//------------------------------// // Chapter 17 // Story: Contact Harvest // by CommanderApplejack //------------------------------// It's not over when you lose, it's over when you quit. “So how do you take a dump in that stuff?” I facepalmed as Scootaloo’s asked the question, Apple Bloom also rubbed her head as she was pretty much done answering all the benign questions our pegasus friend had been asking. “Trust me, ya don’t wanna know,” Bloom replied, placing her armoured hands on her new helmet. She’d explained the suit wouldn’t be coming off idly, she’d essentially be in it until technicians helped her get out of the stuff again. Maria too was in a set of the stuff, Mjolnir they’d called it. “Any chance we get that stuff too?” That drew a laugh from Apple Bloom. “Ah was an exception, mah body was already stronger than normal humans. The augmentations doctor Halsey had to do weren’t the full deal Maria got. Only the spinal surgery and the bone-strengthening stuff are the same.” “Wait, seriously, you had spinal surgery? Jeez, no wonder that you were so clumsy all of a sudden that while back,” Scootaloo exclaimed. We’d seen Apple Bloom stumble about a week back after a particularly long session with the doctor but she hadn’t talked for days and when asked she refused to tell what had happened. Must have been a fairly horrid experience for that to be the case. “Do the three of you really share this much?” Maria suddenly spoke up, asking one of her rare questions as usually she just stayed quiet. “Well yeah, most stuff at least, they might not be family by blood but the three of us are as close as can be,” Apple Bloom replied. “Ah know you know what that’s like, sometimes what you go through together will forge the strongest bonds.” “I guess so...” Maria returned to looking out of the window. “Ya miss them?” Bloom pushed, having probably seen and heard more while she was at her appointments with Halsey. I watched with interest as Maria turned back to look at Bloom. “It was an inevitability. We were always going to split up.” “Don’t mean ya can’t miss them,” Apple Bloom argued back. “What are you trying to achieve here, sergeant?” Maria replied, actually sounding... annoyed?” “Ta get ya to show some feelings.” Apple Bloom bluntly stated. “Ya may be an absolute badass, but at some point yer gonna run into them. So let me ask again, ya miss yer family?” Maria hesitated. I couldn’t help but look between the two power armoured individuals in the room as the Spartan wasn’t acting as she usually did. “I... Wouldn’t be opposed to cooperate with some of them on a mission,” Maria eventually said, I was sure Bloom would push again as that wasn’t really what I thought she was going for but she didn’t. “Ah’m sure if we prove we can get the job done we’ll get that opportunity.” “Talking about proving ourselves, I’ve been wondering when we’re picking up joined exercises. We’ve been getting individual upgrades but those count for squat if we can’t work together like an oiled machine. “Expect exercises to start within the week. A company of ODST’s is being detached to act as opponents for us, Chimaera squad,” Maria informed us. “That what they callin’ us now?” Apple Bloom asked with a raised eyebrow. “It is a reference to old mythology, Chimaera’s are creatures that-” “Mix match of animals, triplet of heads, that kind of stuff?” Apple Bloom cut off the Spartan. “We have ‘em back at home. Rather nasty things.” Maria at least had the decency to look surprised, eyes widening. “That’s... very interesting.” “There’s a remarkable amount of similarities between your mythology and our world. For which I’m sure there’s reasons that scientists will be very interested in figuring out when they get access to our world,” I added, getting up and opening my locker. I took out the spell book we were creating with Sunset as we’d have another lesson soon. “We should be going, don’t want to be late for the magic lesson.” “Mind if I come and watch? I heard you girls have been having some intense lessons lately,” Scootaloo asked. “I’ve got my flight pretty well down anyhow, it’s mostly just figuring out the most effective tactics now.” I shrugged. “No objection here.” “I’m not against studying squadmates’ abilities,” Maria stated with a shrug. I snorted in amusement. “I think she just wants to be there to catch the fireworks, Maria.” “Hey, I was going to study your abilities very closely!” Scootaloo protested, though the grin on her face gave away very clearly that I was right. “Anyhow, Sweetie is right about us needing to leave. We shall see each other in two hours.” she stood up, got her own spellbook, and donned her helmet. With