The depressed doors in the spherical room would have slid open had all of them not been smashed to pieces by the invading cloudy soldiers. As it was, a pink unicorn trotted into the site of the battle with Twilight Sparkle without any of the usual accompanying door noises. She was mildly disappointed by this – she had quite enjoyed the reliable noise the rest of her journey here.
Unlike the gaseous soldiers that stood to attention the moment she arrived, she was not wearing Rune-infused armor. Instead, she wore a simple, form-fitting gray suit that went up to her neck. Her horn was constantly lit with a blue-green aura since she continually held a large two-pronged wooden staff in her telekinesis. This artifact did have a single Rune in it, right at the point where the two prongs met: a small symbol that glowed with a sky blue energy.
She trotted to the center of the sphere and examined the hourglass device in the center. It had broken into two halves, blasted out all its lights, and wasn’t able to decide if it wanted to release noxious smoke or spark uncontrollably.
“Huh.” She prodded the device with the back of her staff, prompting a bolt of energy to shoot out and knock one of the soldiers over. “For once, I believe you. This thing really is busted.”
“Agent Glimmer,” the commanding soldier said by vibrating his cloudy head – Glimmer had no idea what his name was, and unfortunately she didn’t really have time to ask right now. Shame, he probably had a lot of stories behind that shifting, cloudy face of his. “We have determined that both targets translated to another universe.”
“And we haven’t been able to trace them?”
“Negative. The distortion was too great for the computers to parse.”
“Hoooooo…” Glimmer let out the breath as long as she could manage. “Scarcity is going to throw a fit.”
“…A fit?”
“We’re the only ship here. Heavily damaged, low on resources and personnel, and our one ticket out of this sinkhole is now bro-ken!” She sang the last word as if she were part of some musical number. Nobody appreciated this.
“What are we to do?”
Glimmer shrugged. “I haven’t the foggiest. Scarcity will probably come up with some sort of hair-brained scheme to get us out of here. We’ll just do what she says and it’ll probably work out. Probably.”
“Glimmer, am I allowed to ask what’s really at stake here?”
“Ask? Sure! Ask away! I’m just not allowed to tell you, sorry.” She rubbed the back of her head. “I can tell you your people are dying for The Cause.”
“That comforts me little.”
“I know. Again, sorry. I think you deserve to know, and for the record, I don’t think you’d complain if you did. But Scarcity is Scarcity.” Something in Glimmer’s uniform started buzzing. “Speak of the Star…”
Glimmer levitated a small, rectangular screen out of her pocket and answered the call. “Glimmer here!”
On the other side of the call was a graceful white unicorn with brilliant blue eyes, a curled purple mane, and a large scar across half her face. “Your smile is too big. What’s wrong?”
“The device is utterly, completely, truly busted.” Glimmer poked the shattered hourglass again, prompting another bolt of lightning to shoot harmlessly into a wall. “If we had the resources we could probably reverse engineer it, but we don’t.”
Scarcity pressed her front hooves together and hissed. “And what of the Merodi Agent?”
“Both she and the local Twilight managed a highly uncontrolled translation we can’t retrace. The soldiers did an admirable job nonethele-“
“Demerits for the entire team that was in there at the time of the translation,” Scarcity said dismissively. “I’m coming down myself. I’ll see what I can make of this.”
“Scarcity, you may be the Enchantress, but you aren’t a supercomputer.”
“I have a tendency to get lucky.” Scarcity ended the call.
Glimmer smacked her lips. “Welp. That went about as well as expected, didn’t it?”
There was a chorus of annoyed agreements and nods from the soldiers.
Interesting, I feel I should recognize this Scarcity, but I can't quite place the character in your other works
May want to take this back to editing, I noticed three mistakes.
9773252
I think she’s Starcoss Society. SoTS
Oh boy. They're involved. And I'd forgotten than more than one Rarity held that title.
This certainly explains what led to this madness. Now to see how it'll tie in to the ongoing resolution.
9773443
O hi! Wonderin' what happened to you.
Haven't seen you on SotS in a while. Am I just paranoid or are you letting it build up again?
-Gm, master of asking questions he probably shouldn't.
9773675
Not intentionally. Bronycon didn't help. Planning on getting back on the wagon soon.
9773683
Well, as a warning, you might wanna get back before 115 drops. Movie chapter will punch you in the face.
(But I totally understand and am jealous about you and your con going.)
-GM, master of numbers.
9773252
star cross society
Ok, not gonna lie started reading this because of the symbols in Twilight's colour in the story image, thought it might be a 40k Twiggles. But interesting story nonetheless.
The comments thought make me wonder how much I'm not getting because of not reading the 1.4 million words behemoth you write too. Will it all be explained in this story?
Either way I'm intrigued and will follow. Curious to see how will their interactions develop.
9778050
This is designed to be an entry-level story, specifically written to be an introduction to all the other stuff. It just so happens that some other stuff was written first, so people are no doubt going to be continually comparing it. I'd avoid the comments if you want to read this story as it was intended.
-GM, master of loops.
...Oh.