you could hurt me, if you fell on me the wrong way, and I don’t care. So could any other big pony, but I friggin’ love you, Night… do you think I’m afraid of you just because you might trip and fall on me? Because you might roll over on me when we’re sleeping?” I kissed her jaw, sighed, and said, “Stop beating yourself up over stupid what-ifs, Night Cloud… please.”

Night Cloud curled into a tight ball and hugged me to herself, and the mare nuzzled my withers while we lay together on the shower floor. She let out a soft, shuddering cry and squeezed, curling herself around me. “I want to protect you…”

I sighed in exasperation and pushed myself up from her smothering embrace. “Then friggin’ protect me, Night Cloud!” She gasped as I levitated her up from the floor in a flaring nimbus of emerald magic, rolled onto my back, and forced her to lie on top of me and pin me down. Even securely held in my magic, she frantically moved to support herself, but she couldn’t overcome the pull of my telekinesis with the poor leverage offered by splayed forelegs. “See? You’re not hurting me. Protect me, but don’t put me on a shelf. You can’t break me. I’m not—”

“Not a muñeĉe, yes, I know! I know, now, please, stop—” She gave a high, weak whinny of panic and fought again to pull her forelegs inward and take her weight off me. “Let me up, damn it!” I released her, and the indigo alicorn braced herself on her forelegs. She shook and took several deep breaths. “Crystal,” she said tightly, “I am nearly three hundred kilograms heavier than you. Don’t do that!”

“And you didn’t say anything until I told you about breaking a friggin’ rib. You’re afraid for nothing. Night Cloud, I can lift you ten times over, and that’s without radiation.” I smirked and rubbed my rear hooves behind her ribs, tickling her abdomen. “The reason I had trouble with Blitz that one time is because she’s at the upper limit of my volume curve, and I was tired.” She squirmed, and I said, “And if you sit on me by accident, at least I’ll have a nice view while I suffocate.”

“Pervert,” she muttered, lying on her side next to me, which exposed me to the deluge of warm water again. “You joke about things that terrify me, Crystal…”

“Maybe that’s because the things that terrify me, I can blast with my horn, and the things that terrify you—” I touched her brow gently. “—are up here. Maybe you should focus on protecting me from, you know… dangerous ponies, and death robots, and storm nagas… not yourself.” I tugged her forehoof down and pressed it behind my rearmost rib, on the triangular scar that had persisted through both transformative and restorative magic I had believed impossible. “Anti-armor skewers are kinda scary… protect me from those.”

“Crystal Dew, my darling… forgive me if my personal battles are not so certain and rational as yours.” She lifted me onto her chest and held me tightly. “And… I would prefer to be in my own home before you put me in a compromising position again.”

I snapped my tail at one of her hind legs and nuzzled her chest. “What am I compromising?”

Night Cloud laid her head back on the floor and laughed, letting out a long breath. “Propriety, Crystal. You’re compromising propriety… or what remains of it between us.”

A knock came from the door.

“Night Cloud? Crystal? Uh… Doctor Wisp brought dinner, by the way.”

Night Cloud shut off the shower, swept the door open with her magic, and wrapped both forelegs around my back. “Eagle. Would you say that this is a compromising position?”

Eagle took a surprised step back from the suddenly open door and looked away. “Uh… yeah. Just a bit. So… yeah. Dinner’s available.” He spun around hastily and left the bunk room.

Night Cloud pointed her wingtip at the vacated doorway. “When somepony has that reaction, it’s a compromising position. This was minor. Making out would be worse. Make sense?”

