“I’m bored,” Darter proclaimed, as he idly batted a pebble back and forth between his forehooves.
“NO!” Shield Maiden shouted, bouncing a pine cone off her fellow pony’s head. “Why did you go say a dumb thing like that?”
“Hey! What’s the big idea,” replied the charcoal grey pegasus, rubbing his head where the offending missile had struck. “All I said was, ‘I’m bored’.”
“No!” replied the other four members of the Power Ponies, who were spending a sunny Saturday in their equine forms. Shield Maiden, the group’s leader, had managed to convince all parents involved that they needed a day to train and practice their pony abilities, but what the unicorn had planned turned out to be a far cry from what was actually happening...
Instead of practicing maneuvers or coming up with new ways to use their powers, either singly or together, the five ponies had instead wandered their way through a series of small swamps and wetlands that bordered one side of their small town. What had started as a day of seriousness instead changed into a day of simple play and the re-affirming of the bonds of friendship. So it was more than a small surprise to Darter when his friends reacted to a simple statement of his with such vehemence.
“But all I said was—” the pegasus began, before Skylark, his own sister, stuck her hoof in his mouth.
“Shut. Up,” Skylark ordered, with a soft yet firm voice.
“Every time you say that something weird happens,” Iron Hoof stated, his steps clopping loudly in his leathern hoof boots.
“Does not!” Darter shot back, indignant as he backwinged a half-pace back to get his sister’s hoof off his mouth.
“Does too,” Shield Maiden declared. “Every time. It’s like it’s your own special magic or something.”
“Yeah, I’m awesome,” Darter preened. “Like that Rainboom Slash the princess talked about.”
“Rainbow Dash,” Shield Maiden corrected instantly.
“Whoever,” Darter allowed, with a shrug of his shoulders. “But yeah, maybe I’ve got extra powers like that Dizzy guy that used to be their enemy.”
“Discord,” Shield Maiden again corrected, just as fast as the first time.
“Yeah, him,” Darter enthused, undeterred by the corrections. “Anyhow, maybe that’s why we aren’t Elementals.”
“What?” Iron Hoof asked, confused. “You mean like in Battletech? Does Equestria have giant battle robots?”
“What?” Seeker and Skylark demanded in unison, before looking at each other and giggling for a moment.
“Wait, what?” questioned Shield Maiden, just as confused as the other two girls. “What are you talking about?”
“Princess Night Horse,” Darter explained, oblivious to the hoof Shield Maiden planted in her face as he mis-named Princess Luna. “She told me that she was hoping that we were the Elementals of Harmony, or something like that.”
“Her name is ‘Princess Luna’.” Shield Maiden corrected, with a groan this time. “Don’t you listen to anything all the way?”
“Hey, the Night Horse was from her, so to me she’s ‘Princess Night Horse’, okay?” Darter fired back, as he defended his choice of name for Luna. “And what did you mean about battle robots, Iron Hoof? That sounds cool.”
“Dad used to play this game called ‘Battletech’,” Iron Hoof replied, taking a step away from his soon-to-be sister. “It’s got a whole bunch of these neat little battle robot models that you move over a map and shoot stuff with. Some of the little ones are called ‘Elementals’. They’re like mini-bots with a guy inside.”
“Cool!” Darter enthused. “We should play it sometime.”
“Can’t,” Iron Hoof said, dejectedly kicking a leather wrapped hoof around a fallen tree limb. “Dad says you can’t buy the game anymore and he doesn’t want me breaking it. So it just sits up in our game closet.”
“That’s dumb,” Seeker chimed in. “Games are thopposed to be played.”
“Yeah,” Skylark added, before going back to watching some dragonflies zip back and forth over the slow moving water of the swamp.
“There’s no way Equestria has giant battle robots,” Shield Maiden declared, in a voice of authority. “And I can prove it.”
“Oh yeah?” Darter asked, tilting his head toward his leader. “How?”
“Easy,” Shield Maiden declared, lifting her muzzle slightly so that her amethyst pendant caught the sunlight with an amaranthine gleam. “Robots have two legs, ponies have four.”