large strides she walked out of the room, rolling my eyes I jogged after her and could hear Scootaloo lazily trailing behind us. “So, will that other girl that had magic be joining too? I haven’t seen her in a while.” Scootaloo asked as she lazily flew alongside me. “I’m afraid not, she’s good but not ODST levels of good physically. She’s working on getting a much more theoretical understanding of magic from what I gather from Sunset.” I replied as Scootaloo brought up Miska. “ONI having a natural-born human as a magic expert is probably something they wanted.” “Huh, I sort of liked her. Oh well.” Scootaloo came to a halt as we had to enter the large gym that had been converted into an arena for us to train in. Sunset was sitting in the middle of the room, legs crossed and eyes closed. “Halt.” We stopped when we were at about the halfway point when Sunset raised a hand gesturing for us to do so. Her voice reverberated strangely, distorted somewhat and tinged with magic. Scootaloo had flown far up to the stands overlooking the entire field, getting out of our training space altogether. “We’ve been practising spells and improving your mana pools over the last few weeks, but we’ve yet to test those under duress.” She opened her eyes, they were flowing with stored magical power, the spellbook in both my, and Maria’s hands disappearing in a flash of teleportation. “Your task is simple. Touch me.” A wave of fore launched out from Sunset, knocking me into the air and even toppled Maria, though the Spartan was back on her feet within a fraction of a second. The green mass of Mjolnir flying across the area at incredible speed in an attempt to touch Sunset. I myself wasn’t as aggressive in my approach, not having the advantage of power armour I’d have to rely more on my magic abilities. Which, of course, was exactly what Sunset wanted to achieve. Right before Maria could press her hand up against Sunset, a wall of flame sprung up in front of our teacher. The Spartan rushed through it but didn’t find anything other than empty air as the flames dissipated. “I fear your superior physical abilities will not help you here, Spartan,” Sunset mocked as I spun around to find her standing only a short distance behind me. I would have made an attempt to touch her, as that was the objective, were it not for the spell she was building on the tips of her fingers. Pushing magic into my own limb, I balled my fingers and uppercutted the air in front of me, Raising a directional shield just in time for it to be bathed in flames. The air shimmered from the heat, becoming uncomfortably hot. Sweet Celestia, she’s not holding back at all, is she? The flames stopped as Maria came charging in again, forcing Sunset to teleport away. A drop of sweat rolled over my face from putting up the shield and the intensity of the fire blast. “Maria, we’re not going to get her purely by physical means,” I said as the Spartan took pause. Sunset was slowly pacing on the other end of the arena, watching the two of us expectantly. “So I’ve noticed,” The Spartan replied, her hands aglow with her own magic. “I think she overcharged herself, she was meditating when we entered,” I commented, the glowing eyes indicating that she was wielding an incredible amount of magic. Not without danger of course, having charged up like that could have disastrous consequences if she lost control, though it gave Sunset a massive advantage over the two of us now. “So we have to stop her from teleporting. You have a better grasp on suppression fields than I do.” I shook my head. “She’s powered up right now, if I did that the backlash-” A fireball forced the two to dive out of the way in opposite directions. The explosion sending a wave of heat over them. “Whittle her down, death by a thousand cuts!” I called out to Maria, she was smart enough to understand my intention. The buzzing and cracking of electricity starting immediately as arcs of lightning were flung towards our teacher, Maria’s affinity for it allowing her to cast it with much more ease. Sunset though caught it with two fingers, guiding it through her core, before releasing it back towards the two of us. Taking a more proactive stance now, I grabbed a hold of the ground with my magic, raising two walls of rock in front of both me and the Spartan. The lightning blew a hole into the front face of the stone, draining much less of my mana than direct shielding. I’d have to remember that move as it would probably work with plasma weaponry too. Having only run defence until now I decided it was time to do some offence instead. Breaking off the two slabs of concrete that I’d used to shield us, I threw it at Sunset