Before I could reply, Eagle’s steps came back again and his armor’s clawed tail tapped just inside the doorframe. Night Cloud rose to sit on her haunches next to me. “Look, this is the last discussion I thought I’d be having today, but while I have the chance… I never listened to my parents, so I’d be a colossal hypocrite if I told you what they told me. I’m just going to say… respect each other’s wishes, and boundaries, be honest with each other, and, uh… be discreet, because… although Zephyr and I don’t have a problem with this, as long as it’s what both of you want, some ponies will. They’ll…”

A sigh came through his speakers. “Night Cloud, this is really more for you, but you both need to hear it: They’ll see a grown mare and a filly together… and they’ll assume the worst, even if you obey all the laws to the letter. They won’t know you, they won’t know what you’ve been through together, what you’ve done for each other… and even if they did, they wouldn’t care. They’d just look at you funny and think they need to step in and pull the kid away... even when the kid isn’t really a kid anymore. They can’t see that. They never will. I just… I want you to be prepared for that. Somehow, I doubt Bellenast is any more lenient than Cloud Loft, when it comes to… choices, and whom they involve.”

“Not especially,” said Night Cloud; she rubbed her forehoof along my neck and let out a weary sigh. “More open-minded than my tribe, in some ways, less so in others. Thank you, Eagle, for your blessing. Perhaps that’s old-fashioned, but… I’m grateful. I appreciate the warning.”

“No problem. Just, uh…” The armored tail vanished, and the gold-visored helmet appeared in its place. “Don’t piss off Zeph. She’s…”

“A raging mother bear?”

“Protective.” Eagle nodded. “Make no mistake, Night Cloud: You cut an intimidating figure, but Zeph’s fought bigger things than you and won.”

Night Cloud chortled and tossed her mane back. “I’ll behave myself. I would prefer not to lose an ear the next time I have my mane trimmed.” Eagle laughed softly as he turned and left once again.

I clasped my hooves together behind her neck and murmured, “Speaking of trimming, didn’t you say you wanted to do my coat?”

“I think that can wait until the snow melts.”

---

“Hey, Carbide?”

“Hm?”

I glanced to my right at the open doorway to the observation room while I drilled one of many holes into the frame of an adjustable harness for a battle saddle; lacking any aluminum scrap, I had had to settle for a thin sheet of stainless steel, which I had grinded clean and polished, cut into strips twenty millimeters wide, and bent into precisely measured curves. “How hard would it be to let Max see the air sensor readings in here?”

“Ah, right; that problem. Hmm… in principle, not hard at all. I’d need to edit some code in his systems protocol management core. In practice, it may take… oh, twenty minutes.”

“Okay. Sounds great. I don’t want another oxygen buildup to turn into a blow up.”

“The default atmospheric cycle would prevent that, normally.”

I turned the frame over and maneuvered its opposite brace into the drill press. “It happened once. It can happen again. Clearly, something went wrong, and Max never knew it. Said so himself. It would be nice if, say, a really loud alarm went off when there’s a problem with the air. Like a smoke or carbon monoxide alarm.”

“Yes, I’m well aware that Maximillian is lacking in certain creature comforts, thank you for that reminder… and there are smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. There isn’t an excessive oxygen alarm because the atmospheric regulator has its own alarm system, and it prevents that from happening. Normally.”

“Until it doesn’t, right?”

“Look, you try sorting through ten thousand different error logs from the last few decades to find out why it happened and get back to me on that. I’m working on it, all right?” Carbide gave an exasperated sigh from his speaker-connected, shielded interface pedestal. “The circumstances that led to that problem likely emerged from dozens—no, hundreds of unrelated events over the course of many years, Crystal. Max was… he was possessed, basically; that’s the easiest way to describe what happened to him. His systems were operated outside of their normal conditions for a hundred and fifty years. More than that, really, since he can’t have had access to all the maintenance he’d normally have undergone. As a result, things happened that nobody could have predicted… emergent properties came into play. It’s no small miracle that most of his systems are still functioning at all, and quite a few of the subsystems aren’t working. He’s an incredibly complex machine, and I mean before adding his intellectual growth to the mix. He knows more about himself than I do now.” He gave a short, bark of a laugh and said, “Just for some context, Crystal, I can look at the code for the atmospheric regulator and Max’s other systems right now because he changed a part of his own code to allow me to access some of the peripheral systems from where I am. Maximillian modified himself. He shouldn’t be able to do that.”

