//------------------------------// // New tech // Story: The Weary Traveler // by The Psychopath //------------------------------// "While it is quite early, I'll need to make use of your railway system," the traveler said. "What for?" Celestia asked. "To upgrade your travel speeds." He scoffed at the idea. "One could say speed starts the process of spoiling a society." "What?" Rainbow rushed in front of the cephalopony with a scowl on her face. "Speed is awesome! It's the best thing ever!" "Yes, but ponies will want to get somewhere faster and faster until instant transportation becomes possible," the traveler retorted. Rainbow rolled her eyes in response. The walk back to Canterlot from the far, hilly areas was an uneventful. That is, until a pegasus royal guard came rushing in and skid along the ground on his landing. His momentum would have led him to impact into the traveler had he not casually stepped aside, leaving the stallion to slam into Celestia's broad chest and hurt himself. Celestia leaned down. "Are you okay?" she worried. "Y-yes. I came here as fast as I could," the guard stuttered. "Why? What's wrong?" Luna asked. "You rushing all the way over here means that there's an important issue at hoof." She scowled. "Unless..." The guard partially shielded himself with a foreleg. "Y-yes." He jumped to his hooves and saluted the princesses. "One of the metal ponies is tearing up the second artisanal district in upper-Canterlot." Traveler's apathetic expression quickly brightened in full fury. "WHAT?!" he shouted. "Th-th--" "Did it stretch out, becoming a spindly creature." He leaned in closer to the stallion's panicking face. "Y-yes. There's another trying to control her or fight her. I'm not sure." Traveler rushed off, cursing under his breath and inciting surprise from those present. "Wow. He showed emotions," Rarity noted. "This is no time for joking," Applejack scolded. "We need to rush to the city 'n see what we can do." The group followed after her, eventually coming in proximity to the outskirts of Canterlot and the smoke billowing from behind the horizon of homes and buildings. The traveler cursed under his breath and turned to face the group. "She's gone berserk again, but I have a solution. Prevent as much damage as possible while I get the 'restraint'," he rushed. The cephalopony pulled a rectangular pad from his tentacles and started working on it while rushing to the streets, quickly followed by the others. They skid to a halt in front of a long trail of buildings that had collapsed, shards and pieces of wagons, tables, and other other wooden furniture were embedded into the street and somewhat intact walls all around. Several ponies -wounded or not- were cowering behind the debris whilst a tall, spindly creature was fighting against Chinch'k wearing a wooden pendant displaying Celestia's face. The creature's legs were long and thin yet accentuated by metal plates hanging over the joints and two plates on the hooves, giving an impression of having two toes. The tail was now a whip with the fibers wrapped around the central rod and lashing about at the surroundings in frustration. The body, just like the legs, had stretched and separated as well, creating a multi-jointed central form with separate, almost hollow sheets of bent metal moving from side to side like a centipede. "What in tarnation is that?!" Applejack shouted. Celestia narrowed her eyes and glared at the creature's back. "Where are my guards?" Fluttershy looked around in response and frowned. "I can't see anypony, princess. Oh, we can't leave them all there," she worried. "You're right," Celestia agreed with a nod. "I need you t--" Twilight interrupted Celestia and bounced in front of her, surprising the alicorn. "Rainbow Dash. I need you and Fluttershy to get the wounded out of here as fast as you can." She pointed to Applejack and Rarity. "Rarity, you and Applejack need to get rid of heavy debris on anypony and lay them out for Rainbow and Fluttershy to grab." She then turned to Pinkie and took a deep breath. "Pinkie, I need you to set up a camp at the corner of the street using whatever cloths you can find." She looked to everypony and nodded. "The princesses and I will try to contain that...thing until the traveler gets the restraints he spoke of." The mare snorted angrily. "Let's do this!" The group broke and bolted towards their respective goals, leaving Celestia speechless. Luna stepped forward, a smirk on her face and a brow raised. "Looks like the student has learned quite a bit from the teacher." She pointed at Twilight and covered her mouth with a hoof. "She's taking the reigns now." The alicorn chuckled. The white alicorn couldn't find a complex response. She only muster up a few words. "So she is..." she noted despondently. "Princesses, come on!" Twilight called out. "I need your help." The three rushed forward towards the battle scene and created outward pointing shields of magic in order to slam into the creature and send it flying into a building just a few feet away. Chinch'k had shielded his face from the potential impact he could have taken, but upon seeing the carnage and then those perpetrated, he became furious. "You idiots!" he berated them. "Why did you bring her?!" He pointed to Celestia. "Celestia!" the metal mare screeched. An elongated arm reached out from the shadows and slammed around a bubble of magic the white alicorn created at the last second. Tendrils grew out of what would be a hoof and were, for lack of a better term, 'claws'. Twilight and Luna latched onto the offending foreleg with their magic and pulled the leg off of Celestia...At least, they would have. The leg wouldn't budge. Instead, Scleretin waved her foreleg as much as possible to shake the two mares off of her. "Gh! What is with this thing?!" Luna yelled behind clenched teeth. "I've got it ready!" the traveler yelled. A loud humming reached everypony's ears, bringing them great discomfort. The source came, as with most strange noises nowadays, from the saucer flying overhead, but it was now rotating slightly towards its left rather than just float in place. "What's happening?" Fluttershy wondered. A loud clank came from the craft, followed by silence, followed by whistling growing louder the closer it came. A massive, black, metal object crashed into several buildings and would have blown the