"Unscheduled beacon activation. Security Team Alpha, report to Gate Three."
Twilight Sparkle blinked into existence on the floor of Gate Three, standing triumphantly atop the piled bodies of her teammates, victorious and unmarked.
“Yes!” she cried, hopping down from the pony pile and levitating the beacon off her horn, a smug swagger in her step. “Sparkle, Twilight. Insider. Team One-Five. Beacon clear, no contamination. Mission accomplished.”
The guards lowered their weapons fractionally, eyeing the elated unicorn and her piled teammates with a suspicious eye.
“Twilight, you foal,” Walleye groaned from underneath the pile. “Our equipment is still back there. And my rifle.”
“Oh…”
“Yes. ‘Oh.’”
“Well it’s hardly my fault that the four of you were about to tear each other apart!” Twilight rebuffed, allowing her saddlebags to be levitated off by a nearby guard. “I acted to defuse the situation.”
“Retrieval can collect your belongings,” the lead guard informed them, gruffly. “You need to be debriefed, especially since you arrived overdue.”
“Blame Twilight,” Rainboom muttered, pulling herself free of the pile.
“How was our arriving late my fault?”
“If you hadn’t taking your sweet time in rescuing us, we would have gotten back before the deadline!”
“Oh, here we go again. Somehow this is always her fault.” She pointed emphatically at Twilight. “Why are you so eager to lay blame on everyone?”
“Well it’s certainly not mine,” Walleye countered, advancing menacingly. “This mission was bucked into oblivion before we even arrived, and now we’ve wasted twelve hours that could have been better spent looking for Lunatic.”
“At least we know where she is now,” Twilight muttered.
“Yes, about to get beheaded.”
“Remind me again, featherbrain,” Lyra shouted, her eyes narrowing. “Which one of us is too busy arguing with everypony to bother trying to rescue the pony she claims to be so concerned about?”
Walleye dove at Lyra, only to freeze in mid-air, a lavender aura enveloping both her and her intended target.
“I will stun you both,” Twilight threatened. “Seriously, I’ve seen foals who are better-behaved than you two.”
“Get your filthy magic off me, Insider.”
“Word to the wise,” Twilight continued, tendrils of malice edging into her voice as she matched Walleye’s glare. “It’s not a smart move to insult someone who has you in their grip and could crush you with nary a thought.”
Walleye went to respond, only to have her mouth clamped shut by Twilight’s magic.
“And since you’re too stupid to take that advice voluntarily, I shall do it for you.”
The two glared at each other through the undulating magical aura, Twilight’s expression mixed with equal degrees of distaste and exasperation, while Walleye’s radiated pure fury.
“What is the reason for your late arrival?” the lead guard asked, breaking the silence.
“We were captured,” Lyra replied, her voice oddly at ease despite being suspended several hooflengths above the floor. “Guards bushwhacked us the moment we arrived.”
“And I landed in Canterlot,” Twilight said. “Turns out it was my homeworld and no-one thought to tell me. Had to stay overnight before heading to Ponyville and doing the spell deconstruction.”
“So you succeeded then?” the guard prompted. “You know where Lunatic is?”
“Yes, she’s-”
"Unscheduled beacon activation. Security Team Alpha, report to Gate Three."
Her answer was cut off as a grey-blue alicorn blinked into existence, clutching at what appeared to be a pony-shaped suit of metal.
“-right there?” Twilight finished, inadvertently dropping Walleye and Lyra to the floor in her surprise.
“Lunatic?” Walleye asked, not even bothering to right herself after being dropped.
“Hey boss,” Lunatic replied, her voice wavering as she rose to her feet, color draining from her face as blood loss from her missing wing set in. “I got her!”
Her eyes rolled upwards as her body chose that moment to relinquish consciousness, a wet squelch echoing through the chamber as she fell sideways onto the blood-stained floor of Gate Three.
------
Containment is one of the few locations aboard the Exterior in regular, consistent use that very few ponies even know exist. Fewer still know exactly how to reach the labyrinth of heavily-reinforced chambers that comprised the Exterior’s high-security storage facility, held behind thaumically-reinforced bulkheads, near-impenetrable force fields, and spatial geometries folded back upon themselves in a manner solidly beyond comprehension of most physical lifeforms, ponies included.