“Oh,” Darter replied, crestfallen. “That kinda makes sense.”
“I know, that’s why I’m in charge,” Shield Maiden stated, with more than a trace of smugness in her voice and posture.
“But what if Equestria has robots with four legs?” Iron Hoof suggested. “I mean, like the big thing in Star Wars. The whatchamacallit. That Luke tripped with the cable.”
“AT-AT,” Seeker supplied, before heading over to give Skylark a hoof making a little lean-to out of sticks.
“Yeah, what if the robots on Princess Night Horse’s world have four legs because all of them have four legs?” Darter demanded, sensing he had found a weakness in Shield Maiden’s argument.
“Um… “ the group’s leader trailed off, decidedly unsure as she found herself without a response. “Maybe?”
“Ha! I knew it!” Darter declared, strutting around in triumph. “Equestria has big bad battle bots and Princess Night Horse thought we had them too.”
“Maybe if we figure out how to become those elemental things we get to ride around in giant battle robots too!” Iron Hoof exclaimed, jumping up and down. “That would be so cool!”
“Guys, I don’t think it works—” Shield Maiden began.
“Giant Winged Pony Defender Robot!” Darter shouted, extending his body in a line up to the heavens as he tried to summon said oversized mecha to his side.
“Maybe it’s a different kind of spell?” Iron Hoof offered, before shouting, “Iron Hoof Power Pony Mega Mech!”
“Guys,” Shield Maiden objected, “that’s not how magic works.”
“How do you know?” Darter demanded, in immediate protest.
“Hello, unicorn witch here,” Shield Maiden shot back immediately. “Daughter of the most powerful sorceress in town.”
“She’s got you there,” snickered Iron Hoof.
“And how do we know what a giant Equestrian Battlemech would look like anyway?” Iron Hoof added. “It’s not like there’s anybody we could ask.”
“We could ask the princesses,” came Skylark’s quiet suggestion, as she teased a few sticklebacks to the surface with some swatted black flies.
“Nuh uh,” replied Darter, “They’re too busy.”
“Well,” said Seeker, as she was bringing Skylark a few more flies to offer the fish, “maybe we could ask the diggers?”
“The who?” asked a perplexed Shield Maiden, trying to figure out what her earth pony sister was talking about.
“The diggers,” repeated Seeker. “The ones over at the place where we found the book.”
“Oh, you mean the guys from UBC,” Darter added. “Yeah, they would know. One of them showed me his laptop. There was all kinds of giant robot stuff on there. Something she called ‘Robotech’. It looked cool.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Shield Maiden concluded, happy that something was being decided on. But then she noticed that her sister looked decidedly unhappy about the group’s decision. “What’s wrong, Romy?”
“That doctor is there too,” said the purple maned pony.
“What doc—” Darter began, before his mind caught up with his racing tongue. “Oh… her.”
“Her” was none other than Dr. Pearl Carlson, whom the Power Ponies had saved when her plane had gone down in Carmanah Lake. As UBC’s head of cryptozoology, her once mocked academic speciality had leaped to the forefront of scientific endeavor with the revelation of ponies and Equestria in general.
Ever since she had recovered from her injuries at Haida Gwaii Hospital she had been unrelenting in her scientific pursuit of Medevac, Foxfire, Iron Heart and the five Power Ponies, constantly requesting physical examinations, as well as blood and hair samples. Medevac had provided an initial set of samples, in the hope that the cryptozoologist might have a better handle on what constituted a healthy pony. However, it had quickly become clear that the good doctor’s degree was definitely not related toward the health sciences and that she saw Brightly’s equine population as her ticket to a Nobel more than anything else.
“Well, let’s go see the diggers anyway,” decided Shield Maiden, as all eyes swiveled towards her. “If the doctor is there I’ll just tell her she needs to ask Mom first.”
“Ha!” laughed Darter, giggling. “Your mom would give that doc a hotfoot before she’d let her anywhere near us.”
“No kidding,” Iron Hoof agreed. “And yeah, those guys from UBC could probably give us a good idea at least.”
