The Immortal Dream

by Czar_Yoshi

Adventure Calls

The night after I visited Coda, work was scheduled to be light. All we had to do was clean up after the previous day's ceremonies, which according to Jamjars was likely to only be half a workday. So, anticipating some free time later in the night, I got up early and took the train to Eaststone Mall before work began. If I was to make good on my promise to return, I had some shopping to do.

As I hoped, they had a bookstore. A big one. And I suddenly found myself faced with a problem I hadn't anticipated, but probably should have seen coming: I had zero knowledge of the literature of the outside world.

Anything written within the last twenty years? I was probably clueless. Anything fiction? I was likely starting from square one. Sure, the Icereach library had some pleasure reading, but this store was so big even the entire library would have only filled a small wing, and most of it had been academic. The odds of me actually finding something I recognized here, even with helpful signs that explained the store's organization, were very slim.

That was how I came to be slumped on a stool, wearing my coat and leaning against a bookshelf, a small mountain of new reading material in front of me, poring through blurbs and story hooks on the insides of cover leaflets, trying to only read that much and not get sucked in.

"Rrrgh," I whined, holding a promising-looking time travel adventure about a protagonist caught in a time loop. Pleasure reading, back in Icreach, had been a very enjoyable way for my young mind to pass the time, at least until I ran out of new things to read five or six years ago. Now, I was remembering why I ran out, the books pulling at my eyes like magnets. I could almost feel my emptiness again, as if something inside me was physically hungry for the information and experiences these books contained.

I wanted to indulge. I would have to indulge, if I was actually going to recommend something to Coda without being blind. The bookstore wanted me to indulge, with its warm amber lighting and exotic carpets, purple with red diamonds. Glass chandeliers hung from above, and the rustling of paper surrounded me. The woody scent of new books tickled at me, a smell I had rarely smelled before. If I looked over my shoulder, I knew I would see a young colt tucked up in a corner, reading - he had been there when I got here, and never budged except to turn the pages.

And I was also an adult, who had work in less than an hour.

With a mighty force of will, I culled my collection, returning some of them to the shelves. It felt like I was throwing away a treasure I had just remembered existed. But, telling myself over and over that I already had enough goals competing for my time without spending hours on end reading, I was able to get it down to a number of tomes that could generously be described as holdable by a single pony all at the same time.

I looked forlornly at what remained. I had a day off tomorrow, and another half day after that. Barring any sudden and new opportunities, I would spend today and tomorrow reading like the wind. Two days from now, I'd surely have something for the alicorn.

Checking out was simple, and fortunately came with bags, but unfortunately set me back most of my first paycheck. Books were expensive! I hefted the bulging tote bags on my way out, wondering over and over whether I should have put more of them back. Then again, counting my interview, I had only worked for two days.

---

"Yo! That's a lotta cargo!" Thumper called as I entered the warehouse.

I set my bags near the entrance, looking around. "Went shopping before work," I explained. "Sorry if I'm a little late..."

It looked like I was more than a little late, from the state of the room. Everything already looked partly taken down.

"Nah, don't worry about it." Thumper waved a hoof. "Saturn got here early. Cleanup days, we don't keep too tight a schedule as long as everyone puts in their fair share. You're actually the third one here."

As if on cue, Lalala appeared in the door behind me. "Hello, everyone," she greeted with a light bow. "Have I missed much?"

"It's been quiet," Saturn explained, walking out from behind a fake wall with a bundle of fabric in her aura, probably drapes that had been attached to the rafters. "Washing isn't done yet, if you want to take that. No bad spills this time around."

Lalala nodded.

"Hey!" Thumper barked. "You wanna take Halcyon while you're at it, show her how to wash these? It's as good a time to learn the ropes as any!"

Lalala glanced at me. I shrugged. "Sure."

Together, we gathered all the table linens, which amounted to quite a lot, and stuffed them in large, durable bags. "These cloths aren't as delicate as they look," Lalala explained, bundling the fabric in roughly, crumbs and sticky patches and all. "You can machine wash them, but we don't have a company washer, so we have to use a washing service in town. I'll show you how it works."

"Don't have a company washer?" I tilted my head. "Why not just take them home and use one of your own?"

Lalala chuckled. "Why would any of us have one?"

I lifted a corner of my coat. "For your clothes?"

Lalala gestured at her - and everyone else's - complete lack of clothes. Save for Thumper, who was wearing a boater hat. But that probably didn't go in a washer.

