//------------------------------// // 21 - Trials and Transmodifications // Story: A Wolf in Cybernetic Armor // by Shadow Quill //------------------------------// Author's Note: Hello everypony, and welcome to my little Nightmare Night Special!! I am your host for the evening, the one and only Discord, and I'll be filling in for little miss bat-wings while we all have some fun together! As for what kind of fun we will be having, well what else but the wonderful delights that pure, uncontrolled chaos can bring?! I hope you all enjoy the show, and I will be looking forward to the laughter that will certainly follow my delightful performance. Adieu, and I shall see you all as the curtain falls on this little sideshow of holiday horrors! *Snaps his fingers and fades out of existence in a puff of black smoke, laughter echoing off into the distance* Just a little note from me, Italicized words are in Equish while normal speech is in English. Just wanted to make sure you were all on the same page before we got into this lovely little number. See everypony at the end, and happy Nightmare Night!! Shadow’s processors slowly came back online, his optics powering up as the rest of his systems ran through troubleshooting routines to ensure there weren’t any errors in his primary drives. However, his attention was quickly drawn away from his subroutines as his optics focused in on the other members of the team. For a moment there was a logical inconsistency in his processors, although it sorted itself out once he performed a rapid scan of the beings in the room around him. Yet there were several things that still did not add up, at least with the data that he currently had available to him. For one thing, none of the others seemed to be the same chronological age as they had been prior to the burst of wild magic. As he adjusted his servos to stand up, Shadow managed to identify that all of the team members were alive and healthy, if not quite themselves. The last sparks of magic were still fading from the air as Shadow walked from each prone being to the next, inspecting them on a closer level in order to attempt to determine if there were any other secondary effects from the magic surge that Dr. Kelly had produced. Speaking of the unicorn, Shadow caught the sound of hurried hoofsteps coming from his right as Kelly rushed towards the still form of Princess Celestia, or at least what had once been Princess Celestia. “Princess!” Kelly cried as she slid to a stop, her front legs cradling the tiny form gently as she sat back on her haunches, “Please, please be alright!” Kelly’s voice seemed to rouse the others from their comatose state, although as they began coming around fully there were several cries of shock and fear as they caught sight of what had happened to their bodies. Princess Luna was the first to stand, her eyes taking in everything around her as the diplomatic team panicked in various ways. She took one look at her front leg before igniting her horn, her voice echoing around the space as the others froze in place. “ENOUGH!” While her voice was still recognizable, there was a definite shift in tone from how she had spoken before, and she seemed to take note of this as she calmly walked up to Dr. Kelly and the now filly sized Celestia. Kelly’s eyes were filled with tears as she looked up at the now elderly Princess Luna, her eyes widening even further as she looked at the other members of the team and seeing what her surge had caused. Her breathing began to come in shallow gasps and for a moment Shadow was about to intervene when Luna gently placed a hoof on the smaller mare’s shoulder. “You are not to blame for this,” her voice was calm and her lips were curled into a soft smile, “you would have had a surge at one point or another, so it is best that it was contained within this secure space instead of in a public area where it could have caused untold damage.” Luna’s hoof moved to gently lift Kelly’s chin so they could meet gazes, “This magic will fade in time and then we can return to as things were before.” A slight frown befell the Lunar Princess’s muzzle as she gazed upon her now infantile sister, “Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do at this point but attempt to move forward as we are. Wild magic has no cure because of its random nature, so until the spell wears off by itself, we will have to deal with its effects as best as we can.” “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” Will cried out as he inspected his now much smaller teenage hands, his clothing hanging off of his body like oversized sacks, “Why did I let you guys talk me into doing this?! I wouldn’t have volunteered for this mission if I had known I’d have to worry about getting changed back into a teenager!” “At least you got some years back,” Ambassador Lang grumbled as he stood up, his hand running through his now snow white hair in an attempt to maintain his composure, “it seems I have been altered to roughly