“Let’s get going,” Skylark added, tossing the last flies into the water for the various creatures there to feast on, and lifting off into a low hover.
Thus agreed, the five made a ninety-degree turn due right and charged out of the swamp back towards town. Their headlong course soon took them down familiar streets and past their homes where they chanced to see Foxfire in her kitchen window as she worked on some project. The white unicorn was wreathed in her smokey purple magic, but took the time to look and wave at the youngsters as they pelted along, a smile touching her muzzle.
Even though there were two genuine pony princesses in town, seeing a pony running through the streets was still something of a novelty. Particularly as Luna rarely ventured out during the day, preferring to go out at night to be with the town’s contingent of bat ponies, and Celestia was almost always indoors tied up in negotiations or phone calls from various world leaders or industrialists.
The most humorous call the elder diarch had fielded was from a Middle-Eastern oil magnate who offered Celestia Luna’s weight in gold as a dowry for the younger princess’ hoof in marriage. Celestia had horrified Luna by appearing to actually consider the proposal for a full thirty seconds before turning down the would-be groom.
So, as the five ran along the streets toward the older end of town, they gathered more than a few looks and comments. The vast majority of which were either positive or speculative toward the little herd, but Seeker noticed at least a few angry looks and at least one or two outright jealous ones. Although Seeker herself didn’t say anything, she noticed that she and her friends seem to fall into a protective formation with her sister, Shield Maiden, at its core.
The group held to their alignment all the way through town, past the oldest buildings that marked the end of the modern Brightly, and into the light wood and scrub that had overgrown the remains of what had fallen in the disastrous fire of so long ago.
“Hey kids!” called out a lean twenty-something man a few minutes later as the kids approached the dig site.
The site of the old store and warehouse was now a half meter deep excavated square that was neatly blocked off by a line of regular stakes and strings that also laid out a grid over the excavation. As the five approached, they could just see the carbonized tops of walls poking out of the topmost layer of earth, along with the re-excavated shaft of their own dig down into depths of the earth.
“Hi, Mr. Kozwalski!” Seeker replied, being a frequent visitor to the dig site. She was popular among the archeology graduate students, particularly with her ability to find things through solid earth.
“Miss Pedersen,” growled an older male voice. “I thought I told your mother that you and your friends were NOT to interfere with our work here with your… equine shenanigans.”
While Seeker was popular with the grad students, she most definitely was not popular with their professor. Dr. Alvin Spencer was one of the University of British Columbia’s associate professors of Archeology. He was a balding man in his late fifties who had spent his career working on ancient sites around the world and a firm believer in regulated, documented, and above all else, methodical archeology.
As such, he loathed Seeker’s ability to zero in on a specific thing while bypassing the matrix of material all around it. Spencer considered what Seeker represented to archeology as an irresponsible shortcut at best, and dark heresy at worst. He had tried to outright ban the ponies from the area, but had been denied when Mayor Montcalm pointed out that it was public land.
He had then tried to intimidate Seeker’s mother, not initially knowing that Jean Pedersen was also Foxfire, unicorn and witch. The confrontation between the two became the source of giggling talk for weeks afterwards, when a thoroughly chastised and smoldering professor had been seen running back towards his hotel room.
Privately, Foxfire admitted that it was one of the few times she had almost let the umbral inside of her have free rein. Publicly, the unicorn simply stated that her daughters were free to go where they would, much as any child in town, but to keep the peace she would ask them not to interfere with work being done at the dig site.
“We aren’t interfering with anything,” Shield Maiden replied, coming to her sister’s defence, and as one the ponies shifted to orient on the professor and a silent confrontation of wills sprang into being. Five pre-teen ponies, matched against a single human. Both sides fully empowered with outrage and defending what they saw as a line in the sand that would not, could not, be crossed. For long seconds the tableau held, but a tableau of men and ponies is not a painting and after giving the scene its moments, the universe interfered as it is wont to do.
“Magnificent,” said a female voice, over the sound of a camera shutter going off in a series of rapid successions of movement. “Wonderful. Hold that pose.”
“What?” both ponies and professor asked, turning toward the camera, as it continued its machinegun-like action.
