Getting Ready

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"Happy 2207 everyone!" Cheered a voice from the roof of the Garrison in ThreeTown. Northern Shield, the king of ThreeTown cavern and the first point of contact to the rest of Equestria, was standing at the top of the Garrison- a castle-like structure at one end of the massive cavern. As the cavern shuddered slighty, signalling the lift-off of another Equestrian spaceship, Northern waited for the ponies in front of him to quiet down before announcing, "Today, we begin our exodus! Equestria is finishing their final evacuation as we speak, and we're all next, on the underworld ship!" he said.

After getting a mixed response from the crowd, Northern leaned on the edge of the platform and said, in a more serious voice, "That's not all.... the heart of the earth, she stopped working one week ago. It won't be safe down here much longer, the planet's changes above us are affecting us down here just as much"

"Is that why all the other caverns have evacuated up to this one?" Yelled a mare from the crowd. Northern nodded and said, "Yes! The trains are going to start taking ponies to the ship we're using, so I would recommend you all start packing!"

In the crowd, a white mare sighed softly, looking around the crowd. "Hate space..." she grumbled softly to herself with a frown. She glanced at her watch, and gasped as she noticed the time, carefully edging back through the crowd to get back into her town, one of the three nestled in the huge cavern. As she walked home, hooves gently tapping against the centuries-old stone, she looked up at the old underworld houses on either side. Built of very, very old, dark red bricks, the identical houses dotted around the cavern had all stood for centuries, with the green crystal paths between them. And they had to leave it all behind? "What rotten luck...." mused the author as she rambled to her home, which was now temporarily home to two other ponies, too.

The mare's name was White Stream, and she was a well-known underworld author. Much like the writer of daring do above their heads, however White's adventures were mostly based in her head. She remembered the past year like it had been stamped into her mind. Just as the clock ticked over to 2205, harmony guardians such as the Tree of Harmony up above, and the Heart of the Earth down below seemed to just... die. Nopony knows why, either. Was it sabotage, from an enemy nation? Was it some monster from Tartarus? Discord went missing at the same time, was he related? Either way, the pressing issue was more important- the Tree of Harmony was done, and the Heart of the Earth had clattered and clunked to a dead stop, its gears and pistons frozen. With both safeguards ruined, the land soon began to fall apart. Cracks emerged in the ground, rivers overflowed their boundries, the weather began to buck control of the Pegasi, and earthquakes threatened to release Canterlot itself from its foundations! While some places outside of Equestria were suffering, it seemed that only the pony lands were experiencing such misfortune- the dragonlands and everywhere else were left alone, for the most part.

However, nobody would dare take in ponies once the magic broke- after a series of secret meetings between dragons, gryphons, zebras, and more, it was agreed- Ponies seemed to be cursed never to set hoof on their home planet ever again. For some nations, it was obviously born from their dislike of the ponies. And the others had either been convinced to their side, or threatened that way. Even if the rest of the world did want to take in ponykind, it would be a stress considering they were the biggest nation on the planet. It seemed that the "era of harmony" as it was named, which began in the 2010s, was now ending. It had come close to its end when Princess Twilight Sparkle's friends began to die, during the 2090s. Blessed with the long life of an Alicorn, the purple mare couldn't take the deaths of her friends, and she was driven to madness, and then insanity in her desperate pursuits to bring them back- Losing friends in such a permanent way as death was agony for the princess of Friendship, after all. She tuned to science, she turned to magic, she turned to dark magic, and after the death of Applejack in 2098, Fluttershy and Twilight both went missing.

Fluttershy and Twilight's bodies were never found, even though Applejack's body was discovered in the private areas of her castle. She was next to, and hooked up to, a running computer that had crashed sometime after her death. It's actually unknown why AJ was there, and what the computer was for. No data could be recovered from it, and when being examined it was proven that the elderly farmpony had been nearly dead at the time she was put in the bed. White had met the king's son, Polaris, and she'd asked him about Twilight one time. She remembered the look on his face when he explained to her his own meetings with the purple mare. He had told her, and she had refused to listen, that reviving a dead pony was impossible with magic. He'd broken up when he told White that Twilight knew he had tried it many many times, but she refused to believe it was impossible. She began to worry he would cry at his last line- "I don't know where she is, but if she managed to figure out that spell..."

"Ah!" White squeaked, as she managed to lose herself so deep in her thoughts that she walked straight into her front door. She fell down onto the step at the top, then giggled and rubbed her snout, tossing the door open once she got back up. As she trotted inside, she waved gently to her friends, saying, "I'm back~!"

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"Man, it sure would be nice if some unicorn fatass wasn't sitting around and helping instead" growled a voice. "Hey!" came another voice in return, followed by the laughs of a few stallions. In the center hub of the Underworld was a cavern named, accurately, "Centria". The massive train station in the center of the cavern had... seen a few things. Namely, a runaway train full of coal. Moving pretty fast. Not only did it jump the rails and destroy the massive turntable in the center of the station, but it also took down part of the building, and scalded some ponies with hot water, and lodged itself in such a way that removing it would bring down even more of the station.

"So, we done picking up everything?" Asked one of the ponies, as he leaned on his rather full bag. There was a small engine with a single coach behind it, and it was already halfway loaded with various things, mainly Everflame orbs, which the residents of the underworld had discovered were impossible to make without the heart's magic- therefore they vowed to take as many as possible with them to the stars. "Yeaaaah, just about... we all here?" Came another stallion's voice.

"Think so, let's buzz off, we've just been sittin here for a while" grumbled the first one. The small team of workers piled into the carrige, and with a hiss of the engine, they took off to ThreeTown for the last time, leaving Centria in dark silence.

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Each cavern except ThreeTown had fallen apart without the heart's magic, and the aforementioned one was only going to stay together for so long being held up by layers and layers of magic wards placed in desperate attempts to keep it together. Crystal Cavern had suffered the most horrible death, and was the first to collapse. The massive crystal city in the center of the town had collapsed into its ocean, sending earthquakes through the Underworld and Equestria itself. Crystal Cavern was also the only one to collapse entirely- bringing down part of equestria- taking Twilight's Castle down into the earth with it. The plantling hive, thankfully, managed to successfully evacuate after the crystal city had collapsed, since it had flooded part of their hive.

Next, came FallingRock. This cavern didn't suffer too hard, simply put, the small town within had been demolished by rockfall from Crystal Cavern's collapse. Perhaps the name had been a little too foreshadowey. After that, came Greenwall cavern. First, the mindvine died. Most of the ponies in the Underworld had never even considered the possibility of the sentient plant dying, and yet it simply shriveled up one day at an alarming rate, and then it began to rot. After that, all the houses held up by the sentient plant collapsed, and after the rest of the crops died, filling the cavern with deadly mold, it was then abandoned too. Soaring Cavern? Catastrophic failure, thanks to earthquakes, most of the massive Stalagtites lost their grip, smashing down into the cavern's ocean. Skytown was ruined with rubble, its hangar having fallen into the drink, and seatown was flooded with the Underworld's first and only Tsunami.

DarkRock suffered the worst fate- Infinity City's floodwaters broke through into the cavern, and the magma that once ran the heart of the earth bubbled up into the cavern, ruining it and burying the town under a nasty mix of molten lava and boiled water that cooled into stone which encased most of the town. Even Gemstone Town had suffered a cave collapse, the town buried under tons of collapsed rock. However, that disaster had a silver lining- the ghosts who were confined to its borders for centuries were set free when the town was buried, and they moved on to ThreeTown with the others. They would be the first ghosts in space!

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A tall, white mare cleared her throat firmly as she frowned down at the nervous stallion in front of herself. "Repeat that again, Engineer?" She quietly said.

"H-haha, I-I uh, well you see, the... the...." he said, gulping quietly as she continued to stare down at him. "O-Okay, so, t-the SS Twilight! The uh, the old superfreighter! The uh, we have a problem...."

Lost in the dark

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"Uh, guys? Where are all of you? These pranks are getting out of hoof!" Barked a stallion's voice. The sounds of his steadily increasing panic were echoing throughout Centria, but there wasn't ever a response. A twinkle of light began to shine in one of the station's old archways, as the voice neared the exit.

"Come on, just... pop out and scare me already" Said a quiet voice, followed by a whimper as his soft light shone out into the cavern. Silverwing was a ThreeTown guard, and he slowly walked out of Centria with a troubled frown on his face. He'd been looking for goodies to take back home when the others left, and his small everflame orb lantern was struggling against the darkness as it shone in front of him. It was so quiet... so disturbingly quiet. He couldn't hear the voices of the other stallions, or the hiss of the steam engine. All he could hear was the dripping of water, the distant hiss of DarkRock's flooding problems, and loud, dull thuds from time to time as things collapsed in now-abandoned cities.

Silver crept out of the station, onto a small bridge. The bridge led to what was once Equestria's tiny little slice of the Underworld- an Embassy, where they also used to sell things that couldn't be gotten underground. Silverwing looked at it for a while, and he decided that it would be as good as any other place to hide out while he waited for the others to come back. They would come back, right? So, over the bridge he went, up to the double wooden doors. Click. The door opened. Silverwing walked inside, then shut the door behind himself. As he turned to look in the shop, he noticed a lightswitch near the doors... and he smiled a bit. Silverwing had been to the topside a few times, and he found it interesting that ponies, in a lot of homes, had fancy lights that required all sorts of systems to run.

All controlled by one switch! He flicked it, and let out a pained yelp as the main room of the Embassy suddenly bloomed with bright, flickering lights. He closed his eyes tight, hissing with pain as he covered his snout with his hooves. His Everflame orb went to a dull, weak glow, in response to the bright light it was also exposed to. All Silver could think was "Owww..." as he slowly stood up again, cracking his eyes into a squint. As he slowly began to adjust to the light, looking at the shop... he became confused. Didn't these lights require "Power" as they called it? How did they still have any? The heart was dead, and he couldn't hear one of their odd generators...

Silverwing didn't exactly have much else to do, so he decided to investigate. First, he began to snoop around the store. There wasn't too much there, since ponies had emptied a lot of the items inside when they left it. There was a piano at one end, and Silver grinned as he sat down at it. He took a look around, because maybe the others were hiding in here.... but he didn't see anyone. After a while of plinking around on the piano, testing it, he decided to sing... before long, he was belting out the chorus of one of his favorite songs- "I've been thiiiiinking about you all day~... And the thoughts, they just won't go away~... I'll see you tonight, we'll embrace all night, and tomooorow we'll make love byyy the fiiiireee~!" sang the stallion, as both his hooves and wings flew across the piano, sending warm, happy music through the Embassy and even leaking out into Centria.

The Embassy was uncomfortably quiet after Silver had finished singing... and he looked troubled as he closed the protective cover for the polished keys of the Piano. He also felt somewhat of a self-conscious rush of embarassment, at the idea of his fellow guardsponies hearing the cheesy song he had been singing, but that just reminded him of how painfully alone he was. Hell, wouldn't the shame be worth rescue? The pegasus sighed, his ears going down as he got up from the seat. He wasn't sure if they'd be coming back... and it worried him, but he didn't want to try to make the journey back to ThreeTown alone. It wasn't safe- parts of the caverns and caves could collapse at any moment, the journey was very long on hoof, and he didn't trust the darkness around him. He didn't know what sorts of things were out there after the collapse of the underworld... and he didn't like it.

In fact, one collapsed part of the tunnel had a bridge across it- a hastily built bridge that could only hold the train itself, with no walkway for a pony... and it was slippery, thanks to water pouring down from above. As he thought of the bridge, Silverwing shivered, and he got up from the piano with a whirl of emotions. Fear, even Terror, combined with sadness and worry, mixed all in with Anger- How could they leave him here!? He let out a shaky sigh as he remembered that dwelling on the thoughts wouldn't help, and he grumbled softly to himself as he took a few more deep breaths.

Okay, back to the Embassy. All he could do was muck about as he waited for the others... so he went to the back of the store. Silverwing was pretty sure that shops generally had backrooms, where the most stubborn of ponies often insisted workers to look for things they had run out of. He smiled a bit as a memory surfaced- of his time at a small shop in ThreeTown, before he was hired to the guard. A mare had demanded to see the backroom, instead of just asking him to check it. So he took her into the room, which held nothing but a single pair of boots. Ahh, the embarassed look on her face as she left... he'd never forget it.

So where was the back room in the Embassy? There didn't seem to be one! The back wall was just solid. Silver sighed, and he leaned against the solid rock wall. Which then collapsed under him, sending him rumbling into what sounded like a big open space. Silverwing picked himself up with a frown on his snout, then he looked up with a confused expression. "What in...." he murmured softly, as he brought out his everflame lamp and shone it around. The Embassy had a false front to it! And behind it... was a hollowed out room of rock, with a large metal wall at one end. There were some flickering lights on the ceiling, but they had given up most of their light long ago, they could barely reach the floor. Turning to see what he had fallen through, Silver realized he had leaned onto a door, and the hinges on it had rotted to the point where his weight managed to rip them straight out of the wood.

His worries temporarily forgotten, Silver crept forwards, walking up to the heavy metal doors embedded in the strange wall. He gently touched one of them, and to nopony's surprise- nothing happened. He sighed, then mumbled a soft "What is this...?" to himself as he turned around, looking back to the Embassy. Snooping around here wouldn't help his chances of rescue, but... he wanted to find out what it was. Turning back to the doors in front of him, Silver noticed that there was a crack between them. Perhaps....?

With a creaking protest, Silver managed to push the doors apart with the tip of his armored hoof! They were heavy, and their motors were long dead, but the locking mechanisms seemed to be left undone, and therefore Silver was able to move the doors. With much effort, of course. It took him a while to get a hoof between the doors, but once Silver did, he put his weight into shoving one of them aside. Whenever he ran out of strength, he rested against the door, panting heavily in the quiet cavern. Eventually, Silver got himself between the slabs of metal, and he was able to look out into what the doors were hiding.

And it was impressive. There was an entire research station behind here! Buildings sat along the squarish, artificial cavern in the distance, and there was another set of big doors at the far wall of the cavern, looking as if they led into a new place. The buildings were old and faded, their painted signs hard to read and crumbling. With no sun to bleed things, it took a very long time for things to fade in the Underworld, so Silver could tell that this place hadn't seen a pony in a long, long time. And yet... the cavern was illuminated. Flickering, weak, yet stubborn lights lined the ceiling and ground along the makeshift town, and while they made it look strange, they were enough for him to see everything. Nearby, Silver could see a huge machine with red warning lights on it, and thanks to the giant text that read "BATTERY ARRAY" on it, it seemed that SIlver had his answer to why the lights worked.

So, Silverwing shoved his way through the door with a grunt. He turned around as he heard a metallic grumbling, and he yelped in fear as he looked just in time to see the doors SLAM shut inches from his snout. The old doors were spring loaded, and while the weight of Silver had been enough to hold them open, they got enough momentum to slam shut when he finally let go. And the rock that had been jammed between them, holding them open... well, it was nothing but dust now. As he looked at the closed gap, Silver frowned worriedly as he noticed that he doubted he could even fit a sword between there... but befoe he allowed the foreboding thoughts of "I'm trapped!" to overtake him, he turned to look at the strange place he'd walked into.

