May 25, 9:33 AM

Agree, expand the Overgrowth 92%

Wayfinder was in no place to argue. She’d accepted the position as “princess” precisely so she could be the kind of person who could make difficult decisions. It was time to start making those decisions. If that one day meant that the people of Colorado resented her for depriving them of some of its natural beauty, at least that meant there were survivors who could resent her for agreeing.

“Alright Sunburst. I’ll agree. So long as you realize that we have a lot to get in motion right now. We’re already starting off so far behind that every day we’re not working is another day that the problem gets worse. Until then, I can put in a few hours every day to studying… whatever it is you want me to do to help with that.”

She circled past him again, stopping in front of the diagram and staring up at it. She could get lost in a diagram like that, meandering down interweaving and contradictory symbols. It felt a little like walking into a calculus class for the first time after doing great in all her high school math, and seeing page after page of symbols and diagrams that had no place in her existing paradigm. In a single moment, she transformed from “master-level expert” to “moron.”

“Not that I should be saying this, considering how badly I need you. But couldn’t you cast this? You designed it.”

“Am designing,” he corrected, following her. “There are still a few kinks to work out. I’ll keep working on it while we get you up to the level that you can cast it. We can’t spend years working on this, but… we can’t just jump into it when you aren’t ready, or we just make the problem worse.”

Wayfinder turned and winked at him. “Yeah, but… you didn’t answer the question.”

He sighed, slumping forward and staring down at his hooves. “I know it might seem silly. You’ll have to trust me when I explain that… the talent for designing spells is not directly correlated with the talent for casting them. Many of Equestria’s greatest wizards created spells designed for others to use. If I manage to complete this work, I may one day receive that recognition. Assuming they… ever learn of it.”

Wayfinder didn’t want to focus him too much on this painful thought, of course. She’d come to secure help for the Isolation Zone, not to talk about the mysteries of the pony she thought might be able to help them. Yet her own curiosity on the subject burned too bright to ignore. “You were able to get here,” she said. “I’m still a little shaky on the details.”

She also didn’t want to accuse him. Yet she couldn’t know for sure that he wasn’t somehow connected to the ones responsible for NEM10. The disease made them into things from Equestria, when they lived. There must be some connection.

“But if you came from there, that must mean you can get back.”

He sighed, pawing one hoof along the ground. “None can say what magic might be discovered one day. We can… talk about that another time, Wayfinder. I believe you’d just got through agreeing to help. Which means I’ve also agreed to take on responsibility for the fate of millions of ponies. We can discuss the nature of my home another time. I have… final preparations to make. Starhall will not be happy to lose me.”

She shrugged. “Technically, it won’t. You’ll still be in charge of Starhall. Just… helping with everything else in the whole Isolation Zone at the same time. Try to think of it like an… opportunity. You brought all those books to try and help us cope with what happened to us. Before you had trouble getting people to listen. Not me, I’m listening.”

She advanced on him by a few more steps, until she was only a few inches away, close enough to feel the warmth of his coat. “I’m a very good listener. I’ve been learning a whole new science out of a book. And I did such a good job that you agreed to help me with my impossible job in exchange for doing some magic.”

He looked up, met her eyes, and froze. For a few seconds he did nothing but stare, barely even breathing.

She felt it too, a little like a spell—her eyes on his, only a few inches away.

She retreated a step, tail flicking to one side. “You think you… need time to pack? I’m not sure how you want to do this. But… all the information we need is back in the barracks. Probably better if you come to me. I could teleport you if you want.”

“N-no. Tomorrow—no, I mean. You don’t have to…” he swallowed, and his voice came out in a sudden rush. “I’ll have arrangements made tonight and walk there tomorrow morning. I expect to be there for the next several days, if not longer. I’m going to… imagine tax season in the Crystal Empire as a starting point for how much work this is about to take.”

Wayfinder didn’t leave right away, much as her exhaustion pressed her to. She’d seen someone down through the glass, and she was itching to rush down and make sure she hadn’t imagined him. But her fears of missing him were in vain: Sam stood next to Ruby, doing a whole lot of nothing while she expanded the “home” she’d made in one of the food court booths, adding more cushions to expand the bed and pushing aside various printouts and pages.

“Sam, you’re here,” she said, keeping her voice low. Several nearby groups were already getting ready for bed, lights dim in their own private areas. “I worked out a way to get them to release you from prison, but—”

“Blue!” The bird turned, without any regard for the volume. He crossed in a few steps, then embraced her with one of those vibrant wings. “Yeah, Ruby told me the whole thing. You know how much it means that you could get her out. I was fifty miles down shit creek trying to figure a plan to rescue her. Tried gathering an army to break her out, but that isn’t something you can do in a month. Turns out you’d already done it!”

