Harry slept calmly, and barely noticed the needle piercing her neck, the tranquilizer took hold instantly, and Silver carefully carried the foal into the infirmary, held her down with the autodoc, and, talking to herself again, she muttered “Now, time to find out exactly what you are…” A magical scanner arm reaching out and scanning the strange scar on the filly’s forehead, right below the horn. Her body was coated in some kind of arcane shield, on her first scans Silver believed it to be a neutralizer field, but, no, spells worked just the same on her as any other filly her age… She also had much faster natural healing, something that only skilled medical unicorns should have, the field was making the scanner’s readings of the scar tissue blurry.
Silver looked at the magical suppressor-ring the autodoc had placed on the filly’s horn, it was standard, you didn’t want a panicking patient destroying the equipment as it worked to save a life… Where the ring touched, the magic field around the foal dissipated, but didn’t go away completely… The rings were adjustable to fit most horn sizes, but not a fully pony’s body… There were rumors of devices during the war that could negate magic on a mass-scale, magic interdictors preventing zebra potions from working, but she didn’t have one on hand, plus, who knows how much magical equipment in the Stable would be damaged from the use of such a device…
Silver, knowing how important this project of hers was, it had been ordered by the Star Paladin, apologized to her poor Autodoc as she ordered the magic suppressor ring removed from the patient’s horn, and she carefully took out a screwdriver pried the ring off of the mechanical arm holding it, and split the ring in half, carefully extracting and placing on a tray the grains of black dust that came out of the simple iron band… It was this dust that was the actual important part of the suppressor, tiny black crystals, mined from some rock farm from before the war, the reason Equestria annexed the Changeling Hives as the Great War broke out, according to what history on the subject remained, Changelings thrones were made from this black rock, and in the hands of ponies they had helped save many lives from Megaspells during the end, but there wasn’t enough of it to save everyone, not even after all the southern hives had been plundered… Ironic, how a rock that absorbed magic had saved pony lives in the end.
Silver mixed the black rocks in with a basic healing potion, she would need to check the waste recycler for the next few days to get the crystals back after this, they were too valuable to go to waste in… Well… Waste…
The potion was injected directly into the foal, and as it did Harry’s magic weakened, the field slowly fading out, but the scar was resisting the crystal’s effects… Worse… Harry’s vital signs were becoming erratic, the magic around the scar was growing stronger as the shield faded… Silver swore as she realized her mistake, she quickly took a scan of the scar, but didn’t wait for the results, she immediately stuck a magically conductive rod into the foal’s side, had she not been so thoroughly anesthetized Harry would have been writhing in pain, at least that meant Silver didn’t have to worry about the pony having a seizure on top of whatever that scar was doing to her.
She connected a wire to the conductive rod, and wired that into a thaumimeter, she didn’t want to overload the poor foal… Oh shit she was bad at this, she should have called for a unicorn, or at least a magical engineer, but there wasn’t time, she set the dial on the thaumimeter, plugged in a magical spark battery, and there was a soft flash of light from the foal as magic energy quickly flowed back into her, overwhelming the small amount of crystal that she had injected and restoring the pony to magical equilibrium… This method of treating magical burnout wasn’t recommended, but in the situation…
Silver breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the field push back against the magic in the foal’s scar, she had barely saved Harry’s life, for the second time that week. Although this time she had also been the one to almost kill the poor pony.
She pulled out a clipboard and began writing, “Subject’s scar tissue imbued with magical properties consistent with necromancy, subject’s arcane field suppressing scar… Further research required.” At that, Silver finally looked at the results of the scan she had taken in the brief moment where Harry’s magical field had failed. “Scar tissue similar in composition to recent magical energy weapon damage, however approximate age is indeterminable, will inquire the subject when conscious. Two magical patterns impressed upon scar, primary pattern consistent with samples recovered from Hoofington and Canterlot, see previous research on ‘Enervation’ and ‘Pink Cloud’ for further details. Second pattern appears to be-” At that Silver paused.
She was familiar enough with the samples recovered from Canterlot and Hoofington to recognize a death spell… Treating some of the Steel Rangers from those contingents who had been exposed had been… Gruesome… But not the other spell pattern impressed upon the scar, it was… A neural network? She vaguely remembered seeing something like this… Memories slowly came together, of finding a strange little trinket in one expedition into the ruins of Las Pegasus, and putting it into the arcane scanner after a late night of boredom with nothing else to do… She set off for her quarters, and returned with a small figure, a ceramic statue of one of the Ministry Mares, just some collector’s trinket, but remarkably resilient, practically indestructible, and unmarred by centuries of decay. The words “Be Smart” imprinted in gold letters…
Sure enough, when she placed the statuette under the arcane scanner, the reading was the exact same as the foal’s scar tissue.
