Steampunk: The start of a new age

by Philosopher Brony

Chapter 7: Before the storm

Author's Note:

If you are reading this for a youtube video (or anything online in general), please help a fellow Youtuber out by giving my channel a shout out. After all, I did write this story.

My channel is: 1gamer13

I'm sorry, this seems like a low move on my part

It has been a day since Rainbow Dash's surgery. She was still getting use to what had happened to her, but she managed. RD actually wanted to thank the doctor, but the her schedule was too full at the time to pay him a visit. Rainbow was sitting in an armchair reading her favorite Daring Do book in her personal quarters. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to reed very well because her left eye was still readjusting since the surgery. A soldier outside of her door notified Rainbow that her speech was in a couple of minutes. She finished the page she was on, placed the book back on the shelf, and got prepared. Rainbow put on her specialized uniform and grabbed some note cards with her speech on them.

Rainbow was escorted by two soldiers to the podium. They stood at her sides as she got ready to speak. The crowd in front of her was mostly comprised of soldiers, then citizens, and then the few news reporters from all over Equestria. Some of the news ponies didn't really know what to think of the rainbow hair pony that was in front of them. Rainbow tapped the microphone a few times to get everyone's attention.

Rainbow Dash started her speech in a powerful tone alongside a sense of pride: "Good morning my fellow Pegasi. I wish to thank you for attending... Cloudsdale is a very prosperous city, in fact it is the sole provider of the life giving sustenance that is rain. And we are the stewards of the weather for all of Equestria! I wish to recall upon our origins. Back when we were known as Pegasopilus. Back when we were the dominant force in our world, and we took orders from nopony! I wish to bring that up because I feel that we must get in touch with our roots and once again become THE WORLD SUPERPOWER! We must rise out of our former lives under Celestia's rule, and take back what is ours'! I shall be your glorious general in the inevitable battle that we will face, but we will prevail! When we were freezing to death by the hooves of the Unicorns, we prevailed! When we were starving to death because of the greedy Earth Ponies, we prevailed! And when we will be at war against Celesitia, we will not only prevail, we... will... CONQUER!" Almost the entire crowed cheered after hearing her give that speech. The only ones that didn't were the news reporters from other cities. Out of fear of being arrested by the soldiers for some unseen resin, the reporters fled the city with news of Cloudsdale seceding.

Rainbow returned to her room to be greeted by a smack on the side of the head. She slammed against a wall, but she didn't black out like the last time she was hit. The stranger charged at her at almost a blinding speed. All Rainbow knew was that the stranger was a purple mare, and could move faster than she could. Suddenly, Rainbow felt a sharp pain in her side as the mare shoved a knife into her side. The attacker lunged onto Rainbow's back, and started chocking her. While this was happening, Rainbow managed to pull out the knife and slice at the stranger. It missed causing it to fly out of her hoof. Rainbow tried to force the attacker off of her, but the mare stayed on while saying the same sentence over and over. "I have to kill the source!" The stranger said over and over. Eventually, Rainbow bucked her off and across the room. The sound of wing bones snapping rang through the air. The attacker was crippled, and Rainbow Dash knew it. Rainbow didn't hesitate and went for the attack. The mare leapt out of the way letting Rainbow hit the wall. The force of the smack caused the room to shake. They both fell over onto the floor. Before the attacker knew it, Rainbow was on top of her with the knife in her mouth.

Rainbow Dash looked down at the mare and said with intense anger: "You'r going to suffer BITCH!" The knife was jabbed into one of the attacker's wings causing blood to splatter on the floor. Rainbow was knocked off, but she got back to her hives to see that the mare was heading for the window in an attempt to get away. Blood dripped on the floor as she tried to get to her means of escape.

Rainbow grabbed onto her tail with her hoof and began to pull her back as she said with confidence: Don't even bother trying to get away now. I'm the fastest bucking flyer in cloudsdale! You are going to dye slowly you piece of shi-" Rainbow was interrupted by a powerful kick to the face. This gave the mare enough time to jump out of the window and fly out of sight. Rainbow Dash wasn't able to she where she went which just left her with intense anger. Soon, soldiers ran in and examined the room, but not before making sure their general was okay.

A troop helped her onto a chair then asked: "Are you all right general?"

"I'm fine, I might need my eye fixed, but that BITCH got away!" Rainbow slammed her hoof down on the arm of the chair.

"Who are you talking about?"

"An assassin, that mother bucker got some hits in, but I was able to cripple her. I want her caught and brought to me so that I may kill her myself!"

"Yes General, right away!"

They began to leave until Rainbow said: "I want you to notify they king about this, and to ask for his approval to mobilize the army. I expect an answer by the end of the day."

"Yes General, right away!" They left the room to leave Rainbow Dash to herself. She was trying to piece together who the assassin was, but she couldn't come to a conclusion. Those thoughts were pushed aside so that she could think about battle tactics. Rainbow knew her assassin must have came from Equestria, so she wanted to make them all pay for trying to kill her.

Applejack Entered Sir. Cog's office with the scroll in her satle bag. His office was simperer than Flim's office. There wasn't anything special except for boxes of gears, pipes, and wires. Machines were scattered about the room with blueprints near them. Cog was behind a desk with piles of papers around him. There was a look of extreme focus in his eyes as he scanned the papers.

