Act 3 Chapter 18 : Let's Break It Down
‘Ponies cannot build a civilization without building on the skeletons of their ancestors. In building a society, one must begin with the understanding that your flesh and bones will one day become mortar and cement in a grander construction. This is the way it has always been and may always be, until such time as we build something better than society.’
- Professor Van Hoofenstein, B.L.R. 466. at the opening of the second Canterlot Historical Museum. The Museum was destroyed the same night, along with a significant portion of the city in what later became known as the Torch Juggler Fire. This led to the introduction of some of the earliest fire codes.
Someone who knows what’s going on is the most valuable asset in any case. You talk to the wife who knew the husband’s finances were in the tank. You chase down the bookie who paid off the jockey. You write a letter to a semi-omnipotent being in an enchanted empire.
I can’t say I’d ever actually done that last one before, but this particular case was giving us all sorts of new experiences. Just today, Limerence drank a deadly poison, Swift managed to embarrass herself in front of royalty, I’d finally told somepony the truth of what all had happened to us, and Taxi screwed a bug.
All in all, a fairly eventful few hours, not including the train.
Damn...I’d almost let myself forget about the return trip. Another river I wasn’t looking forward to crossing.
----
“Who, exactly, was this a letter to?” I asked, peering at the scroll. It was old-style yellow parchment with red wax shaped into a crystalline heart sealing it.
With a flick of her horn, Twilight popped the seal open. “My research team! They’re some of the smartest ponies...well...some of the smartest beings in the whole world! We’ve been working on this problem since the Darkening, but you might have just given us the final piece of the puzzle!”
“So, they can help us sort things out?”
“I think so—” Twilight began as she unrolled the letter. There was a burst of noise—a fanfare of trumpets—then an explosive blast of pink sludge blew the Princess of Friendship off her hooves. She rocketed backwards into the wall and stuck there, every inch of her body coated in a thick layer of sweet smelling goo.
I took a few cautious steps away from where the letter lay on the carpet. Taxi sniffed at the slime, then dipped her toe in it before giving it a quick lick. “Mmm...frosting. Strawberry with a bit of cardamom.”
Twilight blinked her eyes open, but they didn’t seem quite willing to focus in the same direction. She let out a soft grunt, and a wave of magic rolled over her body. Wherever it touched, the frosting vanished, sweeping away until it had all been cleared from her fur and feathers, then the walls and carpet. Dropping back onto her stomach, the princess slowly pulled herself up.
“...fifty...years...and he still can’t resist doing stuff like that,” she mumbled. “...shoulda left him a statue…”
“Who is this friend of yours, again?” I asked, carefully stepping around where the letter lay on the carpet.
“He’s a professional prankster, but he knows more about chaos magic than anyone alive,” Twilight replied, picking the letter back up and quickly inspecting it for additional traps. Satisfied, she unrolled it again, holding the page away from her face lest there be another load of cake topping hidden somewhere, and quickly read the note. As she reached the bottom, her rear legs slid forward until she flopped onto her rump, letting her wings sink until they dragged across the carpet. “Awww… ponyfeathers…”
“Not what you were hoping for?”
“No. No, really not. I should have known this would be too much to hope for.”
Reaching out, I took the scroll and peered at it as Swift and Taxi edged in so they could read over my legs.
----
My Esteemed Shadow Trap,
You have posed an extremely interesting question. F.H. believes what you propose is possible. The power of Emotive Energies and Psychokinetic Radiations is well established. If one were to create mass chaos across a city or even a small town and then somehow harvest those energies, it would be a powerful source of magic, though how one might do it with true efficiency is outside of my ken.
Against my better judgement, I discussed the situation with D., and his response was to cover me in pudding. He did, however, add something of use to the conversation. I shall quote his precise words and hope they may be of use to you.
“Dull, dull, dull! There’s chaos and then there’s chaos! Chaos is only chaos because boring old order exists, now isn’t it? If one of those sweet little order-minded ponies decided they wanted the power of chaos for themselves, they’d go mad trying. After all, if you want chaos in a bag, you need a net, and if you made a net that size, you’d already have your fish in it, because it would be as big as an ocean! Now shoo!”
For what it’s worth, I believe he may have been onto something.
The dragons might hide a ‘net’ for magic in their lands, but if you say the epicenter of this situation is the city of Detrot, then I fear most of my suppositions fall a bit short. F.H. suggests looking in the surrounding area or towards the lands they call the ‘Wilds’ for large spell forms, but no spell form either of us could calculate would survive stresses of the magnitude necessary to cast Canterlot to the Moon, then maintain power adequate to keep we immortals and our servants from going anywhere near that end of the continent.
We know there are powers in the world older than we, but most sleep or hide at the edges of equine perception. They are ancient, and few choose to play the games of the younger species. As a rule, they don’t interfere with us. Youth tends to breed very creative methods of ridding oneself of one’s elders when they cease to be useful.
Something here is out of joint, however. This is not magic in the traditional sense of the word. It is closer to religion.
Even at my height, I would not have dared imagine such an immensity of power. It is rare I find myself frightened by numbers, but when I look at the maths involved, my knees begin to shake.
Yours Eternally,
The King of Monsters,
S.
----
“King of Monsters?” Swift asked, squinting at the elaborately scripted ‘S’ at the bottom of the page. “Is that some kind of codename or something? Who are these other ponies he or she or...whoever this is mentioned?”
“Mmm...Sombra is a dramatic soul,” Twilight commented, with a little smirk. “The others are Princess Flurry Heart and The Duke of the Unlands, Discord.”
Limerence let out one of ‘those’ sounds that always remind me of somepony squeezing an excited ferret. His glasses slid off the end of his muzzle, and he made no move to fix them.
“S-Sombra? Princess Twilight, surely you don’t mean that’s the actual King Sombra. He’s dead! He’s been dead for decades since the return of the Crystal Empire! And Discord? The spirit of chaos?” he spluttered, then looked confused. “Who is this ‘Princess Flurry Heart’?”