"Oh." I blinked in realization.

"I suppose clothes are more common in Icereach?" she guessed as we piled more linens into the bags.

"Yeah," I explained. "Most everyone never goes outside, but compared to here, it's pretty cold inside, too. Guess I didn't realize..."

Even now that I could logically acknowledge it, it still didn't make sense. Icereach was supposed to be a backwards, isolated little corner of the world. Why would we have technology as household appliances that was a rarity everywhere else? I would have expected-

"It must be something else, coming from a cutting-edge research colony to see how everyone else lives," Lalala remarked.

Oh. Right. As far as everyone here was concerned, Icereach was supposed to be more advanced. For a moment, I debated telling her the truth, that my hometown was a wasteland full of patents and extended deadlines and not actually the rocket-producing paradise it had raised me to believe. But then I stopped to consider that maybe, despite that, it still was a paragon of technology to the outside world.

Then I thought of the trains, and the Ice District, and the massive scale on which Ironridge society was built to operate, and I doubted it again. Did I? I really, really wasn't sure.

"It's interesting," I answered. "Honestly, I prefer it here. So open, so much more to do. Even if the weather's far from my comfort zone..."

---

I wasn't entirely sure how much to talk about Icereach. Before, when I lived there, there wasn't much to talk about because everyone around me knew what it was like, too. Now, memories of it were suddenly mine and unique to me, at least among my present company. At the same time, they felt like they belonged to a previous Halcyon, a me who was still somewhere between mask and the pony beneath it, who hadn't yet fully come into her own. Thinking about it gave me that same sense of reliving someone else's memories that I got a year ago when remembering the times before the avalanche.

But, Lalala was curious and she knew a whole lot that I was curious about, so during our long hike to the laundromat I rooted around for details that weren't too personal and wouldn't shatter whatever impressive mental image she had of my home - at least, not too badly - and spilled them all out as they came.

"...never actually figured out the chemical composition of ether," I was in the middle of explaining as we finally approached our destination. "Our best guess is it's either a unique element, or something completely different that's a particle and not a particle at the same time, like light. It's got liquid and solid states, but transitioning between them has nothing to do with temperature. You can chemically bond it with other things to form molecules, and we know a whole lot about its chemical properties, but they don't fit anywhere you'd expect to find something based on the periodic table and valence electrons and... Hey, is this it?"

"Yes. We're here," Lalala said, stopping us outside an open-air entrance in the Day District that was brightly decorated with images of suds, bubbles and hats floating in water. "Sorry to put you on hold, but we'll have plenty of time to continue while we wait for them to be done."

We stepped inside. "We're just gonna wait around?"

Lalala shrugged. "That's how it's usually done. We don't have enough time to go anywhere substantial, and it's self-serve so we have to turn them over to the driers ourselves. There's a cafe on the second floor with a lounge for waiting."

"A cafe?" I left home early today to hit up the bookstore, and breakfast was a long way in the past... "Sure, I'm down."

We loaded the linens - they took up five whole washers, so I presumed Jamjars' company was footing the bill. A proprietor nodded appreciatively at Lalala, and they chatted for a brief moment. I gathered we were a reliable source of business.

Posters and advertisements covered the walls so heavily that they overlapped with each other, creating a beautiful chaos of fine-print colors that was currently offering several ponies something to do as they waited for their own wash. Noise echoed from a doorless entry in the wall; I peeked through and saw an arcade. There was also a short hallway, and up it, a staircase.

That was where Lalala ushered me. Up top was an airy room that opened out to a balcony and view of the Night District, with a smattering of small square tables sized for two to four and a bistro covering one wall. I bought a sandwich and settled down by the railing.

"So, hey," I said once we were both seated, the thrum of machinery percolating up from below. "I've been talking a bunch. Mind if I ask you some stuff, too?"

Lalala shrugged, her expression neutral, but in a relaxed way. "You may."

"Your whole flower staff thing," I said. "At the weddings. You're like, a spiritual advisor? How's that work, exactly?"

"The world can be a lonely place at times," Lalala explained, not quite making eye contact. "Matrimony is about celebrating the bonds between ponies. But two ponies can be together, and yet still alone. Does this make sense to you?"

I tilted my head. "Like, they share the same house, but don't really know each other?"

"The opposite," Lalala said. "Imagine a pair that treat each other like two halves of the same whole, but that whole is alone in the same way a single pony might be."