He squeezed for another few seconds, then let her go. “I know Ruby already told you how much it meant. But I won’t forget it either.”

“Good,” Wayfinder smiled nervously at him. “Because I kinda just became princess of the whole Isolation Zone. And I might need—”

“Princess Blue!” Sam exclaimed, even louder. Loud enough that someone muttered profanity from a few tents away, and he repeated much quieter. “I can’t wait to hear that story. But maybe somewhere with more chill. What’s your first decree? Gonna drop a nuke on the prison?”

She shrugged. “It’s on the agenda, but I have to find a way that won’t destabilize the whole zone. It’s… a lot. Right now I’m here poaching talent. And… I could use you back. Both of you. A good mechanic is worth his weight in gold. And I’d like to have someone to interface with the medical people I can at least trust.” Her eyes lingered on Ruby, fluffing up blankets. “Just think about it, okay? No commitments right now.”

Sam shrugged. “Oh, I’m already interested. I want to rub it in their faces. But… don’t call me Sam when I get there. I’m Blazing Wave now.” He posed as he said it, flaring out his tail and the feathers atop his head. “Put that on my ID, and you’ve got a deal.”

Ruby hopped up out of the booth, keeping her voice low. She looked between them, her face an unreadable mask. “I have to think about it. See if you don’t burn the place down. What drugs were they on that they…”

“Don’t ask me,” she said. “Pretty much blundered headfirst into it, fighting to leave every step. But if someone doesn’t do something, Ruby—they’re screwed. I don’t expect to be a princess so much as a… pony who helps coordinate the ones who know what they’re doing.”

“Some of the best leaders were that way,” Sam—Blazing said. “And some were spineless wimps. Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure you won’t be the second one.”

She left about an hour later, returning to her quarters to find Hazel sitting up for her.

Rather, she was in the airbed wrapped in a blanket, with a flashlight propped up on Wayfinder’s mattress pointing down at the little book she was reading. She looked up as Wayfinder came in, seeming almost surprised to see her. “You didn’t stay out all night without me at least. I still would’ve rather come.”

Wayfinder didn’t say anything at all at first, dropping to the ground and breathing heavily from the effort of the teleport. Her powers were improving, enough that she could even attempt such a long-distance jump. Though taking one with a passenger wasn’t something she would be jumping eagerly to repeat if she didn’t have to.

“Then we’d have to walk both ways. I… saved enough energy to…” She flopped sideways into her bed, shifting and crawling towards the head. A pony body wasn’t shaped to be able to move easily on her side or her belly, but she managed. Got herself to the edge, resting her head on a pillow.

“Did he agree? Is he coming?”

She already knows who I’m talking about. Of course she did. Hazel was an adolescent, not an idiot. She levitated the flashlight over herself, then tapped it to switch it off, before settling it onto the shelf next to Hazel’s bed. “Yes. I suppose I’ll need to work out accommodations for him, at least for a little while.”

“You think he’s smart enough to solve all the city’s problems?”

Wayfinder hesitated. That one took a little longer for her to answer. Not just because she didn’t know how she felt, but because the answer was probably going to make it back to Sunburst sooner or later. It was her the city had to be confident in, not him. He was an alien stranger, one who could build a great little society but had to do it hidden in the woods out of the people who ran away from society.

The bridge to winning over the ordinary humans in the equation was Wayfinder herself. And they would need plenty of other experts, she already had their numbers. But she wouldn’t call them quite yet.

Morning came too early after her late night negotiating. She got herself a plate of simple rations in the mess, then shuffled towards her office. By the time she crawled into her seat, several sets of sharp bootsteps echoed on the hall.

A pair of officers escorted a single familiar unicorn, one leading and one following behind. At least neither were pointing their weapons at him.

He could’ve left the wizard cape at home. No wonder they’d seen fit to give Sunburst an escort, if he approached like someone who worked at a carnival.

“Captain,” said one of the officers, pushing the glass door partly open. “Do you know this guy? He insists you called for him, despite the obvious signs to the contrary. Want us to give him a tour of the drunk tank?”

She forced a smile, forced a level of decorum she didn’t really feel, sitting up at her desk and looking back. “It’s even worse than you think, officer. He’s a nerd. If you stuck him in there, they’d eat him alive. Just send him in.”

Sunburst looked surprisingly awake for the early hour, with a faint scent of trees and coffee about him. He hung his cloak up on a coat-peg, then shrugged out of a heavy saddlebag, resting it up across the back of a chair. Heavy books balanced on both sides, rolls of paper, binders and other writing supplies. Though the books were of strange quality, everything else looked like it came from a college bookstore. The pen tucked behind his ear was a modern design, glittering metal.

