The Sunset Campaign

by Starscribe

Chapter 6: Lithographic

Sunset Shimmer recognized the human waiting outside, as she knew she would. Bright yellow hair, sharp eyes. Well, as yellow as humans ever got. The Steel Tower had a similar range of colors as ponies did, but the living humans were much more subdued in their range. Rather like many of the animals Sunset had heard of, with only slight variation in individuals.

She wore tight clothes, a clinging lower jumpsuit with a loose-fitting coat on that exposed just enough of her chest to obviously be intentional. Sunset had seen clothes like this in the Realm, though outside it there was rarely any point. She’d never observed an actual relationship with any of the Builders before.

She didn’t seem terribly intimidated to be on the Steel Tower side of camp, even if there were half a dozen legionaries all around them and none of her own men. She wasn’t even wearing a weapon, just a pocket computer terminal and a few leather holsters for equipment Sunset couldn’t identify. “You,” she said, eyes narrowing as she saw Sunset. She was taller by a few inches, and loomed over. “You’re Tesla’s administrative assistant, aren’t you?” She said it like it was meant to be an insult, though Sunset couldn’t imagine why. Wasn’t that just her position?

Sunset nodded. “I’m Natasha,” she said, smiling with the friendliest expression she could. This was her first time meeting one of the living humans in private, or close to it. Maybe if she made a good impression, she could learn some of the real differences between them and the Builders. “Sorry I didn’t stick around to talk after the meeting earlier. I’m still figuring out what they want me to do around here.”

“I didn’t know they made programs that got shy,” said Ada, rolling her eyes. “I suppose stranger decisions in hardware have been made in the past.” She handed over the computer. “I think you should look at these. I would’ve preferred to send them straight to the one with any power to make decisions, but your boss won’t take messages from me. Guess we’ll have to go back and forth ourselves. I’m not excited either.”

Sunset took the offered pad, finding her excitement rapidly draining. The tablet had a long list of information on its surface, looking like a set of complicated legal rules. From the first few lines, it seemed to describe the way Tower and Federation soldiers would interact whenever they met. Ways for them to signal to each other, and prevent friendly fire. Ways they would respect each other’s sides of Normandy. Simple stuff, except that it had been written in the wordiest, most boring way imaginable.

Is she trying to waste my time?

“I don’t like her,” said Twilight into Sunset’s head, apparently watching. Sunset had kept the connection open, though the specifics of setting up copresence hadn’t been worked out yet. Apparently she had mastered sharing her senses at least. “Why does she hate you so much?”

“You’re the one who used to be human, don’t you remember? You should know this war better than I do.” Sunset did know a bit of history, though she wasn’t sure how much of it she trusted. After her time studying under Celestia, she couldn’t help but be skeptical when a source put the entire blame for something bad on one side.

“I ran,” was all Twilight said, before her voice faded and her presence in Sunset’s mind trailed into the background.

“Hey, robot.” Ada tapped her on the shoulder with two fingers. “Robot, did you short circuit? I need you to go over these rules and work out each point with your side. We can arbitrate anything we disagree on, if there’s anything. But there shouldn’t be anything on there that you robots really care about.”

Sunset nodded, pocketing the tablet. “I wonder if you’d be willing to give me an interview,” she said, before she could stop herself. “I haven’t met very many, uh… Federation people before. I’ve got some questions.”

“I’m sure you do.” Ada turned away from her. “I don’t much care. Thanks to our superiors, we’re stuck together. Try not to get stuck on a recursive loop or whatever while you’re reading that over. There are some pretty big words.”

She left, striding away with such authority that her escort of Legionaries followed her, rather than commanding for her to stop. One glanced back at Sunset, an almost apologetic look on his face. But soon enough they were gone, and Sunset was left holding the tablet. “I don’t know why she had to be so mean about it.”

Twilight didn’t answer her. Maybe she was busy using the connection for other things.

