Phase 3: Consultancy, Part 4
“Stupid holes in space!” The dark pink pony took a threatening step forward, head bent low and nostrils flaring.
Finnel jumped to her feet and began to chant behind Akane, while Kokuro transformed and Raki moved behind them to form a second line of defense.
“Blink and you’ll miss it!” Pinkie suddenly vanished, with no sign of any movement or teleportation.
“Ahh!” Finnel cried out as a fantastic force struck her from behind, sending her slamming into Raki.
“Hmph. Still moving! Bad hole! Naughty hole! Let’s raise the rating here!” The pony was standing where Finnel had been, and searching her hair with a foreleg. As Finnel attempted to stand, she saw that the pony had somehow drawn a carving knife, which seemed adhered to her hoof. “Maybe if I bake you into a cupcake and eat you, you’ll become part of me and I can see you?”
Raki shoved Finnel to the ground as she advanced over her, igniting her plasma sword. “Target locked. Evaluation: critical threat.”
“A talking toaster? These sound waves aren’t making any sense! Well! I’ll smash you up!” The pony’s eyes were staring off to each side of her head.
Raki jabbed forward with the blade, extending its length to the door to the next car. Pinkie bent around it like a rubber corkscrew. “Warning! Unknown spatial ability detected.”
Akane had helped Finnel back to her feet, and was staring at Raki’s attempts to bring the plasma sword to the target. The pony’s evasion was seemingly impossible, like a liquid flowing around the sword. Why isn’t she attacking back? Is she too busy dodging? “Kokuro, guard Finnel if she teleports behind her again.”
“Got it, but be careful. It reminds me of Saki.”
“Saki!” Finnel’s eyes went wide at the mention of her Will of the Planet friend. “Is she a Will?”
“No. She’s more like a gamma-sublimator. She’s got her hands, err, hooves on a hotline to one or more Wills!”
“Can we fight something like that?”
“It’ll be a tough fight, but you captured Saki and Aoto plenty.” Beyond Raki, Pinkie was leaving afterimages as she was dodging a series of rapid strikes.
“Honestly, I doubt either of them really knew what they were working with.”
“The power of a Will isn’t absolute.” At that moment, the argument was cut off by a lurch. Akane looked behind her, seeing the train car ahead of them moving away. A quick look over Raki’s shoulder confirmed her analysis: the conductor, seeing the crazy fight going on, had decided to detach the last car to insure the safety of the other passengers.
“It’s time to get this party started!” The pink pony reached down behind herself, and pulled out a cannon that was somehow substantially larger than she was. “This one isn’t loaded with confetti!”
The cannon fired, blowing out all the windows of the carriage with its raport. A cloud of smoke obscured the team from Pinkie’s vantage point, but the wind rushing through the now-unobstructed windows revealed that Raki had caught the ball one-handed.
“That’s hardly fair.” Pinkie shook her head. “How are you so strong?!? What are you made of?”
“Lift collateral damage restriction!” Akane’s shout prompted immediate response from the maid-droid, as Raki suddenly disengaged the sword. Part of her metal skirt immediately popped up and folded into the sword hilt, transforming it into a beam rifle, which she swung toward the pony and fired at point blank.
Everything on that end of the train car went white. When the beam ended, nothing was left of that half of the train car but ash blowing behind them.
“Scanning for target.”
“Close one!” Akane whirled to see the pink pony standing at the front of the car, glaring at Kokuro. Her face was blackened and her mane was on fire, but she didn’t seem to care.
“Whatever you are, stand down.” Akane pointed her sword at the pony for emphasis. “We can do this all day, but I do not believe we have a quarrel with you.”
“Whatever I am? Whatever you are! You weird weirdy-pants blew up the library and you think I’ll let you get away with it? You’re going down! You’re SUPER going down!”
“Talking’s no good. There’s something weird going on with her.”
Akane glanced at Kokuro briefly, keeping the pony in her peripheral vision. “What do you mean?”
“There’s a weird mass of negative emotions attached to her.”