Twilight smiled at the barrage of questions. “They’re my research team. We’re all people who chose to hide during the War to protect our loved ones. We could move behind the scenes and let the dragons focus all their energies in places where they couldn’t break down the morale of Equestria. Princess Luna and Princess Celestia were impossible targets, but they were the only targets the dragons had once my spells made everyone start to forget about me and my friends.”
“So...who are these people?” I asked. I nodded in Limerence’s direction. “He doesn’t make that squeak noise for just anypony.”
“I did not squeak, Detective!” Limerence huffed, crossing his forelegs against his chest.
“It...it did sound a little like a squeak, Lim,” Taxi murmured, putting one of her legs across his back. He let out guttural noise, but didn’t push her away. “Still, I’m curious myself. I read a story or two about Discord when I was studying ancient history in school. I’ve never heard of ‘Princess Flurry Heart’, though. Is that some kind of honorary title?”
Twilight shrugged, pulling her wing around her side and plucking a loose feather from it. “Flurry is my niece. She’s Shining and Cadence’s foal. I thought she’d be safer, at least until she’s fully grown, if she wasn’t a target for the dragons. Sombra is...he’s a sad story. He helped save the Crystal Empire from the Umbrum. He was originally one of them, but he was granted fully ponyhood and...he’s still very hated in many places.”
“Riiight. More people the world forgot,” I exhaled, rolling my shoulders. “Could be worse, I guess. That’s not any odder than the rest of our merry little band. What about this ‘Discord’ person?”
“He’s what’s on the tin: a spirit of chaos,” she giggled, folding the letter up and tucking it into her stack of notes. “He’s more like a spirit of Attention Deficit Disorder, but he’s been a friend of mine for more than fifty years. He has his own stretch of land outside of the Yak kingdom that he calls the ‘Unlands’. A surprising number of ponies moved up there to live with him, since he offers a life without boredom. I figured if anyone would know why someone would want all that chaos, it would be him.”
“Yeah, but...what did he mean ‘a net as big as the ocean’?” Swift asked, spreading her hooves wide. “I mean, gathering up magic can’t be that hard, can it?” She pointed at Twilight’s horn. “Unicorns have a thing to do that on their heads.”
“Magic in general? Yes.” Twilight rubbed her chin, thinking. “If you needed a specific magic, though...like one particular kind of emotional energy...then you might need to either make it or have a really big area to draw it from. Or both. I just don’t know how they’d disguise something like that. Most spell forms and enchantments—even very stable ones—take up a significant amount of space. The largest one I’ve ever seen was the one inside the Supermax Prison and that’s...well, that’s all over the walls, underneath the paint. If it were laid out flat, it would be miles square. This one would have to be many, many times that size.”
“Well, today is ‘research’ day,” I said, then glanced around for Minerva only to find her hiding behind Limerence, her black muzzle tucked underneath one of his knees. She was snoring like a kitten. “Lim...could you wake up your leg warmer and have her go get us a map of Detrot and the surrounding areas?”
Limerence jumped up as he realized he had a changeling cuddled up against his side again. “Oh, goodness! She’s certainly stealthy when she wants to be, isn’t she?”
“You get used to waking up covered in a pile of changelings if you live here long enough,” Twilight grumbled. “Lock your doors unless you desperately want late night visitors.” She gave Minerva a poke in the flank.
The librarian yelped and rolled right to her hooves, her eyes still glazed with sleep. “Ma’am, yes, Ma’am! I wasn’t asleep, Ma’am! I’ll get right on it!” She broke into a full gallop for the nearest row of bookshelves, disappearing between them.
Twilight pretended to check her watch, then mouthed, ‘Three...two...one…’
Minerva sheepishly poked her nose between two books on the shelf. “Oh...um... What did you say you needed?”
“Could you get me the key to the map room, please?”
“Sorry, Ma’am!”
----
Twilight lead us down yet more of the seemingly endless halls of the Castle of Friendship to the largest doors I’d yet seen. An Umbrum sat outside, as though he’d been waiting for us.
“Orb?” Twilight asked. “What is it? Aren’t you on break?”
“Mistress,” the shadowy guard greeted her, standing to attention. “We’ve been made aware you intend to enter the map room, again. Much as we may serve at your behest, we ask that you don’t.”
“Oh? Why?”
Orb’s shoulders stiffened, and a flicker of blue light escaped from his visor. “There are too many friendship problems in Equestria for one pony to solve. The map has called to you for fifteen years, and yet you use illusions to keep the call silent. ” He waved his hoof in the direction of her flank. “Mistress, the Umbrum may not be entirely loyal without the various constraints placed upon our persons, but some have expressed...concerns...for your wellbeing.”
Twilight’s face hardened slightly as she took a couple of steps towards Orb. He didn’t shrink from her, instead raising his chin and standing calmly. “And what concerns are these?”
“That your responsibilities as Princess of Friendship were never meant to be undertaken alone. There are six thrones for a reason. You have not filled them since the expirations.”
The Princess’s shoulders stiffened, and she stood a bit straighter. “Those thrones are for my friends!”
“Yes. Yes, they are,” Orb murmured. “Why do they remain empty?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but there wasn’t a rebuttal there. Instead, she shut her eyes. “We need the map room to fix this situation.”
“Then it is not for me to stop you, Mistress Sparkle. Only to ask.” Taking a step back, Orb moved around to Twilight’s side, taking up a guard position at her flank.
I examined the gold-inlaid doors as the Princess produced a thin, silver key from underneath her wing and levitated it into a tiny lock at muzzle height.
“So, this ‘map room’, then...lots of associated personal baggage?” I asked.
“Uhuh.”
“Big, terrible baggage linked inextricably to why I hadn’t heard of you until last month?”
“Uhuh.”
“Emotional breakdown likely?”
“Hush and let me open this.”
The lock clicked, and Twilight gave it a shove with her magic. The doors swung inward, revealing an enormous hexagonal room containing six crystalline thrones positioned around a circular table of blue diamond. High above them, what looked like the roots of a truly gigantic tree dangled from the ceiling. Thin strings covered in crystals in dozens upon dozens of colors hung from the ends of the various branchings. Five other doors ringed the hall, all shut tight.