Sunset flicked through a few more pages of rules, but nothing on that list really stuck out to her. She wasn’t even the one who dealt with questions like this—she wasn’t a negotiator, and she didn’t have any right to speak for the Tower. They weren’t even her faction, if she got really technical with it. She was at once a guest and a hostage, and couldn’t be quite sure which. I wish I was dealing with Richard instead of Tesla. He seems like a good man.

It took Sunset Shimmer several boring hours to deal with all the legal proposals. There was more than a little searching involved with finding the right people, which turned out to be quite a long and complicated list of different people over which the different rules would apply. Since she’d been the one to receive it, they seemed to think that she ought to be the messenger who ran around and coordinated with everyone. But since Telsa hadn’t given her anything else to do…

She got a little break in the middle of the process talking to Jackie, who needed her help with some basic research. Sunset answered, then was left with more questions than answers. Apparently, there was a pony impersonating a historical figure while serving in the military. Confusing, but not as confusing as the human technology she was using.

But she wouldn’t be trapped in that boring responsibility forever. Once she’d got approval from the Builders, she had to take the rulebook over to the ponies for similar approval. Not that she would’ve admitted it, but Sunset was itching to be back around her own kind, even if it was just for a few minutes.

The ponies were busy today, she’d seen them working hard. As the day went on, shipments of wood and cement were arriving on carts, probably taken here by rail. And no sooner did they get to the outside than a gathering of earth ponies assembled them into more wall. They built with incredible speed, and with half the daylight left they already had half a kilometer of wall.

Not really much point trying to keep the Builders in this way. If they wanted that wooden wall down, it would be down. But she wouldn’t tell them that.

Sunset strode over to where another crew of official-looking engineers were working on a barracks, trying to return to looking friendly. It wasn’t the ponies’ fault that someone had been a huge jerk to her. This would be her chance to make some organic friends who wouldn’t call her stupid names and waste her time.

“We could’ve used portable canvas buildings,” a blue unicorn was saying, her voice annoyed. “I know a supplier in Manehattan, he could’ve had a whole fortress here by now. We could have the whole thing up in an hour, or take it down and pack it into a caravan just as quickly. This looks like it’s going to take days.”

Her companion was also a unicorn, though neither of them were wearing armor. The two were gathered by the piles of supplies and illustrated plans, looking things over and occasionally giving advice to the earth-pony builders. “I’m sure, Trixie. But this might be here for a long time. Looks like the aliens want to build a real city here, so why shouldn’t we?”

The blue unicorn, apparently Trixie, opened her mouth to reply, then trailed off as Sunset approached. Instead she lowered her voice to a whisper, but not nearly quiet enough that Sunset couldn’t hear. “One of them is standing right behind you, Starlight. What do you think it wants.”

“She,” the pink unicorn, Starlight, replied in a similar whisper. “It’s a she. She doesn’t look angry or anything. Maybe she wants to talk.”

“I do!” Sunset said in Equestrian, striding the rest of the way over and abandoning all pretense of not being able to hear. “My name is Su—Natasha. Probably not great to say, but… yeah.” She extended a hand towards the two of them, the one that she wasn’t using to hold the tablet.

“Starlight,” answered the pink unicorn, offering her hoof with an aura of stiff politeness. “My friend here is—”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie. The most accomplished sorceress in all the land, and royal security consultant for this… arrangement.” She gestured vaguely with one hoof, mostly at the other side. “So don’t get any ideas, with your… tallness… or your… whatever you do. We’re watching you every moment. You aren’t going to be allowed to do any harm to Ponyville.”

“I’m sure none of us want that,” Sunset said, unable to suppress a smile. “Good to meet you both.” She held up the tablet. “I’m a mule today, unfortunately. I have some rules that have been migrating their way around Normandy for approval from each faction. You’re the last ones to see it. I’m sure Equestria won’t have any problem with it… most of them don’t even apply to you—but it’s a three-party settlement, so here.” She held it out towards Starlight, since she hadn’t said anything absurd yet. Obviously she was in charge.

The tablet started levitating, and drifted gently out of Sunset’s grip, towards the ponies. “We’ll take a look at it,” Starlight said, holding it close and staring at the screen. “It seems… very interesting. But shouldn’t there be more?”