Celestia, we have a Problem

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The Equestrian space program was immensely successful. Not even the destruction that wreaked havoc across Equestria could deter the massive ships from lifting off, again and again, into the stars. Every town in equestria was assigned a ship to take. Small towns ended up with older ships, sometimes even prototypes like "Apogee's Sky", which became home to Our Town. Equestria only had a few SuperFreighter class ships, massive, city sized beasts that required the magic of a princess to even get off of the ground. There were four of them. Each one named after a princess. There was the SS Celestia, which held Canterlot. The SS Cadence, which held the crystal empire, the SS Luna, which held baltimare and manehattan, and lastly the SS Twilight.

The SS Twilight was special. Before the death of her friends, Twilight had built the ship as Equestria's very first superfreighter, and she had actually designed it to operate without the magic of a princess, unlike the other ships. Using spells that she had designed herself, she had built a magical battery. It was tiny- the size of a car battery- however it could theoretically power the SS Twilight forever. However, it became part of her insane plans when her friends began to pass away, and the battery was lost to time. Rumor says that she took it away to use its powers in attempts to revive her friends, but it could've also just been taken away for testing and never brought back.

The SS Twilight was the biggest ship Equestria ever built. It was so gigantic that it couldn't physically rest on the planet unless it was in a body of water, so it rests in the cool waters of the ocean, where it stubbornly resists any of what the curses throw its way. Every ship that Equestria had ever built were needed for the great Exodus, and the SS Twilight was the one that got slated with the job of holding everyone from the Underworld. However, the ship was incapable of lifting off without the battery Twilight had designed! And even if it did somehow get into space, it would be stuck in a perpetual 'low power mode'.

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"We have a problem...." stammered the nervous Engineer. "And what would that be?" Celestia asked quietly, the muscles in her face shifting just enough to express the anger bubbling up inside of her. The Engineer nervously pointed to the monitor he was looking at, and he said, "I... okay, so, the uh, the SS Twilight can't actually lift off without.. some sort of device that goes down here!" He said, pointing to a model of the ship that was focused on one of its deepest chambers, where Twilight's battery was meant to go. Celestia breathed in, then closed her eyes as she slowly sighed all of the air out of her lungs. The firey anger in her eyes had to fight for its life as a newcomer approached- a turbulent mix of sadness and worry. "So, it can't get off the ground?" She asked.

"I um, no, it can't, it can sail and most of everything works, for now, but the um, thrusters all rely on that battery...." He said. "And in space, it would be really risky, because it would have to rely on solar power!" "Get me Northern Sheild, now" Growled the princess, as a nearby radiomare nodded and said, "Right away!" before she began to type on her own keyboard. Celestia walked past the stallions to the dirty window glass of the control room. In front of her stretched the ocean, bordered by the beach on one side and the docks on another. And floating in its waters was the target of her worries, the last creation of her greatest student. She'd done such a great job... it looked beautiful, it looked strong, it was larger than anything else they had ever built, but it was stuck. "You don't deserve this..." Whispered the mare, though she didn't know what You was.

The poor Engineer was pretty sure he saw tears in Celestia's eyes when she finally turned around to leave, but he wouldn't dare ask. He walked out to the window himself, looking down at the specks on the ground. A considerable amount of Underworlders were already boarding the ship, helping with the efforts to build rooms for everypony to live in. It took a lot of work to make a superfreighter into a superponyholder, after all! But the stallion frowned with worry as he watched the tiny little ponies make their way into the immense hulk.... what was going to happen to all of them? There were rumors that their enemies were going to try attacking any ponies left behind on earth once most of them were gone, and it made him worry. Didn't help that Celestia, the mare who always had a plan, had left with little more than a request to contact the Underworld King.

Also, was that an old van among the ponies slowly heading onto the ship?

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In the ThreeTown garrison, Northern Sheild was just finishing a shower- he was sweaty after doing work on helping ponies move things for most of the day, and he sat down just in time for his computer to start ringing.

Lost in the Light

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"Welp... off we go, then" Murmured Silver quietly. As he walked into the smallish cavern, he looked around, then he called out a loud "Hello?" Into the fickering light. As expected, he didn't get an answer, and he sighed as he walked down the main path. The buildings didn't seem special, really. One read "Barracks", one read "Supplies", another read "Communication", and then "Administration". Other than some smaller buildings for breakers or generators, that was it.

Wait, communication! Silver gasped as he connected the dots, and he rushed over to the Comms building. The door was locked, but when Silver gave it a shove, it creaked in protest, and... well, it collapsed. Over the years, water dripping onto the metal structure had thoroughly rusted it out, and the entire Structure came crashing down with metallic screeches and clanking. When the dust had settled, and Silver had finished coughing, he looked over the mess.... it didn't look good. Like the other buildings, it was just made out of sheet metal, so he lifted up a wall to look inside. There had been a lot of radio equipment and computers in there, but they didn't look good. What hadn't been squashed was thoroughly rusted, and the only thing working was a single computer monitor. The monitor being made of plastic seemed to be what had saved it, but it wasn't in good shape either.

Its screen was flickering and the outer edges were dim, but Silver was able to pick out some sort of logo he didn't recognise in the center of the screen. A star of some sort? It obviously wasn't a comms program, so he sighed and let go of the building, watching the wall slump back down. "Well, a screensaver isn't getting me out of here" He growled softly. As he turned around, the screen flickered, clearly struggling to even display the static image.

But he had already left. As Silver walked further back into the odd cavern, he noticed... the rock wall at the back of it seemed weird. It was oddly flat like the others, but... Ah, that was it. It had no deposits! Throughout the UnderWorld, there were tons of deposits of dirt, Granite, Coal... all sorts of rocks and minerals and everything. But this wall? Solid, unbroken, stone... something here was wrong. And Silver was going to figure out what.

Wait. Now that Silver was heading back into the cavern, he had picked up on something. There was more light, this time coming from ahead! He was certain now that something was in front of him, and Silver was going to investigate. He left the tattered remains of what was once a research station behind him, and he headed towards the pinpricks of light. To Silver's surprise, the light was something he knew, something he had grown up with. It was two everflame orbs, wearing cloth coverings that had simply began to succumb to their age and let some light through!

And what was between them was even more important. There was an empty hallway stretching back into darkness, and it seemed that a heavy, metal door was what belonged here. But the door was open, recessed into the floor, so Silver walked inside. Walking in, Silver could tell right away that this was some Equestrian hoofmanship. There were electric lights running along the ceiling, embedded into the brickwork. The hallway opened up into a much bigger hallway, and Silver was surprised to find that he seemed to be walking into a rather large area.

It was dark and eerie inside of the forgotten bunker, and Silver couldn't help but feel unnerved as he walked deeper into it. It was pitch black other than the light from his everflame lantern, and it was also silent. Mostly silent. He could hear water dripping somewhere in the facility, and the echoes of his hoofsteps almost sounded like somepony was behind him.

The hallway branched off into three smaller ones. Two hallways were labeled with lists of "Laboratories", and the one in the center spoke of things like Power and Electrical. That gave Silver an idea! If this place had power of some sort, then could Silver find a working computer or phone and call the Equestrians for help? Well, it was something to try!

On either end of the hallway that led to the power room, Silver could see shadowy racks of servers resting inside of huge rooms. That's what those things were called, right? Servers? Either way, Silver didn't care about those. At the end of the hallway, there was a room with transformers, battery banks, switches, and three cages that housed large, imposing electrical switches. Thankfully for Silver, all three of the locked-away switches were currently jammed into the "On" position, and it seemed that they corresponded to the three hallways of the facility.

So that just left the power. Silver was feeling pretty overwhelmed at that point, but he began to walk around the room and look for anything that seemed obviously out of place or not. At one end of the room, there was a lot of backup generators, labeled with numbers. But they looked like they hadn't been touched even when the place was inhabited! However, there was a panel on a wall that mentioned "Hydroelectric Power". Hydro meant water, didn't it? Did this place make power from water? There was a large lever reading "Main Power", so Silver grabbed onto it, and gave it a yank.

He didn't realize he had been so anxious about it until nothing happened, then he sighed. "Well, that didn't work" he grumbled. He pushed a button next to the switch that said "Go", and even though it stayed depressed, nothing still happened. So he sighed, and he turned to look elsewhere.

Buried deep in the cavern walls, not too far from Silver, a small pin was pulled out of a set of cogs. Then, they began to slowly turn. Screws submerged in a quickly-flowing underwater stream began to spin, and electricity began to trickle from the generators they were linked to. And behind Silver, that green button lit up.

A loud buzzing sound filled the power room, and Silver nearly left his own body as the sudden noise sent a razor sharp spike of terror through his heart. "Wh-" he stammered as he spun around, looking back at the panel wide-eyed. His heart pounded as he comprehended the illuminated button, and as he watched, more lights began to come on, the old, simplistic computer feeling power for the first time in decades.

And then, the lights along the ceiling began to buzz. Silver looked up with a nervous expression, not knowing what the buzz meant. It slowly grew louder, and while the lights did begin to emit a weak, flickering light, the noise was so loud! Something had to be wrong! Silver was looking for a place to hide from what he was sure was about to become a shower of broken glass when everything turned white, and he closed his eyes with a terrified squeak.

But... no broken glass. No cuts, no pain... did the lights work? It took a long time, but eventually, Silver was able to open his eyes. And once he got used to that, he was able to actually look around. And this place was bright! Equestrians were weird, not everything needed to look like their sun was shining on it... Still, this was good news. Silver smiled as he looked around the room, and it seemed like the facility was coming alive. Old fans began to spin, and air began to move through the old facility's vents, adding some nice, gentle background noise. Something started to make a grinding noise somewhere in the facility, but it didn't last for very long before it went quiet again, back to the smooth hum of the vents.

However, it wasn't loud enough to stop Silver from hearing something that echoed down the hall, from somewhere far-away in the facility.

"Hello?"

We can make this work, right?

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"Hello?" Asked Northern Sheild. He was surprised to see Celestia, of all ponies, come up on his computer. And she didn't seem happy. "Oh, Hi there Tia, what's going on...?" Asked the stallion, as concern edged onto his snout. The white princess let out a long sigh, and she said, "I'm not going to lie to you, we have a problem, a big one". A nervous smile crossed Northern's face, but he spoke up to say "Well, I'm listening..." And with that, Celestia set into her explanation.

"Well, as the name implies, the SS Twilight is related to the mare herself, Twilight Sparkle" Celestia started with, and Northern nodded a little in agreement. "I remember her..." He said softly, and Tia nodded in return before she continued. "Well, before she left us, Twilight had a lot of projects, and one of the biggest ones was a device, small enough to fit in a saddlebag, yet holding enough power to power the ship itself for centuries, possibly forever depending on how its capabilities to recharge itself work" She said. There was a bit of a pause, then, "However... we don't know where it is. And we're just now finding out how twilight made her ship so spacious- it was designed to utilize that power device, and we don't know where it is. Sadly, not even I know any more than everypony else- all I know is that Twilight took the core from the ship to use for one of her own projects, and she went missing before it could be completed. Without it, the ship can't do much more than float around in the water, and even if we did somehow get it into space, it would have to rely entirely on solar power which wouldn't be... the safest". And with that, she finally stopped, letting herself give out a sigh.

Northern was quiet for a while, then he said, "So... what do we do, then? everything except Centria and ThreeTown here has collapsed, and the latter we're just barely managing to keep stable as ponies evacuate. I guess we can live on the ship until the core is found, but do you even have any leads on it? I mean, I... is it even going to be safe? I thought we were going to be seeing Tsunamis soon thanks to all the activity underground?" Northern asked, and even though he tried to prevent it, the anxiety slowly came out into his voice.

"I... I don't know, Northern" Celestia said, her eyes full of distant sadness. "Twilight didn't even tell me where she was going when she finally disappeared, and all I know is that it must have been related to what was happening with her friends. She went missing right after Applejack died, and we thought it was to be with Fluttershy, since she was the last of the old elements remaining, but then she was found to be missing" Celestia said. "And not even Discord could find them!"

Northern felt the urge to say something along the lines of "Sweet Celestia...", but well, now wasn't the time. Instead, he simply muttered a curse under his breath, and he looked up again to the camera as he asked, "So, I haven't talked to Polaris in a while, how are him and Saphira doing with the ship's systems? Are we at least making headway there?"

Celestia sighed, which was already pretty much the answer Northern had been expecting. "Well, Saphira has settled in on the ship's server rooms, but she tells us that she is only able to do that because it seems that they were left unused! But everything else on the ship, the control systems, the life support, the navigation, she can't even look into them, she told me that it would be like a pony trying to comprehend how the body of a tree functions. She told me that the servers she had moved onto are what they had assumed held the ship's computers... and the plans don't show any other computer networks on the ship".

"Ugh" Northern said, resting his head in his hooves. "Well, from what I can see, it sounds much better to risk salvation on the Twilight than to wait for the rocks to descend onto our heads down here" Northern said, looking back to the screen with a grim, but slight smile. Celestia offered a gentle smile in return, and she spoke up again to say "I'm not going to take off in the Celestia until I absolutely have to, I want to be here to help if I can. We're going to send out ponies to search through what's left of Twilight's castle, and I'm going accompany them myself". She seemed to hesitate, then she said, "I... it's a slim chance, but I hope that the device is there, because I know she would sometimes carry out projects in the castle itself, so perhaps it's there"

"It's worth a shot" Northern said, smiling a little. He hesitated somewhat, considering the idea of telling the princess that she didn't need to put herself in such unnecessary danger. But he didn't want to suggest it, he could tell that this was important to her. "Well, be safe out there, for all of us" He said, giving her an encouraging smile. The princess nodded in return, saying "You too, North" before the two ponies stopped the call.

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In the main power room of the SS Twilight, a crew of ponies were doing their best to reverse engineer Twilight's power core from the socket it was designed to go into. It looked simple enough! A hole in the heavily reinforced wall, perfectly shaped for a cylinder about the size of a milk jug to fit. But there wasn't much to go off of, really. In the words of Polaris, one of the ponies on the team, "It's like trying to design a generator, and all you have is the power cord that it would plug into!"

Interestingly, there was something to go off of. In the power room, in a capsule on the wall, there was a device that looked just like the power core! However, it clearly wasn't what they were searching for. This one had a panel on the side that extended out from the cylinder, and it had antennas that extended from it. The panel didn't look like it would come off without breaking the device, so it was set on a table by itself.

It wasn't the only one, though. There were also prototype Capsules, which did fit into the ship's power socket! They didn't do anything, though. One of them seemed to hold a slight amount of power, but all it did was light up the machine, and only enough for it to complain that it didn't have enough power. Still, it was a lead, something to work on. Tinker, an old dragonpony who was part of the team, had made the suggestion to try 'charging' the battery that they did have, but that would mean figuring out how they even stored the power they held.

Thankfully, He and Polaris had been around long enough to remember some fragments of what Twilight had done to make the original battery! If only the knowledge was useful...

Who survived?

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Wait. There's no way. That's impossible. Somepony else was down here? Why did their voice sound so strange? Nervous shudders ran through Silver, and he froze up again as the voice came echoing down the halls once more.

"Is anyone.. there?" It asked, and Silver felt a rush of... sympathy? Sadness? Something about the voice sounded so... lonely. "H-Hello?" Silver asked, and he cringed a little bit as he realized just how quiet and meek it had sounded. He cleared his throat, then said "Hello?" In a much louder tone, his voice echoing down the same halls. He spent what felt like an eternity waiting for an answer, with his ears perked towards the now-bright main tunnel.