Only one of the thrones had any features to distinguish it from the others: Twilight’s cutie-mark was set above the seat directly across from the door we’d just entered.
While I’d become very much lost with all the winding about inside the castle, I had a sudden suspicion that we were at the very center of the building.
Swift let out a faint cough, and it was only then that I realized just how much dust was in the air. It was thick, and the faint light given off by the fixtures in the room lit tiny motes around each like a field of fireflies.
“Maid staff doesn’t come in here much, do they?” Taxi commented, running a hoof through the layer on the door hinge.
“No...and that’s my fault, too,” Twilight muttered, trotting over to the table. She laid a hoof on the leg-rest of the nearest throne. Orb took up position just inside the door, and while I couldn’t exactly tell what he was looking at, I got the feeling he was watching the Princess intently. “This is the Map Room. Equestria’s center for all things friendship. I...I haven’t been in here in awhile…”
Her eyes darted towards the throne with her cutie-mark on it and then back towards the table. I could see the deep-seated guilt there; years and years worth of guilt so thick no single pony could shoulder it.
“Am I going to get teleported into deep space if I sit down?” I asked, waving towards one of the empty chairs.
“I...I would rather you didn’t,” she replied, quietly. “But go ahead. That’s Applejack’s seat. She’d probably like it if you sat there, actually. You’re her kind of pony. Or maybe her opposite. I'm still figuring that out.”
With only a brief hesitation, I hopped into the throne and sat on my haunches. The seat was surprisingly comfortable, for being completely solid, and whoever cut the stone had a pretty good knowledge of equine anatomy.
Twilight approached her own chair, seeming reluctant to actually sit down. Her lips were moving, and I had a feeling she wasn’t really aware of her surroundings. She was seeing into a dark and violent history. She was whispering to herself, but I only caught one word.
“...failed…”
“Twilight,” I murmured. The Princess jerked her head up.
“What? Sorry, what did you say?”
“You going to go ahead and have that breakdown now, or can we schedule it for later on this week?” I asked, tapping the table with my shoe.
“I’m sorry. Orb’s right. Please, the rest of you...feel free to sit down,” she said, using her wings to point to the chairs. “I suppose some explanation is in order.”
“I thought we were going to get a map,” Swift said. “Is there a map in one of these other rooms?”
“No...no, this is the map,” she replied, tapping the table. “When my friends were still here, this map used to...call to us. It still calls to me.”
Turning sideways in her chair, Twilight flicked her horn in the direction of her cutie-mark. It flashed, and then a layer of something like a spider-web seemed to peel away. The mark underneath was flashing like a strobe light, and a faint ringing noise filled the chamber.
“Was your cutie-mark doing that the whole time we were out there?” I asked.
It was Taxi who answered, interrupting Twilight before she could reply. “Yes, Hardy. Yes, it was. I knew my talent wasn’t that off kilter. I was just focusing on you, but...but she is the center of the need. It’s need… it’s need like I’ve never felt anywhere before!”
Twilight’s ears pinned right to her head, and she pinched her eyes shut. The flashing of her cutie-mark seemed to only get a little brighter.
“I can’t...be the pony they all need,” she muttered.
“See, you’re doing that cryptic thing again,” I grumbled, flicking the brim of my hat back as I got comfortable in the throne. “Go ahead and finish that sentence without trying to make me feel like I missed a big section of history class.”
Twilight’s nose flared angrily. “Detective, has anypony ever told you that you have the tact of a...a bulldozer in a porcelain factory?”
Taxi, Limerence, and Swift all quietly raised their hooves.
“As you can see, I have an entire peanut gallery who will happily tell me that every day,” I replied. “Right now, I need some straightforward answers. Which ponies’ needs were you just talking about?”
“Grrr! Fine!” Swinging around, the alicorn slapped a hoof on the round table. A blast of white light shot up from the center, and I threw a hoof over my face protectively. When I hadn’t caught fire or otherwise found myself dying in a horrific magical explosion, I brought it down to see that a complex topographical map of Equestria had appeared on the table. It was fully three dimensional, though if I squinted I could see my partner through the mountain range on the other side.
The scale wasn’t perfect, but the closer I looked, the more precise it seemed to become. Canterlot was there, a great gaping hole in the middle of the map surrounded by several smaller holes. Far to the north—over near where Taxi was sitting—the Crystal Empire lay beneath a glowing dome of pink magic. Fires burned in Manehattan. San Fransicolt seemed to be almost deserted, while two gigantic banks of cloud huddled side-by-side on a mountain to the south. The labels above them said ‘Los Pegasus’ and ‘Cloudsdale’.
Hundreds upon hundreds of tiny purple stars the color of Twilight’s cutie-mark dangled above the table, flashing urgently. A number beyond counting.
“Them, Detective. I failed them. Every one of those stars is a pony or group of ponies who needs a friend right now,” Twilight murmured, looking at the map with something like despair in her eyes “That’s why I don’t come in here. There are supposed to be six bearers of Harmony. Maybe more. How could I ask anypony to go out and take care of all of these problems when I’m too scared to do it myself? Where would I even begin?”
Stretching my knee over the leg rest of my chair, I sat back in my seat, contemplating the vastness of the creek we were up and the complete absence of paddles. Even assuming we could bring Canterlot back, things were going to be tough for a good long while.
Equestria was going to need some friends.
“Let’s see Detrot,” I said.
Twilight moved towards the map, but before she could touch it, the perspective suddenly wrenched sideways until we were staring at a different section of the map. A roiling red ball the color of blood seemed to have been plunked right in the middle. Nothing could be seen through the ball aside from some vague, shadowy outlines that loosely suggested buildings.
Four familiar cutie-marks hung above the vile looking ball of magic: mine, Swift’s, Taxi’s (before her injury), and Limerence’s.
“Is...is that Detrot?” Swift asked, watching the ugly splotch with a nervous wiggle of her wingtips.
Twilight’s eyes narrowed at the map. “I...I think so. That can’t be right, though. The map never sent anypony else on a mission!”
“You ever let anypony else have a chair?” I asked, giving her a meaningful look as I tilted my chin back. A set of golden scales had appeared over my head, inlaid into the seatback. Similarly, my friends’ marks all adorned their thrones.