Pinkie took a deep breath. “Oh, you mean the weird nightmare metamagic that Luna made to practice for making the final Nightmare Moon transformation that’s only a bit less powerful than the final product that Twilight gave to us but she’s actually got one on herself and King Sombra’s put his own spin on it and now we’re all mind puppets?”
Total silence. “Raki, can you play that back more slowly?”
“Negative.”
“Could we trouble you to explain that again, but without trying to do it all in one breath?”
Pinkie’s pupils dilated and expanded independently of each other. “Nope! In fact why am I even talking to you it makes no sense but where’s the fun in making sense?”
“Wait… wait a second…” Kokuro suddenly began shaking in place. “She’s been charging up an attack this whole time!”
“Yepparoooni! Here it is!”
Akane felt space distort around her as she spiraled towards the mare.
Mir, Croix, the Princesses, Rainbow, and Rarity had gathered in the park where Mir and Sweetie had fought Tirek. Mir’s gaze evaluated each of them in turn. Croix seemed fresh and ready, as did Luna and surprisingly Celestia. Rarity and Rainbow still seemed sluggish, no doubt due to lingering effects of being purged of dark magic after being thrashed half to death.
“Right, you two.” She pointed at the Princesses. “I don’t have a lot of choice here. Twilight is a capable and intelligent foe, and with her theft of the song magic cores I can only assume she intends to use them to fulfil the directives the Nightmare transformation has given her. That means you,” she pointed specifically at Celestia, “are now ground zero for all kinds of city-flattening energy beams.”
She levitated the materialized song magic core. “We’re going to put this in your head to make you easier to defend. When you’re manifesting a song magic you’ll be able to draw upon the knowledge contained here to do so properly, including forming a harmonics field so whoever you’re with – I’m looking at Luna here, because there really aren’t any other options right now – can defend you properly.”
Celestia looked the hovering red crystal over. “Sweetie already has one, and Luna watched you install it, correct?”
“Yes, sister. It was a fascinating journey through the mind of our subject, and I believe I may understand the source of Cutie Mark magic.”
“Well, that would be quite a breakthrough. You’ll have to share it with Twilight once we get her back to her normal self.”
“That’s great and all, but we need to get down to business here.” Mir trotted up and tried feebly to push Celestia down. “Fall asleep for a bit so Luna and I can pop it in.”
“All right, all right.” Celestia stretched her neck and lay down on a nearby bench, her mane and tail drooping over it onto the grass. “I just got up, so it shouldn’t take too long to go back to sleep.”
Akane floated through ghostly images of the pink pony baking as a jaunty tune played. This was far more terrifying to her than it would be to others, since she knew exactly what was going on.
Flipsphere! Akane had been on the receiving end of these incredible powers granted by the combination of the Third Tower and the Wills of the Planet a few too many times. Although you could attempt to resist, being bombarded by whatever horrifying things the darkest depth of someone’s imagination could conjure made suddenly real was not an experience that most could survive. Many of Akane’s comrades had been irreversibly transformed into cake.
A similarly gruesome fate might await her now, as a succession of felt anthropomorphic cupcakes brandishing knives charged forward. Whatever was happening now operated on the twisted rules the pony’s mind produced, so Akane didn’t dare try to fight them or block their attacks. “Dodge!”
Akane grabbed the still-chanting Finnel and twisted away from the first cupcake. It exploded into a mass of red sticky liquid as it impacted an invisible wall behind them.
Raki and Kokuro were equally successful in dodging the first rank, and the gruesome red not-quite-blood began to outline a hemispherical enclosure. Akane knew without doubt that if she got any of it in her mouth, it would be intolerably sweet. It would also likely be her last sensation. She could sense the immense energy the pony was drawing from the planet, and it felt somehow corrupted.
A second wave of cupcakes advanced in dense formation, but failed to account for the fact that half their targets could fly, and the other half jump very well. The wall was now thick with syrupy redness and globs of it dripped down, restricting the room to stand – not that it affected the fliers.
The third and final cupcake wave screamed and began to bounce in place. Akane and her compatriots watched closely as the cakes bounced forward, timing their rolling or flying forward to avoid the giant pastries.