“So, he can modify himself, but not every part of himself.”

“Yes. There are some hard limits in place, system compartmentalization; I still can’t directly modify the atmospheric regulator’s operating parameters from here, for example, because it runs independently from nearly every other system. That system is segregated for good reasons. Although, given what Maximillian has managed to do already, I wouldn’t be that surprised if he were to find a way to bypass those limits. Until then, the best I can do is look at a copy of the code so that I’ll be able to tell you exactly what to change when you access the protocol management core, itself. Additionally, ah… I suppose now would be as good a time as any to mention that making those modifications to the core will involve you in a rather significant and… unavoidable capacity.”

“Let me guess: Only one way to access the thing? And you don’t have a body to do that with.”

“Direct physical access only. The management cores are Maximillian’s interface layer with the rest of his systems and the vehicle portion of himself. They’re his peripheral nervous system, to use a biological analogue. Leaving them open to external access of any kind would be disastrous. Case and point, the parasitic matrix injection. Whoever infected his systems had to have gone inside his core compartment to do it. Can you imagine how much easier it would be to do that if those systems were open to remote radio access?”

“Carbide?”

“Yes?”

I shut off the drill press and waited for it to spin down, then changed out the cutting head for a countersink. “These protocol cores… are they computers?”

“Not the kind you’re familiar with, but a form of computer, yes.”

“Okay, well, I’m not familiar with computers. Night Cloud should probably do it. Whatever, um… it is that needs to be done.”

“She can’t. She’s too big.”

I grimaced. “Do me a favor.”

“Er… what?”

“Don’t say that to her face.”

“Ah… okay? Hadn’t planned to, anyway; she’s… well, she’s an exemplar of physical fitness. She’s the last pony I’d have thought to be sensitive about—”

“She’s not. She fell on me last week and broke a couple of my ribs, so now she’s paranoid about accidents. So, if you have to use a word to describe her physically, it had better be ‘tall’ or ‘gorgeous,’ or a synonym of those. Actually, don’t even say ‘tall,’ because Eagle’s tall, and he’s still smaller than her. You say ‘big’ about her, in front of her, true or not, and I’m throwing you into a snowdrift.”

“Ah… right.”

For a moment, we were silent. I set aside my newly made frame piece with the intent to finish it later. “Trotting on eggshells,” I muttered. “Celestia spare me.”

“Er… beg pardon?”

“Just something Night Cloud said earlier. Now I’m doing the same thing.” I rolled my eyes and trotted away from the workbench and into the observation room. I tapped the floor panel to shut the door behind me. “I wouldn’t actually throw you into a snowdrift. That’d be friggin’ mean.”

Carbide let out a bright laugh. “To be honest, that’s something I’d like to experience. Feeling it, that is. The snow. Brisk air… wind and rain.”

I stopped and gazed at the pedestal and the silver globe inside, beneath the transparent, pyramidal shield. “Can you feel anything, um… when something touches the, um… cradle? The metal and diamond parts?”

“Ah… not in the normal sense of the word, but… in a way, yes.”

“Is it safe to take you out of that pedestal for a moment, then put you back in?”

“Ah—well, yes, perfectly safe, but—”

“Hold that thought.” I pushed a button marked ‘Eject’ on the rim of the half-cylinder, and the pyramidal shield receded. The tarnished, silver globe split along its seams and opened, and I levitated Carbide’s deep blue, noctium cradle free from the pedestal. Sitting on my haunches, I held him closely to my chest and wrapped both forelegs gently around him, and I tucked my head down, close to my sternum. The noctium dodecahedron was warm to the touch, and the many-faceted diamond ball it protected was lit from within by swiftly flowing sparks and lines of light that flitted around in fractal patterns.

I pressed my cheek to the noctium cage, and smiled as a faint tingling traveled through my skin where the metal touched me.