alicorns away had they not had the wing strength to resist the strong gusts of wind and dust. The traveler stepped forward and gestured the alicorns to move to him, although they didn't obey. The traveler could do nothing about it, so he conceded and proceeded with his plan, using a broken, elevated support pillar of wood to get some extra height. "Scleretin!" he hissed. "I knew I shouldn't have trusted you to come with me to Celestia." "She started everything!" the metal mare yelled in response from her dark hideout. "She started the wars! All because her ego couldn't take sharing!" Celestia was taken aback. "Wars? I would never--!" She stopped when she saw the traveler raise a foreleg. "This is not your world, Scleretin. This isn't THAT Celestia," he specified. "You never had these issues in a few of the timelines we went to before this one!" He gestured to Celestia with a foreleg. "Why are you doing that here?" Scleretin stepped out of her shadows, showing her face to be stretched as well, revealing to Celestia weary and battered eyes and metal plates moving around the muzzle every time the metal mare spoke. "She's just like her!" With those words, the metal mare charged back at Celestia, prompting Chinch'k to jump forward, hook himself into the floor with his 'hooves' and swing around, tripping the mare into the floor. The traveler, on the other hoof, shook his head in disappointment and pressed a few buttons on his controller. The metal object that came from the saucer opened up, spewing compressed steam in all directions. Its form expanded and it grew taller, the creaking of gears and pistons unveiling a tall, bipedal, faceless machine. Its legs were long and possessed inverted knees, all of which were covered in interconnected, black plates of metal. Its 'feet' were four spades of metal acting as anchors in any ground environment. Its arms stopped halfway to where its knees would be, and its hands were decorated by four claws glowing a pale orange in contrast to the black of the armor. The torso, on the other hand, was thin and disheveled, but beneath the seemingly transparent black plating glowed several strands of orange that would change appearance with every subsequent dimming. Its head was an elongated and flattened raindrop shape with the 'face' being a bigger and longer area, allowing for several, different colored optics to brighten up behind its armor. The machine's form was slouched and beast-like, and while Scleretin stood twice tall above Celestia in her elongated form, the machine stood two heads above her. It grabbed Scleretin by the throat and slammed her back into the ground, making its torso glow bright and its entire arm to run with angular forms of orange into the metal mare. The metal pony screamed in pain and struggled against her aggressor, eventually getting the upper hand by twisting her hind leg and kicking it in the head. The mare slashed at the machine's armor while it was still stunned, but to no avail. She couldn't penetrate its armor. "I improved its armor since the last time you went on a rampage," the traveler taunted. The machine readjusted itself and stared at the metal mare, a low-pitched humming coming from its internal systems. Scleretin gave pause then proceeded to attack it. The machine's arm-plating rolled to its outer-arm and linked together into small shields that it used to deflect the strikes directed at it. After a few strikes, it started moving forward, inch by inch, adding pressure and stress to the mare. "Enough of this toying," the traveler said. "Knock her out and disable her expanded form," he ordered. The machine hummed loudly in response and deflected a strike by its opponent, following by a punch into her neck and pinning her against a building. "Oh, and I removed the spacing between the metal. You can't seep in there either," the traveler mused. He watched while the machine 'took over' Scleretin's systems despite her obvious pain and protests. The traveler didn't care. "What are you doing to her?" Twilight panicked. The traveler snorted quickly in response. "Suppressing her system options and locking them until a time I can trust her." "But she's in pain!" "Yup," the cephalopony answered casually. He turned to Celestia and apologized. "I'll repair the damages done to your city, leaving the current architecture intact, of course." The screams went silent and the traveler saw the machine holding the mare in its hand. "Good. Return to the ship. She's grounded." The machine nodded and flew upwards, creating a blue trail from its back and feet along its ascending path. "Not much draft," the traveler noted. He wiped himself of dust and nodded. "Silent propulsion seems to be working on a smaller scale." There wasn't much time for him to congratulate himself due to Celestia angrily grabbing his shoulder with a hoof and spinning him around to face her eye-to-eye. "What was that?!" she growled through her teeth. "Why did she do that when she saw me?" "Yeah. Sure. I'm alright too," Chinch'k complained in the background. He was digging himself out of some debris, which Rainbow Dash and Applejack helped him with. The traveler frowned and looked to the side, but Celestia refused the behavior. "Answer me, or you'll see another failure on your hooves." The traveler's eyes widened. "...She has an acute form of PTSD." Celestia and the remaining ponies were taken aback. Celestia could barely muster a single word. "What?" "She has PTSD, and a severe one." The stallion bobbed his head left and right. "I thought I had taken care of the problem since she didn't have this with a few previous timelines, but..." "What kind of PTSD? What did I do to her?" Celestia spoke with an almost motherly tone, but the traveler felt nothing from it. "The more common kind. War-related." "That's not common..." Twilight protested. Celestia looked down pensively. "She was a soldier? Was it a long war?" "I don't feel comfortable sharing the precise details of this incident with you." He turned his back and walked away. "But imagine having your life engulfed by war on three fronts with no moments rest, where society is broken and positions of nobility and peasantry have no more meaning. Three societies with different aspects and three people vying for supremacy." He looked up to the sun and nodded. "It's time I retreat for the day. I have...many things to get to."