As the last of the cupcakes smashed themselves into the far wall, the only safe spot to stand was where the cupcakes had originally been standing. Akane tensed, knowing that the end of a flipshere was usually some gigantic single hit. It didn’t leave them waiting, as a gigantic felt butcher knife appeared directly over them, falling point down. Akane tossed Finnel to Raki and grabbed hold of Kokuro as the two of them hovered their passengers over the red goop to the other side of the room, narrowly avoiding the immense knife as it smashed through the room entirely.
The shards of the room spun away revealing the interior of the half-train car once again. The pink pony stood in shock. “You survived? That’s not possible! You are not possible! And I’m sorry I couldn’t work ‘scientifically’ in there, but I’m not a perfect reference machine here!” She staggered back and forth, eyes unfocused and glassy, her chest heaving as she panted arhythmically.
Finnel glared down at the pony. She’d maintained concentration on her song throughout all the womanhandling she’d undergone. “My turn.”
Although she no longer bore any Wills of the Planet within her soulspace, her link with them had left echoes and connections, and Finnel had retained her power of flipshere. Watercolor-painted mythological scenes floated about Pinkie as the pony screamed and flailed, confused as to where everything had gone. “Leave us alone!” Finnel shouted as the flipshere activated fully, showering the pony with falling stars.
As the flipshere concluded, the pink pony flopped to the deck of the shattered train car. “Stand down.” Akane’s command brought Raki’s beam saber to a halt inches from Pinkie’s neck. “Check if she is actually out cold. Give me a full scan.”
Raki deactivated her beam weapon and landed, passing her hand over the comatose pony. “Target appears to have exhausted its energy. Additional status readout: target appears to be permanently blind.”
“P-permanently?” Finnel clutched her hands in front of herself, horrified at maiming such a cute opponent.
“It’s nothing you did, Finnel.” Kokuro hovered over the pony. “I don’t think she’s ever been able to see. What she thinks is seeing, is actually asking the WIll of the Planet what’s going on. She can’t see us because we’re not part of this planet.”
Akane reached into her pocket for an autoinjector, then jabbed it into the pony. “That should both stabilize her and keep her out for a little while. We should probably leave before the explosion attracts attention.”
Raki flew up into the air, then flew down. “There appears to be a handcart 129 meters from our current position on a siding.”
“Excellent. Let us follow that train. You shall push us.”
Finnel put her finger to her chin. “Won’t they notice a rocket-propelled handcart?”
Akane shrugged. “I imagine they would. Interaction with their enforcement agency may make it easier to evaluate their intentions.”
“So we’re trying to get arrested?”
“I do not consider any attempts that might be made to do so a mission obstacle.”
“So is it normal that she has dreams about cake, dreams about self-loathing, and dreams about both?”
Luna watched the red crystal settle into the subconscious layer of Celestia’s mind, then turned her attention to the so-called Daybreaker smacking herself in the face with a cake over and over. “Please do not use your dreamwalking for harm.”
“Celestia’s avatar of repressed desires really shouldn’t have picked a fight with someone who knows soul-editing. Besides, that’s probably not a good thing to have around. Shouldn’t you disperse it or something?”
Luna glowered at Mir. “I dispense of dream figments, but this is a part of her mind that is more solid and deeper.”
“Fine, I’ll set it to revert after we leave. But you should really find a way to deal with that stuff permanently, otherwise she’ll go around setting things on fire.” Mir paused, then giggled. “Now that I say that out loud, maybe just invite me when the fun starts.”
“No.” Luna tossed her head. “I shall preserve my sister from this crisis. At least we have not seen any sign of her guilt over her failures with Sunset. I imagine that the knowledge Sunset has died without ever reconciling with her has been a great burden.”
Mir levitated upwards, until she could lean down to look Luna in the eye. “Sunset Shimmer, as creator of the art of Sound Science, wielded a power over destiny that no other human being could ever claim. I feel she lived the best life she possibly could. In fact, she has probably been consistently the human I admire most. Croix is a great husband, but Sunset’s creations literally changed the face of the planet, both for evil and good.”