“I…” Twilight’s eyes flicked left, then right, before she slowly laid her forehead on the table. “I couldn’t. I mean, my friends were the best a pony could possibly have. How could I just...just replace them?”
Swift gently reached out one wing and set it over Twilight’s shoulders. The pen and sword above her seat flashed brilliantly, then faded to a soft glow. “No matter how many ponies you surround yourself with, there...there have to be some who you let see the real you. Ma’am...if you don’t mind me saying, I’m pretty sure your friends would be really sad to see you all alone.”
“They were. They are,” she whimpered, drawing her back legs up under herself. “I did so many bad things during the Crusades and now, Mayfly and Orb are my closest friends! Orb might kill me if he were free and...and you four have done more in two months than I’ve done in years. It’s...it’s just been really hard to let anypony get close.”
I waved a hoof over the map. “We manage to fix this situation, I’ll be first in line to sit on a beach and read a book together. In the meantime, we need to see Detrot. Can this thing...I dunno...can this map show us the city three weeks ago?”
Before Twilight could reply, the giant red bubble seemed to melt away, revealing the familiar old city underneath. It was as it had been, without the barricades every few streets or the constant smoke from fires. No impenetrable shield surrounded Uptown, nor was there a shattered skyscraper full of dead griffins.
The buildings were shining and gorgeous, as though under the light of a midday sun. Tiny ponies trotted up and down the streets, though I couldn’t tell if they represented actual people or were merely there to give the image a bit more liveliness.
One could almost have said Detrot looked peaceful.
“Huh...obedient map,” I mused, waving a hoof through the image of the Bay of Unity. The water seemed to splash a bit around my toe, though my hoof wasn’t wet when I pulled it away. “I really need to get me one of these. I’d never get lost again.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure you’d find a way, Hardy,” Taxi interjected, with a weak laugh. She was looking up at her cutie-mark, the eye and the dove, her expression unreadable.
“I...oof...It’s been so long since I used the map. It wouldn’t give me information like that the last time I asked. Granted...I...I was trying to use it to spy on the dragons during the war,” Twilight said, a bit shamefacedly.
“Color me unsurprised,” I said. “The Castle of Friendship’s map doesn’t like helping during a war.”
“I guess. I haven’t been in here as much since the first of my friends passed. We kept up, trying to fix friendship problems, but once the war started, there were just too many. Most of my friends were gone by the time I discovered the Tree of Harmony would let me talk to them. Even being in the Castle reminds me of them. I try to stay out there-” she pointed at the door. “-doing things. Diplomacy, teaching, and so on. It’s easier than sitting here.” She let her head fall against her throne, rubbing her mane against the familiar surface. “Fifty-five years and I’m still getting used to this whole ‘Princess of Friendship’ thing. I haven’t wanted to be Princess of Friendship for...for a while now...”
“We’ve all had a rough ride, Princess. Some rougher than others. There are wars and there are wars. I’ve watched too many people die lately to think that I’m ever going to be a ‘normal’ pony again,” I said, casually stretching my neck out to one side so I could see the other side of a small mountain. “You want to be a ‘normal’ pony, you have to be willing to let other people decide your fate. Are you willing to do that, Miss Twilight Sparkle?”
The Princess slowly shook her head.
“I thought not. Still, for all the hard times you’ve been through, Mayfly was right about one thing.”
“What would that be, Detective?”
“You do whine a fair bit.”
Twilight’s eyes lit up with indignation, but when she saw my smile, she relaxed a little. “I...grrr...you could learn some diplomacy one day, Detective. Still, I know you're right. I’ve spent most of my time the last few years trying to keep myself busy so...so…”
“So you don’t have to think about how much it hurts?” Swift supplied, hugging herself with her wings.
“Yes. Yes, that’s really it. It was so easy to keep going, keep moving, keep working. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna were busy. The Crusades hurt us all. Afterwards, there were a million brush fires that needed putting out. I really miss those all-night study sessions where I’d drink coffee until my brain shut off, then wake up with little Mayfly sitting on my shoulders, gnawing on my horn to be fed. If you can believe it, she used to be cute…”
Taxi snickered under her breath. “Please tell me you have some baby albums. I have got to see those.”
“Oooh, plenty. I’ll be sure to show them to you at some point. She was adorable!” Twilight flicked her eyes in my direction. “Still, to the problem at hoof. We need a building or maybe a geographical formation big enough to contain a spell miles wide. Do you perchance know of anything like that in the city?”
“Oh, if only it were just a matter of pointing out one or two landmarks. Frankly, we’re spoiled for choice,” I replied. Twilight gave me an uncertain look, and I elaborated, “Alright, there’s Skytown.” The map zoomed in, revealing the network of buildings and attendant cloud-structures dangling above one end of the city. “That’s a massive collection of clouds which are brought in, prefabricated, from the factories in Downtown. You want to hide a giant spell, you could write it into the magics keeping the clouds stable, right?”
Twilight nodded. “I can think of several ways to do that, actually.”
“All that requires is somepony somewhere in the distribution chain. Next, we’ve got about thirty blocks of just pure industrial buildings, plus underground tunnels which were used during the war. Most have been abandoned since then.” The map blurred for a second, revealing a gigantic spread of lines and interconnected maintenance systems beneath the city. “I don’t even want to think about what could be going on down there.”
“Sir? What about the sewers?” Swift asked. The map seemed to sink, revealing the network of tunnels running underneath Detrot. “I mean, the Aroyos control most of them, but...according to the map Tourniquet put in my head, they don’t have much above the Bay. Lots of big, empty spaces, cisterns, and places you could hide almost anything—”
“Wait wait wait! Come on!” Taxi pushed herself up, standing on the throne. “Hardy...what is the first rule of avoiding surveillance?”
“The first rule? Don’t be doing anything worth being surveilled.”
“Exactly. What is the fifth rule? You remember Professor Glimpse’s class on undercover work back at the Academy?”
“I was always in to be a homicide detective. Sneaking around and making friends with drug dealers was more your kind of thing.”