But there was nothing. He had heard a voice, right? He hadn't imagined it? Silver had no idea where it had come from, other than it obviously wasn't in the power room. So, Silver decided to walk. He slowly walked out into the main hallway, and that is where he noticed that he could hear a secondary whirring sound, a bit sharper than the dull hum of the lab's ventilation. Once he got halfway down the hall, Silver found that the noise was coming from the big rooms he had passed over on his way to the power room.

He could see the signs now- Server Room 1, and Server Room 2. The machines in both rooms, Servers, they were the source of the noise. Whatever they were doing, it didn't seem like something he needed to worry about. He looked into both of them, but they seemed empty other than the humming rows of boxes.

So, back out to the main hall he went. Now that he could see all of it, it was kind of unnerving. Abandoned metal carts were scattered along the hallway, the once-colorful carpet was tattered and stained, and while he could tell that there used to be two matching paintings at either end of the hall, one of them was hanging of of the wall. However, Silver was more focused on the "Administration" Door in front of him. He hadn't paid attention to it on the way in since he had been focused on the Power, but maybe this is where he could try to contact other ponies?

Before he walked up to Administration, Silver looked to the right, and he noticed that the heavy metal door had rolled closed. So that explained it! It had opened when the power ran out, somehow. He walked up to the Administration door, gave it a push, and then realized it wouldn't budge. There was a pad next to it, maybe that would work? He tried to push it, but instead of doing anything, it just whirred as a light shone against his hoof. And then it beeped at him. Silver gave the door another push, and nothing. He tried to push the button again, but that just got him another beep. Equestrian technology could be so annoying... Silver gave the door a shove, but of course, it wouldn't move. It was made of metal, after all.

Fine. "I'll be back for you" Silver muttered, and with that, the stallion walked to a set of doors at the end of the large hall. The doors were next to the further of the two "Lab" hallways, and once he was close enough to read it, Silver noted that Labs 11-20 were down that hall. Seems 1-10 were on the other end, then. Silver was more concerned with the two doors though, and the sign that said "OFFICES AND RECORDKEEPING" between them. This place had to have a phone too! However, it had the same metal doors that Administration was closed behind. There were four of them though, and Silver couldn't see a button near any of them. He stepped up to one so he could try giving it a shove, but right before he set his weight into motion, the door opened!

Silver was so startled by it that he backed up from the door, and it shut once more. This time, he caught a glimpse of the floor moving. The floor tiles in front of the door were raised up above the others, and Silver set his hoof on one of them again. The tile depressed, and the door in front of it opened. Silver wasn't sure if he was impressed or annoyed- it was a cool mechanism, but... did they really have to turn doors into bits of machinery?

Either way, that meant he was in. Silver walked into the room, which held desks with computers on them and messy bookshelves. The bookshelves looked like they were once full of books, but right now they were mostly empty, with some books scattered among them and on the floor. The computers looked like a mess, because even if Silver did know how to use one, he would have to figure out how to connect them together. All the monitors were piled on one desk, the keyboards and mice were tossed haphazardly in a pile on another, and the towers were all resting on the floor in a stack. Some of the towers were in pieces though, and Silver had even less of an idea what the objects inside of them were.

But in the back of the room, on the wall? A red landline phone! Silver had seen phones like this before, and red ones meant emergency or something, right? Silver grinned with excitement as he pushed his way through to the handset, and picked it up. To Silver's confusion, the phone didn't actually have any numbers on it. Didn't he have to dial something? He then realized that he could hear the phone making noise, and he held it up to his ear, saying, "Hello?"

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As the phone was lifted off the cradle, old wires began to electrify with life. Somehow, the phone was able to patch its call through a mismatched patchwork of what was once Equestria's phone network, to reach what was the only remaining phone of its kind. And it began to ring.

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Princess Celestia was about ready to leave for the crater that was once Ponyville. She was standing in her throne room, looking at the stained glass windows lining the hall. Somehow, they hadn't broken, but they sure would once the earthquakes managed to dislodge Canterlot from its perch. The princess had come to the castle to check one single lead that she had before she went to Ponyville, but it hadn't come up with anything. She decided to look through the castle's library, and it had brought up nothing. She even checked the secret rooms and passageways that she had shown to her student such a long, long time ago, but she couldn't find any signs that Twilight and the battery may have been in that area.

Celestia opened her wings, and then she heard a ring from behind her. That sound, it wasn't something she could have possibly expected to hear. She knew exactly what it was, of course. It was the red phone next to her throne, which had direct lines to Twilight's Castle, the Crystal Empire, and a few other locations of extreme importance to Equestria.

And every single one of them was destroyed. Some thanks to the chaos, some thanks to sabotage, to keep other races from finding anything left behind. So why was it ringing? As Celestia walked up to the phone, she reasoned that it was probably nothing, a phone line on the fritz, a broken system, after all, everything was a mess when it came to Equestria's power and internet and phone grids. She picked up the phone, and in a calm voice, she said, "Hello?"

And to her intense surprise, someone answered.

"H-Hello!" Silver gasped, once he heard a voice on the other line. "I-It works! I uh, I need help, I got left behind in Centria, and I don't think I can make it back to ThreeTown on my own, and right now I'm hiding out in this weird place behind the old Equestrian embassy... ah heck, I hope you know what I'm talking about, uh... I'm Silverwing by the way..."

"I... yes, Silver, I know what you mean" Celestia said, but she was still trying to take it all in. Within the span of mere seconds, Celestia's memories and worldmap were thrown into disarray, as new information was given to her that didn't fit. Somepony underground was talking to her on Equestria's top secret emergency phone network? Why not the blue phone to her left that linked to a phone in Centria, designed for emergencies that involved the Underworld? Was this some sort of prank? It had to be, right? Celestia was trapped, half of her was desperately hoping that fate was stitching things together, but half of her was sure that she was being messed with. So she continued, asking, "Sorry, where exactly are you?" And she let the pony talk.

And he did. Silver sat down, holding the phone like it cold shatter at any moment. "Okay, I uh, I got left behind in Centria, I was looking for something in the train station wreck and I guess they forgot I was supposed to be with them. I headed to the Equestrian Embassy since it hadn't collapsed yet, and I went snooping around in the back area, and there was this door that led into this big cavern! There's this metal wall with a door in it, but I managed to shove it open, and behind it was some sort of a uh, a research station I guess" He said.

By then, Celestia was already lost. She had been to the Embassy, and there was no area behind it. Was there? Silver kept going- "So, near the back, there's this uh, this big door, it's kinda hidden, and it was open, so I go in there, and there's this huge bunker back there! Like, there's all these bright lights and big hallways and there's uh, twenty laboratories here for some reason? I uh, I managed to turn on the power, I don't know how, pony stuff is so weird, and I went hunting for a phone, and I found this one!" He said. The stallion sounded so relieved and happy, surely somepony pulling a prank wouldn't be able to pull off such genuine emotion, right?

"Does the bunker have a name?" Celestia asked. A simple question, but she had to know what was going on. Chances were, it was just a private installation. Some random company had decided they wanted to skirt Equestrian laws, and they dug out a bunker underground, it wouldn't be the first time some awful, money grubbing ponies had done it. She could hear Silver shuffling through papers in the background, muttering "One of these oughta... uuuhhh... hmm, this one says report, uh..."

In a confused tone, Silver read off the top of the paper. "Okay, uh, Sparkle Labs, March second, 2025, Lab 5 report, uuuhhh, parasprite taming? What's... I don't know that word, there's a stamp on it that says project success?" Silver said. Finally, Celestia spoke. "I-I'm sorry, what was it called?" She asked, her voice quiet. "Oh, uh, was it Sparkle Labs? I've never heard of this place before, so I guess that's the name, I haven't seen it anywhere else... oh, this paper says it too!" Silver chirped in the background.

While Silver was happy about his discoveries, Celestia realized that tears had began to run down her face. Finally, it seemed that she was finding out what Twilight had been doing all that time. It made sense, in retrospect, for it to be underground. In the 2020s, as Equestria began to re-integrate the once alienated country under their own hooves, Twilight had taken a special interest in the place. Celestia supposed that she decided to build a bunker down there, for research, and projects, and-

That had to be it. That had to be where she was. Where fluttershy was. Where the core was. Buried underground, in tunnels and caverns that were on the verge of collapse, and with nopony other than a single UnderWorld guardspony inside. Oh Luna, this wasn't just a development, this was a massive breakthrough! Celestia managed to clear her throat, and she spoke to Silver again. "Okay, Silver, you said it was Sparkle Labs?" She asked.

Silver grabbed onto the phone again, and his voice came through as he said, "Huh? Oh, yeah, do you know what this is?" He didn't expect the answer he was given, for sure- "Silver, if my theories are correct, you've managed to stumble onto the exact location of the entire UnderWorld's Salvation".

Naturally, the line was silent for a bit. "W-What? What do you... Aren't we all going to uh, get on that big ship and go into space? What would we need from this weird place?".

"The ship's power source, Silver, nopony knows where it is, and if you're telling me the truth, it might be in that facility with you".

"Oh... O-Oh Celestia, that's..." the stallion started to say. The princess really wanted to let him speak, but she couldn't resist, she needed to do a little something to lighten her mood. So she interrupted, saying, "Yes? I'm listening", and she made sure to speak in the more stereotypical 'princess' voice.

"It's just... it... wait, is... who is this?" Silver asked, and she couldn't help but giggle as she noticed he was catching on. "Yes, Silver, it's me, the Princess... that phone of yours is somehow connected to the one here in my old throne room, and I can't believe I happened to be here to pick up. Every oher phone this is connected to is gone by now, so I was, well, let's say surprised to hear it start ringing".

Silver was still experiencing one of every pony's worst fears- saying either "oh celestia" or "oh luna" to the princess in question. But it made sense! In their movies, the red phones always went somewhere important, didn't they? He managed to find his tongue, and he said, "Ah j-jeez, sorry Princess..." She hushed him, saying, "It's okay, really, I love doing that to ponies... back to the subject at hoof though, have you seen anything in there that even remotely resembles a cylindrical power source?" She asked.

Silver had no idea what that would even be, but then again, it seemed easy enough to find. "Well, no, but I haven't looked in any of the labs... would it be in one of them?" He asked. "Oh, probably, could you look? But before you do, are you okay?" She asked, concern edging into the Princess' voice. Silver couldn't help but blush on the other end, saying, "Oh, miss, I'm okay... kind of dirty, but I haven't gotten hurt yet, and I guess I could use something to eat... do you think you can send some ponies down here to come get me, though? Or maybe help look for this thing?" He asked.

"Oh, certainly! I'm going to make sure somepony keeps watch of the phone too, so please, if anything happens, or if you hear it ringing, please come talk to us?" She asked. "Y-yeah, of course, princess! Just tell them to go through the back of the Embassy, and they might need to shove the first big door open" Silver said, and his armor clonked on the other side of the phone as he stood back up with it, ready to go exploring. "And I'll have to figure out how to open the door in this place, too"

"Well, be careful, Silver" the Princess said. "I'll just keep track of anything that looks important, and once I've explored I'll come talk to you again" Silver said hope filling his voice. Celestia sounded the same way, and she couldn't help but smile as she said her own goodbye- "Be safe, Silverwing... we all depend on you"

And with that, both ponies hung up the old phones. They had work to do, and neither one wanted to wait. Equestria itself was on a time limit, and time was running out. "We depend on you..." Celestia muttered to herself, echoing her own words.

Somepony new?

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After hanging up the phone, Silver took in a deep breath, and he let out a long, quiet sigh instead of an exhale. "Okay" he said, and he slowly stripped out of his armor. Taking only his lantern with him, in case the lights died, Silver walked out of the room, and he stretched his wings. Searching the bunker would be much faster with the use of his wings, so he flew all the way to the end of the first hallway- the one holding Labs 11 through 20. The first one he looked inside was Lab 20, and it was empty. Lab 19, 18, and 17 were also empty. It didn't look like they had always been empy, it looked like they had been cleared out. Certainly not all of the labs were stripped clean, right?

Thankfully, 16 actually had something inside of it. Well, it was a huge mess, but that still counted as something. At some point since the bunker had been abandoned, something within Lab 16 had formed a chemical reaction, and there was a huge lump of weird looking foam covering what Silver assumed were lab tables. Where the foam met the ceiling, it looked like it had dissolved the plastic light covers, and the lightbulbs too! Silver wasn't going to go anywhere near a substance that appeared to dissolve all but stone, so he kept going. 15 was empty, 14 was empty, 13 had nothing but books strewn around, and 11 and 12 seemed to be filled with nothing but boring experiments. Lab 11 was full of chemicals and papers, but Silver could barely understand any of the chemicals that the papers mentioned. Lab 12 was pretty much the same, but this time with rocks. That was silly enough to make Silver laugh, saying, "Really? You ponies needed a whole lab to look at rocks?"

The first hallway had been a bust, so Silver flew to the other one. This one seemed much messier, and more dangerous. Carts and shelves littered the hallway even moreso than the main hallway, and he could see odd light coming from one of the rooms way down the line. Lab 1 was the closest, so Silver walked inside to see what was there. It was impressive that somepony had managed to stack lab tables up to the ceiling, yes, but that meant there was nothing of worth there for Silver.

Labs 2, 3, and 4 were much the same. Items of all sorts stacked haphazardly in the rooms, piled high. Why? Why did the ponies move everything around before abandoning it? Why not just shut the place down and leave? Silver remembered Lab 5 from the paper he had been looking at, and the room certainly seemed different than the rest. It was full of weird cages, with tiny bones at the bottoms. The cages had such tiny bars, too... was this what they kept parasprites in? What was a parasprite, anyway? Silver managed to find a sheet of paper that listed off warnings, most notably about Parasprites and their eating habits. Those made Silver glad they were dead.

Off to Lab 6! This lab seemed to be full of what Silver supposed were robotics components, and he was right with his guess. None of the half-assembled masses of wires and metal seemed to be functional though, so he deemed it not worth investigating. He was also a little creeeped out that some of the parts closely resembled pony legs, and there was what looked like a torso in the corner. Lab 7 was full of plants, or rather, what were once plants. All of the pots were litered with shriveled, dusty little remnants of what once used to be living plants, kept there for experimentation of some sort.

Once Silver walked out of that lab, he picked up on something. The light he could see was coming from Lab 10, but there was a clear line in front of him between labs 7 and 8. it took him a while to notice what looked off, but he soon realized that it was the dust. Where he was standing, there was no dust whatsoever. But the rest of the hallway? There was a noticeable layer of the stuff. When he looked closer, Silver could actually see the line on the floor and walls seperating the two parts of the hallway, and it reminded him of a magic forcefield with the odd way it seemed to curve.

He didn't see a forcefield in front of him, but Silver poked an old book through the air first, just to check. And it brought up nothing. Feeling a bit silly, Silver continued on, looking into Lab 8. This one was a huge mess, but in a different way than the others. Books, half of them laying open, were littering the room. Almost all of them had writing in them, ranging from neat and tidy to almost deranged-looking. At one end of the room, there was a huge, blackened machine, with a rounded port on the front that was empty. Flanking it on either side were computers, all of them turned off. Something about the room unnerved Silver, so he decided instead to head to Lab 9. And Lab 9 was even worse. Large wires were coming through the walls of Lab 10 to Lab 9, and they were all converging on the right side of the room, to what looked like a pony!