Luna drew back. “I had no idea you idolized her so.”
“That might be pushing it. I mean, I know now she wasn’t originally a human, but she still died as one. If she’d been around for my evil phase, she’d have been target #1 out of pure necessity.
“The point is, Sunset lived life more fully than anyone, ever. Celestia couldn’t have done any better for her, so she shouldn’t beat herself up over it for an instant.”
Luna nickered. “Oh, and did you explain that to her?”
Mir’s face slackened as her mouth curved into an “o” shape. “Maybe I should mention that at some point.” She resumed her usual slightly glaring expression. “I guess I am just still sore about losing to that overstuffed sack of cake.”
“My sister and I were once formidable warriors.” Luna back over to Mir as the Reyvateil turned to repair the Daybreaker mental construct. “An age of inaction has dulled her somewhat, but never underestimate her. Or myself.”
“Right. But you can’t underestimate me. Or Croix.” Mir pressed her hoof to the corrupted Alicorn, and rings of red runes encircled her foreleg. “Restore… complete.”
Daybreaker suddenly shot backwards, then lunged at Mir with a powerful leap. A sword-wielding biped jumped into its path, its swing forcing Daybreaker to dive or be beheaded. Both of them then dissipated.
“Hmph.” Mir surveyed the scene. “Looks like it can’t take the heat as well as it says. Let’s get out of here before we meet her version of you. I’m sure there’s a ton of guilt over your fall rattling around in here.”
Luna shivered. “That would be uncomfortable to witness. Let us away.”
The handcart caught up with the train about an hour West of Baltimare. They obviously weren’t happy to see the wackos that had begun a laser sword fight in the last car, and a conductor had ushered everyone out of the new last car, then glared at them through the windows.
“Do we want to re-board the train?” Finnel looked up at the scowling pony.
“No.” Akane turned to Raki, who was pushing against the rear edge of the handcart with her rockets engaged. “Raki, can you support the weight of this cart and us in stable flight?”
“Affirmative.”
“Very well. Pick us up, fly us ahead of the train, then put us back down on the track and accelerate to maximum safe speed for this cart.”
Raki adjusted one hand to grip the rear frame of the handcart, then the other. The metal deformed slightly as she increased grip strength until her algorithms were confident of stability. Then the thrust angled downward.
The conductor shrank down as the handcart began to rise into the air, Raki’s thrusters kicking up a huge cloud of dust behind them. He glanced up from the floor as the handcart slowly rose over the end of the train car, casting him into shadow. His eyes snapped shut as the bright cones of the maid-droid’s thrusters came into view, and the car’s frame shook as the rockets came over.
All through the train the passengers cowered as the sound of the thrusters approached, which was quite fortunate for them - Raki had redirected her thrust outward away from the train, but it would still have been extremely dangerous if any of them had stuck their heads out the windows to look.
Akane and Finnel used the opportunity of increased height to look around. Most of what they saw was dense forest, although they could see a river nearby running more or less parallel to their course.
At last Raki had cleared the engine by a sufficient margin and the handcart descended to the tracks.
“This has gotten too crazy.” Brake Whistle, the chief conductor, glared forward, even though he couldn’t see the madcreatures and their handcart anymore. The big earth pony spat on the floor of the baggage car and glared at the other conductors. “We need to warn Baltimare this stuff is coming.”
“And how exactly do you expect to do that?” A junior conductor, a brown pegasus stallion named Air Brake, asked.
“You’re wearing the answer on your back. I need you to fly in and deliver a message.”
“I’m pretty sure I know what to say, boss, but who do you want me to take it to? The cops?”
Brake Whistle shook his head. “No, no. We’re going to need the big guns for this. There’s an EUP fort there, give the message to General Naysayer.”
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Basic13 · 30k words · 23 6 · 1.2k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.11 seconds
Total duration
1,024 users online
1,846,237 hits today, 2,782,760 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Will I need to play the Ar Tonelico series and/or whatever Qoga is to understand this story?
8897436
Ar Tonelico 2, maybe. Not sure about one. Though, personally, I'd suggest skipping Qoga. It just was not a fun or interesting game, at all, and has almost no connection to this story, at least as far as I can tell.