the age of my parents.” “I don’t like this,” Bellwood grumbled as she tried to move about, her armor clicking and rattling as she removed her helmet to reveal the face of a middle-aged woman, “My armor doesn’t fit now and I can’t seem to reach the clasps to get it off.” “Let me help you Ms. Bellwood!” Captain Goodwill cried as he scampered up to the much older woman, his armor hanging off of his body in chunks while his ten-year-old hands were quick to reach between the plates of the Lieutenant’s armor to undo the latches that held the segments together, “I don’t quite understand what’s going on, but I can help you at least a little,” he looked up at Bellwood with a sparkling, innocent gaze that only a child could accomplish, “isn’t that right, Ms. Bellwood?” “It seems that the wild magic given off in Dr. Kelly’s surge has caused all of us to undergo some form of age shift,” Princess Luna stated as she walked up to the others, her sister nestled comfortably on her back in a sleepy little ball, “It could be quite some time until the effects wear off, given they did not immediately cease once Dr. Kelly’s surge came to an end. We must do our best to remain calm and continue with our duties as best as we can until that happens, if for no other reason than we must be ready for the Summit that shall be occurring in the next few days.” “But how can the Summit go on with all of us having undergone such drastic changes?” Kelly asked as she averted her gaze from the others, “If I hadn’t lost control of my magic then none of this would have happened.” Luna placed a wing over Dr. Kelly’s back, her smile firm but kind as she retorted, “I stated before that you are not to blame for this. Do not dwell on what cannot be changed and focus instead on what can be done.” Luna returned her gaze to the others, her muzzle tilting upward slightly as she addressed the team in totality, “Members of the human ambassadorial team, please accept my most humble apologies for the discomfort that has befallen you. We will do everything in our power to help in this strange time and hope that this does not affect the relationship between our peoples.” There were quiet mutterings of affirmation, although they were quickly outspoken as Blueblood finally came around, his voice causing the others to jump because of its shrillness and volume. “What happened to my perfectly manicured mane?!” All eyes fell onto the panicking prince, who was now curled up into a ball on the floor holding his completely bald head with both front hooves. His wrinkled face showed that he had been aged up to later adulthood, although the complete lack of a mane was what was holding everyone’s attention as the frantic stallion tried to pick up the fallen strands that lay on the floor around him. Chaos soon followed the former prince’s exclamation as several things happened all at once. First, Celestia slipped from Luna’s back and began sliding around the room like a block of ice on smooth marble. The filly awoke and squealed in joy as her pink mane and tail waved in the wind of her passage, her giggles echoing around the room as her speed continued to increase. Luna attempted to grab her sister with her magic, but the dark blue aura seemed to slide off the filly as easily as water over a rock. Second, Will’s body rapidly faded from view, leaving only his clothing visible as he began to rapidly move about in a panic, at least from what Shadow could pick up with his sensors. The strange thing was that there was no trace of the teen on his audio or visual scanners, the only thing that could tell what the poor cowboy was doing was his seismic sensors paired with the motions of his poorly fitting clothes. Conversely, Bellwood began to glow in various colors from underneath her armor and clothing, the light quickly rising to a brightness that forced Goodwill to back away and shield his face. Speaking of the child captain, the poor boy’s surprise at the sudden random effects caused him to shout, although his voice was garbled like he was speaking underwater as streams of small, pink bubbles erupted from his mouth with every utterance. This caused even further panic among the beings present as Luna tried and failed to chase down her speeding sister, who was having the time of her life sliding about the room’s floor. Shadow simply stood watch at the doors, which had been dented and partly buckled from the force of Dr. Kelly’s magic blast, observing and cataloguing the effects that seemed to be occurring at random to all the organic beings present save for Dr. Kelly. Given it was her own magic that had caused these effects, and Celestia’s explanation earlier, it would be logical to assume that she would have been protected from the surge, although the steady increase in her heart rate and the spike in her brain activity told Shadow that the poor mare was still being affected on a psychological level. Ambassador Lang attempted to help Princess Luna stop her wayward sister’s wild