“There’s a bazillion pages,” Sunset answered, a little of her true exasperation slipping into her tone. Then her eyes widened. “Right, you’ve probably never seen a tablet before. Here, let me show you.”

She spent the next few minutes demonstrating the touchscreen to the pair of fascinated unicorns, though they weren’t the only ones around. Practically half the pony workers had stopped to stare, though most of them didn’t seem to be listening too closely. They wanted to see a human up close, probably.

“That’s ingenious!” Starlight said, when Sunset had finished. “And these enchantments are common among Builders?”

“Yeah,” Sunset answered. “You can’t even imagine. Some of the things they do make it feel like they’re all Alicorns. Then they’ll turn around and make such an obvious mistake, you wonder if any of them know what they’re doing.” Her eyes widened a little as she realized just how unusual that would sound, and she hastily looked away.

“I mean… that’s pretty basic technology there, not magic. So far as I know, nobody can do magic. That’s a pony thing.”

“And you would have given it up, anyway…” Starlight didn’t sound vindictive, only matter-of-fact. “You personally, I mean. Becoming a machine. There’s a similar school of magic from old Equestria, long ago. Immortality through enchantment. Making a crystal golem, and trapping the soul in it.”

Sunset nodded. “Believe me, I’ve noticed. But… it isn’t so bad once you get used to it. Maybe I can’t use magic like you can, but… there’s an entire world all around us that I couldn’t see before. Millions of people, whole cities and towns and countries that you couldn’t see if you didn’t have at least a few implants. I don’t know that I’d want to give those up anymore…”

You still tried. You tried to get Discord to change you back, and you were upset when he wouldn’t. You didn’t even stop to think about what would happen to your friend Twilight if that happened. She’d probably go insane, trapped in that little library forever.

“Trixie already knows that magic isn’t everything,” the unicorn said. Then she stopped, glancing once around her as though making sure no one was listening. And maybe they weren’t, but the crowd of ponies hadn’t dispersed. They weren’t that close, but they also didn’t get that far away. All of them seemed to be pretending to do other things, but the illusion wasn’t convincing.

“Or… that’s not right. Trixie knows that magic is different things to different ponies. Starlight here can cast spells even Twilight didn’t know about. She can actually pull off lots of the things that ponies out here in the middle of nowhere tell stories about. But that’s not everything. Sometimes what ponies really want is just a little showmanship. A little finesse, a little pizzazz! Do you think the aliens would appreciate my shows, Natasha?”

Sunset grinned. “I think they would.” She pointed to the other side of camp, where an open cafeteria was at that moment filling with humans holding trays and lining up for food. “Just look at them. They seem… bored.” Then she looked down, folding her arms. “I’m not sure if the Tower side would appreciate it, though. They—we… don’t have money. It’s all energy and processor time, and I’m sure you don’t even know what that is. But the humans on the other side seem like they’re a lot more familiar, so I’d start there. If you wanted to run a show, I mean.”

“You… aren’t what I was expecting,” Starlight said, eyeing her with increasing scrutiny. “I spoke with Twilight’s apprentice about you mechanical people. She didn’t have very many good things to say.”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’m noticing that about the other side. They really seem to hate us for no reason. Maybe you know what that’s like.”

“Oh, she doesn’t,” Trixie cut in. “Starlight Glimmer almost ended the world a few times. She’s very deserving of when ponies hate her.”

“Thanks,” Starlight muttered, not quite enough for Sunset not to hear. “Real friend, Trixie.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Sunset shrugged. “Well, get back to me about those rules. Or… no, not me. Get back to the Federation about them. Our corrections are already in the tablet. You can just… bring it straight to Ada in that building there. She’ll know what to do with it.”

“Sure thing,” Starlight said. “And…” She seemed on the edge of shutting up, too nervous to keep going. But then she did anyway. “Are you allowed to talk to us all the time? Or only on business? I’m tired of getting my information second-hoof.”

Sunset grinned in spite of herself, remembering when she’d asked almost exactly the same thing to Ada a few hours ago. I’m not going to be like her. I’ve done enough evil, I can’t afford to treat ponies like that.