The bobbies had brought the thing in a few days ago, and placed it in cold storage… The thing was some kind of insect, but horribly oversized… The doctor, Robert Homes, pulled the thing out and began an autopsy, after continuously inspecting it, disappointed that the sample he had was so torn by the shotgun blast that killed it, he was left with one conclusion, this was a new species, one not discovered on earth so far! He was ecstatic, and told his assistant with glee, he would need to do a bit of research, but perhaps he might go down in history, giving his name to this new species of insect! He had picked up the phone, about to address his colleagues in London, not noticing as a man walked up behind him and whispered something “Obliviate-”… Everything he had experienced in the past week had vanished from his mind… The flayed and dissected corpse of the insect was taken off the tray, and without being noticed at all, the man had left, disappearing around the corner, vanishing into thin air with another whisper, the flick of a small twig of wood.
Harry awoke from the same dream, but stronger, and more horrible than ever before… His mother crying, the laughing, the flash of green, and pain, horrible, horrible, horrible pain! That flash of green, it was so similar to that weapon Rosemary used, a different shade, but Harry could almost imagine a raider-man, holding a series of tubes and coils and glass and spikes, firing a blast of magical energy into Harry’s skull, leaving him nothing more than a puddle of green gel.
Harry turned, feeling something on his… Her… She would still need to get used to that. On her bed, she felt around, feeling a strange rush as she pulled a small ceramic statuette of a purple mare. There were golden letters carved into the base of the statuette, “Be Smart”, she rolled the words over in her mouth, then shrugged, or at least tried to, she was still getting used to this whole, being turned into a pony, thing… On the bottom of the statuette was a small sliver of paper “Wanted you to have this, don’t lose it - Silver Heartstrings”
Harry put the trinket into her scribe robes, collected the parts of the revolver she had spent all night disassembling, and went to train some more in magic with Sparkweld. The stallion, upon seeing Harry’s work, nodded, “Now,” He began, “Reassemble it, back exactly the way you took it apart.”
“What?”
“You heard me, put it back together.”
Harry, suddenly nervous, looked down at the parts of the gun scattered on the table, “Be smart…” She muttered to herself, and started pulling out the most obvious pieces first and trying to fit them together… She could already feel herself a little smarter as she quickly learned where everything was supposed to go.
The Headmaster sat, smiling gleefully at watching the new first-year students file into his hall, the sorting began, the hat was pulled out, singing his latest song, Hogwarts’ ghosts were floating around at their tables, the new children coming in with a mixture of fear and wonder. Minerva began calling out names, and one-by-one they were sorted, Dumbledore chuckled as Frederick Weasely was placed into Gryffindor even as the hat was almost a meter off his head, his sibling George followed. It was expected, the entire family had only ever been in that house, but it was still amusing to see their siblings all cheer at another two Weaselys being sorted. Filius and Quirinus weren’t looking over the sorting, but quietly discussing some of the finer details of Gilderoy Lockhart’s new book… Albus was somewhat proud of what the grandnephew of his old friend T.E. Lawrence had become. Perhaps when Quirinus decided to retire, if he ever did, he would ask that man to come join as a professor. Snape on the other hand was observing the sorting intently, for once, and seemed particularly interested in the Hufflepuffs for some reason, and even his Divinations professor had come to observe the sorting this year.
Minerva finished the sorting, and Albus stood to address the students. While he was doing this, his only real thought was “Two more years, only two more years… And at last Harry would be joining!”
Harry sighed internally as she raised her magical energy pistol, she didn’t like the thought of killing another creature, but at least these were just animals, it was much easier to fry an overgrown and mutated alligator than kill a pony, Harry somehow was glad that she was in this horse-world, she didn’t think she would ever have it in her to take the life of a human… Not yet… She thought grimmly to herself as she bit the trigger, and the radigator slumped over with a glowing, burning hole in its head. A colder and more logical part of her mind had slowly been taking over ever since she got here… It seems that cold logic was all this group of Steel Rangers she had been assigned to had. It was her second time out in the field, and this time, instead of being with Sparkweld, or Rosemary, or Silver, or Lighting… This time the two ponies accompanying her were both knights, who didn’t even bother giving their names, or even calling Harry by hers, they just addressed her as “Foal”.