ride, only to come to a sliding halt as the majority of his body erupted in bright white feathers. His clothing bulged with the sudden addition to his surface area, and it was only two seconds before the poor man sneezed, the feathers that had covered his face apparently having irritated his nose. What followed could only be described as a maelstrom of fluff as every single feather on his body ejected itself from his person. The white cloud expanded rapidly from the ambassador, obscuring Shadow’s vision for a moment before they settled to the stone floor in a roughly twenty-foot radius. Celestia laughed even louder as she slid through the fluff scattered around Ambassador Lang, her passage throwing the multitudes of feathers back into the air just in time to meet the slightly winded Princess Luna behind her. Luna sputtered and sneezed as her face was assaulted by the white projectiles, her hooves sliding about for a moment before she could get her grip on the stone. Her horn ignited in what Shadow presumed was an attempt to get rid of the offending fluffy missiles, only for a passing feather to rub right along the tip of her muzzle. Her face scrunched up in a failed attempt at stifling the sneeze, only for it to erupt from her muzzle in a thunderous rush that nearly knocked the nearby humans off their feet. While Lang’s body sprouted more feathers from seemingly nowhere, Shadow took note of Princess Luna’s predicament, given that in her distracted state she apparently hadn’t noticed the secondary effect of the surge that had begun to run its course on her. Even as she swatted at the feathers that always managed to find a way to tickle her muzzle, Shadow observed the Lunar Diarch slowly shrink in size until her body was no larger than that of the average pony, perhaps even a bit shorter than some of the taller stallions. The chaos might have continued unimpeded from there, had the guards from outside not managed to wedge the doors open at the exact wrong moment. Celestia, in her frictionless state, had managed to slide into just the right trajectory to match up with the now open doorway, her squeals of joy rising in pitch even as the others cried out frantically. “CLOSE THE DOORS!” Luna shouted, not realizing in her panic that she hadn’t spoken in Equish, but rather English. She only realized her shift in stature as her now shorter legs got tangled up as she tried to get between her sister and the opening, her cry of surprise falling on deaf ears as the shouting of everyone else drowned out the exclamation. The unicorns were too busy gaping in shock at the random mess that they had stumbled into to pay their princesses any mind, Celestia’s speeding passage apparently going unnoticed as they rushed into the room, trying and failing to bring order to the panicked beings around them. Shadow, knowing fully well that something could go horribly wrong should the filly manage to slide out of an open window or off of a balcony, chose to leave his post observing in order to attempt to rein in the wayward alicorn. Shadow’s claws clicked rapidly as he sped down hallway after hallway, his optics locking in on Celestia as she slid around startled guards and maid staff, closing the distance slowly as his processors ran overtime trying to come up with a way to contain the hapless filly. Frictionless status meant that there was next to no way to stop her unless he managed to catch her in a container of some sort, but that still didn’t explain why Luna’s magic hadn’t been able to grab her sister when she originally began to move. Rerouting his logic drive for a moment to move past the inconsistency, Shadow focused instead on working with the information he had that could be put to use. Firstly, he needed to find something that could halt the filly’s movements, or at least redirect her into a more enclosed space. Secondly, he would need something that could hold her without allowing for any excess freedom of movement, ideally some kind of tank or box. Finally, Shadow managed to catch up to Celestia, who simply giggled louder as she slid down one of the main hallways, “Fwaster! Fwaster, Doggy!” It seemed that the princess’s mental capabilities had been altered to match her current age, although that information would have to be put into storage for the moment as Shadow spotted an open door off to the left side in front of them. Calculating trajectories at millisecond speeds, Shadow dove to the side and swatted his paw against the filly, sending her into a sideways spin that ended up putting her directly between the mantles of the open door. Shadow slid to a stop in the opening just in time to redirect Celestia back into the room, her squeal of delight echoing around the storage closet as she knocked over boxes and containers filled with rags with every pass. Timing his movements so that the filly wouldn’t be able to slide past him again, Shadow rushed into the room and grabbed a nearby storage crate with his teeth, hurling it over