Silver was confused at first, and a bit scared, but he crept into the room to look. The robot really did look like a pony, but sleek, and metallic, its mane and tail made of shimmering, synthetic hair, and parts of its body made out of an odd, fleshy material. it was coated in dust like everything else, so Silver didn't worry too much about what it was. He walked deeper into the room, looking at the books and papers strewn about on tables. More writing, and little of it made sense. He tried to read the notes in one book, but it was just scrabbled codes, something to do with a computer. He turned to go, and that's when he saw it. That's when he saw her.

Silver's heart lurched in his chest as he laid eyes on the body curled up behind the robotic mare. Somehow, the bunker's controlled atmosphere had prevented it from rotting completely, and after such a long time, it had simply mummified somewhat. But Silver wasn't stupid. Unicorn horns didn't rot away, and this mare obviously had one. Feathers tended to hang around too, and he could clearly see the wings on her back. Silver didn't want to believe it, but every detail on the mare's body pointed towards the missing Princess, Princess Twilight Sparkle.

Silver could barely tell what emotions he was feeling at that point. He wanted to throw up, he wanted to turn tail an run from the awful laboratory, he wanted to investigate to find out what had happened all those years ago, and lastly he felt like he needed to...

Oh no. He would have to tell Celestia, wouldn't he? Silver had no idea how he would even begin to explain it! Ponies had been searching for the purple mare for so long and he just happened to stumble onto Equestria's best-kept secret!? Silver tried to push it all away, and he instead walked out of the room, to Lab 10. When he walked in, Silver had been looking at the floor, still trying to process what he had seen in Lab 9.

And then she spoke. "Oh, Hi!" Chirped a voice in front of Silver, making him yelp and stumble backwards a few steps as he looked up in a panic to see what it was. The first thing that caught his attention were her eyes. There was a large monitor mounted to the wall, and on its black background, flickered a set of white, outlined eyes, belonging to what Silver assumed would have been a rather beautiful mare. "Somepony New?" the voice asked, as the eyes flickered, replaced with Text that came up on the screen. "I-I... uh..." Silver said, unable to think of anything to say. As he began to get over the shock, he looked to the left of the screen, to a few smaller monitors. One of them was displaying a full-screen error in red text, reading an alarming "SERVER ACCESS LIMITED, CONTROL UNITS OFFLINE".

Silver didn't know what it meant, and he looked back to the screen as it spoke up again, saying, "Who Survived? Anypony else but you?" Silver didn't know what it meant. Was this thing sentient? It sounded like it was struggling to come up with words, and the speech sounded odd and weak. And somehow sad... Silver felt like he needed to try to help this thing. Well, if he could. He looked to the computer again, taking note that it mentioned "control units". He didn't remember seeing one of those before, but it also mentioned server access. Could there be something in the server rooms he could do to help? Silver looked to the screen, and he stammered out a "I-I'm going to try to help, okay?" As he opened his wings.

Silver took off, and he began to fly down the hall again. The voice chased him, growing soft as he got distance. "On a lonely night... a blinding light..." What did that mean? Did it relate to twilight? Was she working on this thing? Silver was full of questions, and he had nothing resembling an answer. Silver was deep in thought as he flew into server room 1, and he landed to take a breath. Looking along the servers, Silver found something that made him sigh with relief. The first server on each row had "CONTROL UNIT" plastered on the side, along with a number. And some of them weren't making noise, so that meant they were off, right? Silver began to walk along the rows, and he decided to start at the end. The control unit was off, and Silver pushed a button on the front. To his delight, it turned on! And the entire row behind it began to boot up along with it!

Silver was excited. He had figured it out, and he spent quite a while going down the lines in both server rooms, turning on each control unit that he could find. When it came time for him to leave the large hallway, Silver was grinning, wings snapping open as he took off to head for Lab 10.

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Tired. She was Tired. She could not feel her body. Her voice sounded weird, and it was so hard to say anything anyway. She could barely see. Her eyes couldn't move. She was trapped. The incomplete final works of an alicorn that had gone mad were being dug out from the murky waters of time, but the subject of those projects could barely even comprehend that she was alive.

However, she could. She could think, slow as it was. It had worked. One by one, memories began to come back. They didn't make sense, though. Who was this yellow mare? Was this her? Did she know this pony? She rembered a purple mare. Were they friends? What was a friend?

In the corner of the room, a deeply enchanted magical artifact was beginning to glow. Each set of servers that came online provided more processing power to the mare, and she was quickly experiencing the sensations of regaining sentience. She felt herself floating through angular landscapes, her own body pointy and strange looking. Was that her body? Or had she created it?

Wingbeats approached the room. Destiny was approaching, and it all came down to one stallion who knew nothing about the forces he was about to work with.

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"It's been down here the whole time!?" Northern said, looking at his computer with wide eyes. "Are you sure? Silverwing, it was?" He asked. Celestia quickly nodded to the Underworldian King, and his guards were already picking up their helmets before he even spoke. "You two, hunt down Silverwing, and if you can't find him, start getting a train ready"

As they ran out of the hall, he went back to the computer. "He's okay, right? I can't believe we left somepony down there... and you say the power core is going to be down there too?"

"Well, I think so, Northern..." The white mare said. She looked weary, her snout a bit of a mess, and there were some frazzy bits of her mane that stuck out from the main, flowing portion. Now, the king put his focus on Celestia. "Tia, when did you last sleep? You need to get in bed right now, it looks like it's all on us now"

"I-" The mare said, but she didn't even bother to say anything when she saw the look on his face. "I will tell Luna" he said, and the white mare made a face at that. "All right, I get it... just, be careful down there" she said. And in a softer voice, she said, "I wonder if she's down there..."

Northern's stubborn look faded, and he sat back down in front of his computer. "If she is, we... if we can, we'll gather what's left, she can be buried on whatever new home we happen to find" Northern said, offering the princess a smile. "Thank you, North" She said, feeling an odd sense of Relief. "And before you say it again, yes, I'll sleep" She said.

An exchange of goodbyes, and both ponies went to sleep. Tomorrow would be a long day.

Sooner than Expected

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May 16th, 2099.

It had been years since Sparkle Labs had closed down. Well, since it had closed down to everypony else. With a flash of her teleportation, Twilight appeared in Lab 8, like she did every time. Except this time, she had somepony on her back. It had been a long, long time since Fluttershy was able to stand under her own power, so she was laid on Twilight's back, eyes closed. It was exhausting simply to process light and sound, so she spent a lot of her time in a sort of half-sleep, letting the world slip by.

Twilight wasn't having it. She didn't care what Celestia told her. She didn't care what Luna told her. She didn't care what Polaris told her. Her Alicorn body was a curse to her, a curse that forced her to stand around, smiling like the princess she was supposed to be as her friends and family were washed away by time, taken away from her. Fluttershy was all she had left out of her group of friends. Rainbow Dash. Applejack. Rarity. Pinkie Pie. Four agonizing funerals. Four exhausting sets of meetings, ensuring that the homes of her old friends would stay preserved.

She wasn't doing it again. Tears splashed onto the barely-awake Pegasus below her as she laid her down on a padded little bed, and the yellow mare opened her mouth to speak. "Twilight..." She said, her voice raspy, but still carrying the signature tone that made it clear she was still her friend. The princess froze at the word, giving her time to speak. "It's okay, Twilight..." She said, offering a weak smile up to the princess, a smile that did nothing but shove the spike of terror that seemed to fuel Twilight these days deeper into her. She didn't know what to say. "I-I just want to try something" She stammered, resting a helmet with wires and antennas on Fluttershy's head with as much care as she could. "I'll just have another nap" Fluttershy quietly said, her eyes closing once more.

It would be the last time her body spoke.

The machine was simple. Twilight's breakthrough in energy production sat in the corner, wired up to the computers and machines that were now prepared around her friend. She would rip her friend's weary soul from her body, and trap it within the artifact. Then, it was a simple matter of transferring her to the new body she had built. Everything was ready. The ship was ready, the machine was ready, her friend was ready.

But Twilight wasn't.

The machine was built with the help of old DarkRock textbooks. A pony's magic could be pumped through a machine, and from there a spell be generated, and amplified. A similar spell would later be used for Equestria's other SuperFreighters, even. It was easy to design everything, and Twilight was the princess of magic! Sure, Celestia and Luna and Starswirl and even Polaris had told her that it wouldn't work, but she was the princess of magic. Yes, the two sisters had experience. Yes, starswirl was the only other pony who could craft spells to the same extent as her. Yes, Polaris was one of the few ponies alive to figure out how to live in harmony with something as horrible as Dark Magic.

But Twilight was too stubborn to listen to any of them. She set the machine into motion, and it began to hum and whir. She walked into Lab 9, where the most important of her notes were. She'd need them for the procedure, and she could feel the magic begin to drain from her as she walked into the room. No matter, she could handle it. Twilight picked up the proper paper, and then the elaborate setup of machinery set itself into motion. And she wasn't ready. The mare gasped in pain as her horn suddenly lit up brightly with magic, magic that was being drawn out of her to power the machines. Through the pain and the noise, she could hear a quiet little whimper from Fluttershy in the other room, but she didn't hear any noises to indicate an error.

Twilight felt her legs give out, and she shuddered as she realized how weak she felt. it wasn't a good sign. Spells like this would take everything from a pony, starting with their magic. Then, it would sap their life force itself, and their soul along with it. Tirek used similar types of sorcery, but he always stopped after taking away the magic from a pony. If he had known the full extent of what he could have done, thinga may have gone differently. But was it supposed to be so severe? Did it really need this much magic?

Panic blossomed within Twilight as she realized what might happen. Anger rushed through her veins as she was forced to finally confront the possible problems in her plans, mainly the one she was experiencing. She grabbed paper, a pen, and she began to write on it with a hoof, gritting her teeth to withstand the pain. But even that became too hard within a minute. The mare collapsed fully on the floor, wincing with pain as she felt her senses fading.

The moment before everything went black, she heard the machine switch noises. It had finished its main task! She had done it! But it was too late, she was already gone. Twilight tried desperately to hold on, but she simply couldn't. She had fallen halfway into a black hole, and the only route left was sinking all the way into it. The machine didn't care, of course. It had finished the main task, so when the fuel it was getting from Twilight ran out, it simply swapped over to the Bunker's power. It was a little bit of a strain, but everything that required actual magic to perform had been finished. The lights began to flicker a little, and some of the servers started to struggle for power.

And then, it finished. And everything went quiet. Nothing but the sound of fans filled the air in the bunker, and the large screen in Lab 10 lit up, displaying jumbled text and odd splashes of color and static. It took only a day for the bunker's generators to run out of Fuel. Twilight had used the generators intead of the HydroElectric power, which couldn't be trusted as fully as the well-maintained gas generators.

And as the final generator finally stopped spinning, the lights in the entire facility shut off. Servers died, the main door began to slowly sink open, and all sorts of machines stopped humming. And with them, a mare went to sleep.

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Finally, it had stopped hurting. Twilight opened her eyes, eager to check on the machine that she built to save her close friend.

But this wasn't Sparkle Labs. From behind, she heard a voice. "Wh... Twilight? How did you get here?"

She turned around to look.

"M-Mom?"

Anypony else but you?

View Online

As Silver walked into Lab 10, the computer screen switched to the picture of the eyes, though they looked smoother and less odd now. A camera zoomed in on him, actually focusing this time. "Twilight...?" The voice quietly asked, sounding less weak than it had before. The voice knew that it wasn't the princess, but... maybe she was with this stallion? She wanted her friend, so she could ask what had happened.

And from the look on the stallion's face, she could already tell something was up. Silver nervously smiled, saying, "I... she's... not here right now" as he looked at the rest of the room. Silver walked further into the room, wondering what was behind the large machines on either side of the room. And he wished he hasn't. On the left side, there was actually something good. he could see the core! It had to be. It was a cylindrical metal tube, locked inside of a machine that seemed to be interacting with it.

But on the other side... something just as awful as he had seen in Lab 9. Another body, this one smaller. he couldn't tell who it was under the wires... it was a pegasus, fur a faded yellow, mane looked pink. Wait. That was Fluttershy. Twilight was in the other room. This is where they had gone missing to! They were both in this bunker!

But who was in the machine? With an expression that hinted at a lot of different emotions, Silver backed up to look at the TV, and in a soft voice, he asked, "Who are you?" She didn't say anything. Silver began to worry about the mare, and he had started to look around at the imposing amount of electronics when she finally said, "F.. Fluttershy" In a soft voice. Silver's eyes widened, and in a soft tone, he said, "You... you're Fluttershy? The element of Kindness?" For a moment, he was kind of assuming Twilight had been the one in the computer, but he was proven wrong.

"I... yes, what happened to me?" She asked quietly. She sounded scared, and it hurt Silver's heart to hear it. "I-I don't know, it's... it's _such_ a long story" He said. "Could you tell me?" She asked, the tone of her voice unreadable. When he didn't say anything, she said, in a tone that was ever-so-slightly more firm, "I don't know much about your life beyond these walls..." Silver hesitated again, but she was right. And if she wanted to know about him, well, he wasn't going to deny her. Why would he? He slowly sat down against a machine, groaning as he felt the aches in his limbs. "I uh... well, it's the year 2207, and boy, have things gone south".

As Silver retold everything to the reawakened mare, hours melted away like it was nothing. At times he complained, at times he sounded excited, and the first time he heard a giggle from the digitized mare was when he admitted to actually saying "Oh Celestia" to the mare herself. When Silver got up to the current time, he forced himself to tell Fluttershy about the two bodies. Oddly, she didn't seem too concerned. Well, not with her own. She was clearly saddened by what happened to Twilight, but in her words, "I had tried to tell her..."

After he had finished, Silver was really feeling the exhaustion settle in. The computer mare stubbornly told him to take a nap, and after some halfhearted resistance, he gave in.

The next day, very little changed in the old bunker. When Silver woke up, he only left the room to snag some water, and then it was back to the mare he was rapidly becoming friends with. The two ponies actually managed to spend pretty much the entire day talking to each other! Fluttershy was happy to listen to Silver talk about his life, but Silver loved hearing about Fluttershy's adventures. After all, she was one of the elements of harmony! She was there when Luna was turned, she was friends with Discord, she fought the storm king and queen chrysalis and so much more...

For Fluttershy, it was one of the best things he could have done. Being able to journey down the roads of her life did a lot to help keep Fluttershy's memory stable, and with her computerized, temporary state of living, it was important that she stay intact. As she steadily learned how the computer functioned from the inside, she was able to do more than display her eyes on screen, she was able to construct crude likenesses of herself to talk to Silver with, standing or floating in blocky, unfinished landscapes.

Eventually though, the talk turned back to their situation. Fluttershy told Silver that the core was attached to her, but she couldn't tell how. She also couldn't feel the body resting in the next room, and it was Silver that reasoned that Twilight probably meant to put Fluttershy in that body. She'd gotten halfway there, but something clearly went wrong.

But what? Silver barely knew how computers worked, and he knew he had been extremely lucky so far that all he had needed to do was turn things on to get as far as he had. After they both did their best to figure out how the machines worked, they decided that he would go talk to Celestia again, and tell her about everything.

So, back Silver went, trotting down the hallway. Silver had been extremely lucky so far in his journey, but it was about to run out, and in one of the worst ways. The Equestria outside of the bunker was still a wreck, and it had decided it was time for another earthquake. Thankfully, Silver was flying with it struck, but it was incredibly obvious to him that the area he was in was experiencing a bad earthquake. The ground began to shudder, the lights began to flicker, and Silver found himself dodging plastic light covers and dislodged lightbulbs as the main room of the bunker began to fall in on itself! Silver just barely escaped the cave-in, the stallion hiding in the far corner of the room as he watched rocks tumble down from the fallen ceiling.