My driver rolled her eyes. “Rule five of avoiding surveillance: Be worth ignoring.”
I stared blankly at my driver for a second, then shook my head. “Look, Sweets...I got transformed into about nine different things on a ride in a stinky train, crossed a few dimensions, had a Princess screw about with my personal timescale so I could have a nap, and saw my best friend mid-coitus with a giant insect. You’ll have to excuse me, but I’m kinda stupid today.”
“Hardy...whoever built this spell made for damn sure they could hide it, but what if they didn’t need to hide it? What if they could make it so everyone was grateful it was there and so nopony ever examined it more deeply?”
It took a lot longer than I like to think it normally would have for me to get my head around what she was saying. I was pretty tired, despite getting some sleep, and my faculties weren’t all operating at maximum capacity. Still, I did finally get there.
‘A net as big as the ocean.’
“I...oh Celestia, I am an idiot,” I groaned, slapping my hoof against my forehead. “Really? How did I miss that?”
Limerence and Swift were both on their hooves, and I could see the realization in their eyes.
Twilight’s wings popped open, and she hopped into a standing position. “What? What is it? Detective, please tell me!”
I bucked the table with one back leg and growled, “Show us the damn Shield!”
----
Looking back, I suppose one might wonder why it took me so long to come to that particular conclusion. A thing to understand is that the Shield had been there since before I was born. It was just about the most benevolent thing in my life.
The Shield protects. The Shield is safety. I learned that on my father’s knee, and he learned it on his father’s.
While it might not have been enough to keep the true weight of the dragon armies from our doorstep, it’d kept everyone in my life safe since I was a glimmer in my mother’s eye. The Wilds were lethal, and the Shield kept all the monsters that normally lurk in children’s nightmares at bay; hydras, unregistered dragons, rogue beasts, manticores, parasprites and a hundred other monstrosities that a pony can only hope they never meet lived outside the Shield.
Everypony in Detrot passed at least a couple pylons every week. It was almost impossible not to. They were everywhere, great black stone monoliths keeping us all from dying to the next hungry beast to come along. If you lived in Detrot, you lived under the shadow of the Shield.
----
The map swung into a vertical position a mile or two above the city, and all the buildings vanished, leaving only a collection of ugly black bricks spread seemingly at random across the landscape. The topographical scale indicated they were all at very precisely the same depth, even going so far as to extend some distance underground.
“The Shield, Detective? Surely not—” Twilight began, but I cut her off.
“Giant magical device, enormous range, spread across the entire city, acres of area to write a spell inside each one, and powerful enough to shove an alicorn out,” I said, poking at the image.
“Yes, but I monitored the construction of several Shield Pylons! The Shield Corporation has annual security checks!” she exclaimed.
“And who was responsible for those security checks? Who arranged the inspections?”
“Well, in the past it was city officials, but more recently it was Agent Shadow Co—...oh horseapples...”
“Yeah, we’re going to just assume your group is as compromised as every other we’ve dealt with lately. So there’s the question, then. What do we actually know about the Shield? Princess, you’ve got some information for us?”
Twilight bit her lower lip. “I have an awful lot of information on the Shield Pylons, but...but they’re never supposed to turn off. Nothing in my catalogue suggests any of the magics you said they’ve used. Their spells are passive deflection, scanning, and detection magics. Yes, they might collectively keep alicorns and various other species out, but that suggests a level of complexity an order of magnitude beyond their original purpose. Nothing in them that could teleport a city to the moon...”
Limerence, who had been silently studying the map, suddenly leaped to his hooves. “Wait...wait...no, that cannot possibly be right...” he murmured.
All eyes turned in his direction.
“Lim?” Taxi prompted, leaning sideways a little so she could see the table from his angle. “What? What is it?”
He took a stumbling step back, bumping his rear against the back of his throne. “I think I am seeing something and it is madness, but...I am seeing it all the same. Impossible...”
“Limerence, you have ten seconds to make yourself completely clear, or I have the Princess of Friendship here set fire to your tail,” I said, hotly.
“Eh...apologies. Mayhap I can get the map to show us a more ‘top down’ image than this one,” he replied. The topography sank into a flat plane, leaving only the pylons themselves. “Now, then...does this look familiar, Detective?”
I studied the pattern on the table. It was a widespread, spiraling arrangement that somehow reminded me of...an eye.
I felt all the blood rush out of my face and staggered off the throne. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Taxi was staring at the shape on the table. “That’s the...uh...I…oh crap.”
“Lim...please tell me that’s not that crazy spell system that Astral Skylark was using to control Tourniquet?” I growled.
“Do believe that I would tell you that if I could, Detective. That is the shape. That is the spell system she used.”
Twilight, who was giving us all confused looks, tossed her hooves in the air. “Detective, what did I miss?! I hate missing things!”
Slowly, I gathered my thoughts. The glaring eye stared back at me from the table, and now that I’d seen it, I couldn’t seem to push the feeling that it was actually seeing me out of my head.
“Astral Skylark used a...strange wiring system in the control room for Supermax to short-circuit the construct and take control from her. It...incorporated pieces of ponies that she’d used in her rituals. Pegasus wings. Hooves. Horns. I didn’t get much chance to examine it, but...” I lowered my chin onto the edge of the table and sighed with resignation. “This is it, right here. This shape.”
Twilight’s lightning-fast mind must have reached the same conclusion before I finished speaking, because her muzzle fell open and she stammered, “Are...are you saying that the...the entire city of Detrot is one giant spell?!”
----
It was a semi-collective decision to break for tea.
Tea is good. Tea with rum in is even better. Tea that’s mostly rum and doesn’t actually contain any tea is best.
We’d vacated to the library once more, and Twilight vanished behind a stack of books taller than my head that grew by the minute as more books flew off the shelves and added themselves to the pile. I wasn’t sure how many of them she was reading or if she was just building a book fort to keep the implications of our little discovery at bay for a bit longer.
Meanwhile, Swift and I sat in front of the fireplace, back to back, watching the ever-burning flame that never seemed to consume the logs it was attached to. Taxi had grabbed Mayfly once she returned from her cake banditry and dragged her into some private corner; now and then I’d hear a little whimper or groan from one or the other of them, but I was trying very hard not to think about it.
