//------------------------------// // A Mythical Flying Unicorn // Story: The Olden World // by Czar_Yoshi //------------------------------// "Well..." Anemone pushed open a final door, leading to the observation room Valey had seen before that was adjacent to the gravity machine. "There it is. Head on in and impress your friends." She beckoned toward the observation window, a heavily-mechanized door set into the wall beside it. Valey blinked, then glanced at Shinespark and grinned. "Alright, now go in there and have a fabulous time." Shinespark had a distracted look in her eyes. "You don't even know what it does. You just heard 'gravity machine' and thought it would be interesting." "Guilty as charged." Valey crossed her heart with a hoof, then stuck out her tongue. "And it sounds pretty interesting to me, so-" Starlight was still leading by example, already stepping through the door. "Is there anything special I need to do?" she called over her shoulder, shooting her friends a look that asked them politely to stop making her be the decisive one. Anemone darted to her side with a speed that suggested she must have been one of the island's myriad sports players in her school days. "Wear this," she said, clasping a decorated bracelet around Starlight's foreleg. "It's a device that will let you telepathically control the machine. You might need to try a bit to get the hang of it, but just try thinking up, and see if you can work it. Maybe you'll get it first try!" "Okay..." Starlight blinked at the bracelet. It felt strange around her leg, almost like she was touching something... She didn't know. Shrugging, aware that Valey was suddenly staring at her, she stepped inside the machine room. For a high-tech machine interior, it was spacious. For a room where she might be moving around through the air, it was small. Though maybe that was a good thing... Starlight noted it was carefully padded on all sides save for the observation window. The floor squished beneath her hooves, and she was fairly sure she could take a fall from its full height with nothing worse than a little bouncing. Her friends were watching from outside the window. Starlight looked at the bracelet, concentrated, and thought of going up. Immediately, her hooves left the floor. "Woah!" Starlight flailed briefly... and stabilized, hovering in midair a few hoofsteps above the ground. It was almost disorienting, and she felt her mane suddenly floating around, waving freely without gravity to hold it in place. But Starlight had been dragged through shadow sneaking by Valey, suffered splitting headaches from her horn, and dealt with months of sparring practice where her mentor expected her to see in every direction at once and never forget to look above or below her, and she quickly stabilized her senses around the new sensation. In fact, it was almost more normal than she was expecting. She closed her eyes, and realized she could still feel which way was down. "Are you alright!?" Anemone called, taking her squeezed eyes entirely the wrong way. "I'll turn it off!" "No, I'm-!" The machine cut out, and Starlight dropped, bouncing on the floor just as she had predicted. "Fine..." Valey punched Shinespark's shoulder, sound carrying well between the two rooms thanks to some grates near the bottom of the window. "She's being braver than youuu..." "How are you?" Anemone asked, poking her head in through the door. "I'm sorry, I really should have thought twice before letting a filly in, the disorientation could have completely different effects for children-" "Turn it back on," Starlight interrupted, getting to her hooves. "This is weird. I want to keep going." "...Okay." Anemone blinked, marking down something on a clipboard and stepping back out. For some reason, Starlight never got any feedback from the bracelet that the machine was on or off. It must have been a one-way device... But as she continued to will it upwards, she suddenly began to rise again. This time, Starlight tried to accelerate, seeing if she couldn't nail a landing just like when Valey threw her and trained her to right herself in midair. It shouldn't be that hard, right? Just will herself to go continually up instead of only a little, like using her telekinesis to raise instead of hold. She rose, tried to flip... and stumbled, hitting the ceiling slightly off from when she expected to. Had she been too slow? Starlight frowned, getting to her hooves again, and stopped concentrating on the bracelet, letting it do nothing. Gravity immediately re-exerted itself and she plummeted, and this time she was able to make the landing exactly as intended. "So? What's the verdict?" Valey's nose was pressed against the window. "Because lemme tell you, that looks pretty fun. Can you walk on the ceiling?" "Maybe?" Starlight lifted herself to the ceiling again... It still felt like lifting, not changing the way she dropped. The collision was still weird, but she tried walking around and found she was mostly able to. It felt stiffer than being on the ground, somehow, like she had to press herself harder into the ceiling to give her hooves traction than they would normally need. Was it the material, or was something resisting her walking in directions? Concentrating, Starlight