CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Manehattan Library
City of Manehattan
"Twilight?"
Violet whispered quietly as she poked the prone form of the Princess of Friendship. So far there had been no reaction, though Violet could see the mare's barrel move up and down, so she was breathing.
Candela, meanwhile, was in the corner hyperventilating. It wasn't every day you knocked the horse apples out of a Princess of Equestria, and her brain had decided now was as good a time as any to focus solely on that fact.
Up until about 10 minutes prior, Violet had tried to calm Candela down with soft words, hugs, a glass of water, and some cajoling, but none of it had worked, so she settled on letting her work it out on her own in the hopes reason and sanity would take over once again. She was still waiting.
*poke*
*poke*
"It's doing it again!" Candela's voice rang out. Violet turned toward the corner of the room where they had sat Twilight's saddlebags, and once more she saw they had begun glowing a bright blue. Something inside those bags was making its presence known, and Violet wanted no part of it.
"It's okay," Violet told the tan furred earth pony, in the hopes of getting her to calm down, and maybe convincing herself that things were actually going to be okay. "Whatever's inside hasn't actually done anything, and I don't think Twilight would bring something dangerous with her, especially if she was looking for us."
*poke *poke* *poke*
"Ow!"
"Twilight!" Violet called out as she recognized the mare's voice grumbling from the pointy end of the stick. She dropped it and helped Twilight into a sitting position, the Alicorn putting a hoof on her head and wincing as she quickly pulled it away.
"What happened?" she asked, her voice gravelly.
"You passed out when you came through the doorway," Violet lied, because of course she would. "There must have been some kind of tree limb that knocked you out, and we dragged you inside."
Meanwhile, a few hoofsteps away, Candela's jaw had dropped, because lying to a princess was wrong, and could land you in a lot of hot water if that lie was ever found out! Still conflicted over whether or not she was going to back up her partner in crime, she got to her hooves, attempted to straighten out her mane, and quickly cantered over to the other side of the princess.
"Can I get you something to drink, your highness?" she asked.
Twilight nodded. "Some water, please."
Candela quickly headed off to retrieve some water from one of the nearby vending machines.
"We were so worried we'd lost you!" Violet said as she hugged Twilight as gently as she could. "When I woke up you were nowhere to be found, and I was so scared!" Tears had started to form in her eyes, and Twilight returned the hug, comforting the younger mare.
About that time, Candela returned with the bottle of water, which Twilight accepted gratefully, and took a long drink. For some reason, Candela noted, she seemed to really appreciate it, but paid it no real attention to it as she took a seat next to Violet.
Twilight moved up from a leaning position, to sit back on her haunches. "Well, at least we're all here now, together, although..." she looked at the tan furred earth pony next to Violet.
Violet turned from Twilight to Candela and back, and it clicked. "Oh! Yes, um, Twilight Sparkle, this is Candela Bright. Candela, this is Twilight, whom I'm sure you already know, but I've already committed myself to doing it this way."
Twilight put a hoof out to bump it, and Candela simply looked at it, looked to Violet, and then leaned over, kissing Twilight's hoof.
"Buh?!" Twilight said as she pulled her hoof back.
Candela panicked. "I apologize your highness, it's because I'm sitting down isn't it? Oh no, please don't banish me to the Moon!"
Twilight took the frenetic mare by her shoulders. "Calm down, Candela, it's okay, please, I'm not offended."
The young mare's breathing began to calm as she looked at Twilight uncertainly.
"I'm really not much on protocol to be honest, aheh," Twilight said as she let go of the pony, and rubbed the back of her own head instead. "Please, please call me Twilight. I would much rather be your friend. I mean, that's literally my job."
Formalities out of the way, the mares quickly brought one another up to speed on the events leading up to where they were presently, with Twilight motioning for Violet to bring her the saddlebags, since Twilight was still a bit dizzy from whatever had caused her collapse outside of the door.
"So what is the plan, Twilight?" Violet asked as she laid the saddlebags in front of the Alicorn.