That left Limerence pacing around beside us. He was muttering and mumbling, stopping now and then to polish his immaculate glasses or brush something off his stainless vest. For how much we’d been through, I still couldn’t very well separate his ‘thinking’ face from his ‘psychotic episode’ face. The two were pretty similar.
“Lim, I know stuff is bad, but...could you sit down?” Swift asked, finally, reaching out to block his path with one long wing.
“Is sitting down likely to improve the fact that there is an intelligence out there who thinks on a scale previously unknown to all of equine kind? One both malevolent and capable of manipulating the entire shape of events in an entire country across decades?”
“I dunno, but it certainly can’t help to have tired hooves, too. Come on. Have some tea.”
“You’ll excuse me if I’ve already had my fill of ‘tea’ for the day after the black lotus,” he said shortly. “I vomited five different colors for nine consecutive minutes. Right now, I am focused on exactly how our situation might have come about without...without somepony noticing!”
Twilight’s voice came from behind her book fort. I’d almost forgotten she was there.
“Actually, that’s not hard to fathom, Mister Limerence,” she said. A moment later, she appeared beside Swift and me in a flash of light with a stack of folders clutched in her levitation field. “The Shield Corporation is very tight with their security measures. If the dragons got access to the full specifications of the pylons, they might be able to find a countermeasure. Still, I have found something interesting, and it might give you some direction once you get back to Detrot!”
“I can’t convince you to send a legion of changelings with me, can I?” I asked.
“I’m afraid the Shield is still keeping them out. However, I did find some information on Umbra, Animus, and Armature! Lookie!” She slapped down the papers and spread them out on the carpet.
“Are these...genealogies?” Swift asked, pulling herself to her hooves. I sighed and got up, suddenly missing the warmth of her pressed against my back.
“Yep! Umbra, Animus, and Armature were founded by a very old Equestrian family who went by those three names!” Twilight replied, pointing to a spot on a large family tree whose branches seemed to enfold themselves into a circle, meeting at the top. “They date back more than a thousand years, although they vanished during the Lunar Fall. The last generation all but appeared nearly a hundred and twenty years ago, in Detrot, with a large number of old deeds and a huge surplus of gemstones. They were two brothers and a sister.”
“What do we know about them?” I asked.
“Almost nothing!” she answered with a squee of excitement. “They were rich, secretive, and impossible to gather intel on. My favorite kind of puzzle!”
“So...what have you got? Or should I just go back to my ‘tea’?” I grumbled, lifting my cup of rum from the carpet with both hooves and clutching it against my chest. It was the best rum I’d had in awhile. Twilight’s booze cabinet probably cost more than my annual salary.
“They helped found the Shield Corporation!” she exclaimed. “They didn’t control it, but they helped finance the first pylon prototype in the area that is now called ‘Uptown’. Even better...I’ve got a pair of birth certificates here for two brothers, born one year apart, in the city of Detrot. The names on the certificates are obvious fakes. After these two brothers were born, Umbra, Animus, and Armature only worked through intermediaries! Nopony saw the three original family members in court or anywhere else. Surely they are dead by now, but I have no death certificates. Detective, these ponies built a legal empire that spans your entire region, and there’s almost no usable information on them! I don’t even have an address outside of their main office!”
“And...this is still not explaining why you sound so happy about that.”
“Because! Because, because, because...I never met a group of ponies who hide better than I do!” she enthused, giving an excited flap that almost blew my hat off. “A thousand years they were gone from the public eye, and yet they just...appear with a bunch of money and property and they’re accepted into society, right under the noses of every major intelligence organization in the country! They even managed to help build your city, control regional trade, and assist in the development of most of your major criminal enterprises! If my information is right, every single mayor of Detrot was in their pocket!”
I took another sip from my cup, waiting patiently for a point to emerge. Swift took the cue and began preening her wings, whilst Limerence plucked his glasses off and cleaned them for the twentieth time in as many minutes. Somewhere, a voice I’m pretty sure was my driver called out, “Oh, do that thing with your...oooh, skiiies!”
Finally, Twilight blew a breath through her nose. “Okay, so it’s mostly just incredibly creepy, but isn’t it a place to start?”
I shook my head. “I’m kind of a results-oriented pony, and right now, the results I need are things like getting us into one of those pylons, or into Uptown, or having the names of these two brothers who were born in Detrot, if we think they’re the current controllers of the law firm. Those are all places to start.” I prodded the files with my toe. “This is vaguely interesting, but I don’t see how it helps us. I’m going back to Detrot soon. I need resources and maybe some clues. The city is a giant spell. A spell that managed to carry off Canterlot. Start there.”
Twilight rubbed her chin against the back of her hoof, thinking. “Well, the scale of the spell is certainly impressive. Without some testing and maybe building a small scale model, I can’t tell you what the spell actually does, though. Just looking at it suggests a whole new field of arcane study!” At my flat look, she exhaled and rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine. I did...maybe find something that could be useful when I was looking over the list of properties they hold...”
I sat up and put my booze aside. “And now you have my interest.”
“There’s just one property that’s weird. The rest are resource rich lands, businesses transferred from old Canterlot holding companies, or strategic purchases. The only one that was really odd was this.” She plucked a black and white printed copy of a deed out of her pile and passed it to me.
I couldn’t decipher the legal scrawl that covered the page, but Limerence was quick on the draw.
“A...a mine?” he murmured. “An old gem mine and the attendant outbuildings?”
“Yes. A small cabin and the mine itself. Everything else made sense, but this mine is in an area that we know is empty according to modern surveying techniques. It’s also out in the area you call the Wilds.”
“Why did this stand out?” I asked, glancing up from the paper.
“Because...look at this.” She picked up a flat map of Detrot and held it out. The Shield’s protective matrix was all laid out in that now-familiar pattern of a lidless eye, but out on the edge a single lonely dot sat away from the others, circled in red marker. “That cabin has its own pylon less than a kilometer away. It’s in the middle of nowhere and powered by generators rather than unicorn amplification...and it’s not protecting anything else.”