“I can’t tell you everything,” Sunset said, honestly. “Mostly because they don’t tell me very much. I’m from… well, far away. But maybe I could tell you some things. And maybe you could tell me a little about Equestria too.” About how much things have changed. Five princesses now, really? None of this feels real.

“Sure,” Starlight said. “Hey, Trixie, how about lunch? Do, uh… do humans eat lunch?”

The technical answer to that question was no. In reality, her body could eat. She’d never actually tried that process in the real world, but there was no reason she couldn’t start now. Call me now, Tesla, or forever hold your peace.

No one called her. “Sometimes,” she answered. “It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten. I wouldn’t mind doing it again.”

“That’s a weird thing to say,” Trixie said. “You aliens are strange.”

“Yes,” Sunset said, chuckling at Starlight’s glare. “You don’t know the half of it.”

---

Motherlode didn’t look like much from the air. A dozen buildings or so, half of which looked like they were mostly caves to begin with. It was all made from the same boring bricks, and though sturdy it seemed that a good landslide or maybe some snow ought to wash the whole town away. Even from the air, it was easy to see why everypony who spoke about this place warned her that she would want to leave as soon as she got here.

They were probably right.

And it makes sense as a place to exile a troublesome alien who maybe sorta invaded your whole country. Way up here she won’t be able to do any damage. Keep her away from anything she could break.

But even so, she’d expected to see more signs of human involvement from the air. There was the train station, but Ponyville had one of those too and trains themselves seemed like an old technology in Equestria. Minecarts rumbled down a twisting course all the way towards the valley floor, completely unattended. And high above Motherlode there were a few little huts that seemed to be made of cloud, like carefully sculpted decoration overlooking the town.

They descended past all these, towards a wide, flat stretch of ground lower than the city itself—like the remnants of previous blasts, with a towering wooden mooring pole and not much else. “This is your stop,” said Sea Legs from behind her, as though she hadn’t been able to see that the entire way down. “Get off where you got on, down on the lower deck. Don’t forget anything, because we won’t be back to deliver it to you.”

“I got it all.” Jackie turned away from the railing, tapping the edge of her saddlebags with one hoof. “Look, see? All my crap.” Now, tell me where the banished human is hiding. But the fact that not one of the ponies she’d spoken to about the town had mentioned her did not give her much optimism for her mission. Maybe the superstitious locals she’d been hearing about had decided she was too strange to live and killed her as she got off her airship. Or maybe she was so good at hiding that none of the average visitors actually knew she was here.

Jackie didn’t mind a little treasure hunt, if that was what it took. She was trying to find her freedom, so a little searching felt like a reasonable part of the process.

They touched down with only a slight bump, and Jackie restrained her eagerness to get out and start working a little longer. She watched the crew tie them down, then practically ran to the disembarkation ramp. But she had to wait a little longer as wheeled carts were exchanged with the tracks below. The Nightbreeze was a supply ship.

“Moire,” said a voice from behind her. Jackie didn’t turn around as Evening Star approached, clipboard in her wing as she watched carts loaded up and down. “I hope you’ve thought about what I said.”

She just shrugged. “I think about everything. I’m not so sure I’ll end up as involved with all of this as you.”

She kept her voice down, quiet enough that only the ponies immediately around them would overhear. There just weren’t very many of those. “I didn’t either, when I first got here. I thought it would just be chemistry and plumbing and maybe seducing a handful of attractive locals. But see if you can stand idly by and watch them die. I don’t think you’re wired that way. I wasn’t.”

“I’m not wired the same way as you.”

Evening Star chuckled. “The Nightbreeze is scheduled to come back around on its supply run in two weeks’ time. The crown is stockpiling all the remote villages with as much food as they can store, to try and outlast the invasion. It is unlikely enemy troops will ever arrive here. But if you want a flight out, that will probably be your last chance until the war ends. Assuming we win.”

It was Jackie’s turn to laugh. “I’ve seen what’s sitting in Normandy. Assault drones, thousands of legionaries, the goddamn Sons of Barsoom had a flag waving on the Federation side. What the hell are some primitives going to do to fight them? This war was over before it started.”