"Well," began Twilight, "it's rather simple and straightforward. We need to take the tesseract and activate it, which will disrupt the quantum streams intersecting the library, and cause this storm to dissipate."
Violet nodded. "That seems simple enough. When can we do it."
Twilight's expression turned uncertain. "Unfortunately, I'm not sure. The tesseract will do all of the work once it's engaged, but we need a spark of magic to make that happen. As we all know from far too much personal experience, magical fields break down immediately. Amari told me that it's due to the rupture of elemental bonds on the sub-quanta level. Magic simply cannot work without them because they form the very fabric of our universe. No foundation, nothing to build upon."
Candela raised a hoof.
Twilight chuffed. "You don't have to do that. You can just ask me a question, Candela."
The earth pony blushed. "If magic doesn't work, what about something else that can create a disruption? Like electricity? As you can see, lights do work, so maybe some other catalyst can activate the device?"
Twilight had looked around the staff room. Some of the lights were indeed working, and she wondered what Tempest Shadow would think of using electricity to create a magical reaction. An idea began to form in her head.
"Violet, you told me that the two of you had found some kind of radio transmitter in the basement of the building?" she asked the pegasus.
Violet nodded. "Yeah, Candela and I had managed to find a transmitter, but the capacitors had burned out from overload."
Twilight nodded. "I can work with that. Can you two take me there?"
---
About 15 minutes later, they were standing in front of the broken assemblage of parts that once resembled a transmitter. Twilight had begun the process of tearing down what was remaining, while Candela and Violet traded off holding the small handheld light stick they'd found in one of the desk drawers upstairs.
"Any luck?" Candela asked Violet, who was currently holding the light.
"She's still trying to piece together the motherboard," came the whispered reply.
Twilight rolled her eyes as she continued working, attempting to ignore the furtive whispers above her head. She didn't have the heart to tell them whispering doesn't matter when a pony's ears are situated between the two whispering parties.
She had just managed to snap a lead wire in place, using a soldering kit cobbled together from janitors closets and tool boxes.
"Okay, Candela, hoof me the tesseract out of my saddlebag."
She felt gentle pressure as weight was removed from her back, and a moment later, a shaking hoof was reaching over to hand her the cube.
"It's not going to explode, Candela," she admonished gently.
"Sorry, your highness."
"I told you not to call me that."
"I'm sorry, your highness Twilight."
Twilight grunted. That would have to do.
She placed the cube against the motherboard, and attached the lead wire to it, adjusting several capacitors. She nodded with approval. So far, so good.
Twilight took the cobbled together kit, and trotted over to the large electrical generator in the center of the room.
"Now, this generator powers the whole building. For the moment it's not functional due to the magical field breakdown preventing large magnetic fields of any kind from forming. I'm going to attach the tesseract to the generator."
The other two mares nodded.
"Then I'm going to allow the tesseract to open completely, at which point its quantum field will regenerate the circuit, and allow for magnetic fields to form inside of it, which will cause the generator to produce electricity."
The other two mares nodded.
"Once that happens, I will disengage the safety on the generator, and ramp up the output to maximum, severing the wires leading out of the step down transformer."
The other two mares glanced at one another.
"Once that happens, and the switch is thrown, we should be able to take cover before the whole power system disrupts the quantum stream."
Twilight nodded to herself.
"Uh, Twilight?" Violet asked, as Candela raised her hoof.
"Yes, Violet?" the Alicorn responded.
"How much power will be produced by that generator?"
Twilight did a quick mental calculation. "It will produce about one hundred thousand gigawatts of power."
Candela fainted.
Violet stared and looked at Twilight, opening her muzzle and closing it again several times. "Won't that, uh, cause us to die horrible, horrible deaths?" she finally managed.
Twilight dismissed her with a forehoof. "Don't be silly, the electricity produced will be mostly self-contained, and since the quantum junction sits almost directly atop the generator, we should be able to take adequate cover without incident.
Violet took a deep breath, and then went to help Candela to her hooves.
Twilight affixed the device to the generator.
