//------------------------------// // Chapter 7: Extraction and Elimination // Story: Painted Horses // by Alaborn //------------------------------// Painted Horses By Alaborn Standard disclaimer: This is a not for profit fan work. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is copyright Hasbro, Inc. I make no claim to any copyrighted material mentioned herein. Chapter 7: Extraction and Elimination Once we regrouped back at the hotel, the version of Lightning Shield who was an excited school kid vanished, replaced by the all business military leader. He reported to the group the result of our reconnaissance, with further details provided by Greta and Sweetie Drops. “So now, we need to finalize the two elements of our plan. Extract the trapped ponies and send them home, and eliminate the Malice element of Discord,” Lightning Shield said. “Jason has been in communication with Princess Twilight Sparkle. We need only give the time, and an alternate location if necessary, and she’ll be ready with the portal,” Minuette added. “After sundown, then,” Lightning Shield said. “You probably want to do it far after sundown,” Jason suggested. “Humans are prone to stay out late.” “What time do you suggest?” “Maybe 1:00 AM. Late enough that the streets will be close to empty, but not so late that being out would be suspicious. That assumes there’s some nightlife in Ocala.” “I’m sure the bars are open,” I said. “That’s a good idea. Let’s find a bar centrally located to the targets. Since it’s not practical for all of us to be involved in the extraction effort, most of us will need to wait there,” Lightning Shield said. “At minimum, we need Jason for transportation and communication, and Minuette to cast the spells. Do you two need any support?” Jason looked to Minuette, who replied. “No. Just as long as no one wants to catch the encore of our little performance from earlier.” Jason nodded. “We’ll act only when we’re not being watched.” “Lyra should join us. Then once everypony is rescued, we can go straight to the portal,” Minuette added. “All right. Now, for the harder part. Sweetie Drops? Greta?” “Getting in is the easy part. There’s a fence, but we found an area where the wilderness is so thick, nopony will be able to see us,” Sweetie Drops said. “There will probably be an alarm, and maybe security cameras,” I said. “It won’t matter to you, assuming we can get in and out in time, but I don’t want to be on record breaking and entering.” “You could stay with the vehicle,” Lightning Shield said. Jason shook his head. “To fight discord, we need harmony. And discord that threatens two worlds is best met by harmony shared by the people and ponies of two worlds.” Rose squeezed Jason’s arm. “I may just be a florist, but I’m willing to stand together and fight for Earth and Equestria.” “I have an assortment of spells that might work, but I will need to test them,” Minuette said. “We have hours to test before we engage,” Lightning Shield said. “Now, as for the more difficult task. How do we defeat Discord?” Sweetie Drops raised a hand, went to her bag, and pulled out a wooden box. She opened it. “Standard issue Tartarus-grade spirit trap. What we need to do first is separate his spirit from this world’s body.” “The problem is, we don’t know how much magic he’s accumulated, or how many ways he has to use it,” Greta said. “Given what John reported, the answer is ‘not enough’,” Minuette said. “And if his first instinct is to steal as much magic as he can get his mismatched mitts on, then we have something perfect for him.” Minuette showed us a case made of a dark metal; Lyra recoiled at the sight. And once Minuette explained what was in the case, I understood why the transformed unicorn reacted as she did. “Okay, let’s buckle down and do any final preparations,” Lightning Shield said. “It kind of reminds me of studying for finals, right, John?” Jason said. “Good point. But we’ll need one thing to make it complete.” Thirty-five minutes later, the pizza we ordered was delivered to our room, and our study party commenced. Greta and Sweetie Drops moved the kitchen table out of the center room, and they and Lightning Shield used the area to practice fighting in their human bodies. Jason and Rose handled the final communications with Twilight Sparkle. And Minuette and Lyra retreated to the bedroom, where they brainstormed the magical angle. They sat on the bed, examining dozens of wands while discussing the matter animatedly. “John? Can you come here?” Minuette said. “Sure.” I joined them in the bedroom. “We have some ideas on spells to use, but we need your help to understand your human technology.” “Okay,” I said. “First of all, these cameras you think the park has, do they function like the cameras you showed us earlier?” Minuette asked. “Well, the park’s old. It’s possible the system uses videotape, rather than digital storage.” Lyra shook her head. “What we need to know is how the camera itself works. The way it sees the image, is it the same?” “Well, yeah.” “Good,” Minuette said. “We’ll test the invisibility spell now. Record it with your camera, and we’ll confirm that the spell fools cameras as well as eyes.” I nodded and pulled out my phone. Minuette held a wand and concentrated. In an instant, Lyra disappeared from view. I saw right through where she was sitting to the wall beyond. And my phone recorded the exact same thing. “Excellent,” Minuette said. “Now, Lyra and I have been talking about what spells could be used to stop an alarm. The problem is we don’t know where to start, because we