“It’s moments like these when you really see the inner workings of a species,” said Dr. Carlson, practiced hands removing and then slapping in another cartridge of 35mm film. A quick whirring sound of the autoloader and the cryptozoologist began to capture another set of images.
“Dr. Carlson,” began the archeologist, indignantly, “return to your work at once.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Spencer, but this is my work, don’t you remember?” queried the woman, whose forehead still bore a healing scar from the plane crash. “Besides, we both have tenure, so you can’t order me around like one of your grad students.”
“Dr. Carlson,” Spencer repeated, in a voice like grinding rocks.
“Oh shush,” Pearl replied, before setting her camera aside and approaching the ponies slowly, head down, with her hands out and to her sides. “Hi kids.”
“Hi, Dr. Carlson,” chirped Darter, always the most gregarious of the group. “You feeling okay?”
“I’m fine,” responded the older woman, her voice low and calm as she drew near to the little herd, stopping a full three paces away with her body aligned so that she wasn’t facing directly toward the ponies. “Are you okay?”
“We aren’t afraid of you,” Skylark answered, realizing what the cryptozoologist was up to. “We aren’t going to attack or run away.”
“Good,” Carlson stated, visibly relaxing and looking directly at Skylark and the others for the first time. “Is it okay if I ask a question?”
“We aren’t going to let you examine us again. If that’s what you want,” Shield Maiden, replied flatly.
“No, no,” the professor quickly assured, returning immediately to her head down and inoffensive posture. “Nothing like that.”
“You’re scaring her,” Seeker said to her sister, both intuition and pony power providing the small earth pony with insight. “She’s scared for us.”
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to!” exclaimed Shield Maiden, hasty guilt making her dash forward to hug the middle-aged woman around her thigh. “I just thought you wanted to poke us some more. I didn’t mean to be mean.”
“It’s o—ACK!” was all Carlson managed to cry out, as she was hugged to the ground by a pony pack all determined to assure her that they weren’t scared of her, and that they were sorry for scaring her.
Snickers began to rise from the excavation site, as the grad students paused in their work to take in Dr. Carlson and the danger she was in from being hugged to death by soft fur and feathers. Snickers that grew to laughter that went on and on, despite Dr. Spencer’s furious demands that his students get back to work, and would they please be careful before they stepped on something important?
“So, can I ask a couple of questions now?” Dr. Carlson asked, when she was finally allowed to sit up. Order being restored at the dig site and each of the five ponies staying close enough to the cryptozoologist to touch.
“Hey, we came here to ask a couple of questions too,” Iron Hoof answered. “Kinda fair you get to ask some too.”
“A question for a question,” Shield Maiden intoned, with a brief flash of her orange magic empowering the ritual she remembered from her mother. “Thus is balance kept. So mote it be.”
“A question for a question,” Carlson repeated, holding up her hand, palm outward. “Thus is balance kept. So mote it be.”
“You can go first,” Shield Maiden stated, touching her hoof to the doctor’s palm before setting down with her legs tucked underneath her. The other four ponies following suit.
“‘Kay, first question,” began the doctor, a very happy smile on her face. “When you five got here, you were in an alignment that was good for both defense and attack. Magic unicorn in the center, strong ground ponies on either side of her, and the fliers on either flank. A perfect ‘V’ formation that I’m sure Polaris would recognize in an instant. My question is: Was this instinct, or something practiced?”
“Instinct,” replied Seeker, instantly.
“Practiced,” replied Shield Maiden, in the same moment. Both sisters stopped to look at each other for a moment before giggling into their forehooves.
“It’s actually both,” Iron Hoof added. “We’ve kinda been practicing stuff, but today just sorta happened.”
“Celestia said the more we are ponies, the more pony reactions will be aut… automatic for us,” Skylark chimed in with, before half hiding herself behind a silver tipped wing, her shyness the flip side to her brother’s outspoken nature.
“So, a bit of both,” Carlson replied, smiling to the little pegasus in reassurance. “That makes sense. Okay, your turn. Ask away.”
“What would an Equestrian Battlemech look like?” Iron Hoof asked, eagerly.