Despite this, if the greater population of the Exterior had caught wind of the existence of Containment, along with the myriad items and creatures that warranted confinement within it, the Exterior’s population would drop rapidly enough to make statisticians fear it would plunge into negatives on the way down.
Celestia stood at the edge of Chamber L-55, surveying the interlocking mechanisms that held the chamber’s occupant in place. Numerous force fields shimmered as they interlaced and distended, dynamically adjusting themselves to provide the maximum tensile strength against any impact, while a second, sympathetic field automatically nullified any ambient magical energy within the containment field’s bounds. Fifteen separate shell segments hung in the air around the force field, ready to slam closed at the slightest hint of a breach and allowing time for a second set of containment protocols to initialise, suspending time flow within the shell.
A single pony floated in the centre of the system, held painfully in place by a gravity well that prevented her from assuming any form other than a tightly-packed ball of limbs. It was a cell that was provably impossible to escape from, at least without outside help.
However, Celestia felt uneasy. The pink-maned ball of mad alicorn floating there had evaded capture for years, slipping through other ‘provably escape-proof’ nets in the past and leaving a trail of bodies, Insider and Outsider alike, in her wake. That she was there now meant that either they had gotten very lucky, or that Theta was capable enough to escape from the cage she now found herself within.
There was a third possibility, of course. But it wasn’t one that Celestia was particularly eager to entertain, given that it required her to consider the possibility that Theta had allies.
“I know you’re there,” Theta mumbled, her voice picked up by the array of monitoring devices in the chamber and helpfully reconstructed for Celestia to hear. “Have you come to gloat?”
“I’ve come to talk,” Celestia replied, slowly approaching the containment field, stopping short when she reached the line of shell sections.
“Talk?” Theta spat. “You expect to talk? And you call me crazy!”
“You are crazy!” Celestia cocked her head, trying to follow the pink alicorn’s logic.
“You’ll find out soon enough, Princess Pink,” Theta taunted, her voice happy and chirpy despite her physical construction. “Once I get out of here, you’ll get your answer.”
“That… wasn’t a question. I know you’re crazy.”
“Not that, dummy. The other question.”
“I haven’t asked you any questions at all yet!”
“Oh haven’t you? I thought we’d just skip past that bit of you asking the questions and me acting all coy and villainously flirtatious, fun though it is to watch you squirm, Pink.”
“If you think you can unnerve me with mind games, Theta, you’re wrong.”
“Oh, I don’t need to play mind games to unnerve you, Pink. You’re already unnerved from my reputation. And the fact that you don’t know the answer to your question.”
“There has been no question.”
“Just because you haven’t asked it yet doesn’t mean I don’t know what it is. No it’s not.”
“...What?”
“You were going to say, ‘that’s horseapples’. I’m proving my point. Yes you are.”
“I’m- stop that!”
Theta giggled, making Celestia shiver.
“Fine,” Celestia seethed, circling the outer shell boundary. “So you’re not going to tell me the answer to a question I haven’t asked yet.”
“What’s the fun in telling you now? Then I don’t get to see your reaction when you find out for real!”
“Thing is, though,” Celestia continued, ignoring Theta’s infuriatingly sing-song voice, “I can’t trust any answer you give me anyway. If you say you are working with somepony else, it could just be a ruse to divert my attention into finding somepony that doesn’t exist while you tear us apart from within. But if you claim you’re working alone, it’s just a way to distract me from finding whoever it is that’s going to stab me in the back.”
“I’m hungry,” Theta complained after a moment of silence, her voice petulant. “Think you could bring me some food?”
“You’re not hungry. The field overrides your metabolism.”
“Okay, fine, I’m not hungry,” Theta admitted. “But this is all so boring. I already know everything you’re going to say years before you say it. Yes I am.”
“You’re not- Buck!”
Theta giggled again.
“This is getting nowhere,” Celestia groaned, turning back to the exit of the chamber. “Enjoy your new home, Theta. You’ll be in it until you start giving straight answers, or I drop you into the Void. Whichever comes first.”
“Buh-bye Pwincess,” Theta sung. “ Enjoy your emergency!”
Celestia stormed from the chamber, extinguishing the chamber’s lighting spell on her way out, Theta’s increasingly-manic laughter following in her wake.
------
“Why exactly am I here?” Twilight asked, barely keeping pace with her grey-coated CO as she cantered down the corridor at speed. “What in Tartarus do you need me for, Walleye?”