"Like a binary star," I guessed. "It's technically two that orbit each other, but behaves like one in the bigger scheme of things. And they're still out in the middle of nowhere, just like all other stars."

Lalala hesitated. "I'm... not an astronomer, but you sound like you have the gist of it."

I nodded for her to go on.

"Ponies will always have some distance between them, no matter how close they are," Lalala continued. "It's just the way we are. And that can be bleak or reassuring depending on who you are and what you want in life. But what I believe is that the space between us isn't empty. That's where I see the Aegis."

"The what?" I perked up.

"The Aegis," Lalala explained. "The creator god. Not many are familiar..."

"Hold up." I frowned. "I dig that you know who's out there, and I wanna hear all about it. But what do you mean they exist in the space between ponies? You mean, like, conceptually?"

Lalala gently chuckled. "A god cannot be physically confined to a world of their creation. They exist outside it. We can only reach them through concepts and ideas."

"What about Garsheeva?" I pressed, frowning. "And alicorns?"

Lalala shook her head. "Anything that exists as part of this world is bound by its rules. Garsheeva was physical. Alicorns, if they exist, are too. They can't be all-powerful. Many would still call them gods, but they aren't enough for me. The Aegis is greater."

"Are you sure about that?" I narrowed my eyes. "I was just talking about ether, remember? It's physical matter, but also not, and it breaks a ton of rules and we can't explain why. Even if you've got, like, extradimensional powers that can't fit in the scope of the universe, I'm sure someone that strong could find a way to exist inside the world and outside it at the same time. And if not, why not just create the world a little differently so it works in a way that you can?"

Lalala looked briefly at a loss. "I... don't know the answers to any of those things. We can't fathom the mind of the Aegis. Why is there evil in the world? Where do ponies go when they die? For me, belief is about accepting the holes in my understanding and focusing on what I do understand, which is that the Aegis connects us. My role is to keep knowledge alive, and to help ponies on their days of bonding to feel that connection, that they may be drawn even closer."

I tilted my head. "Keep the knowledge alive? You mean this isn't common knowledge out here? Icereach is kinda insular and only believes in science."

"No, it isn't common knowledge at all." Lalala shook her head. "History becomes incredibly scarce throughout the ages, and disappears entirely about two thousand years ago, in the epoch when Garsheeva came into being. Perhaps Garsheeva used her influence to stamp out things that used to be known, or perhaps it was her influence that allowed history to begin being recorded in a form that could be passed down. Ask any other pony in Ironridge, and I can all but guarantee they haven't heard of the Aegis."

"Then how do you know?"

"Silverwind," Lalala said. "I grew up there. It's something of a no mare's land today, but it has an incredible amount of archaeological history. My parents worked providing amenities at the school where a lot of the more recent expeditions were based out of, and where their finds were brought back to be analyzed. I learned of the Aegis from tablets and translated writings that could be as much as five to seven thousand years old."

Wait a minute. Ancient, almost-unknown divinity rediscovered through evidence from an archaeological dig? My eyes lit up. Now we were talking. "So if they're from that long ago, how do you know they didn't physically exist?" I pressed, suddenly eager.

"Simple," Lalala said. "If they did have a physical form, they would be active and visible today. Can you look around and tell me this is not a world in need of a god?"

I looked around, and honestly, I wasn't sure I saw her point. Aside from the oppressive heat, the ponies around me seemed to be enjoying peaceful, ordinary lives. I wanted to meet divinity, sure, but I had some very unique reasons for that involving probably being physically created by a light spirit and later saved by a series of coincidences so spectacular that providence was the only explanation I could accept.

What I did remember, however, was Coda asking me exactly the same thing.

"I dunno," I eventually answered, deciding to dodge the question. "But if they don't exist, what does it matter if the world does need one?"

"I believe the Aegis does exist," Lalala said calmly with a shake of her head. "Just not in a physical form. To interact with them first requires that you believe."

My jaw hinged a little. "So, like, you're saying they only exist to people who care about them? But if the world needs saving, it would be from ponies who don't care about them. Assuming this Aegis is a good guy. So how's that work?"

Lalala closed her eyes. "It's a matter of faith and feeling, not knowledge and empiricism. I can tell you're a very rational pony, and I can't give you the physical evidence you're asking for. I can't give anyone that, actually. That's why my job is to reassure ponies that their union is witnessed and proper in the eyes of something higher than them. Words are what I have."