I lifted the metal and diamond ball back into the silver globe, and the hemispheres closed once again. The shield reappeared, and a brief burst of static came from the nearby speakers. “Did you feel that?”

“Yes, but… in the future, I would appreciate if you asked before… oh. I—”

“That was a hug, Carbide.”

“Yes, I looked at the last few seconds of video before you… that is… okay, this will sound bad either way, so let me say first, ah… thank you. I appreciate it, truly, I do; I’m just not sure I can quantify how it feels physically, because I can’t feel anything the same way you do, Crystal.”

I rolled my eyes and sat by the pedestal, pressing my cheek to the face of the octagonal barrier, which was pleasantly warm to the touch. “I know… but somepony should give you a hug. What’s the part that sounds bad?”

“Er… well… do you remember when you asked me to stop talking, back in the tram tunnel going from my lab?” Carbide took on a subdued, gentle tone. “You were frightened, unsettled because it was as though I was in the suit with you. I understand why that would be uncomfortable for you… it was a compelling reason to ask of me what you did, but you did ask.”

“And?” I whispered, barely moving, save a quaver in my voice and shiver down my spine.

“And… I ask only that you first have a similarly compelling reason, Crystal, before you deprive me of sight, sound, and my voice again… please. Again, I appreciate the hug, even if it… well, it really doesn’t register for me, physically, but I’m happy that you did it, anyway.”

I nodded and said, “Sorry.”

“It’s all right. I know you meant well. It… you’re a remarkable young mare, Crystal, in many respects, but perhaps the greatest among them is your compassion. You needn’t apologize for that.” He chuckled, let out a long sigh, and said, “I, ah… I look forward to the day that I have a proper body again, and I can give you a hug, myself.”

“Do you have a plan for that?” I glanced down at my left hind leg, now whole again. “What about my prosthetic? Could you make an entire body like that?”

“Ah… if I had access to my fabrication lab, yes. I would have to design a skeletal system, and… well, suffice to say it would be a lot of work, but yes, I could. If I had access to my lab and the necessary materials. That isn’t happening.”

I frowned, tapping my forehoof lightly on the octagonal shield while I leaned on the half-cylinder. “I was half-dead at the time, so correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t remember any machining gear in the creepy robo-tentacle surgery room.”

“Er… no, the fabrication lab was in one of the adjacent buildings.”

“Was it underground?”

“Crystal, there’s little point speculating—”

“Yes or no? Underground or not?”

He sighed. “Yes. Most of the more sensitive operations and experiments were kept underground in isolated chambers.”

“So it could still be intact. Or the equipment and materials could be accessible. Salvageable.”

“Crystal…”

“We could go back and get it, right? Max could drive there and back in no time.”

“Crystal, if you think for one second that I would endorse you returning to my lab, you’re severely mistaken.”

“Just think about it. You built me a leg out of friggin’ metal muscles. You could have a whole body made of that stuff!”

“Right, ah, no. Maximillian! I have a new directive for you: If Crystal Dew asks you to transport her to the lab, don’t.”

“She has a point.”

I threw up my hooves. “Thank you!”

“She—what?! Excu—no, Maximillian, don’t you dare. Absolutely not. She is a minor, and pregnant. You will not endanger her.”

“Directive accepted, Chief Engineer. I do not intend to take Crystal Dew anywhere, unless directed by Princess Blizziera or one of her guardians, or as is required to ensure her safety. However, she is correct. I could make the journey there and back again within a week, if an optimal route were available. Now that I have full control of my systems, I could disable the security fleet, instruct the remaining custodial drones to gather the inventory required for fabrication of a full prosthesis, and return here, or to any location you deem suitable.”

Carbide was silent.

I rapped my hoof on the pedestal again. “That’s a plan. Thank you, Max.”

“It’s a problematic plan.”

I shrugged. “Solve the problems. What are they?”