his shoulder so that it landed perfectly on top of the filly right before she could get through the now unguarded opening. Throwing his weight on top of the wooden box, Shadow heard Celestia let out a whine of annoyance as she tapped against the sides of the box, the miniscule force enough to send her into a spin even inside such a small space. Taking the lid from where it had fallen on the floor beside him, Shadow slid the square of wood under the edge of the box, effectively closing the filly inside before flipping it over. Celestia cried out in surprise as Shadow lifted the now secured filly onto his back, box and all, all while locking the lid to the sides with the metal clasps that had been handily installed around the edge. Shadow took his time to make sure that there hadn’t been any extra damage from his rapid chase through the castle halls, although from the looks of things as he made his way back to Celestia’s lab, the worst of it were a select number of potted plants that had been knocked over as the now contained filly had bounced off of their wooden bases. His audio sensors picked up the frantic shouts of both his team members as well as several ponies as he returned to the lab, although he had to dial back their sensitivity as Princess Luna’s voice echoed through the air. “ENOUGH!” The remaining royal’s gaze locked onto Shadow and the box on his back as the others finally grew silent, her voice returning to normal levels as she raced up to the now larger machine, “My sister, is she safe?” Shadow was about to respond when a sheepish and quiet voice spoke up from the box on his back, “Woona? Can woo make da big doggy wet me go?” Luna’s gaze softened as she popped open the box, looking into the container through the crack she created as she smiled, “I’m sorry, sister, but we can’t let you out until you stop sliding around. We wouldn’t want you to get hurt, would we?” Shadow couldn’t see the filly, but he could create an image of her pouting from the tone of her much higher voice, “But I wanna pway some more! Pweeze can we go pway?” By this point, everyone had gathered around Shadow, although with Bellwood glowing various bright colors, it was difficult to see properly, especially as Ambassador Lang sneezed again, creating another explosion of feathers that covered everyone present, leaving Goodwill in hysterics on the floor as more pink bubbles filled the air alongside the feathers. “P-Princess,” one of the guards managed to stutter out as he realized that the short, elderly mare before him was really Princess Luna, “what happened in here? We heard an explosion and then we couldn’t get the doors to open. Are you alright?” “Does it look like We art alright?!” The Lunar Diarch had to take several calming breaths before she spoke again, “No, things seem to have taken an unexpected turn. My sister’s seal failed to contain Dr. Kelly’s magic flare, which has caused a number of effects to befall us, not the least of which being an age spell that has drastically shifted how old everypony is.” She nodded to Shadow as he translated for the rest of the team, given Will was still completely invisible and silent save for the clothing on his body. “We will do what we can to keep the citizenry calm, given the effects of the flare will pass in time. Until then, we must continue the preparations for the Summit, the leaders of the other nations will be arriving in two days’ time and we must be ready to receive them.” “You must be mad!” Blueblood managed to shout as he stumbled up to Luna, seemingly not caring about the scowl that had formed on the alicorn’s face as he shoved his muzzle against hers, his blatant invasion of her personal space making the guards tense in response, “I won’t allow anypony to see me like this! I don’t care if you throw me in the dungeons, I won’t take a single step from this room until my mane is restored!” Shadow could have sworn he heard Luna’s teeth grinding as her wings flared over her back, Blueblood taking a step back as the smaller mare’s horn ignited and her eyes narrowed in anger, “You dare to lecture me?! Even after all that you have done, and all of the trouble you have caused, you still have the gall to speak in such a way to your ruler?! Guards!” the stallions’ armor clicked as they threw hasty salutes, “See to it that this ingrate gets what he has so generously requested. He shall be staying in the dungeons until the Summit is over, where he can’t cause any more trouble.” Blueblood’s eyes widened in fear as sweat began running down his face, “Y-You can’t! I-I take it back, I don’t want to leave my new companions! D-Didn’t Celestia say that I had to serve them to the best of my ability until my time was up?” “That is Princess Celestia to you, you overbearing, spoiled, ungrateful buffoon! And I expect you to show her the proper respect she deserves even in her current state.” Her gaze leveled onto the nervous royal guards, “Well? What are you waiting for? Get this idiot out of