don’t know how the alarm works.” “Well, neither do I,” I said. “But we can look it up.” I borrowed Jason’s iPad, because the screen was bigger, and used it to look up various alarm systems. Minuette and Lyra looked over my shoulder as I searched. I first showed them a typical home alarm system, but then looked up commercial alarm systems. I looked to the two women. “Does any of this help?” “I can see how the function of these alarms resembles our alarm spells, but how does the magic work?” Minuette asked. “What do you mean?” “I mean, this alarm sees you approach. How does it send out the alarm?” “It’s all electric.” “Electric? You mean, like the lightning used in pegasus inventions?” Lyra said. I hadn’t really examined the technology in Equestria during my two trips there, but now that I thought about it, I never saw an electric outlet. I suppose the lights they used were powered by magic instead. It looked like I would have to start at the beginning, with an explanation of what electricity was, and how it worked. Fortunately, I had a degree in electrical engineering. I saw a lot of polite nodding from Minuette and Lyra as I tried to distill all my knowledge into a brief lecture. But something must have clicked, because Minuette grabbed the iPad. “So if the alarm system uses wires, like in this one, what happens is the camera or sensor notices something, and then the information is sent across the wire instantaneously?” she said. “Do you have an idea?” Lyra said. “I was thinking Skyfire’s Ward could be adapted. What do you think?” Lyra shrugged. “Beats me. I took earth pony magic as my elective.” “What are you talking about?” I said. “Skyfire’s Ward is a shielding spell that drains pegasus magic into mana crystals, protecting the caster. If it also works on human electricity, that spell could shut down the functioning of the alarm system.” It sounded like Minuette was proposing a localized blackout. That could work, but only if it worked on electricity. Fortunately, I knew someone who should know. I popped into the other room. “Hey, Jason, does pegasus lightning work like electricity?” “I have no idea,” he replied. “Not much cause to work with weather magic when I’m building roads.” “Great.” We would just have to test it. “Say, could I get the iPod out of your car?” “Sure.” Once I returned, I plugged the iPod into the room’s clock and turned it on. Music started playing, and Minuette and Lyra looked around. “Here’s a way you can test your spell,” I said. “This device stores music, and this white cord contains a wire that transmits the music to the speaker here. See if you can stop the music.” Minuette nodded. Holding a mana crystal in one hand and a wand in the other, she concentrated. Sure enough, the spell worked. It worked a little too well. Not only did the music stop, but the electricity was pulled out of the iPod, the clock, and the nearby light fixture. They flickered back on after Minuette stopped the spell. “Okay. Let’s not use that spell around anything important.” The one last part of our plan was how to approach Discord. With his nature, there was no doubt he could use magic much more effectively than us, since we were constrained by the spells in the wands. Our plan was contingent on tricking him into taking the nasty item Minuette held. I had the most experience with Discord, having both faced him in his Malice aspect and spoken to him in his statue form. We needed him to act on impulse, and that meant playing on his past failure. And that meant me taking the lead. Fortunately, I had beer to help me cope. The five of us showed up at a bar just after midnight, taking a table and ordering a half dozen craft beers. The bar was surprisingly crowded for the holiday season; it looked like a number of extended families decided a family trip to the bar was in order. The environment was noisy, with loud conversation and music from the jukebox. Greta, Sweetie Drops, and Lightning Shield drank most of their beer, and then took off to play pool and darts. Rose and I stayed at the table. I was just a normal customer, nursing a beer and playing on his phone. Except I was actually monitoring the progress of Jason and Minuette. Every so often, my phone buzzed with a text message from Jason, naming the pony they recovered. And I finished one of the glasses of beer. Our prearranged signal was for the number of glasses that still held beer to be the number of ponies left to rescue. Once the last beer was gone, we would wait twenty minutes and then leave the bar as a group, walking down the street until Jason found us. “They just saved Doc Top,” I said to Rose, and I finished off the fifth beer. “One more to go.” “I’m so nervous. I hope Jason is all right,” Rose said. “He was crazy enough to move to Equestria. This is nothing in comparison,” I said. But inwardly, I was worried too. The phone didn’t leave my hand as I waited for the final message. My other hand was gripped around the remaining glass. – Just rescued G, and boy is she angry – TS is ready for delivery I gave Rose a thumbs up and finished the beer. I then realized that ponies probably didn’t have a gesture like that. But Rose understood anyway; she smiled and squeezed my arm. Over at the pool table, Greta was trash-talking Sweetie Drops, trying to get her to miss her shot. Lightning Shield, awaiting his shot, glanced over at our table. He saw the empty glasses and nodded. Twenty minutes later, we were outside, just another group of young people looking for a bar before last call. After a short walk, Jason approached. He