“You’re my lockpick,” She replied, skidding around a corner. “You can magically unlock things, right?”
“Yes. Well… most things that aren’t already magically locked, but that’s not what I meant.”
“Well, we’ll just have to hope you’re skilled enough to unlock what I need.”
“Walleye, stop dodging the question. Why are you trusting me with this? You hate me, last I checked.”
Walleye skidded to a halt outside of a heavy dual door, turning to fix Twilight with a look of frustration. “Because, much as I would rather otherwise, you’re the only magic adept I can call on right now to get what I need out of the Armory.”
“Why don’t you just ask them for it?”
“Because there’s no way anypony is going to let me into that section,” Walleye said, pressing her beacon to the door’s access plate, prompting it to neatly fold away into the adjoining walls to reveal racks upon racks of weapons. Twilight eyed the racks with curiosity, awed not only by the number of familiar implements, but the variety of unfamiliar ones.
“That was easy,” Twilight observed, once again following as Walleye trotted into the Armory. “Bit small, though.”
“She says to the mare that carries around a rifle that’s longer than she is.”
“Okay, fair point...” Twilight trailed off, stopping to look at an array of jewels set atop pedestals, equally spaced twelve hooflengths away from each other.
“Would you keep up?” Walleye said, gritting her teeth and turning to glare at Twilight
“What are these?” Twilight asked, levitating one of the stones off its pedestal so she could examine it further. “Some kind of spell stone?”
“Probably,” Walleye replied, trotting over to read the label. “Um… This is all gobbledygook to me… ‘Self-Recharging Thaumic Energy Stone. Two point five… Kith?’”
“Kith?”
“I don’t know that word. K-T-H.”
“That’s a unit of measurement. Kilothaum. Used to measure… magical…” Twilight trailed off as what she had just said sunk in, staring at the stone with a mixture of wonderment and horror. “...energy.”
“And… what? 2.5 is a lot?”
“Yes,” Twilight breathed, delicately setting the stone back down. “It’s immense. Normal unicorns can barely leverage ten or fifteen thaum without exhausting themselves, this stone is storing more than one hundred and fifty times that!”
“Take one, then,” Walleye said, tapping her hoof in impatience. “It’s not like it’ll be missed. I’ve seen Ops teams wearing those like they’re going out of fashion.”
“Okay, pertinent question,” Twilight began, gently attaching the stone to her beacon ring, reforming the metal to clasp around the stone. “Back home, this stone would be considered a weapon of mass destruction. Nopony bar Celestia herself has ever managed to create a powerstone with that kind of capacity, and you have them lying around, unguarded.”
“Yes,” Walleye replied, rounding the corner and stepping onto a wall, her subjective gravity rotating with the change in perspective. “Not hearing a question yet…”
“If this is something you don’t think is dangerous enough to lock up with any degree of seriousness,” Twilight continued, pausing for a moment to following Walleye, shaking her head with the disorienting change in gravity. “How dangerous is whatever it is you’re wanting me to help you steal?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Oh, no way,” Twilight said, stubbornly shaking her head. “I’m not moving another step until you tell me what we’re here for.”
“Now you listen here,” Walleye growled, rounding on Twilight. “I don’t care. I don’t take orders from you. Now, you can either shut up and keep cantering, or I can escort you back to your room and good luck ever getting me to trust you with anything, ever again.”
“...Fine,” Twilight acquiesced, ears drooping slightly.
They continued in relative silence for over a mile, Twilight choosing to occupy her time by pinging the powerstone now bound to her beacon ring, pulling various parameters from the stone, when it was made, the exact energy capacity, how much she could requisition for immediate use in a single go…
She was so enthralled in the crystal that she almost missed Walleye taking an abrupt turn, leading them both into a small, nondescript domed chamber with a hoof-thick crystal floor, underneath which lay a locking mechanism that, to Twilight at least, could be described only as ‘beautiful’.
Walleye, however, was less impressed by the lock, standing off to one side and pointing at the floor. “I need you to open this.”
Twilight trotted forward, analysing the myriad of interlocking gears and mechanisms with a critical eye, occasionally probing the construction with a carefully-placed ping of magic. Her expression grew steadily more dismayed with each component identified.
“I can’t.”
“Oh, so Miss ‘Mission Accomplished’ can’t get past a simple lock?”
