//------------------------------// // Wall // Story: Crashland: Equestria // by computerneek //------------------------------// Snap! The Sparkle Friendship Initiative’s Friends in Harmony Party arrives on the beach with a flash of purple light- and, immediately, the noise of a party cannon. “I still don’t think that’s a good name for us, Twi,” Applejack states. Rarity watches some of the confetti sinking slowly to the ground, whipping out an umbrella to keep it out of her coat.  “Why did you have to bring that?” she asks Pinkie. “Uh, girls?” “Yes Flutter….   Oh.”  Twilight blinks, having followed Fluttershy’s outstretched hoof with her eyes, pointing to the massive, circular thing on the front of one of the wings.  They had missed it earlier, thanks to the fire of its approach. The air is boiling.  Twilight can’t think of anything else to describe it, seeing the giant ring thing shift and spin.  She can literally see, not just sense, the magic bubbling off of it as it does- and promptly returning to it. Rainbow snaps her jaw shut.  “How powerful…?” Twilight blinks.  “I don’t think even an Alicorn can manipulate that much power.” “Is it just me, or does it seem to be struggling?” Rarity asks. Another few seconds of looking later, Twilight responds.  “Yes, it does seem to be…  But that’s more than enough power to destroy Equestria if it loses control!” “Eh, but magic is easy to vent safely.” Everypony looks at the Draconequus.  He hadn’t been there a second before. “What?  It’s as easy as-”  He snaps his fingers almost demonstratively, breaking off midsentence when an invisible wall of air not far in front of everypony vibrates.  The invisible wall, Twilight notices, that she had not been able to teleport past- and that had absorbed or reflected every spell she launched at it.  Discord looks at it.  “Huh?”  He snaps his fingers again, this time teleporting himself past that barrier. Only, he didn’t get what he was expecting. Everypony’s jaws drop as the draconequus’ teleport, normally unstoppable even by powerful Alicorn magic, ends far short of its target.  In fact, he finds himself smashed against that invisible wall- except there’s now a patch that isn’t (quite) invisible.  It’s a transparent blueish color, rippling back to invisibility as he physically bounces off of it, falling flat on the ground. All six ponies rush forwards.  “Discord!  Are you okay?” It takes him a minute to recover from the impact, even with Twilight’s helpful spell. “Ow,” he mutters, holding his head as he rises to a seated position.  “What’d I hit?” Pinkie Pie pulls a Pinkie.  “You hit this thi-AAAAAHHHH!” She had rocketed up into the air, expecting to strike off of the barrier like a brick wall.  Instead, she had passed straight through it, with only the tiniest ripple through the air- and fallen perhaps three meters to the ground in a most un-Pinkielike manner.  As Twilight might put it, it’s not like Pinkie Pie to obey the laws of physics. Applejack charges forwards, not thinking for a second about the possible implications of Pinkie’s sudden obedience to physics.  “Pinkie!”  The air ripples again as she passes through, though she seems unbothered.  “You okay?”  She holds out a hoof to help Pinkie up. Pinkie tries to spring up a couple of times, failing both times before she takes Applejack’s hoof, returning to her own with Applejack’s able assistance.  “I’m…”  She pauses, and her head hangs slightly.  Her poufy mane stays poufy, even though everypony gets the distinct impression it should be going straight.  “Okay.”  She tries a couple of her trademark hops, but stumbles on each of the landings.  Why do physics have to be so stinking difficult?  She walks slowly back towards the rest, Applejack at her side. Almost as soon as the air ripples again, Pinkie rockets into the air, bouncing with her exuberance.  “I’m back!  Woohoo!” Discord blinks, finally shaking off the last of his dizziness, and hops back to his feet.  He then steps cautiously through the barrier, to another faint ripple, and looks back.  After a shrug, he snaps his fingers…  Once, twice, thrice, all in vain.  Frustrated, he steps back through, snaps his fingers- and finds himself lying on the ground again, unconscious. Princess Twilight flares her wings while he recovers.  “Maybe I can help it control that power.” Before anypony fully processes what she’d just said, she steps through the barrier.  Her horn instantly starts tingling- but she expected this.  If Pinkie’s and even Discord’s magic stopped working when they passed through, there must be some kind of antimagic artifact somewhere.  Artifacts can be destroyed- or, since she can see so much power easily boiling its way through this artifact’s effect, perhaps she can use magic near that thing anyways, and disable the artifact?  She canters forwards, towards the circular thing- only to screech to a halt when Rainbow races in after her. “You’re gonna- woAH!” Rainbow had decided to follow in the air- and suddenly lost control of her flight once she crossed the barrier.  Her wings beat wildly, but she still crashes- or, more accurately, hits the ground running, recovering in time to avoid faceplanting.  Twilight notices that her wings are still providing lift, though it seems not enough to hold her up. “It’s like magic doesn’t work on this side of the barrier,” Twilight informs.  “Even alicorn magic.  But if I can siphon and control some of that power, I can change that.”  She looks up at the circular thing again- and they both start trotting towards it.  It isn’t long before their friends all catch up; Fluttershy, as she entered on her hooves, seems as bothered by it as Applejack. Docking tractors…  Locked.  One fuel tank repaired, H2O harvesters starting up, dropping the miraculously undamaged feed.  She’d been worried she’d have to carry it up in buckets before she could fix the feed.  Power grid…  Wait.  Power grid, charging faster than it had when she was at dangerous proximity to the local star.  Why? She punches a few buttons.  Rift Reactor online…  Yes, that explains the power levels; that is the system that allows the ship to hold an unassisted warp jump for generations.  But how is it running?  The rift reactor feeds off of the energy flows in rift space- and doesn’t work in n-space, at all.  Normally.  A few more button presses confirm her suspicions:  Atmosphere is similar to Earth, approximately 1.02 gees of gravity, at an angle of about two and a half degrees from shipboard.  Microbiology…  Clean.  It’s safe to step outside without a suit, at least within the limits of her ships’ defensive barriers.  After all, not many safe objects can deliver five meganewton impacts to the antikinetic energy barrier.  That’s well within system tolerances- that barrier alone can tank most small craft (1500 ton range) slamming into it at lightspeed. So she heads out on foot.  She arms herself first, though- a sniper rifle more for the scope than for the firepower, a small autopistol to frighten away anything local that wishes to eat her, and her sword for dealing all of the damage.  She decides to head out through the starboard wing- that one’s on solid land, and should deposit her right up close to one of the warp engines, through which the rift reactor is harvesting energy.  As near as her few sensors in the area can tell her, it is completely safe- but she wants to check in person, in case she has to order a full engine shutdown to prevent damage.  She hates ordering full shutdowns- especially when it’s standard procedure for a ship this large to hold the warp engines on ready standby at all times, in case of a surprise attack.  Speaking of which, once she gets the rift sensors back online, a little bit of power to the stabilized rift engines should be enough to jump the ship into orbit- or, with the rift reactor and warp engines all running, into a neighboring galaxy. But that’s for another time, another day.  For now, the airlock is opening, to let her out onto the sandy beach four hundred meters below and two hundred to the side of an active warp engine.