stopped the car, and we all got in. The lights of downtown faded, and we drove down dark streets as we prepared to stop an immortal spirit of chaos and malice. Jason stared at the GPS map of his SUV as we drove slowly along the edge of Silver Springs Park. I looked at the map on the tablet. “We’re almost at the closest point to our entrance,” I said. “Look for a place to hide the car.” There were no other cars on the road, so Jason pulled off the road and headed toward the trees. The SUV jumped and shook as we rolled over the uneven terrain. We stopped after driving as far as we could into the trees and got out of the car. The moon was near full, but very little light made it through the trees. “You humans can’t see at all in the dark,” Greta said. Minuette pulled out a wand, and a blue light illuminated us. “Can one of you hold this?” “I’ll take it,” I said. The simple spell echoed in my mind, and the magical light persisted. She pulled out a second wand. “Gather close; I will make us invisible.” The slightest bit of a tingling sensation washed over me, and I could no longer see my hand holding the wand, or the wand itself. However, I could still see the magical light. “John, place your hand on my withers and follow my cue. I’m going to search for the electricity; stop when I do. Everypony else, follow the light.” Our group proceeded slowly through the woods, feeling like a party of Dungeons & Dragons adventurers made real. There was a faint glow in the distance, likely the lights of Silver Springs. Minuette didn’t stop us until we were in sight of the fence. “Stand back, everypony.” I took ten steps back. Minuette dropped a large blue crystal on the ground. She must have started on her spell, as the crystal started to glow, first dimly, then brighter. “Just a little more,” I heard her mutter. The crystal flared as bright as the sun, and then went dark. Once my eyes adjusted, I could see the lights in the park were dark too. “I’m pretty sure we’re safe to move,” I said. I heard someone move around me, then saw a grappling hook, with rope attached, fly over the fence. Someone tugged the rope. “Okay, let’s go,” Sweetie Drops said. I heard more movement as everyone climbed the rope. I let the others go first as bad memories of elementary school gym glass filled my mind. When the rope stopped moving, I said “Is everyone else up?” “I’m still here,” Jason said. “Okay, let’s give this a try,” I said. I grabbed the rope and tried to climb. I only succeeded in making the rope swing. Eventually, I slid off, my sweaty palms unable to grip. “You give it a try,” I said to Jason. A few grunts and a thump later, I saw Jason was in the same boat as me. I heard someone land near me. “Unicorns,” Sweetie Drops grumbled. “Climb on my back.” With her help, we made it over the fence. “Even Twilight Sparkle needed to be caught by Rainbow Dash before she could defeat Nightmare Moon,” Jason rationalized. “Now where?” I asked. “Hold out your light,” Greta replied. I did as she said. “Right, right... a little left... there!” she said. “Walk in that direction.” “Everypony, take your wands, and cluster around me,” Minuette said. “Remember the plan.” “Lead the way,” Lightning Shield said. My heart pounded as I walked to what could very well be my doom. The sounds of our footsteps crunching through the undergrowth and the movement of nocturnal animals were all I heard. I saw a shape in the trees. Raising my wand, my light shone on the back of Tarzan’s house. We were close. Soon, I felt something beyond my own fear. The dread, the emotional blackness of Discord’s presence, crept into my soul. My light washed over the back of the Tarzan statue. The first thing I noticed was my light changing from blue to red. Then I realized I could see my hand again. The statue changed, stone becoming flesh. Then the statue turned, sneering at me. It looked like Tarzan, down to the long hair and loincloth, but its eyes were Discord’s yellow and red. “Remember me?” I said, with as much false confidence as I could muster. Discord sniffed the air. “Yes. One of my elements of disharmony. You’re even uglier in person.” He reached out his hand, and the mana crystal I was holding flew into it. The light from my wand blinked out, leaving us bathed only in the light of the moon. “Thank you for bringing me some more magic. It helps replace my careful network of mana collection that you so rudely disrupted.” “Magic?” I scoffed. “If you remember, we seven humans kicked your butt with nothing but our hatred of you.” I emphasized the word seven, and that was the cue for the others to join me. Their invisibility spell was canceled, just like mine, as they approached. I stepped back and joined my companions, standing in a semicircle. All of us held our wands out, like a scene out of Harry Potter. At the center of the semicircle, Minuette held her bag, containing all our mana crystals. “As you can see, there are seven of us again, from Earth and Equestria, and again we’re working in harmony. This time, however, we decided to bring magic. Lots of magic.” “Not as much as I’ll have once I finish my link to Equestria’s dimension,” Discord said. “Well, it’s not a fair fight until I’m the only one with magic.” And with a wave of his hand, the bag of mana crystals was pulled from Minuette’s grasp. “No!” Minuette screamed. Discord turned the bag upside down and stretched his arms wide. Its contents were pulled to him in an invisible field of magic, crystals of assorted sizes glittering far more than they should have in the faint moonlight. I held my