The fillies ran down the courtyard, following the rather rotund male, one Professor Port. Twilight and her friends watched them go, heading toward the small airship, apparently called a bullhead. “Be safe!” Rarity shouted, and Rainbow had to be physically restrained from following after them… The professor, Ozpin, had allowed them to watch the morning’s ceremony from the seats up on the walls of the auditorium. This all didn’t sit right with the mare, wasn’t this professor just sending these children into danger!
The airship took off, and lazily started to fly away, slow at first, with growing speed, toward the south.
“Come on girls, let’s go get something to eat…” Spitfire said.
“I agree… Let us tour the city while we can, it’s a wonderful town, less dreary than that Mantle place,” Rarity began.
Twilight and Rainbow reluctantly nodded, then followed after the two, Twilight, still worried about the fillies, started to fiddle with her scroll… The device was so interesting, she had taken it apart and put it together repeatedly, analyzed all of its inner workings, and had customized it to her liking, once she knew what everything did… The idea of using tiny switches, almost too small to see, even with magic, to create a predictive device, an immensely powerful calculator that, with simple binary computation, could create all these fascinating displays and do such incredible things, all without magic, purely electronic, save for the holographic display, the result of dust crystals embedded within the sides. And that was before she got into it and started to add her own touches… The thing now ran far faster, taking much less time to do complicated calculations, as she integrated some spells into the components… She was idly removing one of the plastic plates again to look inside when she spotted the antenna…
This tiny thing was capable of sending electromagnetic signals across vast distances with the aid of something called the CCTS… It was similar to telepathy, but using electromagnetism rather than pulses of arcane energy, and was limited to the speed of light, plus, without a similar electronic device wired into a brain, it could only communicate between other machines…
While Twilight was deep in thought, the ponies had walked down from Beacon Cliff and were now taking the path into town… Soon they came to a small restaurant, a place called the “Crow Bar”, and each had sat down and started to order, Rainbow nudged Twilight in the side to distract her, and she looked up and placed a simple order for a sandwich.
The bartender was looking curiously at Twilight’s scroll, which was now floating in five pieces by her side as she was in the middle of removing the antenna to get a better look at how the thing operated, the book she had gotten on the subject of scrolls back when she was in Atlas was certainly a help. Once the bartender went back to prepare food, she continued her analyzation of the device.
“A loop of copper wire there, a rod of iron there, forming an electromagnet, tied into a small conductive rod, acting as a radiation emitter, tied into wires that sent pulses of energy to the device in time with signals from the central processor…” She looked between her book and the scroll’s parts… Now… If only there was a way… Yes… Electricity into magical energy, there was a way to do that, but… No, I don’t have a piece of white sapphire, but… But Dust is magically conductive enough, if I can just…
Her sandwich came as she was removing a dust crystal from her bag and was changing its size, shape, and colour, as she inscribed arcane runes and spell matrices into it, then removed the electromagnet from the antenna and replaced it with the crystal, welding the wires back into place, an action that confused and amazed the bartender. She levitated the food to her mouth as her focus was entirely consumed by her actions… Replacing the crude electronics with arcane devices was something she had already done plenty of times to her scroll, the battery, for example, was now a lump of enchanted topaz, capable of lasting an entire decade on a full charge.
She perfectly reassembled the device, welding and snapping the plates back together, and let the device reboot. “What did you do to it this time?” Rainbow muttered.
“Replaced the antenna with a lump of energized and engraved crystal, it should work on both electromagnetic and arcane signals now…”
“Booooring…” Rainbow replied, and returned to drinking her cider.
Twilight scoffed and opened her scroll, the display now a purple hologram showing a hexagram with Equestrian lettering along the side. She brought up her hand and started to rotate the hexagram, the device talking to her in her own voice, a voice no one else could hear, as it was broadcast directly into her mind, she went to the call function and started to input a set of magical coordinates, one that she had drilled into Spike’s mind when he was first taught the matter transference spell.
The screen flashed, and in Twilight’s head, she heard a slight gasp of surprise and joy in a familiar voice, “Twilight! I can’t believe it, you’ve found a way to contact me, I would think the amount of magical energy to even send a telepathy signal this distance would be far beyond you…”
Twilight smiled, and subvocalized, “No, Princess, I am not using a telepathy spell, I found a way to use electrical energy to fuel a spell matrix and am currently using a machine to augment my telepathy… Plus, it’s not that complicated a spell to begin with, and doesn’t take much power at all, even at this distance...” Even though the telepathy, she could feel Celestia give a wide grin, and could faintly feel the princess trotting in place.