“The custodial drones are just that: Custodians. They clean the floors, remove waste, and move crates around. Very simple robots. They have manipulator arms, so they could gather some of the materials from storage, but the fabricators are too large, complex, and delicate for them to dismantle. A pony, several ponies, realistically, would have to enter the lab, which is most likely no longer structurally sound, and very dangerous—we’d have to decontaminate entire rooms, scrub the air to remove lingering radiation, deactivate all the sentries, many of which are no longer communicating… never mind that some of those fabricators take up the entire room in which they reside; they’re assembly lines.”

Carbide let out a long-suffering sigh of frustration. “Listen, Crystal, I—I will think about this. I will consider it, at length, and if I can think of a workable way to do it, I will consult with you and anyone else who may be willing to help me, as soon as Blitz says it is safe for you to return to the city, and we are no longer hiding from some insane prince, his army of cutthroats, and his giant sand creatures—and I’ve seen Max’s video feeds—but you are not going back there. Ever.”

I gritted my teeth and sighed. “Even if it’s safe?”

“Crystal, nothing about that facility is safe anymore; believe me, I know exactly what lurks inside those walls… dangerous magical experiments, toxic chemicals, captured wights, and ghouls, apparently, just to name a few… actually, scratch that: I don’t know what is in there anymore. There’s no telling what else has moved in while I slept the decades away. Look—recovering that equipment would be a needlessly dangerous and enormously complex undertaking, but the tools in the vehicle bay and the documentation I have here, now, are more than sufficient to allow you to repair your armor enough that I can use it as a body. Just… help me do that, all right? If you’re so Tartarus-bent on—on repaying your debt, if that’s how you see this, then let that settle it. I’ve been without a body for most of my life; I can wait a while longer to make a better one.”

“You shouldn’t have to!” I snarled. I seized a waiting sheet of stainless steel from a nearby storage rack, less than a millimeter in thickness, that I had cut down to size an hour earlier. With only the crushing press of my telekinesis and my coach gun held in front of me for reference, I bent the sheet easily into shape and fitted it around the gun’s receiver and the remaining stub of the original grip. I donned a set of cracked and scratched safety goggles, molded a protective guard around the trigger assembly, levitated an angle grinder from the bench, and cut a pair of slats into one side of the holster. The only sound for a long moment was the hair-raising screech of steel being reduced to hot sparks and slung to the floor.

As I shut off the grinder and began to file the rough edges of the cuts down to smooth chamfers, I said, “You shouldn’t have to wait to have a friggin’ body, Carbide.”

A long sigh came from the speakers. “Crystal… believe me when I say I’m not suffering right now.”

“Yeah, and I wasn’t suffering when Night took my leg off when I went to sleep, but I still woke up without half a leg. You don’t even have that much.” I flicked my ears back as a faint rustling came from directly behind me. I spun around and lightly poked the faint shimmer of air with my file. “I can hear you. You know that, right? Your wings make some noise.”

The indigo alicorn wavered into visibility as she collapsed her spell. Her smile was drawn, and her mane bedraggled. “Not when you’re using those noisy power tools, you can’t, and not since you oiled the doors.”

I blinked and glanced at the door, and Carbide in his pedestal. “Um… so… why were you trying to sneak up on me?”

“Because I was worried about you. You’ve been in here all night. I was going to give you an ambush snuggling and drag you back to the bunks, bu-u-ut I didn’t want to startle you while you were using dangerous tools.” She rocked once on her hooves and bent down to nuzzle my neck. “I wasn’t trying, by the way; I was succeeding. I moved my wings on purpose.”

I nipped at her collar and mumbled, “Oh.”

“I’m a light step. Also, it’s easy to stay downwind in here; I simply have to be between you and an intake vent.” Night Cloud sighed deeply and set her foreleg across my withers, pulling me close to her chest. “Baby… Crystal—and you, Carbide—please, forgive me for intruding, but… I agree that it would be best to talk to Eagle and Zephyr, and Blitz, about this before making any kind of plans. And before that…” She let go of me and turned to walk to the doorway. “I’d like to wait the few remaining hours before sunrise, at least. Please put down the… circular saw, or… your face says that’s wrong, so just correct me before I guess the wrong name again.”