“This lock is by no stretch of the word ‘simple,’” Twilight snapped. “This is probably the single-most-complicated thaumomechanical device I have ever seen or likely will ever see in my life. I wouldn’t know where to start!”
“Why does that matter? You’re a unicorn, just dump some magic at and make it open.”
“That wouldn’t work. I can’t just fire a spell at it with the order of ‘open up,’ because there’s a far more powerful spell, several far more powerful spells, actually, sitting in there with the explicit instruction of ‘no, don’t open up.’ Without knowing the exact timing and exact strength each locking component needs to be triggered, I can’t open it.”
Walleye waved her hoof in the air in a clear ‘blah, blah, blah’ gesture.
“And the fact that I know that much is a miracle in itself! This entire plate is covered in a field that screws with magical interrogation, so I’m having to guess most of this based on the thaumic equivalent of shining a light on something and trying to figure out what its shape really is from the shadow it casts! That’s not mentioning the structural reinforcing, the layers upon layers upon layers of thaumic field interference that basically result in any external magical effect being rendered impotent after a few hooflengths. I can’t levitate anything inside, I can’t teleport in or out, it’s a magical black hole!”
“You’re talking,” Walleye said, “but I’m pretty sure you’re not speaking the same language as me.”
“Gah,” Twilight facehoofed, groaning in frustration. “Okay, lay-ponies explanation. A normal mechanical lock works by little segmented pins. You put a key in, it pushes the pins up until all the little lines of segmentation align, and you can turn it. Simple, and with magic you can just fire a spell that finds the right amount to raise the pins to unlock it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Walleye said, rolling her eyes. “I follow you.”
“This,” Twilight gestured to the floor, “works by examining a pony’s magical field. There’s dozens of tiny little collector pins in there, which react to a certain frequency of magical excitation. Each individual pony has a unique magical ‘signature,’ if you will, and you can only unlock this lock if your magic matches the magic that’s programmed into the lock.”
Walleye nodded, clearly bored and impatient.
“The thing is, though, this whole ‘Outsider’ thing makes it more complicated, since my magical field is the same as any other Twilight Sparkle on the Exterior, or in the Interior, for that matter. That’s what I don’t get. It’s quite obviously a magical signature recognition lock, though a very, very thorough and complicated one, but that alone wouldn’t work. Unless Outsiders have some extra field component that this thing reacts to that is different from pony to pony, any Twilight Sparkle could just come in here and pulse their magic, and the lock would open.”
As if to punctuate her point, she loosed a mild thaumic ping, a barely-visible purple wave echoing off the walls of the chamber, motes of light flickering through the floor as the lock reacted to the pulse, reading and responding to her magical imprint.
Two seconds later, the entire mechanism slid sideways with a solid mechanical thump.
“...Much like that,” Twilight breathed as the lock rotated and a panel in the centre of the floor rose, revealing a simple metallic-silver cylinder covered in warnings.
“Good work, rookie!” Walleye exclaimed, trotting forward to retrieve the object. “Never doubted you for a moment!”
“That shouldn’t have worked.”
“And yet it did,” Walleye said, swinging the cylinder onto her back, a strap looped around her barrel.
“But it shouldn’t have!” Twilight yelled, turning to Walleye as the floor section sunk back into place. “It’s impossible!”
“I’m not going to complain that we got what I came here for, but apparently, you are.”
“What is it, anyway?” Twilight asked, trotting forward to read the prominently affixed warning sign, a red circle-enclosed six-pointed star denoting the presence of high-energy magic components. “Thaumonuclear Implosion Assembly. Two Megathaum Effective Discharge. Handle with Care.”
Twilight turned to look at Walleye, all color drained from her face. “Two megathaum?”
“Yes,” Walleye snapped, purposefully walking towards the exit. “It’s a very large bomb. Those monsters are going to pay for what they did to Lunatic, and I wanted an appropriate weapon. Now, are you coming or not?”
shit you don't mess with walleye
Err... The falls are going to... Fall
Something is screaming at me that Walleye and Lunatic are much more than just team mates. I wonder if Twilight will be fighting her fall self that rules with an iron hoof and loves public executions? Meh, we shall see. In one week.
Ah got to love it when top class security is so easily compromised by one being. Frankly in a universe of near identical copies forcing security measures to take two different being to unlock should have been a must.