I took the map from her and examined it for a moment. “That is odd enough to be worth taking a look at.” Folding up the paper, I slipped it into my pocket. My hoof bumped against a little box, and I pulled out Cereus’s magical walkie-talkie. “Speaking of odd things, there are a couple of field agents of Princess Luna’s who might like to hear that they’ve still got jobs. You seen one of these before?”
She blinked, then flipped the walkie-talkie over and peered at the label. As recognition began to dawn, she all but tossed it away from herself. I barely caught it before it hit the wall.
“For the love of...you’ve had a Hyper-Comm Mark One on you this entire time?!” she demanded. “We...We never tested those for trans-void excursive events. Tell me you didn’t hop dimensions with that thing in your pocket!”
“Oh...uh…” I picked up the communication device and turned it around a couple of times. “I mean, I would really like to tell you that, but I did...em...several times. Is that bad?”
Twilight gradually drooped like a dying fern until her horn was resting on the carpet and her face was buried in her crossed hooves. “Why...are...you...still...alive?”
“I ask myself that exact question every day,” I replied, then jiggled the walkie-talkie. The sound-box whistled, then let off a screeching sound that made her jump. “Still seems to work, though.” Raising my voice for the mic, I said, “This is Egg-Head to The Master of Hay Fries. Master of Hay Fries, come in.”
Twilight mouthed ‘Master of Hay Fries’ at me with a questioning expression, and I grinned.
After a second, Cereus’ voice came down the pipeline. He sounded exhausted and maybe a bit like he’d been crying.
“M-Master of Hay Fries, here. Is that you, Detective?”
“Yeah, it is. Where’s Night Bloom?” I asked.
“She’s...she’s locked herself in Survey again,” he moaned, stomping his hooves in agitation. “She’s been having nightmares every single night, and I can’t help her even with hugs or reading her stories, and we’re almost out of cheese doodles and pickles and I don’t know what to do and everything is awful! Please tell me you found some way to fix all of this so I can go turn myself in and go to jail and never do field work ever again, ever?!”
“Well, yes and no. I have somepony here who you might want to talk to.”
“There’s nopony I want to talk to except the Princesses!”
“Funny you should say that,” I replied. Twilight gave me a chicken-in-the-headlights look as I held out the walkie-talkie, then gingerly picked up the device and pressed it to her muzzle.
“Mister Cereus,” she began, “This is codename ‘Evening And Morning’, confirmation code Phoenix, Unity, Radio, Phoenix, Lunar, Exodus...Shadow, Mask, Accelerate, Radio, Torchlight. Do you copy?”
Cereus must have dropped the walkie-talkie then, because I heard it skittering across a floor. When he came back on, it was in a voice only a little louder than a whispering mouse.
“P-p-princess Twilight? Is it really you?”
“It’s me. Can you give me a quick debrief on what’s been going on in Detrot?”
We both leaned away from the speaker as there was an explosion of feedback followed by a blubbering stallion trying desperately to explain how the entire world had managed to go so wrong.
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Well, that was unexpected.
"same night, along with a"
Ought that comma to be there?
7304767
Why would sending the tree to the moon necessarily cut it off from the castle?
I just love this story SO much! And the way you incorporate the new canon material deftly into it is amazing.
Also:
I see what you did there.
Oh dear. also poor Cereus, I just wanna hug him.
Almost a million words in and the story is just as interesting and mysterious as it was at the beginning.
Can't wait to se who is behind all this and why (though I can guess the why part) :P
So random question: just how much of the original draft for this point of the story changed when Seasons 4-5 came about? I'm really curious.
Anyways, these have been some really great chapters lately. I love stories that compare the "then and now".
I managed to figure out it was the Shield itself that was the spell...moments before they did, however.
Well...that is most certainly interesting. The throneroom/map adapted to work with Hardy & Co.
Lol, "PURPLESMART".
The whole map room, sorta floored me for things, especially for the song that arrived for the time.
And it just sorta arrived at the oddest moment for a go mad from the relevation moment.
P.U.R.P.L.E. S.M.A.R.T.
I love it!
I'd quote a favorite line, but I don't want to quote half the chapter in a comment. But 'best tea', 'absence of paddles', 'Kinda stupid' and 'Why are you still alive?' were particularly good. 'tail on fire' and 'thinking face' were also good.
And the entire sequence at the table.
The collective oh crap moment too. And... like I said, half the chapter.
1.media.dorkly.cvcdn.com/50/27/0d41808f60af8871fa122b3b0f37ab1b.gif
7305720 Now, if you can get what the title for this section is from, you get a big freakin' cookie.
-Chessie
So AA&U has been playing operation BIGFOOT for the past 100 plus years, Twi's call sign is PURPLE SMART, and Hardy should have been dead 50 times over by now. Oh and Cereus just got to talk to the hidden princess.
Great chapter and I can't wait till Hardy and Co. get back to Detrot and in the words of many action movie characters, "Blow sit up!"...probably.
This is the mood the story is giving me at the moment.
Creepy things after creepy things, dark implications after another...
Whoof!
7306047 Shit is NOW...bad, yes.
7305754 I'm already on writing it! Coming chapter, it's back to the city!
7305657 I'm glad you guys enjoy the way I write this. I put a bit of effort into the character voice and making them all as different as possible. It really makes me feel better to know people appreciate that.
7305066 It's basically a completely different story. King Cosmo was originally our main villain.
7305029 Celestia save me if I ever write fan-fiction of an ongoing show again... Sweet Jesus, stuffing that shit in is HARD.
-Chessie
Please. If we do not see the bodies, then they are still alive. Besides, I am fully expecting them to turn out to be dragons. There are not too many groups that could create a hoard of gemstones, and that could explain the longevity question. Now what could they want to do with the NMM armor? Possibly recreate her through arcane shenanigans?
7306427 Heeheeeheeee...you're still thinking too small.
-Chessie
7305053 You're wrong. I promise.
-Chessie
7307226
7305751
Well originally I was thinking it was just one of them 'it's just whats going on in the chapter' things but I guess it is something...
hmm...