I looked away. That was what I wanted, wasn't it? I was plenty physically capable and could accomplish most anything I set my mind to, usually. The idea of being completely and totally known by someone I could completely and totally trust, that's how I most often thought of what I wanted when it came to the divine. Admittedly, it was a hard thing to think about, and I wasn't the best at putting words to some of my deepest desires, but that's part of why I settled on this explanation - I couldn't explain myself at my core, so I wanted someone who could do it for me. Which was a paradox, because my core was an empty, blank slate, vacated by a different pony to make room for me. But still.

So, if this was exactly what I wanted, why did Lalala's words sound so unsatisfying?

Lalala stood up. "While you think, I need to go check on the wash. I'll be right back."

---

When she got back, I hadn't really come to any conclusions I didn't hold before. My long-term goals hadn't changed. If I got an airship, maybe Silverwind would be worth a visit - it was far to the northwest, the corner of the world beyond Varsidel and Yakyakistan's border. But more likely, I would just head to Equestria. I didn't know if Lalala knew about that, but it wouldn't supremely surprise me if the reason this Aegis was nowhere to be seen was that it was south of the mountains, instead.

I tried to start a conversation again, but for some reason, my words fell flat and I couldn't pull off anything meaningful. I felt like I was only half-present, all my thoughts tied up in hopes and dreams and divinities and the alicorn I had met just a night ago. Eventually, I sighed. Maybe she wouldn't mind if I started reading a-

"Thank you for not asking about my eyes, by the way," Lalala remarked. "It's not something I mind talking about. Better for ponies to know than for it to be stigmatized. But the reactions of most strangers do get tiring after a while."

Wait, what? I tilted my head, looking again at her eyes - one yellow, the other orange. "I figured it was just a fashion statement," I said. Actually, I had no idea, but this was a safe, innocuous assumption. "A colored contact, or something."

"Oh?" She looked surprised. "Um, yes. That's..." She hesitated. "You don't know what multicolored eyes mean?"

Suddenly curious, I shook my head.

"It's the sign of moon glass," she said. "You know what that is?"

Moon glass. I had heard that name before, but where? I squinted, tugging on my memories. Something to do with Icereach, with Elise...

And then it clicked: that was what Elise called her 'changeling detector', a black glassy stone she told me could have all sorts of effects that no savvy traveler would ever willingly touch without knowing exactly what kind it was. Ponies sometimes used it as a drug, it came from a meteor... That was about all I remembered, but it was enough.

"I've heard of it," I nodded. "But, err, hold on. You just thanked me for not asking about it, and now you want to talk about it?"

Lalala leaned closer, looking slightly concerned. "Do you know what moon glass looks like, and what can happen if a sarosian like yourself touches it?"

"I've seen it once," I admitted. "And I heard it can kill us? Don't worry, I'm not planning on looking for any."

Lalala sighed in relief. "That's what I wanted to know. And yes, you've heard correctly. Moon glass is..." She hesitated. "Once it's been depleted, it can kill sarosians. I wouldn't want you to accidentally find some."

I tried to read her. It was hard, since some of my usual tricks for reading ponies seemed to bounce right off her, but I still knew enough to put together a narrative in my head about what was going on. Moon glass was some sort of drug, Lalala had clearly used it, and now she had ran into a pony who didn't know much about what it was or what it did.

It sounded like a thing she was willing to talk about. But I wondered if getting to interact with a pony who didn't know what it did, and thus wouldn't treat her any differently for it, was a rarity for her.

"Well, that's all I know," I said, testing my guess. "Not exactly planning on using it myself, so, I guess that's all I need to know? Unless you want to talk about it, of course."

She gave me an understanding smile. I felt like I had made the right choice.

"Hey." A stallion interrupted, looking at us like he knew Lalala. "Your stuff's done in the dryers," he said with a wink before wandering away. I tried to read him, and got a vibe of self-assuredness before he left.

---

"Good work, everyone," Jamjars declared, serenading the team as we wrapped up for the day. I watched forlornly as Lalala left, waving to me goodbye.

The entire trip back to the warehouse, I returned to talking about Icereach. For some reason, talking to her about myself, or at least about Icereach and the things I knew, was easier than talking about her. It wasn't like we couldn't communicate, but I had to do more work, and reading her wasn't as easy as other ponies I knew. I felt awkward and not quite able to connect, which was fun and empowering when I did it on purpose in Icereach but here was just inconvenient. So, I took the easy road, and felt like we were better friends for it to boot. Even though I left knowing very little about her at all.

