The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

Meeting, Three

For a moment of silence, long glances were thrown across the table, most centered on Starlight. The filly stood on the middle, facing Shinespark and beginning to prickle uncomfortably.

"...One more time, please," Gerardo requested. "Give me that line of reasoning again?"

Starlight gulped, her ears starting to itch. "You said windigo hearts were used to remove your cutie mark, and windigoes are hatred. The Defense Force is doing something with the material to remove and store cutie marks. Also, if they blow up the dam but everypony survives, all the Sosans will be angry and depressed because they lost their jobs to something that's not their fault for the second time in a row! This time, if it looks like Selma is on your side but the Defense Force are still the bad guys, they'll blame Valey, and they already don't like her so she's an easy target. If large amounts of bad emotions are involved in the spell to remove cutie marks..." Her ears folded. "You'd have them, right there."

"Shinespark?" Gunga raised an eyebrow. "Is this how your removal procedure worked?"

"I..." Shinespark grimaced. "I can't tell you. Not right now, at least."

"What's that supposed to mean!?" Gigavolt leaned forward indignantly. "Do you know or don't you? Liiives are on the liiine!"

"A lot more than just lives, if this is true..." Gerardo muttered.

Shinespark banged the table for order. "It means I don't know!" she shouted, raising her voice. "We did this early in the project, and haven't had the means or reasons to repeat it. It's... not something I understand well. But I do know a pony who might be able to tell me, in Ironridge."

"That's not a request to postpone this meeting, is it?" Gunga leered at her, wary.

"It isn't." Shinespark shook her head. "Braen is on her way to have that conversation right now. Hopefully, she'll arrive here with a report before this talk is done."

Gunga relaxed, leaning back.

"Whether it's possible or not, we should begin planning now," Gerardo announced, drawing everyone's attention. "Because, let us face it: if the bombs are intended to be detonated no matter what, this changes everything."

"IIIf the poiiint iiis to make the Sosans totally loathe Valey," Gigavolt offered with a shrug, "what iiif we diiid nothiiing? They wouldn't set off the bombs untiiil they know the Sosans wiiill blame the riiight poniiies."

"Would they?" Shinespark glanced skeptically at him. "Is that a risk we want to take? If they got impatient and set off the bombs without us doing anything, then Selma told the public he warned us about this and we did nothing..."

"Then we would become the fixtures of... erm... unpopularity instead," Gerardo sighed. "And that is something well within his means to prove, as the yak embassy provided official documentation of my service as a so-called facilities inspector yesterday morning... and to him, no less. It would produce the same result, and with a lot more property loss and casualties."

"That's the problem, though." Shinespark closer her eyes and hung her head, allowing her hanging bangs to shadow her brow. "No matter what we do, if Sosa is destroyed, it would be cataclysmic to morale and some party would have to take the blame. We might be able to find a way to pin it on Selma, who we know is involved, but it wouldn't change the outcome."

Gunga stiffened resolutely, pounding the table for himself. "Then if diplomacy is guaranteed to fail us and we cannot capitulate, it falls to us to stop this threat by force!"

"One issue." Gerardo raised a talon. "That was Selma's recommended course of action. Perhaps he was sealing off our best option on purpose, but to attempt to take matters into our own hands... and hooves... would be to play precisely into his. He will surely be ready for us."

Grimly, Shinespark set her face. "Then we'd have to be readier. Selma had a particular method he wanted us to use in an attack, didn't he? If it was a trap... we'd need to outsmart him."

Talks quickly broke down into military strategy, discussing the entrances to the Water District, the tops of the dams, and fighting pegasi in tunnels. Gerardo drew his sword, showing it off and explaining its function. Shinespark hammered the table. Grenada remained stunned, clearly not going to move until somepony tended to her. And in the middle of it, Starlight stood on the table, feeling thoroughly ignored and not sure whether that was a good thing.

She turned around, and saw Maple staring reproachfully.

"Starlight," she lectured as the filly drew closer. "Why? Weren't you paying attention to how much Valey helped us? You can't believe she would... she would..." She stopped, sniffing back tears. "You couldn't..."

