Sword Spells: Science and Magic · 11:15pm Feb 25th, 2015
There is a lot of science to magic. But Twilight Sparkle would be the first to tell you that magic isn't an exact science. There are so many variables, so many fluctuations that there is no one given reason for why different spells worked at times. Sometimes, they simply worked because they needed to, because the individual that cast the spell needed it to. As a scientist, Twilight vowed to do her best to understand how magic worked. But as a student, Twilight understood that sometimes magic just worked because it did. Because it had to.
When Vice Grip first acquired the bankrupt Stable-Tec and created FIST, he found their research into weapons called "megaspells" very intriguing. Unfortunately, like many of Stable-Tec's other experiments, they were ultimately unpractical(in this universe, at least) and produced few results and fewer, if any, profits. Megaspells, balefire bombs and similar weapons were simply not needed in an Equestria at peace and so had ended up mothballed along with the company. Until Vice Grip came along.
Vice Grip had found the concept of a magic nuclear bomb to be more than intriguing and after quietly purchasing Stable-Tec for fractions of bits, completely overhauled the megaspell design. By crossing them with shield spell magic, Vice created a destruction spell, an are-of-effect weapon that annihilated everything it touched within an expanding magic bubble of energy and fire. Thus, the Sword Spell was born and while it required a substantial amount of magic, energy and material to destroy a city, it was now only a matter of acquiring the resources, mixing them properly and choosing a method of delivery. The method Vice chose ended up being Magic Gear.
FIST and all the ponies and individuals at Vice Grip's command had stockpiled a vast amount of resources, assembled a huge arsenal of Sword Spells, and built a massive army of Magic Gears to launch them against their enemies when the time was right. But when the time came to test them, the tiniest glitches, errors, malfunctions, miscalculations occurred in every trial. The Sword Spells misfired, the Magic Gears disobeyed, the results Vice was looking for just didn't appear consistently. Regardless, Vice continues searching and researching, testing new designs and trying to perfect and refine each Sword Spell to get it to do exactly what he wanted.
Currently, Vice Grip has developed a design for building Sword Spells that will work as intended. The recently-produced Sword Spells have a projected 99.9% success rate, more than enough to constitute a threat to any target FIST decides to launch against. The power to destroy entire cities is in Grip's grasp; there are only a few loose ends that need to be tied up first. Despite these things, Vice isn't prepared to commit to a full-out Sword attack until the simulations improve. While the chance of launching a dud or a misfire is always present, the real concern Vice faces is not whether the Swords work as intended; it's whether they do more.
Just as magic sometimes worked simply because it needed to, sometimes magic didn't work because it needed not to. So it really didn't matter how precise Vice Grip's calculations were, how refined his materials were or how exact his designs were. Because, while there is a lot of science to magic, Twilight Sparkle would be the first to tell you:
Magic isn't an exact science.