Hey Jamjars, I imagined myself saying, several heavy bags of books weighing me down as the two of us rode the train back to the Ice District. What's moon glass?

Ah, she would say, snapping out of the daydream that currently had her eyes half-lidded and her cheek pressed against the window. Asking about Lalala?

I would nod, and then she would effortlessly tell me all I could ever want to know.

That was how it would play out. Jamjars was very easy to read, at least in how she would treat me. Pretty much any question, and I would get an answer much more detailed and useful and possibly classified than most other ponies could give me, as if she was somewhere between mentoring me to game the system and showing off what she knew. But, I thought back to our lunch at the laundromat, and remembered the way being satisfied with what she told me had felt. This might not be a secret I needed to know. When would it ever matter, anyway? I yawned. I'd be able to interact with Lalala more genuinely, maybe, and at the very least it would be one less thing to balance on my long, long list of things to learn and do.

So I kept my silence. For the moment, at least.

"Hey Jamjars," I said. "Have you ever heard of an Aegis?"

Jamjars owlishly blinked herself back to reality, as if I had interrupted a very good daydream. "Aegis? Yeah, it's a metal dragon. From a popular comic book about huge mecha. Ponies piloting robots... Oh, did you mean Lalala's Aegis? The divine one?"

Not what I was expecting. "Yeah," I said.

"Never heard of it anywhere else," Jamjars mumbled. "Anyone else tells you about it, they mean the comic book..." She went back to half-sleep.

Well, okay, then. Apparently Jamjars didn't know everything after all. That, or Lalala had accidentally excavated a five-thousand-year-old comic book.

The train rolled to a stop. The doors hissed, and passengers shuffled through.

One of them was Ansel.

"Oh, hey, Sis!" His brows shot up in surprise, and he got a little grin, swinging down into the seat across from me. "Feels like we don't run into each other as much as we used to anymore. Let me guess, getting off work?"

"Yeah," I said, nodding and focusing on the real world again. My ears fell a little. "Sorry if I haven't been around much. Now that we're finally somewhere with places to explore, I've kinda been..."

"Out of the house all the time?" He leaned back, stretching as the train resumed its course. "Eh, same. Try not to sweat it. Ironridge is kind of an eye-opener for how much stuff there is to do in the world, isn't it?"

I sank back in my seat, thankful that we were off before rush hour and didn't have to stand. "You can say that again."

"What's in the haul?" Ansel asked, pointing to my bags.

"Books." I tipped one up to show him. "Figured I'd spend my first paycheck on some entertainment."

Ansel nodded approvingly.

"So what have you been up to?" I asked, pulling back my bag so nothing would fall out. "Looking for cash, or staying a free agent and just exploring?"

"Eh, mostly the latter." Ansel waved a hoof. "If you're curious, I've been traipsing around the Earth District, getting to know who's who and where's where down there."

"Earth District?" I tilted my head. "Where's that?"

Ansel gestured at the window. "It's what the folks down in the Night District used to call the Night District before the new name was a thing. Same for this place; it used to be the Stone District. Basically, Cold Karma renamed them when it founded the Ice District to get everyone excited for a new city order, or something. But they did it back in the days when sane folks would go out in the Day District during the day. It's gotten a lot hotter since then, and the new names are impossible for me to keep straight when you only go out in both districts at night."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Makes sense. But the Night District? You can actually survive in that inferno?"

Ansel read my expression and chuckled. "Oh, let me guess. You tried to go down there and didn't take off your clothes."

I winced just a little.

"Yeah, that'll do it," he apologized. "It's pretty much impossible down there. Like living in the caldera of a volcano. You only go out if you have to, and you do everything you can to stay cool. I don't know how you bundle up like it's Icereach in Stone District weather, but down below, I wouldn't be surprised if you randomly caught on fire."

"What about during a rainstorm?" I asked. "I got kinda close when the last one started, and it felt a lot more manageable."

Ansel shrugged. "Oh, yeah, I guess you could go then. If you wanted to see the place, I could be your tour guide, but we'd have to stick pretty close to the train stations in case the rain let up."

"Sure!" I brightened. Exploring the Sky District with Corsica, and the Night District - or Earth District - with Ansel? Perfect way to divvy up time between my friends and make sure I explored everything and hung out with everyone. "You know if they have, like, weather predictions and stuff?"