“I hope you’re right. But remember, two weeks. I might be able to use a pony like you. The Nightbreeze isn’t really a supply ship.”

The cars stopped rolling, and one of the sailors lifted the gate. Jackie hurried away without a second glance, before the strange maybe-human could change her mind and try to trap her. But she didn’t—no soldiers chased after her, and the gates didn’t come crashing down. She was able to walk out onto the rough stone completely unmolested.

There were only a few ponies down here, all wearing the same brown hats and vests. There was a sun logo sewn onto the front—some kind of military contractors, maybe? The largest building she could see was a warehouse just up on the next rise, which seemed placed specifically to service any airships that landed.

The ponies stared openly at her, pausing as they pushed switch carts around. Jackie was wearing her robes again, but apparently that wasn’t enough to conceal that she was a bat underneath. “A thestral,” one of them said, his voice dismissive. “What in Celestia’s name do you want with Motherlode?”

Jackie shrugged. “I heard you guys had an engineer. Is that true?”

The pony laughed scornfully. “We’ve got a blacksmith and some pegasi, does that count?” He turned his back on her, going back to work.

Jackie didn’t bother trying to extract more information from these. No doubt their unfriendly attitude would only get worse the more she pressed them. But even a tiny town like this needed shops, needed restaurants, or some other place for ponies to congregate. She could start there.

At least the locals had been good enough to carefully mark the paths through town, lining the trail from the airstrip up to the city with thousands and thousands of little rocks. Jackie made her way up, wishing she’d brought someone else along. It would’ve been nice to have a friend from the Realm come along like Sunset had done, but… Jackie didn’t have any friends with magically high security clearance who could come on official missions.

And probably they shouldn’t. I was the only one upset about digital life. They liked pretending to be immortal just fine. Transferring to a portable medium would spoil the illusion. She thought about calling Sunset and asking for advice, but ultimately dismissed that idea too. Jackie didn’t need help—she was one of the best hackers in the world. Once she finished with this last mission, she wouldn’t need the modifiers.

Motherlode itself was tucked into a little valley in the cleft of two large mountains, with its homes spread between different elevations linked by winding switchbacks. The single largest group of buildings was the one she’d seen from the air, with a dozen or so structures that were clearly the center of civic life in town. So, if I were a banished human super genius, where would I be hiding? She couldn’t see any churches or smoking factories, so cultist and secret industrial tycoon were both right out.

With nowhere else to go, Jackie just followed the crowd until she found the central gathering place in town, which also happened to be following a single long wire strung up by poles alongside the path. Her sensors gave her a slight electrical reading from the cable, but far less than it would take to power anything useful.

The cable led straight into a building marked with an old-fashioned burned wood sign: “Motherlode Telegraph Co.” Just beside it was an open cafe with a few dozen tables, and many mares and children were gathered there, along with a small number of older stallions.

Even as she watched, someone ran out from the telegraph station, clutching a slip of paper in their mouth. They had to stop in front of a table and set it down to read, and everyone fell silent to listen. “Seaddle reports sightings of griffon scouts to the west! Air service is scrambling ships from the coast to respond. Wonderbolts en-route.” Panicked muttering descended on the crowd again.

I’ve seen this before. Jackie could remember a quiet pub on a London street. She had ran inside when the gas bombs dropped, and watched as a panicked barmaid franticly stuffed the gap under the door with damp towels. Even though those memories came before her conversion, Jackie could remember them perfectly. The smoke hanging in the air, the stale alcohol that no one was drinking anymore, the buzz of holoprojectors at the front that played national news instead of sports. The growing list of cities reduced to rubble as evacuation orders kept coming in, along with promises that “Tower Recovery Teams are traversing the city. Remain where you are and you will be recovered.”

Well, Jackie had obeyed. Now she’d been recovered to be dragged across the universe and into another war. She could almost hear Evening Star’s words in the back of her head, smug at what she was thinking. Jackie banished her, and hurried up to the front of the cafe.

