[Forlorn Ascension]|[Rites of Dominion]

by Desrium

Now Upon The Threshold

The last of his things were placed into the relatively small chest that he was issued for his departure. The chest was more like a barrel, cylindrical with a hinged top. It was made from a white casing with black rings at the top and bottom and the entire thing was fitted with a hover pad and straps to secure it to Phineas' person. His small room -just a bit larger than the average utility closet- was cleared of anything that had personal significance to him. That meant every trinket and decoration he had on the tiny shelves on the walls, everything he had in and on his desk and all the clothes he possessed; three spare uniforms. When he was finished, all that left was his sleep pod and the white walls as stainless as they were the first day he stepped hoof into the room. A cadet did not have much with them when they joined the academy; Phineas had even less than that.

He turned and moved to the doorway and just before he passed through, he looked back one last time at what had become his home. A small, windowless room with only one light on the ceiling which cast a cold, muted white light upon white...everything else. It was not aesthetically pleasing to say the least, but it had been his place of solitude and rest. A place of study and learning where he sat at the desk with a flashlight, reading manuals and text books when he should have been asleep like the other cadets, recovering from the intense training that had dominated most of his daily routine when he was not in class. He was going to miss a bare hovel tucked away on the third floor of the third habitation building of the Starfleet academy.

"And somepony else will grow to miss you when they are in my place. Assuming they get as far as this. I may not be a Star Commander but at the very least I made it through the program."

"Getting sentimental over your room, Startrot?"

Phineas turned his head to the other pony. A pony by the name of Lightning Streak, and he was deserving of his name. He was a mostly white crystal pony with a blue tint to his shining coat and his mane and tail were even lighter than that, with a bright yellow at the fringes of them. He was almost painful to look at when the sun shone directly upon him...but in a good way, if that makes sense. Lightning sure saw it that way, as he'd mirror the ponies in the pictures hung on the walls, puffing out his chest, looking heroic as all who laid eyes upon him were assaulted by his radiance. It was why after a time, he was given a special uniform. One of a significantly darker shade of blue with a black trim. This, as well as a tail sheath and a helmet with a rubbery cover for his mane. While opposed against the notion of having to cover himself up in such a way initially, he eventually relented.

"Ha! The Federation recognizes by brilliance to the point where they issue me, a mere cadet, his own personalized uniform!" he boasted when he showed up to a training session adorned in his more visually forgiving attire. Phineas was sure to show him up that day. Anything Lightning did, he did better. Which was why he was not Star Commander of his very own spaceship now, and why Lightning had something of a rivalry with him.

"No more sentimental than you when you thought you lost your comb," Phineas said coolly before walking the rest of the way out of his dorm and pressing his hoof against the wall unit just off to the right side of the doorway. The automatic door slid across from right to left and clicked shut, then popped out a few inches to make the seams in the blue wall disappear. Hoping to avoid an issue with the prideful stallion -more prideful than himself- Phineas started to trot down the corridor to the central elevator where he would go down to the subway station and catch a ride to the departure hub in Ponyville. There the Iopteryx awaited its launch window in just under two hours. His hovering travel case made a wavering hum as he moved, the underside of it giving off a cool blue glow and causing the air to ripple around it.

***

"That comb was a family heirloom!" said Lightning, matching pace with Phineas fairly quickly with his own levitating luggage in tow. His chin was held upward and turned away from Phineas as if the pony in the strange suit were insulted over such petty things. And he usually was. And yet he had made it through Starfleet academy...

"Where are you heading now?" Startrot asked, trying to be conversational when in actuality he couldn't care less about what the Crystal pony's affairs would be like after leaving the institution. As long as he didn't have to see Lightning again, Phineas was all right-

"Well if you must know, and really you must be dying to know, I was assigned to the starship Iopteryx!"

"You're fucking with me." Phineas stated mentally, reflexively at that. "That's wonderful," he said out loud while expanding on his thought: "Don't let them see your hatred. It only provokes them."

"Ah yes, being the navigator of such a stellar vessel will be amazing! Of course, I believe I am more befitting the role of a captain but navigator is the closest thing to that, hmm?" Lightning asked. Phineas' urge to put a pin through his bubble was like an inferno born of a single spark.

"I would think the pony the captain chooses as second in command would be the closest thing, Lightning Streak," Phineas replied with as much restraint as he could muster. "And no captain would be stupid enough to choose you of all ponies aboard."

"My my, you don't seem so enthused!" Lightning said in a melodramatic way, and it was then that Phineas knew the true meaning of this encounter. Lightning knew. Lightning knew and was going to goad him with it.

"The son of a bitch..."

"What position did the council assign you, the best of the best of us!" said the pony in the dark blue suit. Phineas could see the wide, spiteful grin the pony must have had underneath his mask with the large, insectoid yellow screens over his eyes. Nevertheless, he stayed tactful and punctual. This little game was about subtlety, and outright telling the Crystal pony to fuck off would be ruining the fun. If there was a silver lining to the fact Lightning Streak would be aboard the Iopteryx, it was that the game could continue even beyond the farthest reaches of the planet's atmosphere.