tried to drop forward instead, jumping off the ceiling and willing the bracelet in front of her. This one almost felt more normal, but the sudden transition between which surface her hooves were on tripped her up and she fell again, squishing into the wall instead of bouncing. Starlight frowned and let herself drop to the real floor, and once again bounced as normal. "I think she's having fun?" Anemone hopefully guessed. "Sort of," Starlight called back. "I don't think your machine is working properly, though. I don't feel weightless. Ways that aren't the real down feel different." Anemone blinked. "Well, that's what it is, though." "Then maybe it's broken." Starlight hovered in midair again, testing how fine of control she had over herself by shifting back and forth slightly, changing her direction or coming to a halt before hitting the walls. It was actually good control... too good. If she was really in zero gravity while hovering, she should have kept going in whatever direction she was going when she stopped trying to go, at least until air resistance slowed her down. But instead, she stopped far too quickly, almost like the machine knew that when she tried to hover in place, that meant it had to brake her current momentum for her. It really did feel more like the control she had over objects with her telekinesis... or more accurately, her sword, since that didn't use her horn. But even if this wasn't what it was supposed to do, was having better control a bad thing? Starlight started trying to move herself in a circle. That should have been complicated, constantly changing which way gravity was pushing on her, but instead it just felt like going in a circle. She even subconsciously banked after a while, and eventually felt ambitious enough to try a figure eight. But she started too early, and crashed into a wall before she could finish it. "Uh... yeah, how does that controller thing work, again?" Valey prodded Anemone. "Because that really looks more like she's flying than falling in one particular direction." Anemone sighed. "Yes, we did that deliberately. The first revision of this machine could only have gravity controlled along three axes, and we had to make more machines to even move the controls in the patterns required to do certain maneuvers. This one, our controller actually gives more fidelity than we need, and some of the engineering department took it upon themselves to make it less realistic and more of a toy. So yes. It can be a zero-gravity simulator, but it's also a flight simulator." Shinespark looked like she had just lost a bet. "Well?" Valey nudged her again. "Go on, check it out!" "Starlight is having fun," Shinespark countered, pointing a hoof. Fun might have been too strong a word. But it didn't stop Starlight from rotating, willing herself to spin in place instead of actually moving anywhere. "Alright, bananas, I have to ask, how is she doing that!?" Valey pointed at the gravity room again. "Gravity doesn't make you spin! That's like... what?" "As enthusiastic as you were about seeing this toy," Anemone sighed, "you sure are intent on believing it doesn't exist." Starlight wasn't listening. She stood on one wall, charged at another... It was easier when she tried to push herself along, she realized, instead of willing gravity to be purely down against the wall. Like whatever force was trying to keep her in place was now helping her. She jumped, trying to change her orientation and gravity mid-leap, and after several crashes and retries she was able to hit the wall running, barely tripping or not at all. "She's quite the acrobat, though." Anemone tried to change the subject as Starlight switched to running a circle across the floor, walls and roof. That was much harder, since all three felt different to move along, and she needed to not make herself dizzy... "Yeah, she's good." Valey smirked. "I trained her to fight and stay nimble on her hooves. Try throwing a fruit at her sometime. I can guarantee she'll dodge it." "I'm not throwing fruit at a filly!" Anemone looked bothered and annoyed by the implication. Valey shrugged. "Well, she'll probably appreciate it. Also, I kinda trust Starlight when she says this supposed gravity thing feels as weird as it looks. So until further notice, I'm just gonna assume you made that using some ancient machine you found somewhere and don't actually understand how it works." Anemone looked just guilty enough to make Valey suspicious. "Waaait a sec." Valey narrowed her eyes. "I was just messing with you. You better not have actually done that." Shinespark stared at Valey, and even Starlight stopped flying. "Is there something we should know?" Nyala asked from the background. "...Fine," Anemone sighed. "The bracelet controller isn't made by us. Doctor Lost World donated it to us after discovering it in one of his artifact blind barrels. It really is a gravity machine, and if you don't believe me I'll throw you in there without the bracelet and work the controls myself. It only looks the way it does because we have everything tuned to this particular style of input. Please don't go around talking about how we have equipment we don't understand, the jocks make enough jokes about this