I giggled. “Angle grinder. I mean, it’s not really that different, in principle.”

“Right. Put that down and come back to bed, Crystal. Please. We can talk about this with everypony later.”

I telekinetically cut the power to the inactive drill press and hung the angle grinder on its wall rack. I set the battle saddle harness and file down and took a tentative step after Night Cloud. “I kind of thought, um…” I swallowed and said, “I thought you, of all ponies, wouldn’t even consider the idea of, um… going back there.”

She turned around and stood there by Carbide’s pedestal. “I said I would help you, Crystal.” She glanced aside, smiling, and touched her wingtip to the octagonal shield. “Oh, I’m not happy about what it might involve, now, but… I see a stallion who just learned to walk on his own… have his legs taken from him. I said I would help however I could. I mean that.”

“Ah…” Carbide made a coughing noise. “I’m grateful. Crystal, listen to her and get some rest, all right? No sense in rushing headlong into anything.”

“Yeah, yeah… good night, Carbide.”

“And to you, as well.”

I rolled my eyes and followed Night Cloud through the observation room.

“I didn’t know how I would help, at the time I promised that…” Night Cloud beckoned me closer, and she set her wing closely over my back as I trotted alongside her.

“Um. We’re still not clear on that, to be honest. I mean, beyond ‘Go back, zap the bad robots, grab the fancy equipment, and bring it back here,’ I guess we still don’t have a super detailed plan… but we have Max!” I grinned and jumped onto the bunk after her. “Shouldn’t be a huge problem, right?”

Night Cloud laughed brightly. “Oh, darling. I’m not worried about the robots right now.” She trailed off into a sigh and wrapped me once again with warm fur and feathers. She tucked her snout down against the back of my neck and murmured, “I’m fairly certain any plan will involve giving Blitz a gift of expensive whiskey and convincing her not to murder us both.”

Author's Note:

Here’s some artwork of Crystal with her cutie mark I commissioned in 2018. It’s anachronistic, since she’s an alicorn and has all her legs intact when she gets her mark, but I hadn’t decided on exactly when that would happen when I commissioned it. Oh well.

If there’s anything that catches your attention, whether editorial, continuity-related, or just something that doesn’t feel quite right, let me know. Feedback is blood and I am a mean green mother from outer space! Feed me, Seymour!

Comments

[TheFVguy]

Pony has a gun.

[Sir Mediocre]

10522559
That's a funny way to spell 'contingency.'

[Etyco Filly]

Neat chapter, I liked it a lot.
I like your interpretation of how alicorns buildup and lose radiation, and the fact that Crystal's now stuck constantly bleeding dangerous amount of radiation (kinda wish it was more of a big deal and wasn't resolved within a chapter, but oh well).
I like the fact you went the extra distance to confirm/explain that nuclear and balefire radiation are different things. Nothing mindblowing, but a neat detail.
I actually had to look up what a centrefold is. Oops.
I really like that Night Cloud's ends up treating Crystal like a kid despite being in a romantic relationship with her. I like that the story leans into the very delicate nature of their relationship.
I liked that Crystal ended up triggering Eagle's kinetic dampeners; shows that she's still adapting, and it's just a neat detail. Laughed pretty hard at the yao guai cub dig.
I really liked Orchid Wisp's whole personality. Not much to add other than she's a really neat character.
Tiny detail, but I loved the "Bad Apple" grenades. Maybe it's just my age showing.
I loved the angst in the long conversation between NC and Crystal. Pure, cute gold.
Crystal hugging Carbide was neat and cute, too.