I'm not sure I get why Twilight agreed here. She knows Walleye is after something dangerous, knows Walleye hates her, has no personal loyalty or other reason to help her... and agrees to help without hearing what she's helping to steal because Walleye "won't ever trust her with anything again"?
Did I miss something there? I can't see that she ever trusted Twilight to begin with, or any indication that Twilight has any interest in earning her trust.
...
Boom.
There's no kill like overkill, right?
Why is Twilight even going along with this madness?
5223014 Just because you can't trust what someone says doesn't mean they can't give you some fascinating little tidbits to consider. Granted, the whole time-traveller speech issue is a royal headache, but once you work out what is actually being answered things get clearer. Or you can try confusing her enough that she sticks to the present for a conversation.
In regards to the second, well, that plan never really works. First you kill someone, then someone witnesses it and you have to kill them too, and pretty soon it turns into one of those plans where you're killing everyone who notices you're killing people. And we all know how those end.
5223000
She's explicitly trusting someone who literally wants her dead.
There's nativity and then there's this stupidity at this point.
Also the fact that Wall-eye is about to consider genocide...Yeah she's a bleedin' imbecile.
Kill them All!
Kill them with Fire!
5223465
The Outside is on fire, everybody's dead, and you've lost your hat?
5223512
meh ...
Its only one city and one bomb.
Unless the magic nuke is vastly more powerful than human atomic weapons the death tole wont go much over 20k or so.
By human standards thats barely a mass murderer much less Genocide.
Derpy will have to put on her big girl pants to get numbers into the genocide range.
If nothing else (assuming that the bomb does not completely blow up the planet) FE could use a ... change of moral direction ...
5223654 Actually considering it's more medieval sort of style a small kingdom could likely be ended by a nuke with many bloodlines being destroyed and all.
The problem with this entire page is that it relies on Twilight suddenly becoming submissive, weak, and most important brain dead.
She was fighting with her and knows she doesn't like her at the beginning, and to prove her trust to someone who is always going to hate her because of what she is (and because she's hypocritical), she helps her break into a high security storage with which Walleye isn't supposed to be there. This entire chapter is horrid because it's as if Twilight's return to the Outsider caused her to become addled. There is literally no reason to Twilight becoming submissive and helping someone who actively hates her to break into a High Security Weapons Storage!
I want to know what makes one an "Outsider" as apposed to an "Insider." Is it the simple fact you wind up on The Outside under your own power?
Because from the way The Outside was described; found by the first Celestia and other ponies just showing up overtime, I would think that all Outsiders had been Insiders before. Is it the fact that our main Twilight was brought to the Outside though some means other than her own power that makes her an "Insider"?
i ask because that seems to be the main sticking point of Walleye's bigotry; that this Twilight is an Insider. But it is not clear to me what makes one an "Outsider".
I would say all who don't know about The Outside are Insiders, but our Twilight here not longer fits that criteria so I am at a loss to say why she still carries that moniker.
5223681
I don't know if i would call her submissive or weak (definitely not brain dead) but i will happily grant you uninformed and a stranger in a strange land.
She knows Derpy does not like her but Derpy is one the few ponies that she does know and herd instinct (group instinct in humans) would tend to guide her towards going along with her new associates. At least until she learns enough to make her own way in her new world.
I admit she should have talked to Celestia (her one Actual friend there) but anyone can get bull rushed into doing ill advised things when under stress.
I am just trying to give her the benefit of the doubt until we learn more ...
5223945 "I will not trust you, unless you can get me into a high facility weapons that has locks that would prevent most if not all access to anyone, of which I don't have access"
Yeah I'm going with brain dead, Twilight might have a light herd mentality but the problem is that Twilight doesn't carelessly break rules which she would know are in place to prevent major problems. There's a difference between trusting a criminal and a law maker, and right now she's acting stupid with someone she knows has issues, and not "subtle" issues, but blatant "I don't like you, I'm a violent person, and you just saw what amounted to major weapons cache"
Brain Dead is pretty much the word I'd use here because Twilight wasn't even this trusting in the show.
Okay, I'm going to guess the plan: Arm bomb in secluded location but close enough to still get your target (given that we're talking nuclear here not terribly hard to find somewhere that meets that criteria) then start a timed detonation then port out. So, if I'm right (and that is an if) they're going to leave a massive warhead unattended however briefly. Yup, this'll end poorly.