MC Lyte?
I guess it's also a thing Lucio of Overwatch fame says...
7307709 ARRRRG!...you got it. I've been playing lots of Overwatch lately...
-Chessie
7307737
I want my mah-fuckin' cookie, dammit!
lovethispic.com/uploaded_images/144669-Cookie-Monster-Frenchie.jpg
Also just realized that list of names spelled purplesmart XD
Code name
PURPLE SMART
BLUE FAST
ORANGE TOUGH
PINK...PINK
YELLOW SHY
WHITE DRESS HORSE
And the story rolls on... Fun reading as usual, even if it feels a bit slow pace and progress wise.
Also, I'm betting some smart dragon somewhere made a deal with somebody, but U,A, and A being dragons would really explain. Also, their pre-Lunar Rebellion presence (I'm assuming they're the same ponies) handily explains knowledge of the moon weapons and their apparent absence post-rebellion and prior to Luna's return.
7307994
Yep. First thing I checked (what the first letters spell) after I finished noting the codenames. Having heard people refer to those sort of things before when letters were unclear over telephone conversation (wiki says 'NATO phonetic alphabet') it seemed fairly obvious after the first couple words and the fact that she was confirming her identity. Interesting that Cereus knows that sequence and that there is a 'Princess Twilight'.... given that almost everyone else is in the dark. I'll have to check back through the last couple chapters, but the scope of that spell is somehow rather fluid.
7304767
I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Depending on the backstory you use, the tree could be simply a manifestation of harmony/?. It's function isn't exclusively to contain the Everfree, in fact that seems like an ancillary effect that's happens to be useful. I.e. as a consequence of being a source of harmony it is able to quell a certain degree of chaotic magic. Presumably the tree was always there and may have been the reason for the Princesses castle being built there. If they didn't know about it before construction, then we could infer that it drew them there somehow. Moving it somewhere else wouldn't affect it's intrinsic properties probably.
I'm not up to date on watching the show but 'having a friend' can be read as an exceedingly brief synopsis of a need for harmony. Humans, and presumably ponies, have a need to socialize with other humans/belong to a group. See 'Maslow's hierarchy of needs' ("love/belonging"). Consequently being isolated/unhappy/in need of a friend, etc could be lumped together into a single category. A lack of creativity/expression doesn't seem relevant.
7306662
The only thing I can think of this time is this is going to result in a megaspell being created in an attempt to deify the three beyond the capability of the regular superpowers that usually stop an Equestrian Menace. That or create a Kaiju-sized NMM. That is what I am at least taking from the company that is casting a shadow (Umbra) with ill intent (Animus), bent on being the framework (Armiture) for whatever nefarious plans they are hatching.
I may have been influenced to determine this due to a deprivation of sleep.
7309562 Glad to have you back!
7308453 Hehehee...those are all very good ideas. I wish I'd thought of them.
-Chessie
I can't believe it took reading the comments for me to get the black lotus joke in the last chapter, but I see what you did there. I assume Lim vomited red, white, black, blue, and green?
7309961 Well...yeah. Lots of characters here are like that.
-Chessie
7309953 Of course. What other colors would he?
-Chessie
I love this story so much. I also feel so bad for Cereus. I don't normally feel this way, but he's probably one of the first fictional characters I've ever legit wanted to hug.
7311374 He really is a sweetheart. He mixes adorable with completely out of his depth and maybe a bit stupid, but stupid like a puppy who gets his head caught in a sock on a regular basis.
-Chessie
I liked the use of the friendship map and the empty thrones. Great update!
7306427
I think that AU&U are less dragons and more Elder God level beings that can give an angry dragon a big enough hoard of gems to catapult him into a position where he could coup his way to becoming emperor.
My current guess that A is Nightmare Moon and U&U are her bros and are trying to bring her back. Although the timeline is a bit wonky so I'm probably wrong.
7311348 "Nine minutes" is also a very specific figure, especially given the period of Magic history here. Power Nine reference?
7313474 Well, duh, what else would it be?
-Chessie
7311523 I see your point on him being out his depth, but I can't help but notice even Twi is a bit out of her depth here. I don't think I can hold that against him much. And he cooks food that's not just edible, but actually good!
7314626 Eh...I think Twilight's default state is 'out of her depth, but does it anyway'. I don't think she's ever going to get to a state of 'smugly prepared alicorn-hood'. The world will keep knocking her on her ass.
-Chessie
7314655 To be honest, "out of their depth but doing it anyway" is the whole main cast at this point, I think. They're mostly driven forward by a mix of friendship, vengeance, stubbornness, booze, and the occasional complete emotional meltdown, if I understand correctly.
What I'm saying is they're great and I love them all. Especially Swift.
So Astral Skylark basically used the topographical features of the structures in a city as a giant spell matrix eh?
7316967 Skylark's dead and crazy. Someone much smarter than she was did all this.
-Chessie
7317169 Oh okay, I suppose I overestimated her then.
7324736 I...you know, I have no idea? We certainly didn't reference them, but they might have referenced us. What are you referring to?
-Chessie
7328121 Oh...heh, I had no idea what you were talking about, hence why I asked. That's pretty funny, though.
-Chessie
Things are getting interesting. Can't wait for the next chapter.
Sorry for missing this earlier.
"her stomach, the princess slowly pulled herself"
"Princess"?
7343722 You had TOO much fun with this chapter...I can tell.
-Chessie
In retrospect, scheduling the National Fire Poi Beginner Summer Camp Clinic along side the "Combusion! A Comprehensive History of Equestrian Inflammable, Incendiary, and Ignitable Materials" exhibition was a staggeringly bad idea.
I know Mayfly is supposed to be cute and sexy and all, but a bug big enough to do that with?!
NOPE! Nopenopenopenopenope!
derpicdn.net/img/2016/4/30/1143190/medium.gif
derpicdn.net/img/2016/5/13/1153375/medium.gif
> MFW I see all the unread Facebook notifications on my phone...
It is going to be tragically sad if they dig through the backlog and find a 40 year old "Jingle Jangle: Detrot: Needs a friend and a counsellor after his brother died" notification...