It was a disaster. The bunker had been split in two, and he was cut off from both the exit and Fluttershy. He could just barely slip into the hall that led to the Power room from the looks of it, but at the moment, he decided that he needed to get to the phone. Thankfully, the Office room was safe, other than a few fallen lights. And hey, the door power got cut off! So at least it was open, to expose the massive pile of rocks on the other side.

And in Canterlot, the phone began to ring. The pony watching the phone picked it up right away, but instead of answering, Silver heard them shouting orders to notify Celestia. Then, they said, "Hello?" Silver let out a shaky sigh, saying, "H-Hey, I've got trouble... half the place just caved in, and I can't get anywhere near the exit now"

The stallion hissed a curse, and he hadn't been quiet enough for Silver not to hear it. "Yeah, you said it" He muttered. The other guard tried to be encouraging, saying, "Well, from what I hear, your rescue team's made it to Centria". "Well, that's good" Silver chirped. "They oughta be able to dig through to-" he had started to say, but they were both interrupted by a fwoosh of yellow magic, as Celestia teleported in to get the phone. The guard quickly told her what was going on, and then she spoke into the phone herself, saying, "Silver, are you okay?"

"Somehow, I am" The pegasus said, smiling a little bit. "I guess I've got uh, news for you.. I um... I found Twilight, and Fluttershy's body is here too, but..."

"But?" Said Celestia quietly. She hated to rush him, but she needed to know what happened. "I.. I don't know how to put it princess, but Fluttershy, she's... she's in these machines, a uh, a computer, I've been talking to her about all sorts of stuff and it's gotta be the actual pony" He said. before the princess could speak, he said, "Oh! She said to tell you that she's sorry about your lemon birthday cake, I guess cause it's something you would understand?"

"She is the one who ate my-" the princess began to say, before she broke out in a laugh at the absurdity of finding out the culprit of such a small theft centuries after it had happened. "I can't believe it, Twilight did it... but I guess it really did do her in at the end, didn't it" The princess said, slipping back into her melancholy tone.

"That's not all... the uh, the power thing, it's here, and there's also some sort of... like a robot body in the other lab? Fluttershy says they must have something to do with her, but I don't know how to... I think I'd kill her if I just took out the core, wouldn't I?" He asked softly.

Celestia wished she had an answer. "I don't know, Silver" She said. "Did you try looking at her notes? She used to write down pretty much every step of a spell, then act them all out" Silver sighed, then said, "Well, no, there are a ton of notes though... I just don't really know what they mean, but if that's what I have to do..."

"I'm afraid it is, Silver" She said softly. "Can you still reach her after the cave-in?" "I don't think I can, it's almost covered the power room hallway and the hallway for her lab is way behind it" Silver said, sending dread creeping down the spines of both ponies.

"Well, Silver," Celestia said, "You've awakened her again, and I'm sure that if you've got this far, you can save her and everypony else, too" "I-I sure hope so..." Silver said, his nervousness clear in his voice. "At least the power's still on, and I'm not hurt"

"That's the spirit!" Chirped the princess. "She depends on you, and so do we... and I promise you, if you manage to pull all of this off, I've already got you a seat as one of the highest ranking ponies on the Twilight" She said. "Oh dear, I don't know if I'm-" he began to say, but she cut him off with "Don't you even try"

Silver wasn't about to argue with Celestia herself, so he sighed, wearing a bit of a smile. "All right... and hey, do you think maybe you could get a computery pony on the phone so I.... oh no" He said softly.

Celestia was immediately worried, asking, "What? Silver?" As she sat up, holding tight onto the phone. She didn't get much of an answer, but she felt the dull rumbles under her hooves. Another damned earthquake, and from the sounds on the phone, it was close to Silver. His voice broke through the rumbling sound, And he sounded panicked as he said, "Oh no, oh no, it's all-"

Then, the phone clattered to the ground, hanging from its cord. It was still on though, and Celestia could hear falling stone and shattering glass, and Silver yelling something in the distance. And then, he was drowned out by the sound of twisting metal and crashing stone. The sound only went on for a moment before it was abruptly cut off, replaced with the annoying "off the hook" beep that stereotypically would mean that the other pony hung up.

She didn't care in the moment, but Celestia nearly made one of the guards outside her door faint with the force with which she threw the plastic phone through one of the heavy doors.

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Getting to Centria had not been easy. The crew of Underworld guards had just stopped their train when the first earthquake hit, and the second one hit when they had been working on getting towards the embassy. The first one had been awful, they thought the train might derail, and Centria had collapsed even further as they watched the ground shake. The second one was much worse, though. This time, it shook free stalagtites from the ceiling of the cavern, and the five-pony crew found themselves sprinting for the Embassy as house-sized spikes of rock slammed into the ground around them.

Thankfully though, none of them were hurt. Getting into the embassy was easy enough, and all it took was some equipment borrowed from some firefighters to shove open the heavy metal doors that locked away the researh station. Inside, the cavern was a wreck. Whatever buildings hadn't collapsed were flat against the ground, and a large chunk of rock had broken free from the left side of the cavern, collapsing down along with some of the roof. However, they could see the glow from the everflame orbs at the rear.

The only issue was that when they got to the entrance to Sparkle Labs, they found nothing but a wall of collapsed rock. They were prepared for it, they had shovels and picks, but it would be a long time before they managed to actually get far into the Bunker.

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See, the rescue party would have to excavate pretty much all of the main room to get anywhere. The first collapse had caved in half of the main hall, and the second collapse took away the entire thing. Administration had survived, entombed away in the stone, but the offices were done for. All that was left were the server rooms, and about half of the labs. The server rooms were holding on mainly because they were more fortified than the other parts of the bunker. After all, they were bigger rooms, and the server racks throughout the rooms did a good job of distributing weight.

A lot of Sparkle labs had shifted around, in ways both minor and extreme. When the second earthquake hit, Silver had fled into the first row of labs, and he was incredibly impressed that the lights were still on. The walls were cracked in multiple spots, he could hear water dripping somewhere, and the awful chemicals in Lab 16 had been shaken out into the hall. Ew. Silver didn't want to get anywhere near it. Silver didn't even want to try getting out to the main hall, so he had to think of something else. And the cracks in the wall looked interesting!

After some flying up and down the hall, Silver decided on which crack looked the most promising. He could see into server room two, and after shoving one of the bricks out of the way, he could fit a hoof through! it was slow, difficult work, but Silver eventually managed to pull a big enough chunk of bricks out of the hole, and he squeezed through into Server room 2. From there, it was easy to walk through into server room 1, where he desperately hoped he could find a way to get into the other hall.

And annoyingly, there was nothing. However, Silver happened to notice that one of the computers in the server room looked different than the others- its screen was black, with white text on it. Like fluttershy did! Silver gasped, and he walked over to the machine, sitting down in front of it. And he started to type.

"fluttershy?"

"Silver! Is this you?"

"yes! im in server room 2 and i need to figure out how to get through the wall"

"Why do you need to go through the wall? Is the normal way blocked off?"

"yeah and i managed to get this far through a crack in the wall"

"What if you went through the Ceiling? I don't know about down here, but I remember that lights like these used to be in a false ceiling that was below the real one"

"you think i can do that? heck ill try it"

"Just be careful, Silver, I don't want to lose you"

Reading those words sent a shudder through Silver. A good kind of shudder. The kind that sent warmth through a pony's chest, and stuck a smile on their face. It was strange, but Silver really liked Fluttershy. He had gotten closer to Fluttershy in just a day of talking to her than he had with ponies he had spent most of his life with, and as he watched the computer screen, he vowed to do everything he could to save the mare.

"i will, im not letting either of us get stuck down here"

Fluttershy took in his words, while Silver got up from the computer and got ready. Interestingly, she felt similar feelings. She felt them. There wasn't the physical reaction, sure, but Fluttershy was quite attached to the little Underworld guard. After all, he was the first pony she had seen ever since Twilight carried her there so long ago. And while some ponies would have just grabbed the core and left without ever realizing that they would have killed her in the process, Silver hadn't even made a mention of the concept. Still, if it came to it... he had told her how many ponies depended on that thing. And if she had to, she would tell him to take it, even if it meant she wouldn't be coming along. She had lived a long enough life, after all.

Getting into the ceiling of the Server room was hard, but it wasn't too bad. He had climbed one of the server racks to reach the lights, and then all he had to do was remove one of the light covers, then the lights, then he shoved the light housing out of the hole it was mounted in. With that done, he discovered an area above the bunker, a crawlspace with just enough room for a pony to crawl around and work on the wiring for the bunker's lights if need be. He could look out over everything that hadn't collapsed, and he found it kind of interesting that there were lots of brick support beams reaching up into the stone ceiling. Made sense, and it seemed to prevent at least some collapses.

Silver crawled his way towards the general location of where he thought Fluttershy was, and he pulled away one of the lights. Silver happened to pull out one of the lights overtop of Lab 9, and it was right above one of the tables. "As good a spot as any" He muttered, as he carefully stuck his back legs through the hole. He jumped down onto the table, landing with a grunt as he sent a few books tumbling. Silver was reminded of Twilight as he looked down at her body, and his ears went down again as he thought of her fate. But this time, he noticed a piece of paper next to one of her hooves. And he decided to pick it up.

"I'm sorry

It wasn't supposed to happen this way

I couldn't lose someone else

If I don't make it, you have to transfer her from the machine to the other-"

It wasn't a very happy note to find, but it gave him a hint. The other what? Other parts of the machine? So, like, the body? Silver held onto the note, and he walked out into the hall, then over to Lab 10. Both Silver and the fluttershy on screen gave matching grins to each other as he walked in, and she beat him to speaking as she said "There you are!" Silver nodded, saying, "Your plan worked! And I think I know where to start looking for what to do..." He said, looking at the note he held, then the machines filling the room.

This mare who's slept two hundred years has something after all

View Online

And so, Silver set to work. The UnderWorld guardspony was determined to save Fluttershy, and that meant learning how to interact with Twilight's computers. Thankfully, the purple mare had notes taped all over the place, little reminders on what settings to use and in what order to do things. As he read through the late princess's notes, Silver continued to talk to Fluttershy. The two ponies were already friends, and the more they distracted themselves with conversation, the easier it became to ignore how dire their situation really was.

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Polaris and Tinker both let out a sigh, at pretty much the same moment. Things were looking beyond hopeless on the SS Twilight. The royal scientists had tried to figure something out, Canterlot's best spellcasters had tried to figure something out, and that just left a group of random ponies who didn't have anything else to do. Polaris' memories of what Twilight had done with the battery were coming up blank, and even though Tinker had been highly focused on the massive ship ever since its construction was announced, the gray-nosed dragonpony couldn't help much either.

"Well, it's been floating here for two centuries, surely it can hold on for another day or so" Polaris muttered, getting a chuckle out of the others. "Crazy to think she went missing so long ago, huh"

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"Now we wait" Said Northern, a frown on his face as he sat down on the roof of a threetown house. Finally, the cavern had been cleared of everypony except for some guards, spellcasters to keep the rocks from falling, and of all ponies, Celestia. "You know-" Northern began to say, looking towards the white mare, but she shushed him with just a look. "I am going nowhere, they might need me" She said, and her voice had such determination in it that Northern didn't even want to try arguing.

Having heard about the phone call though, he couldn't shake the pit in his stomach that said Silver had likely gotten squashed. He hoped it wasn't so, but from what he was told, it didn't sound good.

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"Hey, I found the sign!" Barked a stallion, as he picked up a chunk of wood out of the rubble. The rescue party had just now managed to claw their way all the way across the main hall to the entrance of the closer lab hall- the one where Silver was. So, they set to work again, this time focusing on getting down to an un-collapsed portion of that hallway.

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"Oh, shut it you, I don't care how blocky it is, it's cute" Silver said. He couldn't help but grin as he saw the digital fluttershy start blushing, and he turned back to the computer he was reading over. Silver was almost there. Twilight had everything figured out from the start, and she simply hadn't been there to finish the job. After Fluttershy was transported into the machine, Twilight had planned to perform another transformation, but this time from machine to machine. Fluttershy was going to be placed inside of the power cell! And the cell was going to be able to be placed inside of the robotic body in Lab 9!

The wires attached to the body had turned out to be merely for testing, which is something that had thrown Silver off. But once he realized what was meant to happen, it was much easier to get his way to the solution. "Well, fine, I don't want you acting like you're not just as cute" The mare huffed, and Silver found himself turning even redder than she just had. "W-Well....!" he said, turning to the camera. He waited until he turned away to let the big grin take over his snout, cause she was right, he wasn't going to argue it. "Yeah, that's right" She said, before she began to giggle a little about it.

"Well, guess what?" Silver asked. She was about to ask, but then he kept going, saying, "I've figured it out, and it's actually easier than I thought!" "Oh, that's wonderful, Silver... what do we have to do now, then?" She asked, her body floating over to his side of the screen as if it would help her see better. Silver pointed to the machine holding the power core, and then he pointed to the machines she was currently held inside. "Okay, so when I push these three buttons here, the machines are gonna move you from where you are now to this little thing, the thing that powers the SS Twilight" he said. "Then, I just stick this inside of that body in the other room, and you oughta be able to use it"

"That sounds easy enough, should we do it now, then?" She asked softrly. Shift smiled up at her, filled with both excitement and a healthy dose of anxiety. "Y-You ready?" He asked, answering her with a question. "Y-Yeah, let's do it" She said, smiling back at him. And then, Silver turned to the machine, pressing the buttons just like Twilight's notes had mentioned. At first, nothing happened. Then, the screen went blank. Silver began to feel a lot more worried, but then the machines began to hum in unison, and a progress bar came onto the screen that belonged to the power core machine. Silver sighed with relief, and he smiled down at it.

Well, until the ground began to rumble again.

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The rescue team's progress was slow. They had just made it to Lab 5, which interestingly, hadn't collapsed like labs 2, 3, and 4. Lab 1 hadn't collapsed, but that was only thanks to the tables filling the room. When they began to set to work on reaching Lab 6, the ground began to rumble. "OUT! GET OUT!" barked the leader, and all five ponies scurried back out into the larger cavern that they had entered from. They didn't want to be in there if more collapsed, so they planned to wait it out in the bigger space where they had more chances of avoiding a cave-in.

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Silver's anxiety spiked to new levels as the ground began to shake harder. His training snapped into his head, and in record time, the guardspony put on all of his armor, something he had been taught while in training. It gave him a better chance in a cave-in, since all the armor was treated to withstand ridiculous amounts of pressure. This Earthquake didn't seem like it would be as bad as the others, but he would prefer none at all. Above him, he heard a sound that made his heart jump in a panic, right when he put on his helmet. And then, the ceiling came down. The rear half of the room caved in, and Silver barely managed to avoid getting hit. The machine near the door got crushed, but Silver didn't even know what it did.

So far, Fluttershy was safe. 70% on the progress meter. As the pile began to settle behind him, a section of the ceiling that had ended up on its side began to tilt towards Silver, and in the span of seconds, he realized that it would flatten the machine holding Fluttershy if he didn't stop it. Silver nearly collapsed when the wall hit him, but he met its weight with an angry growl, armor scraping against it as he just barely managed to keep it from contacting the machine. He had managed to keep it from smashing into it, but he had only been holding it for a moment and he was already losing strength. Silver hadn't eaten since breakfast on the day he got left behind, so he was just about out on energy. 87%.

