The Stronger Tiara

by computerneek

Chapter 13

Author's Note:

WARNING to any returning readers: The previous chapter has been edited. The changes are in the details, but they're very important details- and this chapter won't make any sense without that. I personally recommend rereading, but if you really don't want to, the most important difference is thus: Clearing the armor is no longer enough to fully revitalize Diamond's Bolo in but a moment. You may also want to check the final section of the previous chapter as well, as it's new. No worries, it's short as well.

Confusion.

She can’t see anything, can’t move her head. She can’t feel her legs.

She can see the inside of her Bolo, though, just the same as she could every time it was working. Except, there’s a difference. Before, it felt like it was part of her. All the feeling in the walls, all the everything, had a little bit of a distant feeling she couldn’t describe. Almost like it wasn’t her, but also was her at the same time.

Now, it feels like it is her- exactly like her body felt before. She feels the warmth of the sun shining on her back corner, which also stings because of the hole in it.

She can feel everything.

… Funny. There’s a large pile of flowers sitting on a large, wooden box in the middle of that shaft. She can’t read the words on it, though-

She stops herself. She can see the engraving, see the words, without issue. And, she recognizes the symbols from her memory of her most recent homework assignments.

… But she doesn’t understand them in the slightest.

She-

She doesn’t scream. She would have, had any of her speakers been working.

---

She waits, and she wishes. Every day or so, she wakes up for anywhere from a few seconds to a minute. Each time, she looks at the flowers on the wooden box, notes any changes (it’s always a fresh bunch), and reanalyzes everything she remembers with those characters on it. From homework assignments to wallpaper in the school to signs at the store to the titles of every single book and magazine on the shelves of Twilight’s entire library. Even her alarm clock.

Each time, she wishes she had her hooves back.

Each time, she idly watches her spiders and nanites work until she gets bored, before she goes back to sleep. They are never doing very much; she doesn’t have the strength to run too many of them at once. And, they aren’t working on her back corner, either- no, it’ll take far less time, overall, for them to work on something a lot closer to her front. Something that was working before, but isn’t now, for some unknown reason. Almost like something had burned it- but it’s submerged in water, that shouldn’t have been possible.

Rather fortunate her nanites and spiders are all waterproof.

---

One day, she wakes up earlier than normal. Funny. No, wait- her nanites finally got that thing working again so, as of thirty-seven milliseconds ago, she once again possesses the strength to stay awake full-time. So much strength that the tiny trickle from her back corner is negligible, to the point that it might as well not even be there.

Then, she blinks. Or, she would have, if she had eyelids. That’s… That’s her father, Filthy Rich. She watches him swap out the glow crystal on the magic torch placed next to the wooden box, before stopping at the box, replacing the flowers, and leaning against it to shed a tear. She tries to cry out to him, to comfort him- but none of her speakers are working. She listens to his words, not understanding anything but her name, before going back to sleep. Had her eyes been capable of shedding tears, they would have been doing so.

---

She sleeps for far longer than she has previously. She knows exactly how long; it was one week, four days, and twelve hours. During that time, all her available strength had been devoted to understanding what people were saying.

If she could blink, she would. She had… figured out how to understand a few of the words ponies use, in her sleep. She checks her memories of the written symbols, but doesn’t come up with anything.

But in any case, she didn’t wake up to a surge of strength this time. No, it was a task completed that woke her up. Had she still a face, she would have raised an eyebrow- she could do work while she slept? A whole new meaning to the idea of sleepwalking, she supposes.

Then she looks at what task it was.

Had she legs, she would have jumped for joy.

No- no. She checks that the task truly is complete, and the result has entered into a stasis state, before triggering the discharge sequence. Then she reaches out, throws together a quick, two-address Total Systems Data Sharing net, steps out of her nanovat, and jumps for joy.

She has her body back.

Her tiara is now actually part of her body… But so? She can detach it, if she wants to. She makes a singular jump straight from the stretchers all the way up into the passage above, landing in the passage, before galloping down it like a lightning bolt.

Her body is a little… different than it was before, but so?

The dirt pile at the bottom of the shaft has been dug out long ago. She pivots on it anyways, rocketing up the passage. Somepony must have placed all these thaumic torches in here at some point, giving the passage an even blue light.

She veritably explodes from her back right corner, before screeching to a halt and looking around.

The entire area seems to have been turned into a cratered wasteland while she was away. She can see the beginnings of an effort to restore it off by the edge of town, but most of it is all craters. Twilight really must have gone to town with it while she slept.

She gallops into town. She makes sure to slow to a normal pace, once she gets out from among the craters.

She’s not sure why everypony seems to be staring at her. Did she miss her homework?