breath. Discord did just what I expected he would. Now, we had one chance for our plan to work. As the pile of mana crystals moved to Discord, they spread out. And somewhere in the pile was Minuette’s lead box, containing a black antimagic crystal. I caught sight of the shape. Sweetie Drops’ arm twitched, and a dart flew. It hit the box in just the right place, triggering the latch, and the lid popped open. The reaction was instantaneous. The other crystals shattered, and their elemental magic was pulled into the black crystal, swirling like a whirlpool. The black crystal didn’t stop there, as it pulled magic from the next nearest source, Discord himself. Discord screamed as the magic was pulled from him. For a moment, I could see the image of the draconequus overlaid on the human figure. But the image disappeared, and the human fell to his hands and knees. Discord coughed and got to his feet. “I don’t need magic to beat you,” he said. But the certainty was gone from his voice. “I’d say things are fair now,” I said. Greta cracked her knuckles. “I am so looking forward to this.” Now was the time for the three trained warriors to shine. Lightning Shield stabbed with his spear; after one blow hit, Discord was forced to respect the weapon. But that left him exposed to the tandem of Greta and Sweetie Drops. The former griffon employed punches, kicks, and throws in a style that wouldn’t look out of place in a mixed martial arts competition. The former pony primarily struck at Discord with a baton, but many of the blows were mere feints, concealing thrown knives and darts. It was not a fair fight. It was brutal. Without the reality-bending powers that defined him, Discord had no idea what to do. “I’m beginning to see why no one smart tries to invade Equestria,” Jason said. Rose, who was clutching Jason’s arm, nodded. Minuette watched the battle intently, holding the spirit trap she got from Sweetie Drops. She flinched with each blow, but she stood ready to ensnare Discord’s spirit. I didn’t know what would cause it to separate from his body, but I suspected it wouldn’t be pretty. Discord tried to talk, tried to bargain his way out of his situation. But the Equestrians would have none of it. Sweetie Drops landed a hard blow on Discord’s head with her baton; the sound made my stomach turn. Greta swept with her leg, knocking Discord off his feet. And Lightning Shield followed by raising his spear above his head and thrusting downward with all his strength. I covered my eyes with my hands. All was quiet, and I dared to look. Discord was no longer moving. His face was caught in an expression of surprise, and despite having a human form, his face resembled the one when he was turned to stone by the Elements of Harmony on my first trip to Equestria. And speaking of stone, his human figure was now reverting to stone. The statue of Tarzan was off its base, cracked and chipped in multiple places, and wearing an expression it didn’t have before. A translucent ball of red energy hovered over the broken statue. It radiated malice, and I shivered. Minuette shivered as well, but she steeled herself and approached. She opened the spirit trap, and the essence of Malice was pulled inside. The bad aura was gone, though I felt far from calm. “Let’s get that invisibility spell going and get out of here,” Jason said. “We don’t have any more mana crystals,” Minuette said. I noticed the ground vibrating. The black crystal was pulsing, seeming to pull in the moonlight. The ground shook around it, and it was getting stronger. I pointed at it. “Actually, I think we need to run.” I don’t know what the antimagic crystal did, but I heard something that sounded like trees falling behind us. This time, adrenaline meant I was able to climb the rope without help. As soon as we were over, Sweetie Drops recovered the rope and grappling hook, and we continued to run. As soon as the seven of us were in the SUV, Jason drove away. Rose wrote in the diary, and it glowed shortly thereafter. “The princess is ready,” she said. We drove to the same place where we met the portal the previous day. My heart was still pounding. “We have four minutes,” Jason said. “You all did good,” Lightning Shield said. “Especially you, John. You didn’t have to fight for Equestria, but you did.” “I just want to put it all behind me. I like being a normal person,” I said. “Are you sure you want to? Equestria isn’t all dangerous schemes from mad immortals,” Jason said. “There’s a lot worth appreciating in Equestria.” He took Rose’s hand and squeezed it gently. “Sorry, can’t. I don’t have your permission to visit.” “I’m sure Twilight Sparkle would be happy to grant permission,” Jason continued. “Look, I’m not going to say never, just... not now.” “Hey, if you ever come to the griffon lands, I’d be happy to buy you a beer,” Greta said. “Equestrian beer is better,” Lightning Shield said. “And the cider is better than that,” Sweetie Drops said. “Those are fighting words,” Greta said. “Someday. Maybe,” I said. A violet light washed over the car as the portal reappeared. “There’s our ride,” Lightning Shield said. We shared fist bumps as the Equestrians got out of the car. We stayed to watch each disappear into the light, and to see the portal wink out. “Now we can finally enjoy our vacation,” Jason said. That’s right. There was the resort in Tampa where we were supposed to be right now. “I called the hotel for you, and canceled the room for tonight,” Jason said. “We have the room for the rest of our trip. But now, I just want to crash.” I couldn’t agree more.