Still, his body had a few tricks. Adrenaline boosted his weary muscles as he let out another growl of effort, managing to heft the rock away from the console and get a bit of a better angle on it. 91%. Still, it wasn't going to last long. Silver was already panting hard, and he could feel the sweat run down his head. 94%. His thoughts went to Fluttershy out of desperation, and he shuddered as he thought of losing her. If she died now, he wouldn't get even the chance to tell the mare that he loved her. And he did! 97%. He took a glance to the progress bar, and he saw how close it was.

Silver could feel blackness seeping into his vision. He looked to the screen. 99%. Of course it was. He let out one last desperate whimper as he put what was left of his strengtrh into holding on. Somehow, the power hadn't gone. The lights flickered, some of them fell out, but the power stayed strong, thanks to the HydroElectric generator that was just as determined as Silver himself. The machine made some sort of beep, and Silver tried to look at it.

Instead, he collapsed. Everything went black, and his armor clanked off of the floor as the stone ceiling crunched into the computers next to him.

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"You feel that?" Whispered Celestia. "Of course I do" Muttered Northern. He could hear it too. Celestia leaned against the stallion, and he didn't even try to stop her. Truth be told, he felt exactly like she did, he was just better at hiding it.

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All Silver could feel was pain. The quake had stopped, and the computer next to him was dead, and he wasn't even trapped under the rubble! But one of his hind legs had gotten caught under the bricks at the wrong angle as they came down, and his bone lost that particular fight. He was also exhausted... but he summoned the strength to look up at the screen in front of him, and a big grin took over his face. It was a simple screen, displaying "100%" with "Transfer finished" underneath it. But to him, that meant Flutters was safe. Now he just had to move her. Silver pulled himself closer to the machine, and he bonked the eject button with one hoof. The core hissed, and it slowly emerged from the machine, glowing even brighter when it was exposed to the cool air. Silver managed to grab onto it, and he slowly pulled himself towards the entrance. Thankfully, it hadn't been blocked off when the room collapsed. It was difficult to fit himself between the rubble and the door, but he managed. He could have stood up on his three remaining legs, but it was much easier to push himself forwards a bit, then drag the core closer, and repeat.

Silver nearly passed out a few times from both the pain in his leg and the exhaustion that inhabited every part of his body, but giving up was not, and would not be an option. he dragged his way into Lab 9, and he muttered plenty of curses as he unplugged all of the cables from the robotic mare. Once he finally managed to get all of them out of the way, he opened the door on the side, and he smiled wearily. "Here you go, honey..." he said softly, as he pulled the cell close to him, gave it a tired kiss, then shoved it up into the robot. Silver barely managed to get the door closed before he went limp, stubbornly holding onto consciousness even though his body wouldn't bother to respond to his attempts to control it anymore.

The silver body began to glow, yellow lights sprouting from the joints in its body. The fleshy, synthetic portions of the body also lit up, glowing a soft yellow. Her flanks even had her cutie marks on them, a detail that made it clear who the body was meant for. The hair turned out to be somewhat fiber-optic, considering the way the strands all lit up pink. Silver was barely aware of it though, and he didn't see the mare's eyes open either. "Silver?" She asked, finding her tongue almost right away. The machine Fluttershy had been in was a mess to comprehend, but this body was easy to figure out. Not long after she spoke his name, Fluttershy got a weak grunt from him, and she gasped as she turned to look at his body. "S-Silver!" She said, noticing something that he hadn't- the trail of blood that followed him from Lab 10 to Lab 9.

Silver attempted to alleviate her worries, but what came out of his mouth sounded more like a grunt than "I'm fine". Fluttershy calmed herself, and she set to work on helping him. With the life she lived, helping animals, fixing a broken bone was almost nothing to Fluttershy. She could tell that Silver's bone was more than just snapped, but it was a simple matter for her to gather the materials to bandage him, wrap his leg up so he couldn't move it and make the damage worse, and finally, once it was done, give him a tight hug while sitting on the floor with him. Silver had regained a bit of strength by then, and he managed to look up at the mare, saying, "Can't believe I pulled it off... ceiling fell on it, and I had to keep it from hitting the machine until you were safe"

"That's what hurt you...?" She asked, the robot's eyes doing a fine job of expressing her worry as she gazed down into his own weary face. "Yeah" he said, closing his eyes again. "Ugh, I really wore myself out... I'll uh, I'll figure this out once I'm okay again" He said. Fluttershy frowned, and she stood up while holding him. Then, she picked him up, placing him on her back. Twilight hadn't been able to make the components for Fluttershy's body small enough to resemble a normal pony, so she was just slightly smaller than Luna. Even if Silver was perfectly fine and full of energy, he would have a hard time disobeying the protective mare's orders. And then, she gave them- "You are done doing all the work, I'm getting us out of here now" she said. Before she left the room, her eyes made their way to Twilight's body. A lot of different emotions ran through the pegasus, but she settled on... sadness. She wished that Twilight hadn't taken the deaths of their friends so hard, but on some level, she could understand it.

After all, a pony's lifespan was much longer than that of most animals. Fluttershy was sadly used to the concept of outliving her friends, and try as she might, she couldn't help Twilight with it. But there was no saving her now. Silver, however, she could save. Somepony depending on her, that was one of the few things that brought out the yellow mare's determined, commanding nature. Still, she couldn't wait to be out of that awful bunker. Fluttershy noticed something on a table, a book that stood out among the others. She could tell what it was from just a glance, and she smiled a little. It was one of Twilight's diaries, and it must have been the most recent one. She figured it would be a good record of what exactly happened two centuries ago, so she decided to stuff it in Silver's armor pocket. With Silver resting on her back, Fluttershy walked to the cave-in that was blocking off Lab 8, and she decided to see what her body was capable of now. She placed her hoof on a large chunk of stone, and rather effortlessly, she heaved it aside, watching as it rolled backwards into the hall and bonked into a forgotten chair.

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When she looked back into the tunnel, she met the squinting eyes of two very surprised looking stallions. One of them couldn't think of what to say, but one of the others looked to her back, saying, "I-Is that Silver?" "Yes, do you have medical supplies? He needs help" Fluttershy said, and the stallion smacked his friend, saying, "Go get the others, we're going!" He turned back to Fluttershy, saying, "What about the-" before she cut him off. "Yes, the core is me" She said. He hesitated, but he decided to trust her. He knew about as much as Silver did when he first walked in, after all. Once Fluttershy had crawled out of the bunker with the rescue team, she gently but firmly made sure to keep their focus on Silver, and she helped them as they fixed up his leg with some better bandages, gave him some water, made him finally eat something, and lastly, gave him some painkillers.

Once Silver was in a more stable condition, Fluttershy finally opened up for questions as they headed for Centria once again. "So, you're actually Fluttershy?" Asked the stallion who was nearest to her, the one who seemed to be leading. She smiled a little bit, but there was a lot of sadness behind the expression. "Yes, Twilight managed to transfer me into a machine, and Silver here managed to finish the project and put me into this body" she said. "She didn't make it, though" She murmured, in a softer voice. The next question was more lighthearted, thankfully. "What's it like bein' a robot?" Asked another one. "Well, it's weird" She said. "Everything feels the same as it did when I was in my body, but it's also completely different at the same time".

"So you're like, two hundred years old now..." Murmured one of the ponies, as they emerged from the Embassy into Centria. Fluttershy didn't know if it was a question or not, but she shrugged slightly, saying, "Yeah, but a lot of it was being aleep". "Man, I sure feel like I could sleep for two damn centuries" Muttered one of the stallions, one who hadn't talked before. The others all laughed, and one of em gave his shoulder a bump, saying, "You said it!"

"So, are we using that to get out of here?" Fluttershy asked, looking at the train sitting on the rails ahead of them. They had reversed it into the cavern slowly, allowing for a more hasty escape. "Yeah, go get it fired up for us" One of the ponies said, bumping into one of their friends. And with that, the batpony he mentioned took off into the skies, flying over to the engine to get its fire started.

We depend on you

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The trek across Centria was thankfully, uneventful. The group of ponies climbed onto the fancy carriage that was hitched up to the engine, which was already starting to hiss with steam. "My, this is fancy" Fluttershy said quietly, once she had carefully laid Silver down on one of the soft cushions. One of the guards smiled, saying, "Well, why not take the fancy cars? We're abandoning it all, anyway"

"Right, that makes sense" she said, smiling back. "All right, we're goin!" barked the pony at the controls. This time, he poked his head back into the car, counting out his four partners, Silver, and Flutters. That was everypony. With a hiss, the steam engine began to move, and the stallion driving pulled the whistle. The sound of the whistle echoed up the tunnel to Threetown, where Celestia and Northern had moved inside to rest. The princess teleported to the roof of the house right away, and Northern followed once he realized where she'd gone. Once the whistle stopped, their ears went up, waiting for another. And Northern put on a big smirk as two short toots came down the tunnel. Celestia turned to look at him, her expression alone asking "What's it mean!?"

"Two toots, I told them, if they managed to recover both Silver and the Power cell" Said the stallion, and Celestia could've fainted with relief right there. She didn't, of course. But she almost felt like it. "Oh, that's wonderful! I hope he's okay... I can't stop hearing what he said before the phone gave out" She grumbled. "Ah, so it was bothering you" Northern said, ignoring the mocking expression she made towards him.

"All right guys, hold on!" Yelled one of the ponies in the car, and Fluttershy scrambled to secure both herself and Silver, despite his protests. The train was coming up on the temporary bridge that had been built overtop of a cave collapse, and it wasn't the safest thing. The engine made it across fine, the front half of the car did, but half the ponies in the car made rather foal-like spooked noises as the second half suddenly sank down on its way across. The bridge had buckled, but it had lasted long enough- the rear of the car made it across just fine, and the train continued on. Didn't help the nerves of the ponies on the train, though. Still, it was a short trip from Centria to ThreeTown, so that was the only spot that held any real danger.

The train hissed as it came to a stop in the first town, and Celestia and North simply teleported onto the car. The princess and the robotic mare seemed equally surprised to see each other, and Northern began to quietly talk to one of the guards as the train began to move again. Celestia was the first one to speak, and in a quiet voice, she asked, "So, is this what Twilight worked so hard on?" She was smiling a little, and she sat down next to the once-pegasus. Fluttershy smiled, saying, "I suppose so... I'm glad to see you again, Princess" In her usual softer tone of voice. The white mare shook her head, and she gave the robot a little snout-boop as she said, "Just call me Tia, really". The boop was followed by a soft hug, and Celestia took that time to whisper "Is Silver asleep?" To Fluttershy. Silver himself answered, saying, "Nnnuh, tired though" As he slowly opened his eyes. Celestia released Fluttershy from her hug, and she sat down in front of him, smiling at the stallion. "Well, I'm glad you made it out" She said softly, giving him a gentle little nuzzle.

Taking a look over his body, Celestia noticed his leg. She frowned a bit, asking, "How bad is it?" To Fluttershy, as if she knew SIlver wouldn't admit how bad it was. "Pretty broken..." Fluttershy said, giving Celestia a worried look. The mare nodded, saying, "Well, he can be the first one to the clinic onboard the twilight then". As they talked, the train connected to another car, containing the remaining crew of ponies in ThreeTown. In fact, the last ponies in the entire UnderWorld. A triple-checked roll call was taken, and with a toot of the whistle, the train set off for the surface.

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Onboard the SS Twilight, things were ramping up. There was a nasty thunderstorm going on outside, and crews of Pegasi were doing their best to keep the storm from getting bad enough that the massive ship was put in danger. It was somewhat of a losing battle, though. The storm continued to build, and it was starting to get to the point where even something like a sonic rainboom wouldn't clear the sky for long. On the bridge, Saphira and a few ponies were trying to fogure out how to interact with some of the displays, but they weren't making much progress.

The power room was actually left Empty, since everypony inside had left to work on other things. Well, all except for Tinker, who had fallen asleep at one of the tables, the not-a-power-cell sitting on the table in front of him. The ship was ready to leave, despite its incapability to actually do it. The SS Twilight and SS Celestia were the only two ships left on Earth, because the atmosphere itself was beginning to get rough enough to make takeoff dangerous. The ponies riding on the train got quite a startling notification that they had left the underground, in the form of harsh rain that began to batter the windows. Now that it was aboveground, the train sped up, hissing with power as it began to race towards the docks where the SS Twilight sat.

A few of the ponies onboard started to joke about how drenched the driver was, but Northern put a stop with it by suggesting that they switch places with him. Nopony was willing to do it, of course, and the one at the engine was the best driver they had anyway. The trip to the docks was rather quiet. Everypony stayed glued to the windows, watching the battered landscapes pass on by.

Equestria wasn't holding together too well. The railway had a good vantage point of the country, and the ponies inside could see what had happened to everything. Highway bridges were laying along the ground, the smashed remains of various cars and trucks scattered along them. Pegasi air-chariots were scattered all over the ground, since the cloud roads that once stretched all over Equestria had been thoroughly destroyed. In fact, the only pegasi construct to remain was Cloudsdale itself, but the city was barely holding on. The ponies in the train could just barely see it in the distance, floating low to the ground. Its towers were collapsed, and the rainbows pouring from it were just a muddled mess of pale colors.

As the train pushed through the storm, the ground began to shake once more. Nopony on the train said anything, but a few of them certainly began to look worried. This earthquake wasn't nearby thankfully, so the train wasn't in much danger. The same could not be said for Canterlot. The next time lightning stabbed across the sky, everypony on the right side of the train got a glimpse at the ancient city, and it wasn't level anymore. Everything went dark once more, until another network of lightning webbed across the sky, revealing Canterlot once more. This time, it was lower. The city's massive supports had finally given way, and the entire thing was falling to the farmlands below.

Darkness, once more. Then light, as lightning arced through the sky, striking the ground somewhere in the distance. This time, it stayed lit long enough for the ponies to watch as the city impacted the ground, and they could hear it. The sound was like nothing they'd heard before, a harsh rumble that could be heard overtop of the noise form the earthquake, and the rain. The darkness returned, but only for a brief time. Next time Lightning striked, all they could see of the once-standing city was a pile of stone and broken buildings at the base of a mountain.

There was a 'tock' from one of the windows. It was just Celestia's horn, touching the glass as she let the pane hold her head for her. She hadn't said anything, but she didn't really need to, the tears running down her face alongside the tightness of her jaw did enough of a job. One of the guards in the car muttered "Damn" in a soft voice, and for the briefest of moments, a smile tugged at her lips. Why was it always the dumbest things that amused her?

Fluttershy was the next one to speak. "So, everypony in Equestria is leaving?" She asked quietly. Northern decided to answer, and he looked over as he said, "Everypony above and below... well, I suppose not every single pony alive. There are ponies living in faraway countries, and there are even plenty of stubborn ponies living here in Equestria who are determined to stay. But without the heart and the tree of harmony... well, it seemed clear that heading to space seemed like the best idea" He said. He then sighed, and kept going. "We also don't have much of a choice, there isn't a single place on the planet that can handle the entire population of Equestria showing up at their doorstep. We'd have to learn new sets of laws, we'd have to rebuild cities, and it might even come to war if the people housing us decide that we've overstayed our welcome. And not only that, certain parts of the world are convinced that the country was cursed, and letting all of us in would bring the curse with us"

Celestia finally spoke up, saying, "Equestria's magic has two parts. There is the magic flowing through the world, the magic of the tree and the heart, and then there is the magic inside of every pony, be them earth, pegasus, or unicorn. I've got the elements of harmony on my ship, and our best plan is to try to plant a new tree of harmony wherever we go, to establish our new home". "What happened to the heart and the tree of harmony?" Fluttershy softly asked. "We don't know" came the reply, as the white princess wiped her own tears away. "We thought it might be discord, but he-" she said, before she stopped suddenly. She looked to Fluttershy, having the same realization that she did. Where was discord?