5223930
I've been getting the impression that there are outside worlds and inside worlds, with everything slotting into place from there.
5224543
It probably would have helped smooth it over if there was some sort of intermission between "They just got back, Twilight just sealed her lips and then left after they both cursed each other" and "They are now angry buddy buddies breaking into restricted zones".
It felt so Abrupt that I had to read it three times to make sure I didn't miss a section of text explaining why all of this was suddenly going on.
5222558
One of the key parts of Twilight's characterisation at this point (which, in retrospect, appears to have been less obvious than I initially intended) is that she's determined to prove Walleye wrong about her distrust of Insiders, and the first thing she needs to do to do that is to get Walleye to trust her.
This is the main reason why she followed through on the mission on her homeworld when she could have just run off and abandoned them, and it's also the reason the 'good luck ever getting me to trust you with anything, ever again' line worked on her.
She's going to work out what a colossally bad idea that was fairly soon.
5224618
All things considered, I'm not all that happy with this chapter. It went through ~5 rewrites before it even got to the editors, and I'm still not happy with how it turned out. It's rushed, disjointed, and probably my weakest bit of writing in the entire story.
5223465
I think "confusing Theta so much she sticks to the present" might just flat-out make her change sides. I got the impression that Ms. Bored Precog would become a thrilled puppydog servitor to someone who could do that. On which note, I suspect her ally is one (or more) of the multiverse's Discords.
I... Kind of understood what Twilight was talking about. I'd like to see the rest of your sophisticated magical system!
5225618
..She's going this far just to prove her wrong? She really is addled, considering it's very likely that all Walleye is doing is just using her because she really isn't the type to change her attitude, she really has grabbed the idiot ball so hard that it's actually quite..
Though at this rate it seems Walleye is going to be the one giving her a complete distrust of Outsiders, and I for one would love to see Wall-eye's plan fail so hard that she ends up being considered for capture like Theta.
5225861
Certainly not the impression I was aiming for. I was intending for Twilight to be socially naïve and somewhat manipulable, not... idiotic.
Admittedly, some of the characterisation here is based on my own experiences, so this might be a matter of 'reality is unrealistic', but I'm a
bitvery disappointed that 'idiot ball' is what got conveyed.5226002
She's been constantly insulted by her, Walleye mentioned to lock her up in prison right in front of her, she's actively attacked her by striking her into a wall and would blame any and everything that went wrong on her regardless of situation to the point of blind rage, she's mentioned hating "Her and her kind" to the point where it's practically a catch phrase.
If it had been ANY other character that had called to her to do this, even Rainboom I would have believed her to be easily lead astray. Walleye, and even then calling her out on her shit beforehand, and then suddenly after Theta's interrogation we see them together it just...
It's my opinion on the matter and all, but it just seems out of place, to the point where I'd believe Walleye has found some darker method of mind controlling her to believing she has socially manipulated her.
5225618
I just wanna throw in my two cents.
There are not enough thumbs, on the Exterior or Interior, to give to this fic.
Please tell me this was an original idea and that this isn't based off of a video game I haven't heard of...
Okay. I'm scared.
5226021
I can see where you're coming from.
Like I said, Even I'm unhappy with how this chapter turned out. It was a pain to write, and I personally consider it quite weak.
5226053
Ponies don't have thumbs
I get what you're trying to convey, though, thanks.
And no, it's not based off any video game I've played. It's an original idea based on some daydreams.
5225618
I did in fact get the impression that that was why she completed the mission on her homeworld, so that part was conveyed ok. I think Walleye has just been so unpleasant that I've completely seperated "gaining the trust of the Outsiders" from "gaining the trust of Walleye", and assumed the latter was impossible, and it would be the other Outsiders she would be proving herself to.
Like Wroth mentioned, I think I'd have had much less problem with her making exactly the same mistake with any other character she's spoken to since coming to the Outside. Walleye has just been so thoroughly opposed to Twilight that the idea of taking a risk of losing the trust of the other Outsiders by helping Walleye break into a secure vault for what I can only see as not even a realistic chance of gaining her trust just doesn't seem even slightly sensible.
Totally not my place to suggest re-writes, but since you've said you're also unhappy with the chapter, maybe the core of that section could happen without Twilight being told she's breaking into a secure vault? It'd still hit the important parts of Walleye getting the bomb, and Twilight being naively manipulated, but without the overt trust of someone she has no reason to trust while simultaneously betraying the other Outsiders who she might otherwise have more luck gaining the trust of.