“A what?” Carlson asked, completely blindsided by the question.
“Giant piloted fighting robot,” Darter supplied. “About thirty meters tall, with a bunch of missiles and guns and stuff.”
“Um, I don’t know what those are,” Carlson admitted, thinking for a moment. “But, we can find out. That is if you’ll let me go and get my backpack over there.”
“Nuh uh,” Darter declared, taking to wing. “You sit and be safe. I’ll get it for you.”
Mother bird instinct in the flier phenotype Carlson thought to herself, watching grey and silver wings propel a lithe body through a pair of impossible aerial flips. I seem to have been accepted into the herd. Equine adoption instinct perhaps?
“So, what’s in here?” Darter asked a moment later, as he dropped Carlson’s backpack into her lap.
“The sum total of humanity’s knowledge,” Carlson declared, reaching in and pulling out a laptop heavily sheathed in a protective casing. “You kids ever hear of Wikipedia?”
“Our father hates it,” Darter replied, settling back down in the space he had left less than a minute earlier. “Keeps saying that you can’t edit facts. Isn’t it an online only thing?
“It is online,” the professor admitted, sitting herself cross-legged and booting up the device. “However, most people don’t realize that you can also download the whole thing onto a computer if you have a hard drive big enough. And I do.”
“Cool,” Iron Hoof opined, and all five ponies clustered in close to get a look at the screen.
Thirty minutes and a multitude of articles later the Battletech rabbit-hole had been explored only partially, but it was enough to answer the question posed.
“So, I’d say that an Equestrian battlemech, if they even have such things,” Carlson stated, in a voice that belonged in a lecture hall, “would tend to resemble something like the ‘Barghest’ mech. Or the ‘Scorpion’, but either way I’d say that it’s almost impossible that Equestria has things like that.”
“Oh,” Iron Hoof said, crestfallen. “But Princess Luna asked if we were Elementals, or something like that.”
“I’d say you need to talk to her about that,” Carlson replied, cupping the disappointed pony’s chin with her hand and lifting it up so she could give Iron Hoof a reassuring smile. “I’m sure she would be willing to chat with the five of you. Remember, the only bad question is an unasked one.”
“Thank you, for being nice about it,” Shield Maiden said, giving the woman another hug, which was quickly emulated again by the rest of the pony pile.
“Oxygen!” gasped Carlson, only half in jest as she was nearly buried again in fur and feathers. “Don’t I get another question?”
“Those are the rules,” Seeker replied, letting go of the professor, but still leaning her head into the woman’s torso. “Go ahead.”
“Shield Maiden, would you be willing to turn me into a pony?” Carlson asked, eyes hopeful. “Like the rest of you?”
“Um, why?” the unicorn asked, in response. “Mom said I’m not supposed to use that spell anymore. Unless it’s to protect lives.”
“Well, I know you kids don’t want me examining you anymore, or asking for samples, or anything like that,” Carlson began, noticing that all the ponies but Skylark had backed off a little bit. Not much, but that it even happened at all sent an unexpected pang into the older woman’s heart. “So, I thought if you made me into a pony for a day then I could just examine myself, and get all the samples I wanted without bothering any of you anymore.”
“OH!” Shield Maiden replied, face lightening, and Carlson’s heart gave a happy double-thump as the ponies came back into physical contact with her. “That makes a lot of sense, I think.”
“And, unless you make me into a pony a second time, it won’t be permanent,” Carlson added, to the surprise of the packed pony pile.
“How did you know that?” Darter asked, eyes wide. “Dad only figured it out a little while ago.”
“I’m a trained observer, and a scientist,” Carlson explained, with a small smile. “Once I realized that those in Brightly who had only changed once didn’t keep changing on a regular basis, it wasn’t that hard to find the pattern.”
“Mr. Harding keeps calling it the ‘First Time is Free’ spell,” Shield Maiden said, with a little giggle. “Everyone gets to be a pony once, to see if they like it. But if they change again, they wind up like us.”
“Reverse were-ponies,” Iron Hoof supplied, before adding as he saw Dr. Carlson’s eyebrows climb toward her hairline. “Well, we come out at daytime and not night, and it comes and goes, like a werewolf.”