Starlight's eyes widened. Should she have seen this coming when alerting the ponies in charge to what might have been a threat? "I-I..." she stammered, not sure what to say. "I just wanted to be safe! Didn't Valey always tell us not to trust her? She practically said she was going to betray us!"

"What a pony says and what they are are different, Starlight," Maple muttered hollowly. "I don't think Valey believes in herself, but we both saw her actions! She's a good pony. She wouldn't do something like that..."

Starlight stared... and was gone in a burst of teleportation.

---

She didn't know what part of the ship she reappeared in. It was lit, but barely, and mostly from behind, her shadow stretching long and tall over a collection of panes of glass. Bound in a series of triangles by a metal frame, it protruded out through the wall of the ship in a bubble, big enough for a grown pony to stand in. An observation room, maybe? Something to let a pony look in every direction, including down. Foggily, she recalled something like that at the front of the ship, when seeing it from outside... but it could have been her mind, making up memories of things she thought she should remember but didn't.

Her heart twisted as she paced forward, hooves leaving the wooden floor and stepping onto the reinforced glass. It didn't feel like glass. It felt like... the roads in Riverfall, enchanted so ponies could never slip. She had no doubt she could slam it as hard as she could and it would be perfectly fine. For a split second, she even considered it.

Maple had yelled at her. Or... not yelled, since her voice had kept its volume low. But the feeling had been there. It wasn't even anger. It was sadness, and denial.

Starlight wracked her memories, and turned up blank: that was the first such incident she could remember. Every day, every time either of them had gone somewhere, they had gone together... Every day since Maple and Willow had told her about Aspen, and Maple had asked to be her mother.

She hadn't gotten it then. She could still feel the sting of Amber's hoof across her cheek.

But ever since then, they had been inseparable. They had gone together to watch Gerardo's boat-raising, and Maple had come for Starlight when she panicked and teleported away. They went to market together to buy... some ingredient Maple needed. They stuck with each other when the ponies found out about where Starlight was from, agreed to go to Ironridge together, were so inseparable Starlight spent more time riding Maple's back than walking normally, and had teleported into an unknown crate in a last-ditch effort to prevent them from becoming separated.

They had never disagreed, either. Their thoughts weren't identical, or anything, but when one voiced a concern or need, the other listened. If ever there was a decision about what to do, it fell to them to make it, and them to agree.

Starlight had never expected that to change. From the look on Maple's face, she knew her new mother hadn't, either.

What was so irreconcilable about a stupid batpony, anyway? Starlight ground at the glass with a hoof, as if daring its enchantment to let her slip. Surviving danger was a matter of two simple things: hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. Of course, she didn't want to see their green-maned benefactor as a scheming villain, and it was possible Valey could be framed as a hatesink without being evil, but when such powerful magic was on the line, you had to be prepared. The worst that could happen was worse than she could consider: an entire city devastated, at war, and stripped of their cutie marks.

She paused. Since when had she considered that a bad thing?

With a groan of frustration, Starlight fell face-first against the glass, feeling her fuzzy filly cheek squish up against it and its cold touch drain the heat from her coat. She hadn't realized it, but she had been sweating. It felt nice... or as nice as laying on a hard, flat, slightly slanted surface could.

In truth, an entire city losing its marks was something she could consider... because she had. Once, during a dark year of living friendless and markless in Equestria, she tried to soothe herself by daydreaming about a world without cutie marks. A world where she would make it so... not because it would be fair for one pony to have that kind of power, but because she was bitter and hurting and it was the way the world needed to be. It was a fantasy she indulged in repeatedly, sitting on the roof of her house and staring into the mountains and the sky, though she had stopped after a series of nightmares about tearing the marks from ponies she cared about where they begged her to stop and subsequently died. She never remembered their faces, either.

So if she could think it... and feel justified in doing so, that such a world would be a better world... what right did she have to condemn someone else for trying the same? For all she knew, their reasons could be even better than hers.