An elderly mare worked with what looked like several children behind the counter, cooking simple meals and dispensing simple flagons of ale. Jackie ordered only the latter with half of her remaining coins, then took them to a table outside where she could sit and watch the locals. Somewhere out here was the key to finding her missing engineer, if only she looked closely enough.

But for the first hour or so, nothing jumped out at her. Jackie drained her ale and refilled the flagon from the water-trough outside, sipping slowly and listening to every conversation at once. Someone here would be talking more than the war and their mining, right? There would be some secret mountain cave, maybe someone here was responsible for bringing food… wait, no.

She was sent to an alien world, that meant she would have field power like me. If she wasn’t moving, she could hide in a cave for a century and not run out of power. The locals might not know anything about her at all. Maybe she’d arrived in the middle of the night and immediately hidden in the mines somewhere, and was still there today. But if she did that, I’m just fucked. There’s no way I’d find her.

There were a few more obvious search methods that Jackie tried while she sat in place, though she hadn’t expected anything and they paid no dividends. An IFF ping was a good place to start, since every legitimate Tower body had a transponder. But as she had feared, there was none. Military bodies could switch them off, either for secrecy or to save power. And if I was stranded on an alien world and didn’t think rescue was coming, I wouldn’t waste energy on that.

Jackie had counted on her conversational skills to help her where technical acumen failed. But so far, not a single pony had come up to her even though she’d chosen the largest, most central table to the telegraph station. When she tried approaching a table of ponies that looked her age, they all got up and left, ignoring what she had to say.

A few hours went by, and Jackie kept her empty wooden stein in front of her. If there was one benefit to how much the locals seemed to hate her, it was that the staff of the cafe hadn’t asked her to leave for not buying anything else. They just kept glancing at her, then hurrying away from her table when they noticed her looking.

But as it was getting dark and Jackie herself was nearing despair, she noticed another outcast settling in at a table on the other end. A pegasus had just sat down to eat there, and the ponies nearby had immediately gotten up. They didn’t give her quite the same amount of space they gave Jackie, but that didn’t matter. Someone else was being avoided, they were her best lead.

Jackie got up, then walked over and set her flagon down across from the pegasus. She was gray, with a speckling of brighter spots standing out from her coat. She looked exhausted, which Jackie wasn’t sure would help or hurt her. “Hey.” She resisted the temptation to say something flirtatious, if only because this pony wasn’t half as mature as the one she’d tried that with last. She was pretty enough, but much younger than Evening Star had been. Even smaller than Jackie, though also not a kid. “I hope you don’t mind if I sit here.”

“No you don’t. You would’ve asked before you sat down if you cared.”

Jackie grinned, shrugging her wings. “Guilty. But look around, it’s not like we’ve got tons of other choices here. Or… okay, maybe I don’t know how long you’ve lived here. But I’m new, and I’m not exactly feeling the friendship washing over me.”

“You won’t,” she said, her tone weighed down with frustration and exasperation. It didn’t seem directed, though it was hard to say for sure. “All you’ll get is blamed for everything you can’t control. You get to be a scapegoat, and you get to hear the old ones whisper about you behind your back. I hope you didn’t move here without being warned, stranger.”

“Moire Pattern,” Jackie supplied. “And I had some idea. But it’s been so long since I’ve seen racism outside of a historical reenactment. I honestly didn’t believe it still happened.”

“Sorry.” The pegasus sipped at her noodles from a steaming bowl. It was hard to tell if the blue on her ears was frost, or just an extension of her natural colors. “And I’m Frostline. One of three weatherponies assigned to this whole mountain. No, we don’t have enough resources to get rain up here. Yes, we’ve already asked the central office, and they said no. Sorry.”

Jackie laughed. “Sounds like you’ve said that a few times.”

“Yep.”

Better than I’ve got with anyone else so far. Even the cafe’s owner barely spoke to her. “Listen, I’m… I’m looking for someone in town. I’m not sure if you’ll be able to help me, but… I figure we have a responsibility, you know? Outcasts. We gotta stick together.”