She screeches to a halt in front of… what used to be her mansion. There’s some ashes still visible, and it looks like the construction ponies are getting ready to relay the foundation soon. It must have burned down.

She blinks. Obviously, her father isn’t here. Perhaps he’s still at work, at the bank?

She gallops for that instead.

More ponies are staring at her.

It’s another pile of ashes. This one looks much more recent; most of it looks like it hasn’t been touched yet, only some of it cleared. There’s a sign out front, with words she doesn’t understand… Except, she finds, in context. By analyzing it in her other context, the one she doesn’t understand, she’s able to find it indicates that something valuable that was stored inside the building remains unharmed- and has been moved to the giant crystal castle on the outskirts of the town.

She looks up at the giant crystal castle in question. Twilight’s castle, she knows.

She gallops to it.

At least it hasn’t burned down. As she knocks on the gigantic crystal front doors, she wonders idly if it’s even possible for it to burn down.

Somepony- no, she recognizes the voice, that’s Spike- says something from inside that she doesn’t understand. No, wait- she quickly processes it in that other context. He’s telling her she’s allowed to come and go at will- which, if she thinks about it, she already knew. Twilight never locks this door.

Whatever. It’s polite to knock. She pushes the door open, and steps inside.

Ahh, there’s the little green-spined purple dragon, Spike. Funny, he’s staring at her too.

She quickly drafts up a question, does her best to translate it into that context, revises it in that context, prays she didn’t mess up the meaning, and says it.

“Hey, Spike! Could you point me to Twilight?”

He tilts his head, blinks, and tilts it back. “Um… She’s in the library, I think. Didn’t you… uh, die, at some point?”

She processes his oration in that context, and does her best to translate it into something she can understand. As near as she can tell, he told her that Twilight is where the books are- something she guesses instantly to mean the library- and that she herself is… something.

Strange. That other context wants to respond to his question with a vehement ‘no’, so it was presumably something rather unpleasant. She lets it.

“No, of course not! And thanks for the info!”

She gives him a little wave, before trotting towards the library. He stares after her for a few seconds, before resuming whatever he had been doing beforehand.

Finally, she enters the library. It takes her all of two seconds to find the purple Alicorn, who seems to be studying a very large and heavy book… and looks much worse for the wear, almost like she’s cried herself to sleep every night for weeks. She trots forwards, and calls to her by name. Fortunately, she doesn’t need to translate the name; it’s a name, so something that never needed to be translated in the first place.

“Twilight?”

Twilight doesn’t react at all.

“Twilight?” she calls again, louder, as she trots up next to the mare.

Yes, she’s definitely studying the book. She’s staring at it, eyes tracking over line after line of text that- according to that other context, which understands the words- makes her nose wrinkle in disgust. She tries translating it, and gets the really weird impression that the book talks of making the dead alive. Lke, necromancy, maybe? No, no, not that. Resurrection? Yeah, that feels like the same concept.

She fills her lungs and yells in Twilight’s ear. Twilight flinches, but stays focused on the book.

She looks out across the library, and finally picks a course of action.

She jumps, fluidly, on Twilight’s back.

Without taking her eyes off the book, Twilight tries to shake her off. She, however, spreads her wings for balance- and stays on with dismissive ease.

Then she hops up onto Twilight’s head, sticking her head down in front of Twilight’s face and screaming straight into her face. “Twilight!”

Twilight screams, leaping backwards, away from her book and flinging her off. She adjusts her wings just a little, causing herself to land on her hooves, before holding them and trotting towards Twilight, who is finally looking at her.

… And staring at her.

“Twilight?” she asks.

Twilight blinks a couple more times. “D-Diamond. You’re… alive.”

This, she finds, is pretty easy to translate.

“Yes, I’m alive. Why would I not be?”

“Because I- I-!” Twilight bursts into tears and explodes forwards, wrapping her in a massive hug and sobbing into her fur. “Because I killed you.”

Comments

[LostArchivist]

...So, there was either a timeskip where Twilight's meddling had bad ends for Diamond and/or the Bolo before she was brought back, orrrr this is the Bolo thinking it's Diamond. I think.

Boy have I been distracted lately. But I aten't dead!

[computerneek]

9947000
Yeah... You did check back to the end of last chapter, I assume. Presumably, one of her misses was just right that either the blast or rock thrown by it hit Diamond... and squish. But as Twilight told her chapters ago, that simply meant she'd wake up in the Bolo instead. Which has suddenly placed her on the other side of the language barrier...

[LostArchivist]

9947024
That seems remarkably careless of her...

[computerneek]

9947035
Might be why she's so devastated by her belief that she'd killed Diamond, rather than simply recycling her body... because it was her inattention that did it.