Trying weakly to curl up and failing, Starlight realized that for all she knew, the logic she had used to arrive at the conclusion someone had a means of removing so many marks at once was flawed and shaky. Maybe the reason she thought of it as an idea was because that daydream had never really left the back of her mind.

A tear of frustration hit the glass. It was dark enough around her that Starlight could see through, into the muddy depths of the warehouse's construction bay. What she knew for sure was that she hated being alone, and anything was worth it to change that.

...Maybe Maple felt the same way.

Struggling, Starlight got to her hooves, taking note of the sounds of impassioned debate coming from not far behind her. If she and Maple did everything together, and always agreed? That was the price to pay for having a friend who was always there, through thick and thin. She had walked out first. It was on her to go back.

She bumped straight into a fluffy pony chest, and squeaked in surprise.

"Ah!" The other mare jumped back. "I didn't...!"

Softly, a ruby glow lit the room. It was Grenada.

"Oh. You're here too." Grenada looked relieved, horn shimmering softly. "...Starlight, right?"

Starlight frowned. "What are you doing here?"

"I got..." Grenada swallowed, sheepish. "Overwhelmed, a little. It's hard being an authority figure, sometimes. I mean... bombs? The risk of the destruction of Sosa? Braen believes in me, but I'm not... I don't have the expertise to deal with that. This could be the most important Sosan meeting in years, and I wouldn't want to mislead or..."

She shook her head. "Sorry. Let me start over. I missed part of the conversation, but I trust Braen to steer us right. She always knows what to do. I'll take her orders, and give one hundred and ten percent to making sure they work! I'm just... not sure I'm comfortable doing more than that. I don't want to mess her up."

Starlight's face scrunched. "You know her name is Shinespark, right?"

"I grew up with the Spirit," Grenada explained. "She is and always will be Commander Braen to me. I don't know if you've met the Spirit before, but..." Her eyes unfocused, expression dreamy. "They're noble. Together, we're going to take Ironridge and make things how they used to be. They've been an inspiration to me since I was a teenager, and... well, technically I still am, but you know what I mean."

"...Yeah, I guess." Starlight shrugged, and tried to push past her to the lighted corridor beyond. "Can I get by? I have someone I need to talk to..."

---

Maple wasn't in the table room when Starlight wandered back in, noting that she was in the tunnel next to the staircase she had observed when coming down earlier. It was just Gerardo, Shinespark, Gunga and Gigavolt, collectively doing their best to match wits with a foe they only circumstantially knew existed. Gerardo appeared to be easily holding his own, contribution-wise, while Gigavolt was quieter than she would have expected for someone with his bombastic demeanor. Maybe he knew he was annoying and couldn't help it, so he spoke only when necessary.

Hoof by hoof, she ascended the staircase, figuring Maple was either in the engine room or had retreated back to their cabin. The former proved fruitless as she pushed open the door with a hoof, the room sitting empty beneath the dead and dormant rail coil.

She paced along the bridge to the reading room, then into the cabin hallway, already running her mind back and forth over what she would say. An apology? That she didn't really believe Valey was that bad, or just wanted to be safe? Or should she ask why Maple cared about the batpony so much, risking offending her further if that was something Maple thought she already knew? She could always confess that she had dreamed about removing ponies' cutie marks once, too.

...The door was already open, light pouring through. Cautiously, Starlight peered in.

In the middle of the room, directly beneath the light fixture, Maple stood on her hind legs, stretching as tall as a pony could go. Her face was set in determination, and in her hooves, pressed against the magical light source, was a small, colorful gemstone.

Comments

[Venlinelle]

In truth, an entire city losing its marks was something she could consider... because she had. Once, during a dark year of living friendless and markless in Equestria, she tried to soothe herself by daydreaming about a world without cutie marks. A world where she would make it so... not because it would be fair for one pony to have that kind of power, but because she was bitter and hurting and it was the way the world needed to be. It was a fantasy she indulged in repeatedly, sitting on the roof of her house and staring into the mountains and the sky, though she had stopped after a series of nightmares about tearing the marks from ponies she cared about where they begged her to stop and subsequently died. She never remembered their faces, either.

…Hmm.