“Perfect timing then… I am currently researching the exact same thing! I am trying to figure out a way to use a teleport spell to reach Remnant, but the power levels…” The princess trailed off, her thoughts filled with complex mathematics.
“Well, I can help with that… Teleportation is my speciality!”
“Yes…” Celestia paused, clearly thinking of something, then her mental tone shifted, back to one of joy rather than the monotone thoughts of a pony deep in thought… “But before we get to that, can you share optical and auditory data! I want to see what this world is like!”
Twilight smirked, and spent the rest of the day silent, just looking and hearing, as she let the girls drag her around Vale, sending everything she saw, heard, and felt through to the Princess.
“Our first mission!” Scootaloo was hopping in place and squeed as she waved bye to Rainbow Dash and got aboard the airship. She then nearly fell over as the ship lurched for takeoff…
“Careful there, Scoots, don’t want to go jumpin’ out yet,” Apple Bloom muttered, grabbing a hold on the handrail.
Sweetie was quickly brushing up on the newest spells she had learned, flicking through the pages of her spellbook, and Diamond had an air of intensity around her, something that somewhat unnerved everyone…
“What exactly is our mission?” Sweetie asked, “The job details weren’t exactly clear on specifics…”
“Good question!” The professor, Port, said… In his normal jolly tone, he began, “There have been reports of disappearances and increased grimm activity toward the south-east, we are going there to sweep the area clean of threats, and search for the cause of the increased grimm presence…”
The airship jerked and swayed as they turned in the air, the hatches closed, preventing the fillies from seeing where exactly they were heading, but eventually, after what seemed like forever, it started to slow and descend, finally coming to a halt. The hatches opened, and Port gestured for them to jump.
The fillies nodded and leapt, landing on the leaf floor, the airship then took off behind them, vanishing back the way they came… They were in a forest, dark and green, like the Emerald Forest, but this one held a much eerie feeling to it… In the distance, visible over the treetops, was a mountain, with the vague shapes of ruins sticking out from behind… Everything over there seemed dreary and grey.
Luna stared down the griffons in front of her… There were five of them, representatives from Griffonstone’s version of the royal guard, on loan to the princess in accordance with the plan herself and the various leaders of the world had agreed upon. Each of the nations of Equus were going to send a squad of their own guards to join the princess in making contact with the aliens, both as a cultural exchange and as a way of silencing the sceptics, as many still believed this alien world, Remnant, was simply a hoax… And, it was always nice to bring some warriors along, Celestia was the thinker, but Luna was the warrior, and it felt good to have fellow warriors at her side.
The leader, a griffon whose black and green plate-mail was marked out with gold rather than the silver trim of the others, and who wore a long black and white cape, stepped forward, “I am captain Talos of the Winged Hussars, 1st regiment, the Ravenwing… With me are captain Ralof and captain Aela, of the 2nd and 3rd regiments of the Winged Hussars.”
The princess eyed their extravagant armour, despite its fancy gold and silver trim and it’s lustrous black, white, and green paint, this was no parade ground uniform, this was real armour, she could spot the dents, scrapes, and scratches, even if the armour had recently been cleaned and repainted, her eyes made out the signs of battle, and a smile crossed her face… These were nothing like the useless figureheads that made up her sister’s royal guard, these were proper soldiers, they had seen bloodshed before… “Greetings,” She gave a polite nod, “I’m sure you have already been briefed on your reasons for being here, but allow me to recount it for you… You will be accompanying my guards to the alien world when my sister has figured out a way to travel to this world, both as representatives as Griffonstone and as Equus as a whole… Your secondary purpose is to act as bodyguards, we know this world is filled with dangerous creatures and expect you to be vigilant in defending the lives of your fellow-creatures, and any humans we encounter, we do not want to be held accountable for any diplomatic screw-ups…”
“Yes, Princess!” They all said in unison as the princess led them deeper into Canterlot Castle.
“First, though,” She said, as she led them into the Canterlot Armory, one filled with swords, spears, crossbows, and other older instruments of war, now filled with barrels of liquid rainbow, drums of gemstones, and the various magical energy weapons that had been designed and assembled over the weeks. “There are two things I must show you… First, the new weapons my kingdom has developed from alien technology, and a new magical ability that we have discovered from my sister’s student’s interactions with the aliens… Something known as an ‘aura””