"Only an hour in advance, if that," he said. "The storms come down from the Aldenfold mountains, like back home. I've heard it's pretty spooky to watch, and you can actually do it safely from this tower up in the Sky District. One minute everything'll be peaceful, and then next, a whole waterfall of clouds falling off that cliff."

I remembered seeing that tower. What was it called, Skyfreeze? Someone had told me that. This was suddenly on my list of Ironridge entertainment I wanted to experience.

"I've been trying my hoof at some science, by the way," Ansel added. "Just some light reading. Probably nothing you don't know. But, it's pretty interesting. In most of the rest of the world, the best way to make clouds rain is to push them upward. Say you've got some mountains, and you blow clouds toward them. The side the clouds go up will get all wet, and the side they go down gets basically none. It's called a rain shadow. But these clouds fall for easily a mile, plus who knows how high those mountains eventually get. And when they reach us, at the bottom? Torrents of rain. Apparently, there was a year or two of disruption twenty years or so ago when they behaved like the rest of the world for a change, and then it went back to the way it used to be. Same time as Ironridge's weather began heating up, actually..."

I listened curiously. "Quite the weather guru, aren't you?"

"It's interesting." Ansel shrugged in self-defense. "Isn't it? And come on, you've been doing the nerd filly shtick for as long as I can remember. I already jumped way out of my comfort zone to come here, so I might as well see what else I've been missing out on."

"You've got a point," I admitted. "At the end of the day, I do all the research I've done because I'm curious and have questions nobody can answer. Others can do it for money or fame, but if you ask me, curiosity is the only real reason."

"Hah," Ansel chuckled. "You know what would be cool? You, me and Corsica, the three of us posing in lab coats. And then you make that into a propaganda poster, For Science! Probably a dumb idea, but I'd dig it."

"You're on," I promised as the train sped into the tunnels of the Ice District.

---

For the rest of the night, I sequestered myself in my and Corsica's room, a trove of books piled neatly by my bed, and read. I confirmed with Jamjars that the following day was a day off, which meant I could sleep in as late as I pleased; I was up well past dawn as a result.

My vacation day rolled around, and I woke up on my own time to continue reading. The only breaks I took were for food and the bathroom. I was a naturally fast reader as far as text was concerned, but the more I read, the more new ideas seeped into my head and the more I subconsciously stopped reading to daydream, slowing me down. Love triangles, giant mecha, pirates and high drama, fantasy worlds with made-up creatures and physics, time travel, clashing armies, characters that probably wouldn't be compelling at all to a literature critic but I found myself utterly attached to-

A knock sounded at my door.

"Eh?" I reached for a bookmark, snapped out of my reverie.

The door cracked open, and Ansel peeked through. "Ho there," he whispered, realizing I was busy and keeping it down. "No rush and just thought I'd offer, but it started raining about half an hour ago."

Well. I put my book down and pulled on my coat. Apparently, reading about other ponies having adventures was going to have to wait, because I had yet another opportunity to go have a real one of my own.

Comments

[Boopers]

Interesting, so the city started heating up at the same time as the Aldenfold was powered back up? Makes me wonder.... nah. No. It's probably still Fire melting all the rockz

[KMCA]

more questions but few answers. I'm a bit surprised Jamjars just casually namedropped our old robo friend.

[Boopers]

11149384

Jamjars just casually namedropped our old robo friend.

What? That wasn't Jamjars. Am I reading a different story?

[KMCA]

11149387
other robot friend. The one from TOW Ageis

[Boopers]

11149393
Sure, but Jamjars still didn't do that. It was Lalala

it ageis

[KMCA]

11149394

Jamjars owlishly blinked herself back to reality, as if I had interrupted a very good daydream. "Aegis? Yeah, it's a metal dragon. From a popular comic book about huge mecha. Ponies piloting robots... Oh, did you mean Lalala's Aegis? The divine one?"

oh wait she didn't spill the beans. Not her best evasion but still

[PropsValroa]

So many questions.

[BurningSkies]

Jamjars owlishly blinked herself back to reality, as if I had interrupted a very good daydream. "Aegis? Yeah, it's a metal dragon. From a popular comic book about huge mecha. Ponies piloting robots... Oh, did you mean Lalala's Aegis? The divine one?"

Shinji, get in the Aegis.