"Now," she said, "prepare to take cover underneath that large mattress in the corner."
"On the count of three," she began, her hoof held over the switch.
"One."
Sweat began to drip down Violet's withers.
"Two."
She also realized she had to pee.
"Three!"
Twilight pulled the switch hard, breaking it in the process. Wasting no time, the three mares galloped for the alleged safety of the mattress as the generator, and the tesseract both, began to give off a brilliant blue and white light.
"Cover your heads!" Twilight shouted. "You can be struck by lightning in just about any orifice and live except in the head!"
The mattress pulled over, the three mares held on for dear life. For a few seconds, things seemed to be working well, but things started going awry quickly as they were all slammed to the ground, as if a ten ton weight were pressing on their chests.
"What's going on, Twilight?!" Violet managed to wheeze.
Twilight couldn't even shake her head to respond. "I don't know," she forced out. "I think there is... some kind of conflict... between... the matrices... and their lattices!"
"I... don't know... what that means!" Violet shouted as the room became blindingly bright. A high pitched whine soon followed, and Twilight knew they were in serious danger.
"Hold on!" she shouted, and prayed to her mentor that she had time.
Right at the moment the entire generator system exploded, sending fire, hot shrapnel, and 100,000 gigawatts of electricity into the open air, a violet bubble winked into existence, and three ponies vanished.
---
"Aaaaaaaah!" Candela screamed as she suddenly realized there was nothing underneath her, and she was falling. A few moments later, her backside hit the ground, and she rolled onto her side.
She looked up right before a purple furred pony landed on top of her. She grunted in pain.
Violet, meanwhile, noticed that she too had fallen, but had a much softer landing. It took her a moment to notice the tan furred pony underneath.
She panicked, of course.
"Oh, Candela, are you okay?" she asked as she scrambled to her hooves and helped the earth pony to her own.
"Ugh, you're lucky I'm made of sterner stuff," she rasped as she was pulled to her hooves, and brought the pegasus into a hug.
"We did it!" they heard a voice shout next to them. Breaking the embrace, they turned to see Twilight already on her hooves, much of that likely owed to her Alicorn constitution, and a massive grin on her face.
Surely enough, they were all standing in the middle of the Manehattan Library's arboretum.
"There's no rain," Violet said in a whisper. "There's no rain!" she repeated again, not even remotely whispering.
"Clearly this is an indicator that the junction has been dissolved," Twilight explained as she brushed the leaves and twigs from her mane. She had landed in the bird section.
"How did we get here, Twilight?" Violet asked as she and Candela made their way over to the walkway near the entrance of the arboretum.
"It's quite simple, really," Twilight said, removing a bird's nest from her tail. "There was a window of .08812 seconds where the electrical field was supercharged, and where the magical field would be present, with the magic field reaching us first during that window. I merely had to calculate the timing and teleport us before the electrical field took over."
The two mares were just staring in shock, no pun intended, at the Alicorn's ability.
"Your highness!" came a voice from nearby. They all turned to see the Captain of the Mare Nobilum approaching in a hurry. "We were worried about you," he said as he stopped and saluted.
"Captain Copperpot," Twilight exclaimed, relief in her voice, "I assume then that there are survivors."
The captain nodded. "Yes, your highness. There were no casualties. The Sola Raptura is on its way to pick us up. The city is peaceful, and there's not a cloud in the sky. It's a miracle, your highness!"
Twilight smiled, turned to Violet and Candela, and gave them a wink.
"Let's go home then, Captain," she said.
The two trotted off in brisk fashion, leaving Violet and Candela alone.
"So, Candela, I was thinking. You know, Canterlot and Manehattan aren't that far from here and, I mean, if you want to visit sometime, you could stay at my place," Violet was saying as she created circles in the soil with her forehoof, "and you could meet my cat, Mr. Doldrums. He's a little impatient with new ponies, but he's a good kit-"
She was interrupted by a very warm muzzle making contact with her own as forelegs embraced her and pulled her closer. She melted into the warmth.
Mr. Doldrums could wait. The future was getting bright.
The End.