my sight before I lose what little patience I have left.” “Yes, Your Highness!” They cried in unison, dragging the sputtering Blueblood from the room before he could utter any further complaints. Luna sighed, turning her attention back to the gathered diplomatic team, “Forgive me. It is unbecoming of a Princess to lose her temper as such.” “No need to worry yourself, Princess,” Ambassador Lang stated calmly before sneezing yet again, a long-suffering sigh escaping his mouth as the feathers on his body detonated with a loud poof, “This is going to become bothersome rather quickly.” “Oh shoot!” Goodwill cried out as his feet slid out from under him, the bubbles ceasing in favor of his body beginning to slide about like Celestia had been moments before. “Not again!” Luna yelled as she created a box of magic barriers around the boy as he slid around on his back, his actions only causing his movement to speed up as he attempted to rise or stop himself with his hands. Everyone else let out a sigh of relief as any further crisis were averted for the time being, although that still left one big issue hanging over their heads as Dr. Kelly finally spoke up, “So, you said something about the Summit still going on as planned. Why wouldn’t you postpone it after all of this?” Luna’s lips curled into a frown, her gaze traveling up to the ceiling of the chamber as she let out a sigh, “Because it would show weakness to the other nations of our world, not to mention insult them after calling them all far from home. Plus,” her gaze returned to the mare standing beside her, “your team still has a task to complete, we will just have to explain that there has been a magical accident that has caused these unusual effects. Hopefully they will wear off before the other representatives arrive but given the amount of power that came from your flare, I doubt it will be less than a week before we return to normal.” “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Goodwill grumbled as he continued to slide about inside Luna’s construct, “you mean we need to deal with these crazy effects for a week?!” He opened his mouth to say more, only for silence to befall his speech. Luna’s barrier faded out as the boy stood up, although his visible relief was short-lived as he too began to fade from view, stopping at a point where his body was mostly translucent and his scowl mostly rendered invisible as he walked into the glow radius of Bellwood’s light emissions. Ambassador Lang sneezed again, adding to rather impressive pile of feathers that littered the ground around them, “I believe we will be experiencing a variety of effects at different rates, Your Highness. At least from what I have seen so far from the changes that have befallen Captain Goodwill.” Princess Luna nodded her agreement, “It would seem that the effects of Dr. Kelly’s flare do not act on the same timetable for each of us. Be careful, as we do not know when they will change for each of you, nor do we know at what severity. The plan is still to attend the Summit and introduce your kind to the world at large but be ready for anything. The last thing we need is one of these random effects to happen at the wrong time.” The others voiced their agreement, or in Goodwill’s case, nodded, before Luna turned to face Shadow and opened the box to take a look at her diminutive sister, “We will have to keep you in something like this box until you stop sliding around. I am sorry, sister, but it wouldn’t be safe to let you out until we can be sure you won’t go flying off through the castle halls.” “But I wanna swide awound!” The filly attempted to stand up but squeaked in a combination of frustration and surprise as her hooves slid out from under her again, “Ovay, moobee not.” Luna chuckled as she rubbed her sister’s head, her actions causing the filly to spin inside the box for a moment until her hoof’s gentle pressure slowed her rotation to a near stop once more, “We will let you out as soon as you can walk again. Try to be patient. We will make sure you aren’t bored or lonely as best as we can.” “Obay.” Was the discouraged reply. Shadow followed the others out of the room as Luna placed her sister’s box on her back, her wings flaring slightly to steady it as they worked their way back through the castle halls into the more public sections of the building. Many of the staff stopped and stared at Luna as they walked by, their hanging jaws voicing their shock almost as easily as the poor maid who fainted on the spot as they passed. Shadow could very well calculate any number of possible problems that could arise from this new development, but without reliable data about their afflictions, there was little he could do to stop anything from going wrong. He just hoped that the other representatives didn’t try and pull anything in their current state, or he would be hard-pressed to do anything besides react as the situation evolved. …Power core: 87%... …Portal Recharge Time: 8:22:45:15…14…13…12…