“Show me your records,” he said, without preamble. “I mean… good morning, Wayfinder. You look good this morning. Can I have your paperwork, please?”

“My…” she blushed, then turned to look over her shoulder. Sure enough, there were several banker’s boxes there, piled on the floor and onto extra table space and anywhere else they’d fit. It looked like a whole forest, yet now that she actually cared to look, she realized it wasn’t.

“These boxes here,” she said, levitating one onto the desk between them. “There are nine of them. Then we have some files on the digital side, but we mostly use that to try and trace identities and find next of kin. We’ve been keeping most things analog since we started…”

His mouth fell open. “A settlement of… millions,” he said, agape. “You couldn’t even write all their names on so few pages.”

“Yeah, we… haven’t really,” she sighed, then slid the box along the tabletop towards him. “We’ve been doing what Washington told us for most of the outbreak. By the time we started making our own decisions, it was…”

Wayfinder slumped into the seat, resting her head in her hooves. “Like this. I’ve got a whiteboard with some of my thoughts on where to go if you’d rather start there.”

He glanced over to the board, read it in a few seconds, then shook his head once. “How about I just soak up what you’ve got so far. I… may have misjudged how prepared you ponies are. If you don’t even have information… He looked away. “This is so much worse than I thought. Bring those other boxes, princess. I’ve got a lot of reading to do.”

She levitated one down to the desk, then stopped. “Okay, but—don’t you start calling me that.”

He flushed, tail flicking suddenly against the floor. “Right. Force of habit.”

Of course she wasn’t just sitting around while Sunburst devoured every manila folder and piece of paper in the office. She had other worries to consider, like where he would sleep that night. It took her twenty minutes to figure out which of the many contacts in her new phone was the one to help with that specific problem.

“You want me to…” said the mare on the other end, her voice the gruff, annoyed type she’d come to expect from many around the base. “Can’t you just stick your specialist in your old quarters?”

“I’ve only ever had one set of quarters,” she said, frustrated. She couldn’t say they weren’t large enough for three, given she’d done exactly that with Ruby. So far as the policy of the isolation zone were concerned, she’d lived with her significant other for most of her time there.

“Until… yesterday,” said the pony on the other end, her voice stretching slow. Like she was talking to a toddler. “You got Captain’s old place. I had a few recruits clean it out as soon as he left. I assumed you’d already… shit. Sorry, Captain. I forget you weren’t put in for your familiarity with our protocol. You’re here for a different kind of miracle.”

Wayfinder sighed. “Just tell me where to find it. And… I could put him in my old quarters?”

“If you wanted. The captain has a suite on the top floor, some guestrooms for anyone who visits. We used to get lots of official representatives from Congress and stuff, and he needed somewhere they could stay. I know he’d be furious if you did that, but… it’s your quarters. Do what you want with it. Want me to have your belongings moved up?”

She returned to the office with lunch, then dinner later in the day. By then, Sunburst had finished reading, and had several notepads spread around the room, all of them open to various scribbles. Wayfinder stayed out of his way, depositing the food and fresh water where he would find it and slipping back out again.

By evening a crowd had begun to gather outside the office, a cloud of off-duty officers watching the explosion of pages that gradually filled the interior. Sunburst tacked some of them up on the wall, or taped them to the inside of the glass. He was designing something, though Wayfinder couldn’t tell at first what it was.

Until nearly midnight, when Hazel had returned from their new quarters and found it empty, so slept on the bean-bag instead. Wayfinder stared at the scattering pieces of notebook paper and the open boxes, and realized what Sunburst was doing.

“This is…” her mouth opened and closed. Her tail drooped, her eyes hung heavy. But she kept going anyway. “You planned a city.”

“A country,” he corrected, knocking over several open cardboard coffee-cups without realizing it. “It’s a city right now. But there are millions of ponies in the surrounding areas, and their lives are going just as badly. That doesn’t mean investing resources in events that might or might not happen. It means that we can’t neglect our foundation, because it may have to carry a great weight.”

He leaned to one side, so far he nearly toppled over. “I— believe—”

Wayfinder vanished from across the room, reappearing beside him in exactly the right position to catch him against her side. Not easy; he was still a stallion, heavier than she was by a considerable margin. She grunted under the pressure, but managed to stay upright.

“I believe you need rest,” she corrected, before he could say anything further. “Why don’t we pick this back up early tomorrow morning. That way whatever you’re about to tell me will be the best possible version of your idea it can be. Seeing as I’ll have to take it and get the rest of Denver on-board.”

“I… alright, princess. Perhaps we could… arrange sleeping quarters in the meantime.”

She nodded, and told him.

1. I have a spot in the barracks ready for you.
2. The captain’s quarters upstairs has room for guests.