5226002
I myself never got the idiot ball impression.
was precisely the impression i got especially since she never had Spike and the Princess as her friends and possibly never had the BBBFF relationship she had with Shining (oh and the total loss of Cadance ...).
a bit lost, more than a bit lonely and trying to find her way in a strange world made even worse by the fact that she had nothing of real import in her original world ...
just my 2 cents ... keep up with the good work
Walleye you uh... you do know that world is the way it is partially because it was nearby the Fall right? As in, the thing that happened when someone destroyed a world, which dragged another thousand worlds with it into the void, leaving a quivering rickety and unstable tear in the fabric of the multiverse? And like any tear in any fabric, widening it is far easier than getting it started? You... really think the reason your guys haven't obliterated that world off the face of existence is out of the goodness of their hearts?
I mean, granted by my estimates a 2 megathaum explosion would barely be able to destroy an entire downtown area, so the world wouldn't all go up in one swell foop. That's assuming a linear corellation between thaums and energy of course, and the notion that a relatively powerful unicorn would be limited to levitating about 200 pounds, so it could be much, much worse, but even if it isn't this is not the world you want to destabilize. Who are they going to blame for the bombing? They'll find someone to blame and kill them, and then comes the retaliation, then the escalation. Besides how is killing an entire unsuspecting neighborhood better revenge than just killing the one single certain purple unicorn who actually cut off Loonatic's wing? Aren't you supposed to be a sniper?
Walleye are you drunk
5228993 I do love winning...
5222897
"Anything worth doing is worth overdoing,"
~Adam Savage
Seriously though, wouldn't a detonation of that magnitude anywhere NEAR the Falls cause everything near it to the scale of several thousand dimensions be pulled into the collapse, effectively expanding the The Falls by a matter of up to an order of magnitude?
5232508
The assumption that those that weren't in on the secret initially will try to murder your face off once the secret's out, mostly. New things are scary, and finding out that there's a whole other realm of existence (thousands of them, in fact) where things are completely different and new is VERY scary.
That said, not going to put words into the author's mouth. This is, after all, speculation.
5228198 I'm pretty sure thaumic energy is far more powerful than mechanically engineered energy.
5238166
How much stronger? My guesstimate was that a unicorn with a lot of gusto could lift 200 pounds, certain outliers such as Twilight being notable exceptions. So that would make one thaum about 13 times as strong as the energy it takes to lift 1 pound.
It might not be a linear correlation though. If it was logarithmic, a megathaum could be ridiculously powerful. Say an average unicorn could lift the max weight of 100 pounds, and a strong one 200 pounds. That means twice as many pounds from a 5 thaum difference (10 to 15 thaums). On a logarithmic scale that means every 5 thaums doubles the energy output. So that would put 2 megathaums at...
...
Let's hope it's not a logarithmic correlation.
5238828 Based on how Walleye wanted it? I think it's a logarithmic conversion.
5239420
No, see the sun's energy output per second is about 3.8e26 joules. Assuming a logarithmic relationship, if a 15 thaum unicorn can lift 200 pounds up one single meter in a second, then it would take 599 thaums to match the total energy output of the sun. 599 thaums. The Milky Way has maybe 400 billion stars in it, so to produce the energy output of the entire milky way per second, you'd need 793 thaums. There are estimated to be 170 galaxies in the observable universe, so to produce the energy output of all of them at once simultaneously, would take 980 thaums. Something that exerted a force of 2 million thaums would make the Falls look like a tipped over sippy cup. As near as I can tell it's on the order of 10^(10^10000)) pounds, so imagine 1 with ten thousand zeroes after it. This number is 1 with that many zeroes after it.
So, no thaums can't have a logarithmic relationship to force exerted, otherwise the mere existence of a 2 million thaum bomb would probably retcon itself out of history or something. You don't go from 10 to 15 to 2000000 exponentially it's just not a thing you do.
5240919
Since I have all the relevant numbers here, I can actually answer most (hopefully) of your questions.