And so, Fluttershy asked. "Where is he?" She said, her ears lowering with two quiet clicks. "Nopony knows" Celestia said soflty. "After you went missing, Discord moved to canterlot with us, and he came close to me and Luna like it used to be before his original banishment..." She said, pausing to organize memories. "I refuse to believe that he is the cause of this. This isn't his brand of chaos, this is much worse. I... I should have listened" She said softly, frowning.

"Listened?" The pegasus quietly asked. Celestia took in a breath, then she said, "Not long before this all started, Discord had started to complain to me and Luna that something felt wrong to him, but we had no idea what. It's not like we ignored him, but we had no idea what it could've been. We tried to help him figure it out, but we came up with nothing. I guess that's the closest we got to a warning" she said, looking more troubled the more she thought of it. "I can't help but fear the worst. Was he simply kidnapped to prevent him from stopping this? Was he forced to do this? Surely, someone or something couldn't have just killed him" She said.

Fluttershy was quiet for a while, then she said, "I hope he's okay" In a soft voice. "I think you're right, Discord would never do these awful things, and if he's still the discord I know, then nothing could keep him contained forever" This got Celestia to smile, and in contrast to the nightmarish landscape outside of the train, she said "I'm sure he'll make it out of whatever mess he's gotten into, and all he'd have to do is follow our beacons to find us again"

"Beacons?" Fluttershy asked, glad to divert the subject from the fate of her close friend to something more simple. Celestia was happy for the change in discussion, too. The train continued to push on through the storm, and the ponies inside began to talk about the fancy system of beacon sattelites that they would leave behind as they pushed out into space.

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Firebox was soaked. Still, he wasn't going to give up the chance to be the pony at the helm of Equestria's last ever train journey. The rain had soaked every part of him long ago, but he was still hyper-focused on the task at hoof. He kept watch on the tracks ahead to make sure they were clear and intact, he kept coal in the Firebox to keep the engine going, and he made sure the train was going at the proper speed for the grades and bends it had to raverse. In the distance, he could spot the SS Twilight. The massive ship had been a landmark since it was finished, shortly after the disappearence of Princess Twilight herself.

It's not like Equestria forgot about it, of course. The problem came with the ship's controls. From the ground up, Twilight had designed the ship herself, and every system and computer was designed by herself. Twilight made it clear that when the ship was finished, she would finally explain its functions to everypony. It wouldn't make sense until it was finished, she had said. When she had died, crews of ponies did their best to reverse-engineer the way it functioned, but Celestia forbid disassembling any of the ship.

For the two entire centuries it had sat there, the princesses disallowed any projects to try disassembling the ship, whether to scrap it or find out how it worked. Neither of them ever confirmed it, but the main theory that passed from snout to snout was that they were keeping it safe, in hopes that Twilight would return. When Equestria had began to fall apart, the SS Twilight wasn't even on the list of ships that would be modified to hold ponies. Originally, the twin sisters had managed to plot out the entire population of Equestria onto heir fleet of ships without needing the Twilight, and then even had room left over. That is, until they remembered the UnderWorld.

Finally, the orders were given to clear out what little was inside of the Twilight and get it ready for the ponies of the UnderWorld. Soon after the orders were given, it was discovered that the networks of Servers on the ship weren't even holding anything to run the ship. Equestria's other superfreighters had simplistic AI programs on board to run the entire thing, and following that logic, there should have been one on the Twilight. but there wasn't.

That was fine though- the Earthquakes had managed to start caving in the PolariSoft bunker next to Ponyville, and the servers held within the bunker contained Saphira, Equestria's first and only fully sentient AI. The solution to that problem was obvious! Saphira managed to successfully transfer herself to the servers on the Twilight before her original servers were destroyed, and the problem was figured to be solved. That is, until Saphira came to realize that the ship's systems were totally alien to her.

Still, she had all the time in the world to figure it out. They just needed to get the ship into space. Firebox flinched as a blinding bolt of lightning slammed into one of the buildings at the dock, where a substantial Lightning rod had been mounted. It had been seeing quite a lot of action during the storm! Firebox began to slow the train as they came into the docks, passing empty docks, and warehouses, some of which had already been destroyed by either the Earthquakes, the heavy rain, or even a lightning strike, in the case of one unfortunate warehouse.

The train began to squeal as it came close to the dock that led to the SS Twilight, where a drenched group of Royal Guards stood, in front of one of Celestia's chariots. "Oh dear..." The mare said, looking at the little group of her poor guards. They were there to get her back to the SS Celestia, but she felt bad that they'd been waiting there for her in that awful storm. At least they were standing under the relative dryness of the train station! Finally, the train came to a stop at the station, and Northern pushed open the doors to the cairrage. "You guys ready?" He asked, smiling as he looked back at the others. Fluttershy pulled Silver onto her back again, ignoring his protests. "Flutters, I'm fine, I think I can walk..." He grumbled, though he wasn't even going to try to prove it once he noticed the looks that both Fluttershy and Celestia gave him.

"Tia, I want you going to your ship right now, we'll take it from here" North said, and she hesitated, before sighing a little bit. "You're right, it's getting bad" She muttered. "Be safe, okay? Don't hit anything on your way up" She said, giving North a smile. He nodded in return, saying, "Now go". The mare left the train car, and she ignored the rain that blasted in underneath the station roof as she stepped onto her chariot, grabbing onto it tightly. "All right guys, let's go!" She barked, needing to yell to be heard over the rain. Four sets of wings opened, and the group took off into the skies, making a beeline for the Celestia.

To the Skies

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Meanwhile on the train, Northern was taking count of everypony. He draped his own cape over Firebox's back regardless of the stallion's stubborn protests, and with that, the group of ponies ran out into the rain. The Twilight loomed over them, rain pouring off of its upper decks. The boarding ramp was sliding all over the docks as the ship fought the oceans that held onto it, and the massive cables that kept it tied down were struggling to hold the ship steady. The group of ponies ran onto the boarding ramp, and the hydrophobic coating on it made sure that nobody slipped.

Finally, they walked onto the ship. North gave the command to close the heavy loading doors, and the heavy chunks of metal slowly closed in, sealing off the ship from the storm. They were safe, but only somewhat. The entrance hall for the ship was massive, and it led to a tram station of all things at the other end, though the tram wasn't working. Without any hesitation, Northern began to walk, leading Fluttershy into the ship. "This thing is just as big as I remember" Fluttershy said softly, smiling up at the walls of it. She remembered how proud of it Twilight had been, and she was glad to help it finally come together.

As they began to head for the deeper reaches of the massive ship, Polaris caught up to them. "Jeez, dad, you guys are soaked" He said, before he noticed the glowing mare on his other side. "F...Fluttershy?" He asked, his eyes wide. He hadn't talked to the mare much back when she was alive, but he certainly remembered her. She smiled a bit, saying, "It's quite the long story... Polaris, right?" He nodded, saying, "Well, if you don't mind, I'd love to hear it... is that Silver you're carrying?" He asked. Silver himself looked over, smirking just slightly as he said, "Yep, I wasn't gonna let a bunch of rocks take me out" Polaris couldn't help but grin, saying, "Well I'm glad you're here! Hell, I hope you know exactly how we're meant to power this thing".

"Well, I have an idea of it" Fluttershy softly said. "Is that the place?" She asked, nodding down to the end of the hallway they were in. A set of big doors with "POWER ROOM" were hanging open, and Northern nodded as they approached. "This is it, all right" he said. They walked into the room side by side, Polaris and Northern flanking the robotic mare. She held the key to everypony on the ship making it, after all. She walked up to the hole in the wall, and she peered into it. "This is it, all right" She said quietly. Silver finally slid off of her back, stubbornly standing up on his three legs. He looked at Fluttershy with worry written all over his snout, but he did glance back at the others.

Polaris had walked up to Tinker, and he poked his snout with a hoof. "You okay?" he asked, as the brown dragonpony blinked, slowly sitting up with a pained look. "Oh, I picked a _bad_ place to fall asleep, oww..." He groaned, stretching a little. Silver didn't care about either of them, though. He was staring at the cylinder on the table. Fluttershy gently poked him in the side, saying, "Silver, you've got to take it out, the ship needs it" in a soft voice. He hesitated a little, his mind racing as he managed to connect the last few pieces of a two-century-old puzzle. He looked to Northern, saying, "Hey, gimmie that thing" As he pointed to the table. Northern's magic floated it over to him as Fluttershy laid down, resting her head on her hooves.

Silver couldn't help but smirk, saying, "Well, now I get what she was planning!" "You do?" Polaris asked, sitting down next to North, while Tinker was trying to get out of the chair without hurting his poor back. "Yes, I do" Silver said. He opened the door in Fluttershy's side, and he grabbed onto the core. He met her eyes, they both nodded at each other, and he removed it. The room darkened as the light bled from her body, and Silver held the core with intense care as he lifted it, then shoved it into the socket on the wall.

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Deep underwater, another Earthquake had started. This time, a massive portion of land broke free from the side of an ocean trench, tumbling down into the depths as the ocean above churned and bucked. And the energy that was dumped into the water had only one place to go, outward.

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When the cell was inserted, the ship closed a thick glass plate over it, then the mechanism clamped down onto the cell. And then, it opened itself up to the power held inside. All throughout the ship, magic channels of light began to glow, as the power from the cell began to extend throughout the massive construct. The magic channels matched Fluttershy's colors, sending yellow and pink light throughout the entire ship.

And in the power room, Silver was the only one who tore his eyes away from the machines as they powered up. The not-a-power-core he was holding had begun to glow just like the real one, and he grinned even bigger as he slid it into Fluttershy's body. This time, the door retracted inside of her, since the panel to the side of the battery acted as the door. And the Antennas.

Just like the first time, Fluttershy's body began to glow, lighting up all over again as it booted up.

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Darkness. The moment Silver pulled out the core, Fluttershy was thrown into blackness. She couldn't tell if it lasted a moment or a millenium, but she suddenly began to feel things again as the world came rushing back to her. But the world was weird. She could feel massive, strange structures, instead of the legs and wings of her robitic body. She could see camera after camera, looking into different rooms of the ship, the rain battering the roof, the water underneath it.

She started to panic a little, getting overwhelmed with the amount of new sensations that were pushing against her, demanding her attention. Until she felt something familiar. Familiarity was exactly what she was desperate for among the ocean of computers and systems, so she went rushing towards it.

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Silver jumped a little as Fluttershy's body suddenly gasped, her eyes shooting open as her legs kicked a little. She looked like she was waking up from an awful nightmare, as she carefully sat up and then latched onto Silver, hugging him tightly against her. He had a hard time speaking, but he managed to ask, "W-What happened...?" When she found her words, she said, "Oh, it's... it's awful, it's like being in that machine, but instead of confusing, it's overwhelming..."

"Is she supposed to control the ship?" Polaris whispered to his dad, making Northern's eyes go wide as he also made the same realization. In fact, all three of the stallions at the other end of the room realized what Twilight had done. Instead of giving her ship an AI, Twilight had elected to transfer Fluttershy herself into the power cell she had created, and then place her into the ship she had built, along with a body for her to use. It would have been an incredible breakthrough, had she managed to finish it alive.

She hadn't, but Silver had. Still, it wasn't over yet. When Fluttershy let go of him and stood up, he climbed onto her back once more, since he didn't want to try walking on his hurt leg. "Now what?" He asked, looking over to Polaris. "We uh, we take off?" He said, smiling a bit. Northern spoke up, saying, "If the ship is actually powered right now, then we need to get it into space now."

"I... I don't know how..." Fluttershy said, looking over at them with an anxious expression. "The bridge" Tinker said, having gotten up. Polaris nodded, saying, "Yeah! Maybe she can do it from there?" "Are the trams up now?" Northern asked, walking out of the door and into the hallway outside. "Should be!" Polaris said, and the four ponies left the room, following behind the King. The ship's network of trams was indeed online, and Northern called one to the nearest station. "Thankfully, these things should take us right up to the bridge" He said, and as soon as it showed up, the five ponies climbed onto it.

The bridge, meanwhile, was a bit of a mess. Saphira still couldn't interact with the ship, but she still had some sensors of her own mounted to the outside of it, and she was panicking at what she could sense happening underwater. Not only that, since Polaris left to find North, she was the only one on the bridge. All the UnderWorld royalty had left to help organize their respective populations, so that left Saphira and a few guards that generally looked very concerned.

The trams weren't something to sneeze at- a walk from one end of the ship to the other would probably take hours, but the tram did it in a minute. Once they got to the nearest station, the five ponies headed straight for the Bridge. Fluttershy wasn't talking, but Silver could tell just from the way she walked, she was nervous. Scared, even. After all, she told him flat-out in Sparkle Labs that she was rather timid, so it made sense that she was getting worn out with being the center of attention for so long.

He didn't want to interrupt, so he hugged onto her a little tighter, resting his head against her neck. When they got to the bridge, the first thing she noticed was how big it was. The room was incredibly spacious, with huge windows looking upwards and outwards, and computer screens and chairs all throughout it. Oh, and one very frantic mare that looked a lot like herself. And Indeed, Saphira was actually Twilight's inspiration for the concept of Fluttershy's remotely controlled body. Back in the 2090s, Saphira's first body had died. It was a mare body, but with the brain swapped out with a computer that allowed her to control it, and feel through it. The mare was someone who had succumbed to a nasty concussion, so it allowed a second life for the body that would have otherwise simply gotten buried (or studied).

When it died, Polaris began to look into building a new one, and Twilight actually helped somewhat. Saphira's body was rather different though, since Polaris had been working on it little by little over the years, while Fluttershy's was the finished model of Twilight's design. "Polaris!" She barked as he came in the room. "I still can't talk to this thing! It's just, it's a whole different kind of computer!" she said, looking anguished that she couldn't do anything about their situation. Instead of the blue stallion though, Fluttershy spoke up. "T-That's because I'm the ship now... somehow" She said, walking out into plain view. Saphira took a moment to process the new information, then she swapped right away to a grin as she said "o-of course! Like me, right? You're running on the ship, and your body's accessed wirelessly?"

Fluttershy nodded, and Polaris cut Saphira off before she could talk again, saying, "She's gonna tell us about it all later though" "Oh! Right, okay, Fluttershy, do you see these?" Saphira asked, waving her over to one of the screens. On it, she could see a model of the ship, along with four massive rockets at the bottom and some sort of box at the top, and all of them were highlighted in green. "I don't know how, but these are the rockets you need to activate to get us out of here, before the tsunami hits"

Immediately, both Northern and Polaris said "Tsunami?" Saphira snapped at them, saying, "Yes! You would know, if you hadn't run off!" The two blue ponies began to explain everything to the AI, while Tinker took a rest in one of the chairs, hoping to see the liftoff. Fluttershy was starting to panic again though, and as Silver climbed off of her, she looked at him with fear clear in her eyes. In a hushed tone, Fluttershy said, "S-Silver, I don't know what I'm doing, this thing is huge... I-I can feel all sorts of systems, a-and components, and I don't know how to interact with them or..."