place already. And stop trying to ruin the magic. Starlight looks like she needs this." "It's not that important," Starlight replied, hovering in front of the window, right-side-up. "Why is this a problem? And does Shinespark want a turn?" "All this has made me curious," Shinespark sighed, getting to her hooves. "May I try?" Starlight nodded, floating back down to the door and landing, then slipping the bracelet off with her teeth. "Here." She passed it to Shinespark, stepping back as her friend entered the machine. Something still felt slightly odd about that bracelet, but what was it...? For a moment, everyone watched as Shinespark hovered, doing a few exercises similar to Starlight's, but with more flying and less running along walls. After about twenty seconds, she landed and walked back out. "Hmm. Interesting." "That's it?" Valey looked disappointed, folding her ears as Shinespark passed the bracelet back to Anemone. "Just interesting? Bananas, girl, I tried literally this hard to find something you'd enjoy, and..." "It was interesting," Shinespark repeated, her voice tone-dampened as usual. "The control felt exactly like my old flight. I wasn't expecting to fall sideways, but still... make of it what you will." She looked away. "Sorry, Valey. I know you're trying to help, and maybe I could enjoy this more later, but right now I have something on my mind." Starlight could see Shinespark's eyes. The flame she had once possessed, battered by Ironridge and the ruin of Izvaldi and the loss of Valey and her horn until it was nothing more than embers, was still there. It was a little stronger than usual, even, like it was daring itself to flicker back to life. Valey saw it too, and gingerly smiled. "You know what? If there's something you gotta do, we'll come haunt this place some other time. Take care, girl." "Thank you. I should get going." Shinespark nodded, trotting away. Anemone slowly shrugged. "Well, okay." "You know what?" Valey squared her shoulders. "This whole thing has gone kinda awkward, so I think maybe I'm gonna go do some flybys of hot sunbathers and come back tomorrow and pretend this never happened. How's that sound?" "Advice from a friend?" Anemone raised an eyebrow. "I don't think your friend was very enthusiastic about this." Valey groaned. "Sparky is enthusiastic about nothing, though! If I don't make her do stuff, she won't do anything! I'll talk to her, but I'm serious, she needs this. I'm like the group therapist or something, I would know." Nyala gave her a look. "That doesn't mean you speak for everyone. You should talk to her." "Or I will," Starlight said, a restless itch sitting somewhere beneath her coat that pushed her to do something just for the sake of doing it. "Can we go? You wanted to show off to ponies by throwing fruit at me." Valey's unhappiness turned back to a grin. "Eh, yeah, we can do that. Bananas, let's just stop taking things seriously again for a bit. See ya, science pegasus!" She bolted, leaving Nyala, Starlight and Anemone in her tracks. Anemone shrugged. "Might as well get about your way, then. Come back later. I'm still curious about your sword. And here, I'll show you the way out." Eventually, they reached the entrance, and Starlight and Nyala bid Anemone farewell. "Took you a while," Valey commented, hovering over the doors. Nyala shrugged, and they started walking. "So, you saw it too," she eventually asked Valey, eyes down. "The bracelet?" "Mhm." Starlight blinked. "What about it?" Valey nodded. "Yeah, I guess you would have been..." She drew up abruptly, staring at Nyala. "Wait, how do you even remember that? I thought you only got your memories from being Braen..." Nyala stared at her. "What? We were all down in the ether room." Valey stared back, tilting her head. "What?" "The runes," Nyala said. "That band had exactly the same decoration pattern as the rune ring around Starlight when she used that sword." Starlight's eyes widened slightly. She hadn't even been paying attention... "And you thought it was something different?" She glanced at Valey. "Yeah, I've seen a band exactly like that one before," Valey grumbled. "Guess I was too distracted to draw that other connection, but that thing looked exactly the same as the control band for Herman's magic flying axe." Starlight had no idea how to react. "Well, now that you mention it's the same as the runes... bananas, your sword flies too, right?" Valey tilted her head. "And that gravity machine thing kind of lets you fly, and Sparky said it felt exactly like when she... But her cutie mark is completely natural, right? She earned it as a kid?" She squinted. "Alright, I made it through all the rest of the science today, but this is making my brain hurt." Starlight had nothing, so she shrugged. "Weird. Maybe we should just get lunch." "Lunch sounds good," Nyala agreed. "Yeah. Lunch." Valey adjusted her hat. "And then I'm gonna lock myself in a dark room with a million chalkboards and nerdy things and try to come up with a grand unifying theory for everything, and I'm not gonna stop until I succeed... or get bored enough that I'm less bothered not knowing than trying to find out. But this is suddenly annoying me. Come on, let's go hit up Ironflanks for some food."