Finally--and this is something that's been bothering me for a while--I'm not fond of how homosexuality is dealt with in this universe. I disliked Crystal's speech thingy to Max. While it does make sense why he wouldn't get it, the way Crystal explains it doesn't feel like it makes sense. The whole "it's just how I am" part doesn't feel right given the universe. I held my tongue when NC revealed how her tribe treated her, but in general I'm not fond of when authors see Equestria as the same as humans in that regard.
I just see it as something a lot more common in Equestria, given the canon gender ratio. It's a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but it never fails to annoy me when stories use it as a plot point or dwell any amount of time on it. At least here it doesn't feel completely out of place like it does in Hard Reset.

[Sir Mediocre]

11568304

kinda wish it was more of a big deal and wasn't resolved within a chapter, but oh well

Wait and see.

the way Crystal explains it doesn't feel like it makes sense.

(Context for anyone reading this now: I altered the conversation in question so that it reads less as Crystal explaining something about herself she doesn’t understand and more as explaining a simple fact of life that Maximillian doesn’t understand; it no longer creates an implication I never intended. Once again, a reader’s insight and commentary revealed to me that the way I wrote something has a meaning different from what I thought it did. This is why feedback matters, people. If you see something in a story that looks out of place, tell the author. You might change their story for the better.)
That's because Crystal doesn't understand it very well, and doesn't know how to explain it best. She made the discovery herself only a few years prior, and the first person with whom she could talk about it at length was Zephyr. Her former foster father, a professor, was completely indifferent about it, to the point that he didn't care; he felt that it was a total non-issue, as the vast majority would, but the guy was a lecturer, not a communicator, and he wasn't especially good at holding a two-sided conversation.

I held my tongue when NC revealed how her tribe treated her

The Reklat tribe is a bit of an anomaly, and the Prince will have something to say about that.
Please don't hate him too much, because I worked hard to make him compellingly Not Actually Evil.

Beyond that... I suppose how I've presented it is cynical, for which I rightly could be criticized. That said, the reader can't see everything because the narrator can't see everything. Night Cloud's guarded attitude on the matter is a result of her upbringing in a relatively insular tribe. Crystal's comparatively cavalier attitude is a result of a lack of input and supportive affirmation from parent figures. She's had two relationships before Night Cloud (Tornado, in Neighvarro, mentioned in Ch 3 while talking to Blitz, and Meadow Gale, at Cloud Loft, mentioned in Ch 5 by Zephyr), though neither lasted more than a couple months. Night Cloud is still guarded about it because, for several years, hiding from her own tribe was all she knew. She hasn't really looked at how things are in Bellenast yet, but I suppose I failed to present that properly beyond showing that Crystal was her first marefriend. I intended the implication to be that Night Cloud hadn't tried to have a relationship in Bellenast, purely as a result of her own insecurities, not that she had faced discrimination because of her sexuality. Although in her own words she isn't ashamed of it anymore, Night Cloud is definitely the shy one here, and that affects her perception of social situations. She sees it as a social minefield, when in fact it's a collection of harmless groundhog burrows.

Edit for one more important note:

I’m just going to say… respect each other’s wishes, and boundaries, be honest with each other, and, uh… be discreet, because… while Zephyr and I don’t have a problem with this, as long as it’s what both of you want, some ponies will, and they’ll look for any excuse to cause you grief. Somehow, I doubt Bellenast is any more forward-thinking than Cloud Loft, when it comes to… choices, and whom they involve.

I probably need to alter this for clarification's sake, because Eagle is not referring to only sexuality here. He's referring primarily to the significant age disparity between them. Eagle is 27-28-ish, and Zephyr is 22-23-ish. While that would be considered fine by any standard for adults, they have been very close friends since Zephyr was 16-ish, which would be considered definitely not okay by most standards; he had to defend himself against myriad and unsavory accusations early in their relationship, so he's fully aware that Night Cloud may experience the same thing.

[Etyco Filly]

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I see. I can't say I'm fully convinced, but it at least improves how I see things.
I kinda hadn't realised the whole Eagle/Zeph thing, that's pretty neat