Still, she pressed on, going through this gator-infested ruin, some old water treatment plant. She doubted if there really was anything left in this place that was really worth it, everything just seemed like rust.
Eventually, the knights retrieved what they had set out to gain, some kind of magical device, to Harry, it just looked like a jeweled box… An ugly one, although perhaps that was just all the algae and slime the damned thing had been coated in.
The moment they were back in the Stable, Harry sat in bed and listened to the radio, the DJ was on again, telling a quite frankly amazing tale about a stable mare who had killed a dragon! And freeded over a hundred slaves too by the sound of it. Harry shivered a little, realizing that, if there were dragons out there, she may need to fight one someday… Then, she got up, realizing she was late for her magic training with Sparkweld!
She arrived in the maintenance bay, the stallion waiting for her with another gun sitting on the table, she had done this before at least a dozen times now, this was going to be easy, she wanted to learn something new… Sparkweld said, “Stand, you will not be sitting tonight.” Harry did so, and Sparkweld pointed the revolver squarely at Harry’s chest, “We are moving on from telekinesis to shield spells… Do not worry, these are just rubber bullets…” Harry suddenly realized some ironic lesson about getting what you wished for. The next few days were going to be painful.
10814832
Getting back into the swing of writing fanfics... Needed a bit of a break from my other projects (I'm writing my own original novel but I've gotten a bit of writers block for that, and I'm working on my own video game but learning to program in C# is... Tiring, to put it mildly)
Have I ever mentioned how much I fucking hate wizards? Bet they don't even do anything with the only clue as to Harry's whereabouts either, because they're idiots.
My problems with Rowling's worldbuilding aside, great chapter!
10816433
Indeed. this is why I love when the Statute of Secrecy collapses. There is almost no point in putting the story in modern times if you go out of your way to make it irrelevant.
Another great chapter you’re really picking up speed with these uploads and I love it
all my yessssss
10816433
Well, being a closed-soceity so firmly stuck in the past tends to make one a little xenophobic and intentionally ignorant about the outside world, so yeah, wizards suck. I may need to slow down writing for a bit to reread parts of Fallout Equestria, since I kinda forget the order of events after Littlepip kills Topaz and freees Shattered Hoof, since I'm using the radio as a way to keep track of time and tell when and where certain important events occur... Also, hope you caught some of the very important implications of Silver's scan of Harry's scar.
10816814
Well the most obvious revelation is the Ministry Statues are horcruxes, which makes sense. Obviously not full horcruxes though, because if they were than the Main 6 would still be alive, kind of. Anything I missed?
10816851
That, and the spell Avada Kedavra is extremely similar to Pink Cloud and Enervation. Also, horcruxes don't keep you alive, just bind your soul to the physical world, Voldemort had still died when he was hit with Avada, he just turned into a wraith... And, there is a rather suspisious scene in Fallout Equestria, when Littlepip was lost in Canterlot, where she gets greeted by what appears to be the ghosts of the Mane 6. And the "ghost" of Twilight does posess an alicorn after Littlepip blows up Maripony.
10816860
Of course! That all makes perfect sense! I really like how you're connecting the magic systems of these two universes.
10817121
Take a guess what you get if you combine Avada Kedavra, Incendio, Bombarda, Engorgio, take the resulting spell and apply it to a potion, and then take that potion and crystalize it, and then apply a megaspell-framework to the result?
10817171
You get a nuked Manehattan?
10817312
Yep, ingredients in making a balefire bomb... Of course the spells go by diffrent names in Equestria, but the concept behind them is the same.
The irony of a soul jar is that Fluttershy is the only confirmed survivor of the War that lived to the present day. The bloodlines of the rest of the ponies might be traced, like Applejack's. Yes, the ghost of Twilight was there but it's not clear if she gave up on the living world afterwards.
10817365
Hold on, there are some defenses against Zebra super weapons, right? It's been a while since I've read it. Does this mean Harry could have defenses against Avada Kedavra?
10817414
Yep
10817515
Wait, how did the Zebras discover these spells? They don't have horns. Do some have wands in this?
10817601
I kinda already explained that, spell patterns, when drawn or enscribed on an object, become talismans, basically wands that are pre-programmed to cast only the spell that had been enscribed on to them. Perhaps the zebras learned that if they painted certain symbols on objects, magic would come from it... After all, the Zebras did evidently have access to magic, they brewed potions, and the Black Book, which was where Rarity learned how to make
horcruxesSoul Jars, was Zebra-Made.