He finally took notice of her, and said with glee: "Good-evening Mis. Applejack! How are you?"

"I'm fine, how are you?" AJ replied.

"I doing fine as well. If you don't mind me asking, why did you decide to come here?"

"I was asked to give you this scroll." Applejack said then retrieved the for mentioned scroll and handed it to Cog.

He looked at quickly and asked: "Who is this from?"

"Flim." After AJ said that name, Cog's face turned stern with intense thought and concern for why Flim would want to contact him.

"Do you by any chance know why he wishes to contact me?"

"No, but he did seem off when he told me to give ya that." Cog became slightly more concerned after hearing that. Against his instincts, Cog opened that scroll to see what was written. Once he saw what was written down, he was showing signs of confusion and more intense thought.

"Could you come over here and take a look at this?" Cog asked the mare while still studying the scroll. Applejack walked over and looked at it alongside Cog. The scroll was covered in words that were nothing more than writings of a madman, but there were a few key words that stood out from the rest. Those words were: Traitor, Cycle, and Source. After looking at it for a little longer, cog pointed out a phrase that was out of place from the rest of the scroll. 'Save them. I'm gone.' was written over and over in the middle of the paper. It was somewhat scary to see this just written over and over and it not meaning anything, at least for right now.

Eventually, Cog rolled up the scroll and shoved it in a drawer while saying: "That... was interesting. I'll try to figure out what it means latter, but for right now, I must get bak to my work."

For some unexplained resin, Applejack became interested in his work and asked: "What are ya workin' on?"

Cog's unusually happy self retuned and responded in a chipper tone: "It's a project that will drastically help everything from manually labor to helping supply troops to army. I call it the A.I.S. Project that stands for: Automated Iron Stallion." He presented her with blueprints of the machine. Unfortunately, it was far too complicated for AJ to understand, and it might even be hard for Twilight to understand. Cog continued as Applejack looked at the papers: "I have gone trough a few prototypes trying to get this to work, but a lot of them had the same trouble. Their heat sync colds kept overheating causing it to become hot enough to cause spontaneous combustion of nearby organic matter. Thinking back on the experiments, those ones had a better result than the earlier ones."

"What happened to the earlier ones?"

"Well.. in short, they all simply exploded in a violent enough explosion to cause both a small crater, and internal organ damage to anything within 30 yards."

"Oh..."

"Yes... Anyways, I should get to my work, and I'm sure that you have work to do as well." Applejack left the office, but not before they exchanged their goodbyes. Instead of going back to his work, he retrieved the scroll from earlier. Cog wanted to study to some more to at least have a small understanding of what it meant. If he knew anything about this type of stuff, it was that there must be some form of connection between them. Eventually, he stopped after going over it for the tenth time, and he got back to his work.

It was after sunset when Applejack was walking home when something caught her attention from a nearby alleyway. It was a subtle moan from an unidentifiable being. The sense of fear washed over her, and everything cell in her body was telling her to run. AJ ignored the felling because the moan could be coming from an injured pony.

She walked down the dark alley in search for the source of the sounds. Eventually, she found it, and she was right. In the shadows, there was a stallion in dire need of medical help. Most of the stallion was hidden in the darkness, but the parts that were exposed were severely burnt and beaten. He didn't even look like he was breathing, but he would occasionally moan in pain.

AJ stepped towards him and asked with concern: "Hey, do ya need help because you look like you got burned badly?" The stallion shifted his position once he heard her voice. Applejack felt like she should run for her life. Something wasn't right here, but she couldn't figure it out. The stranger reached his hoof out to her. He was shaking and even more burnt than the rest of him. AJ grabbed his hoof and helped him up. His hoof felt like something was crawling under it. Finally, she figured out what was wrong. The stallion was Flam's corpse. She stumbled backwards after seeing his face, and fear was completely in control.

"What the-" Applejack was cut off as a tendril lashed out at her from Flam's mouth. It wrapped around her neck and lifted her into the air. She struggled to free herself as the monster just stared at her with it's cold eyes. Flam shortened the distance between the two, but never broke eye contact. Once flam was close enough, Applejack used all of her lower body strength to buck Flam square in the face. Flam's skull shattered upon impact, and the tendril around her neck loosened. She used this as an opportunity to get out of it's grasp. AJ landed on the ground, but she was meet by even more tendrils. Flam continued his assault on Applejack with renewed anger. Luckily, Applejack was able to fend most of them off. Only one or two of them made contact. All of the noise from the fight caused other ponies to notice. The monster noticed the approaching ponies and ran further into the alley. AJ was still alive, but just barely. She was cut up, covered in bruises, and had a broken bone or two. For the rest of the night, she made her way to the hospital, and she was thinking about what just happened the entire time.

Comments

[Philosopher Brony]

Chapter 7 is finished! Get ready for twists and turns in this chapter!

[Dante1120]

4251741 wait WHAT!?!!??!?? WHAT HAPPENED TO DASHIE!!!!! also epic chapter MOARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

[Philosopher Brony]

4255339 Any guess of what happened to Rainbow, or who the assassin was?

[Dante1120]

4255895 well I think I know she got her eye operated on and it made her controllable

[Philosopher Brony]

4256855 What about the assassin? Also, great guess.

[Dante1120]

4257743 didn't look at the description