8897436
As long as you have looked into the lore of then you don't necessarily have to have played the games though 1 and 2 explain Mir's attitude a lot. Qoga is for those wanting to know about the 3rd tower (Akane and Finnel) and the wills of the planet. Ar Tonelico 2 also uses the same battle system that is being portrayed by Croix and Mir (and by extension the others).
I love Ar Tonelico, such an overlooked series. Though the third kinda ruined it for me game play wise.
8897822
The word "purge" still feels me with self-loathing. Ar Nosurge slowly lost me, for all the meta/irony stuff I felt like I was just doing a lot less.
I try to explain who people are, but yeah it does work better if you've played the first couple Ar Tonelico games (there are Let's Plays of them floating around, and those two are pretty well written, even if the second is hobbled by translation).
can twilight install the seeds.
Mir has to have luna help her put it in.
8900277
Twilight's special talent is in part "can learn all the magic" so it's likely.
Yeah but luna has stated that she has never been able to before.
If she does it now it will be a huge blemish to the story.
8902823
Luna hasn't, but Sombra knows other magics and has Luna's work as a head start.
8951369
Firslty Sombra is just using the mane six as a distraction so why on earth would he attempt such a difficult task when he could be working on his own plan.
Secondly, Twilights cutie mark does not mean all magic. It appeared to her when she was a unicorn so it is only for unicorn magic. She is a novice in regards to earth pony magic , pegasus magic, dream magic, and SONG MAGIC. Do not use her cutie mark as a type of explanation to try and make up for any unrealistic parts of your story.
PS I am of the mind that twilight is subconciously using unicorn magic to make up for her underdeveloped earth pony and pegasus magic.
8952307
Except you forget, Song Magic, in this story's headcannon, was created by Sunset Shimmer, who was originally a unicorn. At the very least, unicorns possess a natural form of a technology Reyvateils need to use Song Magic, so it would not be that much of a stretch for Twilight, or Sombra, to learn to use it in some way. Twilight's talent is "Magic", there is no qualifier or specific type attached to that, which means all magic, it is just a matter of her effort and understanding that limits her ability, besides what is restricted by race. Add to that her experience in fighting against a user of Song Magic and her ability to organize information and calculate, and she has more than enough to get a start in understanding at least a fraction of Song Magic. Though full understanding would be impossible without more information and time, she could still manage a rough understanding of it's components and structure.
As for unrealistic, you're reading a fanfiction of a cartoon about mythical creatures wielding magic crossovered with a hyper advanced scientific pseudo-magic culture from the future. Arguing "unrealistic" is what's unrealistic. Anyone reading should have forsaken "realism" as soon as they entered this site.
8952426
Except is seems that for the crystals to be implemented someone else has to plant them.
Either twilight does not get BASIC SONG MAGIC or Sombra messes around with her mind.
8952643
Also her song magic would be even weaker than sweetie belles because unlike her sweetie has a cutie mark specialized for song magic.
Twilight can learn a lot of magic but she will be inferior to a pony whos magic is specilized towards a specific type of magic.
She is a jack of all trades.
Is this fic dead? I'm worried.
9469790
I had a bit of a motivation crisis last year, working on getting the mojo back. Planning on digging out my AT2 disc and going back through.
9470778
Also, if you're not dead, have you considered that Twilight might have Oversight?
Because she travelled in time, and quite probably EqG world is located further on the fifth axis than Equestria, giving Twilight Oversight over third, or even fourth axis. Considering that she is an alicorn now, and has more DNA Chains, and the fact that she probably managed to install Hymmnos Extract, she should be able to use it.
We repeat the question: is this fic dead?
9880238
Oh, shoot. I thought I'd replied to your previous inquiry but I didn't. The short of it is that this is on hiatus since my work with Sunset got a much bigger response and is easier to write for. I do plan to come back to this once I've gotten that completed.
Unfortunately my third-party memory card ate most of my AT2 saves so I've got to go back and fix that.
11048430
It's been pushed back by various things, but I do want to get back on this proverbial horse.