A typical off-the-street unicorn can leverage ~10 Thaum worth of energy before becoming physically exhausted, or ~20 before knocking themselves unconscious. A unicorn like Twilight has a reserve 1.5-3 times larger than that, and uses less energy per spell (greater skill translates to greater energy efficiency). This personal energy reserve is multiplied by the local 'ambient' magical field strength when casting, allowing a relatively small amount of energy to become much more effective in the right environment (Field strength primarily correlates with population density, with places like Canterlot or Ponyville having a field strength of 5-8 Thaum, while the Everfree Forest is closer to 0.4-0.6)
It takes ~4 Thaum per minute to levitate a 200-pound object, at a speed of up to 1m/s.
1 Thaum of magical energy, converted directly, produces approximately 360kJ of electrical/mechanical energy.
In a direct magical attack, it will take on average ~3 Thaum to render a target unconscious, ~17 Thaum to ensure death, and ~32 for complete bodily destruction.
5243385
> correlates with population density
and harmonic frequency, no doubt
But, thanks. I was getting a bit loopy there. So that makes the bomb about... half as destructive as the one that took out most of Hiroshima, assuming she sets it off in a highly populated area (yeah, this is totally what she's thinking) and assuming that all those thaums go straight into energy (likely as it's designed to be a bomb), and assuming the population are more thinking hateful and destructive emotions than happy, calm, peaceful ones (they're totally fucked). The one in Hiroshima destroyed a neighborhood (and I mean annihilated) and heavily damaged practically the rest of the city. Not destructive enough to be conclusive, too destructive to be useful. At least, in my opinion.
Why must you be so obsessed with muffin shaped things, Dewpy?
C'mon Twilight you have to stop this madness... there has to be a way to get through to her...
Being a physicist makes this very enjoyable.
5240919 Here's the flaw in your logic... You're basing that math as if all stars in the universe are the same size as the sun, when there are stars hundreds of times larger than our own, and the number of galaxies? We have no fact, even though asides from that, there are galaxies more than double the size of the milky way, let alone the unknown and most likely uncountable quantity of energy in the core of every galaxy (the theoretical supermassive black hole). There is most likely far more energy in the universe than your math predicts, even then, we're a young race. Our science is flawed and our grip on the workings of the universe at large sub-par.
And even if all your math is correct, and everything is a straight conversion, the thing is, we're talking about an organization that operates outside the MULTIVERSE, they most likely know how to do more damage with less. That, or seeing as the lock was so easily undone, it might just have the same destructive capability you guessed, for all we know Walleye just wants to kill that Twilight, or Canterlot, or probably, both simultaneously.
5245869
Nah, I'm pretty sure something I read in some forgotten astronomy article about a decade ago is iron clad fact. Doesn't get more rigorous than that! But no seriously I heard that our sun's about average in size, as far as stars go.
Anyway it doesn't matter if you assume there are 170 billion or 170 billion billion galaxies, it still doesn't come close to whatever 29 * e ^ (0.14 * 2000000) pounds is. I don't have to have anything other than a very rough estimate, because the difference is so phenomenally large. Even if 90% of a galaxy's energy was secretly hidden in its magic galactic core, it all still wouldn't come close to 10^(10^(10^5))) pounds. Even if there are 170 billion universes Outside, and it sure doesn't seem like there are uncountably many universes, a bomb like that would be more energy than all of them combined. I'm not trying to put down our galaxy, or hurt our universe's feelings by saying it is a wimp who needs bigger pectoral muscles. It's just that the number I came up with is just so ridiculously big, it's more energy than even makes sense to contemplate. I only added up all the explosive energy in the universe to illustrate just how big that number is.
At least it's not a googleplex...
after all this, walleye is going to take a nosedive towards evil d*** bag on the morality scale, mainly because she doesnt know EF's side of the story
A grey pony with wild white hair materializes in a flash beside Theta's confinement.
"What the heck?!" the current villain with whom we all must agree gasped. "Who are you?!"
The mystery pony smirked, "Well look at that. You actually don't know everything. And as to this question, you'll never know the answer." He vanished, leaving Theta raging impotently.
Is 'She' referring to Lyra?
welllllll my phone's (Apple ) dictionary says those words don't exist so we have 4 options
1. U spelled it wrong
2. Your world is a lie
3. Apple sucks even more then before
4. All of the above
5. I'm stupid
6145192 or, perhaps, YOUR world is a lie, and everything else is just a construct of Twilight's imagination. Bookhorse is Godhorse.
So why exactly is Twilight helping her again? Did she just turn terminally stupid or is she that desperate for approval?