"While you are reading star charts and projections, I'll be ordering my staff of well trained engineers around to make sure your absurd, convoluted courses don't take half a millennium to traverse," Phineas said flatly. Shortly after he came to the elevator unit, a gigantic tube made of what appeared to be glass but in reality was several times stronger. In it were several elevator shafts, the whole assembly rotating based on which elevator was most available when it was called upon. Startrot pressed the call button and waited.

Lightning scoffed and gasped, gasped and scoffed and continued like so for what might have been a minute or more. Phineas thought the pony was choking, having a heart attack and experiencing a seizure all at the same time. There was some satisfaction to be had there for him, as morbid as it was.

"My courses will not be absurd nor convoluted!" Lightning Streak exclaimed once he regained the ability to articulate his speech. Just then, the elevator came up, its doors parting with a mechanical hum.

"In that case, we will only get to our destinations even faster," Phineas responded. He walked forward into the chrome plated elevator, pressed the button at the lowest part of the panel and then watched as the many levels of the academy float on by over his head as he was lowered into its depths. Lightning did not speak. The silver pony enjoyed the silence -almost more than he enjoyed mangling the Crystal pony's attempt to get under his skin. Only almost, though.

***

The last Phineas saw of Starfleet academy was the garden plaza at ground level. The garden was bright orange and red with the colors of autumn. He realized the sight would the one of the last he would remember of Earth. It was then the irony of an earth pony heading up into space struck him. He let out a chuckle, something Lightning scoffed and turned his chin up at. The train ride to Ponyville was going to be...pleasant, Phineas could already see it.

To his surprise, the train ride was marked by a silence the likes of which Phineas never expected from the arrogant pony that had become his rival. He sat in the navy blue, padded seat he had taken to the right of the train car and Lightning sat directly opposite on the left. They both fished out a book to read from their travel cases and spent the trip doing so, though Lightning was quite obviously brooding. The landscape was a blur as the train shot across it at several tens of miles an hour. It made the ride from the Manehattan academy to Ponyville exceptionally short, just under an hour. That left little more than an hour before the Iopteryx was sent into space.

The train pulled into the Federation transport hub and the doors opened with a hiss of air. Phineas and Lightning Streak, among several other fledgling flyers stepped out onto the platform of the station, which was a semicircle. When it was completely vacant, the white and golden train pulled off and gained speed, suspended a few feet off of the single rail it followed. The front of it had a long horn and its windows were pink, an image after Celestia herself. Immediately after stepping out, Phineas was greeted with the launch hub, the entire super structure being defined by the metal with a lovely sheen and a sapphire tint. The front wall was the reinforced glass given a prismatic charm, to the left it was multicolored and wavering like the princess of the dawn's mane. To the right, it was solid and darker to match the princess of the dusk's.

Phineas and the hundreds of others like him funneled into the building. After all the trials and meticulous methods of weeding out recruits, he was surprised to see that so many had passed through their respective academies. Ponies and non-ponies -maybe even a few dragons!- from all across Equestria and all sorts of walks of life were at the center of the country in one place. Phineas found that, in spite of this unifying establishment, ponies barely spared each other a passing glance. They were too busy making their way to the ships they would be spending a great deal of their careers on. The layout of the launch hub was like a super massive airport. There were many boarding terminals extending from the main lobby area with massive screens each denoting which ship belonged to which. The Iopteryx was roughly dead ahead from the entrance of the lobby. His hard earned destiny...which Lightning Streak happened to be a part of. Fate hardly worked in the way of one's choosing.

***

Dream Catcher. Crescent Moon. Star Chaser. Cloud Breaker. Blazing Ruby. Fedoria. Shimmering Dawn. Luna-One. Celestia-Prime. Those were only a few of the names Phineas saw entering the open-topped shipyard. Each craft was as distinct as their names, which were printed in large angular letters of various colors depending on the color of the vessel's hull. The Iopteryx had its name emblazoned in bright red against a light gray hull with black highlights. It was roughly elliptically shaped with two oblong pylons mounted on its underside and two delta shaped wings on either side which were folded upwards to form a narrow, uneven V. At the front was a cone-shaped structure which the silver stallion first thought to be a horn, another homage to the princesses, but then saw the screen which was near the tip. That was the cockpit...and in comparison to the rest of the craft, it was tiny. The ship itself was dwarfed by many of the other vessels docked at the station.

"And who might you be, fledgeling?" a mauve mare officer asked Phineas at the end of the ramp extending out from the Iopteryx's side to the boarding platform. Her uniform was white and black like his, with red stripes across her chest showing she was part of the security force. She was a shapely Earth pony mare. She had a black hat on her light yellow mane, the top portion of it hidden away but the rest of the long strands flowing out from the red striped cap and down her neck.

"Phineas Startrot," he said then watched the officer look to her right. There, on a small computer screen his ID and designation was visible to her. When she looked back to him, he added: "and what is a beautiful mare like you doing in a place like this?"

"My job, Chief Engineer," she said somewhat playfully. "You should get suited up to do yours. Take off is just around the corner."

"Do I not get the pleasure of a name?" Phineas asked with a cock of his head. Lightning Streak, who was behind him ever since they left the train, cleared his throat forcefully.

"Amethyst Shine," the officer replied with a smile. "Now if you'll move along mister Startrot, I think your friend is getting a bit impatient."

As he walked past her, Phineas muttered into Amethyst's ear: "Please; he's not a friend of mine."