“It’s as good a name as anything else, Iron Hoof,” Dr. Carlson said, giving into temptation to rub her hand through Iron Hoof’s yellow mane. “So Shield Maiden, what do you say? Can I be a pony for a day?”
“I have to ask Mom,” the little unicorn responded. “Okay?”
“More than okay,” affirmed the older woman, closing up and putting away her laptop. “I wouldn’t want you getting in trouble with your mother, so ask her and let me know. Now, I believe I owe you kids an answer to another question.”
“Well, we were gonna ask the guys about elementals, but we kinda got that answered for us,” Iron Hoof mused. “I dunno. You guys wanna ask something?”
“Why are you different?” Skylark asked in a voice as soft as her feathers. “Last time you saw us it was like you wanted to take us apart in pieces and now you’re… nice.”
“Have you ever wanted something?” Carlson asked, by way of explanation. “Wanted something so bad that you would do almost anything to get it? And if you didn’t get it, you just kept on trying?”
“I wanted to fly,” Skylark answered, her smile sending Carlson’s blood sugar levels skyrocketing. “I’ve always wanted to fly.”
“And now you can,” Carlson replied, “For me, I’ve always dreamed of finding new species, creatures only hinted at. Their true shapes and forms lost in mist and legend.”
She paused to catch the eyes of each of the five, “I’ve been around the world. Searched for Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster. Checked out Ogopogo and looked for the Yeti. I never found anything more than shaky pictures and ‘evidence’ made by drunken pranksters. Then one day, an old student of mine sends in some hair and feathers from an ‘unknown equine’ and the next thing I know my life is being saved by my dream come to life.”
“We didn’t do anything special,” Darter stated, blushing heavily.
“You just did the good that comes naturally to you kids,” Carlson countered. “Anyway, so after so many years of looking for something like you kids, and then finding it, and then losing it, and then finding it again, I went a little crazy.”
“A little crazy?” Seeker giggled. “Mom said she was gonna cook you, and all you did was ask if you could film it when she did.”
“It took a good, long talk with my old student, who you know as Mr. Wilcox, to make me realize what an obsessed idiot I was being,” Carlson continued, sobering. “It took him awhile to get it through to me that I was treating all of you like animals, and not people… And I apologize for that. Can you forgive an old, obsessed scientist who nearly drove away her dream by finding it?”
For many things in this world there are speeches and soliloquies aplenty, but for some situations, hugs are still the best and the five ponies responded to Dr. Carlson’s heartfelt apology in that most eloquent of ways.
“Heh,” Pearl said, sniffling as the hug broke up over a full minute later. “Thank you, children.”
“Anytime,” Shield Maiden replied, on behalf of the five. The unicorn was about to say more, but then a rumble of thunder was heard.
“That’s weird,” Darter said, tilting his head and looking around. “It’s a sunny day.”
“We should get going,” Seeker suggested, her eyes unfocusing in a way her sister recognized. “There’s a storm coming.”
“Welp, I guess it’s time to do this,” said a big pony with a coat so dark it seemed to drink in the light.
Iron Heart, formerly known as Arnold Kye, looked around his engine and machine working shop with a hint of sadness. It had been weeks since he had done any real work in this place, not knowing if his new pony body could work metal or handle tools like his old body had, but trial and error had proved to him that anything was possible. With a little adaptation and adjustment, of course.
As the pony walked through the shop, he flicked switches that brought work lights flickering to life, illuminating all seventy-five square meters of workspace, which included a small but functional forge and foundry. The big pony drew a large, custom made leather apron over his body as he made a final check of the stacks of copper and tin he had gathered over the past two weeks.
“Okay,” Iron Heart said to himself, tapping the power button on a final device with a label that read “Hephaestus” on it. “Let’s see what happens when I try to take this pony power thing up to eleven.”
There was a “bamf” of exploding air as the foundry burst to life, and a moment later the voice of Mako sounded loudly from some speakers with the opening words of one of Arnold’s favorite movie soundtracks.
“Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of…”