who blew them apart with two massive fireballs. Not being deterred I grabbed a hold of the entirety of the ground around me, straining myself severely as I pulled massive, jagged, spikes from the ground. Each time one appeared Sunset blew it apart with a blast of fire, slowly advancing on me, only to be forced to teleport as Maria came charging in from the side. The entire arena’s floor was messed up, jagged spikes of rock all over the place and deep gashes in the ground. I was panting heavily as my arms burned from the amount of magic I’d channelled through them, it was way past what the regular pony back in Equestria was capable of and really only Sunset’s pointers and exercises had raised my wellspring this significantly. “Just... how much... magic did she... store up?” I panted as Sunset didn’t even seem winded, the other human showing just why she’d been Princess Celestia’s student. “Too much,” Maria replied, “Those teleports should be taking more out of her. She must have set up prior anchors.” “Makes sense, she would have had time to prepare.” A fireball nearly interrupted our quick deliberation but was stopped by a hastily thrown up barrier of rock. “I’ll get her to teleport around. Look for patterns.” Maria charged off again, closing the gap with Sunset again, making her teleport before the Spartan could get close enough. This time though I was watching as Sunset appeared across the arena, noting the location as Maria forced another teleport with her charge. Two anchor points... Another flash to a third location. Three... Sunset seemed to be getting annoyed by our tactic of just charging her, white-hot flames springing up around the place to prevent even the power armoured Spartan from crossing certain areas. Maria didn’t let up though and tossed lightning around to distract Sunset from what I was doing. Having sprinted over to the closest place Sunset had teleported to before I went and tried sensing for magical anomalies, very quickly finding one of Sunset’s artificial magic crystals embedded in the concrete. Gotcha! Pocketing the crystal I found Sunset had teleported to one of the other two locations again, having to deflect lightning from Maria again right away. Sprinting over to the other place I suspected an anchor, I came to a skidding halt and scanned the area as I’d done with the previous one. This time I didn’t pull out the crystal though, just placed the first with the second essentially making one anchor out of the two crystals as they led to the same place. “Get in close!” I called out to Maria who was holding off a barrage of fireballs so intense even the Spartan needed to take cover. She didn’t complain for a second as she deflected a strike and got in close. I, meanwhile, created a teleportation-suppression field around me, making sure when Sunset blinked in she couldn’t blink back again, even though that would put her close to Maria again. Ultimately I didn’t need it as Sunset appeared in a fiery flash of light beside me, confused for the briefest of seconds about ending up in the incorrect location. She never got a chance as I grabbed her, tossing her over my body, and pinned her to the ground. “We win.” I was panting, at the end of my strength as I hovered over Sunset. “So you have,” Sunset calmly replied. Every fire around the arena was snuffed out instantly, the overwhelming amount of magic still within Sunset flowing out into the ground as she dissipated it from her system. She looked frail as she finished doing so, the inevitable side effect of holding that much magic, and needed my help to get up. “I take today’s lesson is over then?” Maria asked as she approached, even she seemed to be wavering under her armour. “Y-yeah...” Sunset went into a coughing fit, spitting out a glob of blood. “It’s also the last of our regular lessons. I will update you of any practical findings of course, but I have given you all the basic tools to create your own stuff out there.” Staff slowly started to enter the arena, some of them gawking at the immense damage the building’s foundations had sustained. Scootaloo also landed beside us, eyes wide and a grin on her face. “That was awesome! Granted, I had to duck a time or two and the helmet really helped, but damn was that insane!” She made a small loop in the air. “Also tiring. Very tiring,” Sunset grunted, barely able to stand even with my help. Maria stepped in and picked her up. “I shall get her to the infirmary, go rest up. There’s a briefing planned later in the evening.” “Indeed. There are certain things that need discussing...” Sunset grunted. “I’m going to need coffee... a lot of coffee...” I nodded. "We'll see you there then."