Silver gently cut her off, saying, "Can you uh, try to focus on one of them? Like, if you can figure out which one is the rockets, maybe you could try to use them from there? The mare whined a little, saying, "I-I... maybe? There's so many, I don't..." "Uhhh, guys?" Polaris said, looking at a display, then out the window. The ocean had retreated from the docks, exposing the sand below it. The ship was still afloat in a dug-out channel that was designed specifically for it, but the lack of water wasn't the danger.

It was what it meant. Saphira came over to say something, but Silver waved a hoof at her, saying, "No, go, we'll figure it out" With a frown on his snout. She hesitated, but she relented, heading to the windows with Northern and Polaris. Silver looked back to Fluttershy, who had started to shiver a little. "S-Sil.. I..." she said, followed by another whine as she closed her eyes, trying to focus.

She opened them just in time for Silver to grab onto her, pulling the robotic mare into a kiss.

Just like any normal pony, the sudden kiss blanked out her mind, making her go silent as she wordlessly put her arms around his. And this time, she could focus. Silver felt her begin to return it, and he kept his eyes closed, holding onto her. He didn't know if his plan would help, but at the very least, he could say that he managed to kiss the mare he loved before the ship met its end. Thankfully, he was right. Now that she was focusing, Fluttershy managed to run power to where it needed to go, and the ship began to shudder beneath them.

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In the distance, the SS Celestia had begun to rise into the sky. Its massive rockets shone bright with magic power, and tears ran down Celestia's face as she angrily dumped her power into the ship's main engines to give it enough power to lift off. She had been forced- the cradle the ship rested on had begun to crumble beneath it during the most recent earthquake, and her only choices were to either take off now or doom her ponies inside of it.

She couldn't see it, but the ponies on the bridge did, and her headset buzzed. "Hey! I think they did it! Well, something is making it move higher..."

Then, another voice. "No, you're right, those are the engines! Wait, holy- look at that wave!"

The first voice again. "It's as big as the ship! it's gonna hit it!"

"No, it has time! Look, the engines are firing, you can see em now!"

"Yeah, but it's not going fast enough, the wave's gonna..."

The line went silent for a short time, but before they entered the clouds, before their vision of the Twilight was cut off, one of them exclaimed- "Wait, the Twilight has WINGS!?"

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It took a ton of focus for the poor mare, but Fluttershy had managed to understand at least a little bit of the ship. The rockets were firing with as much power as they could, but they were barely lifting the ship off of the ground. Saphira and the two stallions were starting to panic about the approaching wall of water, but she barely registered them at all. Her focus was on takeoff, and she was ignoring everything else. Well, except for Silver.

As the ship reached a certain altitude, something opened up to Fluttershy. It had to be related to liftoff, so she poured power into it as well as the rockets. And on the top of the ship, two powerful magic generators flickered to life, casting their spells as a massive, purple, glowing set of wings slowly unfurled on either side of the ship. And then, Fluttershy put them to work.

The combination of the main thrusters alongside the massive wings helped the ship gain altitude much faster than it had been, and they were well clear of the Tsunami by the time it crashed into the docks, wiping out every building it came into contact with. As the ship continued to ascend, the wings started to lose effectiveness, thanks to the atmosphere growing thin. However, by the time the ship was that high in the sky, it had already escaped the raging storm clouds, and the thrusters were growing more effective.

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As soon as the ship got high enough in the sky to escape the planet's gravity on its own, Celestia pulled herself free of the magic conduit that had been holding her horn. She swayed for a moment as she regained her balance, but she made it crystal clear that she wanted to get to the bridge immediately.

Commandeering the nearest inner-ship tram, Celestia and the guard she was with headed straight for the bridge, and as soon as she entered the room, the mare who had been talking to her pointed to one of the windows. Running over to it, Celestia couldn't help but smile as she laid eyes on the Twilight, which had actually managed to somewhat catch up to her ship. "She did it..." She said, her eyes misting with tears as she stared at the massive purple ship, and the winds stretched to either side. As she watched, the wings slowly closed, folded up to either side like a pony would do. Then, they slowly disappeared, fading away until they would be needed again.

Celestia watched the ship until it had fully escaped the Atmosphere, and it wasn't until then that she finally listened to the stubborn nurse behind her, who demanded that she rest after launching the ship. She could be annoying, but that's why she was the royal nurse, because Celestia would rather be bossed around by a nurse than get hurt because they were too scared to tell her what to do.

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On the moon, a phone rang. "Oh, hey Luna, what is it?"

"Cady, do you have your telescope pointed at home right now?"

"Oh, yeah, why?"

"Have a look at the Twilight..."

"Where? Oh, wait, they're aiming it... woah"

"Yeah, woah"

"Are those wings?"

"I think so... I suppose they figured it out, huh?"

"Oh, I'm so glad... hopefully Sis is doing okay"

"Yeah, she was worrying herself sick over it, I don't have the heart to tell her but I know she's started to look at that ship as if it were Twilight"

"Well, sure looks like it with the wings, but I know what you mean"

"Oh, are the landing sites for those two ships ready?"

"Yeah, we'll get 'em on the radio once they're close"

"All right, see ya in a bit then Cady"

"See ya Luna!"

✩｡:*•.──────────.•*:｡✩

Slowly, Fluttershy and Silver parted. They opened their eyes, taking glances around the room. Thankfully, it seemed all of the others were glued to the windows. In a hushed voice, Silver whispered "I love you", smiling at the robotic mare. She smiled back, saying, "I love you so much..." Still, both of them were excited to see what she had accomplished. Carefully, the two ponies got up, and Silver climbed onto Fluttershy's back once more. As he did, she looked back at him, saying, "When we leave this room, it's straight to medical by the way", and all he got in return for his dramatic pouting was a grin.

The view from the windows was amazing. Far below them, Equestria broiled underneath a thick mat of clouds, but if they looked up, all they could see were Luna's stars. Saphira was the first to realize they were at the window, and she grinned over to the pair as she said, "Y-You did it, Fluttershy..." Both Polaris and Northern looked over, smiling about as much as Saphira was. "Landing on the moon is probably going to be a lot easier than it was taking off..." Polaris said, giving her an encouraging smile. His dad nodded, saying, "And while we're there, you can figure out the rest of the ship at your own pace before we all go"

Silver decided to look to the other end of the room, since he thought there had been somepony else in the room. Tinker was still there, but he was just sitting at the other end of the room, staring up at the stars through the glass ceiling of the bridge, his tail curled around him. He didn't say anything, but Silver agreed with him anyway, as he turned his own eyes to the windows.

Outer space was beautiful.

Epilogue

View Online

With a dull thud, the SS Twilight's landing gear finally met the surface of the moon, and everyone on the Bridge let out a cheer. There were mainly two groups, one to either side. On one side was the PolariSoft crew, and on the other side were the former Kings and Queens from the Underworld caverns, with Northern standing somewhere in the middle. Saphira was the first one to actually say something, and she laughed before saying, "We really did make it!" "Oh, we sure did..." Murmured the deep voice of Prince Blaze, the imposingly tall Dragonpony king of what was once Inferno Cavern.

Silver let out a tired sigh as he leaned against Fluttershy, and he nuzzled her as he said, "I'll go to the medbay now..." It kind of worried her that he was not only willing to go, but reminding her. Then again, she supposed the painkillers were wearing off by then. Fluttershy said her quiet goodbyes to North and Saphira, and she walked out of the room, Silver held on her back.

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By the time it came to fix Silver's leg, it had been in awful shape for a long time, and the only alternative to removing his leg would have been an extremely demanding healing spell. For a normal pony, the answer was simple, a robotic leg to replace their normal one. But the princesses weren't having it. The Twilight's medbay ended up becoming a princessly meeting for a while, as Cadence, Flurry, Luna, and Celestia all came over on shuttles to visit both Fluttershy, and the pony with her. Their combined magic easily repaired Silver's leg, despite a halfhearted protest on his end. With the pain eliminated, Silver finally allowed himself to fall asleep, and as he snored away, the three princesses helped catch Fluttershy up on all the events she had missed, and Fluttershy did her best to explain what had happened.

She also gave Celestia the diary she had nabbed, because she suspected that Tia had kept all of Twilight's other diaries. And she had! All except one, the book Fluttershy brought up from Sparkle Labs. Luna took a bit of a break to check on the dreams of all the ponies on her moon, Cadence made sure to point out that she could nearly taste the affection between Fluttershy and Silver, and Celestia just kind of went along with the flow, since she was still coming down from the stresses of the past week. Flurry got a big hug from Fluttershy, along with a "You were so small the last time I saw you!"

After they ran out of things to talk about, Each princess got a warm hug from Fluttershy as they went back to their ships, and Celestia was told to "Please get some sleep?" "Oh, I plan to~" The mare said, giving her a tired grin in return as she walked out of the room. That just left Fluttershy and the nurses who happened to be on duty. Fluttershy gave one of them a shy smile, and she picked up Silver to leave. She found her way back to the bridge, and Saphira was waiting for her. "Hey, we figured you would come back here, I'm s'posed to show you to your room" She said. "Oh! That's wonderful, you guys read my mind" She said, smiling back at the mare.

As they walked to the room, Saphira told Fluttershy what it was like to be herself, an AI built from code and a little bit of magic versus an AI built with a pony soul and a littrle bit of code. It was pretty interesting to either of them, and by the time they got to the room, Fluttershy felt she had made another friend. For now though, she wanted rest. She didn't think she could sleep, she loved the idea of laying down, closing her eyes, and letting her mind rest.

The room was at the end of the Administration hall, and it had the biggest doors on it. And her cutie mark. "It's funny, the door didn't light up with your cutie mark until you powered the ship, and then we realized why it wouldn't open... it's meant for you" Saphira chirped. "What about you guys?" Fluttershy asked softly. Saphira nodded to the rest of the hall, saying, "We've got rooms here too, don't you even try to tell me you don't need it"

Well, she was right. When Fluttershy came close, she realized she would have to open the door herself. She bade Saphira goodbye so she could focus on it, and she found it easier than expected to open the door, walk inside, then close it again. When she did close it, the room went dark, and she frowned with confusion as the big TV on the wall lit up.

It lit up with Twilight on the screen. From the way she spoke, it seemed like this was nowhere near the first time she had recorded it, which was natural for her. She left such awkward phone messages, Fluttershy always found them amusing.

The purple mare sighed, then she looked to the camera. "I don't know why this is so hard to record, it's not like I expect that something bad is going to happen to me" She said. "But Fluttershy, if you are hearing this, then it means I wasn't here to show you how the ship works, but it does mean that you made it here, powered it up, your body and all" She said, smiling eagerly at the thought. "I don't know why the urge is there, but I felt like I needed to make this recording, just in case, just so I could tell you... why" She said.

A deep breath, then she kept going. "Fluttershy, you're my last friend, everyone else is gone. I don't know how Tia and Luna handle it. I don't! I... This ship was designed from the beginning in the hopes that I would find a way to link a pony's mind to the controls, because what would be better than an AI but a pony with a helmet on?" She said. "But I couldn't make it work, not the way I planned" She said, sighing. "So, I'm taking the power core. I'm taking you and it to Sparkle labs, and I'm going to put you in it" She said.

"Then, I'll... I'll never lose you, I'll make the ship work, my greatest project won't be such a failure" She said, tears rolling down her cheeks as she spoke. Fluttershy felt such a well of sadness at the image... Twilight had been hurting, it was clear that her fears had been consuming her at the time. But who can help a pony if they refuse to help themselves? Twilight began to speak again, "Anyway, I suppose that's all of it, it's getting late so I'll just go with this one" She said, and her magic reached for something, probably the camera switch, considering that it went black. Then, the room slowly lit up, illuminating a spacious, beautifully lit up bedroom with murals along the walls that reminded Fluttershy of her old home. Fluttershy couldn't help but smile, a bittersweet wave of emotion rolling through her.

Twilight had died, but her biggest creation hadn't. She would live on, in the form of memory, legend, and a massive spaceship in her name. And she was finally at rest, too. Fluttershy had been ready to go when Twilight brought her down to the labs, but now? She was excited for the second leg of her life. She hadn't ever been to space, and she also hadn't ever bothered to get herself a coltfriend back in her time...

And well, she had one now. She couldn't help smiling as she laid Silver up on her bed, being extra gentle with him. She gave his snout a little kiss, then she pulled the blanket over him, finding that her new body was perfectly capable of producing the adorable little "Squee" that would sometimes escape her. Fluttershy climbed up onto her bed, and she laid down next to Silver, finally closing her eyes.

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The Equestrian space fleet stayed on the moon for one week. In that time, the crews and the populations of each ship settled in to their temporary homes, Fluttershy taught herself how to control every aspect of the ship that she now called home. Her and Silver grew even closer together as he recovered, too. The poor stallion had done more damage to himself than either of them had thought in Sparkle Labs, but it wasn't anything too severe, just worn out muscles that meant he spent a lot of time laying in bed with Fluttershy as she silently learned how her ship worked.

Firebox and the rest of the Underworld rescue crew were given free reign of the ship's massage parlor for a few days, and the poor guards who had sat waiting in the rain for Celestia for so long were told to rest their wings and stay warm and dry for as long as they needed. Northern and Polaris finally took a rest, and Tinker took a long nap in an actual bed, in a nice room that he'd been given, even though he had planned to sleep in the van he had brought onboard. Celestia got some well needed rest, she read through Twilight's last diary, and it was put away with the rest of them. Luna had gone for a spacewalk, which was strange to her, since the last time she was able to stand on the moon, it had been as a magic manifestation of herself while her soul was trapped inside of the moon.

All of Equestria's non-organic ponies had a party on the surface of the moon at one point, just because they could. Why not? It's not like they needed to breathe! Even Fluttershy attended, but only long enough to take a break from learning how her ship worked.

Silver had also had a meeting with White Stream, the author from ThreeTown! She wanted to try turning his adventure in a book, and he didn't mind retelling the entire experience to her, with some additions by Fluttershy.

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With a roar of its engines, the SS Twilight lifted off of the moon alongside the Cadence, falling in line behind the two Sisters' ships. By then, it was easy for Fluttershy to control the ship, and she did it all from her bedroom, though she did manifest on one of the bridge's computers for the sake of the ponies there. She still looked a little angular though.

One by one, all of Equestria's smaller ships lifted into space from the moon. Once they were all in proper formation, every ship gathered together over the comms to confirm the planet they were heading for, a distant one that appeared to have a similar atmosphere to Earth. And as a group, the ponies of Equestria fired up their thrusters, setting off towards the stars.

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Fluttershy opened her eyes, smiling over to Silver as she said "Well, we're underway... what?" She asked, noticing the worried look on his face. "I... I think I left the lights on in the labs" Silver said, looking back at her. Fluttershy looked deeply confused until she saw the smile tugging at his lips, then she broke out into a laugh, saying, "You doofus!" As she limply smacked him with a hoof, something the stallion barely noticed as he laughed along with her. "Oh, I got you good" He said, grinning a big, happy grin at her, for so many reasons that he couldn't keep count. "Oh, shut up~" Fluttershy said, and just to make sure he did shut up, the mare pulled the stallion into a kiss, holding him close to her.

On the bridge of her own ship, Cadence looked up from her book with a somewhat confused Expression. Where was that much love coming from?