The pegasus made a disgruntled, noncommittal sound. “Nopony ever said I was an outcast…” But there was no serious objection in the tone. It sounded more like a ritual denial, something she told herself but didn’t believe. “Who are you looking for? Can’t be anypony interesting—Motherlode doesn’t really do interesting.”

“Well…” Jackie lowered her voice. She wasn’t sure how quiet she would have to be not to be overheard. Maybe it wouldn’t be possible. But she could try. “I’m looking for someone strange… not a pony. Someone pale, two legs, hair just on their head. Taller than anypony you’ve ever met. Ever seen someone like that?”

“You mean like a diamond dog? But they don’t just have fur on their heads…” She frowned, obviously confused. “Why would you think that would be out here. You think they were setting up a friendship school out in the mountains with nothing around?”

Jackie shrugged. “Maybe. I dunno. But maybe… they might be hiding what they look like. So maybe you could help me find them by what they do. They’re an inventor, one of the smartest there ever was. They build machines that run by themselves… tools that work impossibly well, maybe even things that talk. Have you ever seen stuff like that around town?”

“Silver Spring?” Frostline asked. “She’s made some pretty crazy stuff with her mom, but… they’re not freaky diamond dogs or anything. She’s just an earth pony, like almost everypony else in town.”

An earth pony who’s helping to hide the real inventor? Jackie sat a little straighter in her seat, taking a long pretend swig from her stein. “That sounds perfect. Can I meet her?”

“Well… I usually head over after dinner to make sure she hasn’t blown herself up. Guess you could come along. So long as you’re not going to be mean. Spring is kinda fragile… being an earth pony hasn’t protected her from Motherlode, not with the way she acts.”

“I’ll be sweeter than candy,” Jackie promised, rising to her hooves. Once she tells me where the human is hiding, you two can go back to whatever and I won’t bother you again. “Are you done eating? Let’s go now!”

Frostline groaned. “I thought I liked you, Moire. Don’t make me regret saying yes.”

---

Comments

[djthomp]

Ada needs a robotic hoof to the face.

Sunset and Starlight and Trixie, should be fun.

She spent the next few minutes demonstrating the touchscreen to the pair of fascinated unicorns, though they weren’t the only ones around. Practically half the pony workers had stopped to stare, though most of them didn’t seem to be listening too closely. They wanted to see a human up close, probably.

Dubiously created magical touchscreens by Starlight and Trixie when.

“Oh, she doesn’t,” Trixie cut in. “Starlight Glimmer almost ended the world a few times. She’s very deserving of when ponies hate her.”

Hah!

“Sure,” Starlight said. “Hey, Trixie, how about lunch? Do, uh… do humans eat lunch?”

Excellent.

And it makes sense as a place to exile a troublesome alien who maybe sorta invaded your whole country. Way up here she won’t be able to do any damage. Keep her away from anything she could break.

It's a traditional location for that sort of thing.

The ponies stared openly at her, pausing as they pushed switch carts around. Jackie was wearing her robes again, but apparently that wasn’t enough to conceal that she was a bat underneath. “A thestral,” one of them said, his voice dismissive. “What in Celestia’s name do you want with Motherlode?”

Well, scratch that theory of mine about Motherload. Probably.

“Well…” Jackie lowered her voice. She wasn’t sure how quiet she would have to be not to be overheard. Maybe it wouldn’t be possible. But she could try. “I’m looking for someone strange… not a pony. Someone pale, two legs, hair just on their head. Taller than anypony you’ve ever met. Ever seen someone like that?”

“You mean like a diamond dog? But they don’t just have fur on their heads…” She frowned, obviously confused. “Why would you think that would be out here. You think they were setting up a friendship school out in the mountains with nothing around?”

Well, it's probably not Frostline.

Silver Spring seems like a good candidate though.

[FridayPie]

9225245
You're not one of perceptive kind? That Motherlode was tribalist town was said on first mention, you even quoted that phrase.

[djthomp]

9308335
Please do not respond to any of my comments if all you are going to do is be insulting. Particularly so weeks after the original comment date.