//------------------------------// // Triumph // Story: Least Faithful Student // by Dexter Helix //------------------------------// In the very early morning, Dexter is walking through the market alongside a frustrated Derpy, "I'm sorry, but I can't explain where I was!" "I was looking for you all day yesterday!" "I know, I'm sorry, I should have told you I was leaving, but Luna needed me urgently!" "Luna again?" "Did I just say Luna? ... Oh dear..." "I don't know why it's such a big deal, you can tell me what she's working on." "I've told you before, Derpy; the princess' work... It involves politically sensitive information." "It's not like I'd tell anyone else, I just really want to know!" "I had to swear an oath, Derpy. I don't ask you all kinds of invasive questions when you go galavanting off with that Doctor fellow!" "Luna isn't anything like the Doctor, and you know that." Dexter sighed. "I guess I do know that. But I still swore to secrecy. I swore to the princess, for crying out loud! I'd tell you if I could, honestly!" "Fine," Derpy replied, "You're right. It's wrong for me to ask." "Now you've gone and made me feel bad... I'm not really right... I'm just... forced." "Well do you want me to force you to tell me?" Derpy asked with a sly smirk. "No! ... Well? ... No. I mustn't tell you." "Is it important that I know?" "No... Or... I guess it might be. It depends!" "Depends on what?" "On lots of things!" "What kind of things?" "I can't tell you..." Derpy whinnied in frustration as she and her companion finally arrived at her home. "Quickly now, come in," she insisted. "So, what have you been waiting all day to show me? Is it the transducer?" "Better!" "What could possibly be better than a functional transducer?" "How about a magic amplifier?" "But that's impossible, Derpy, we already worked out that a portable device couldn't possibly take in any more magic than a full-grown pony!" "Well the magic doesn't come from the Sun." "You finished your sonoluminescence reactor then?!" Dexter asked, beaming. "Even better!" "It can't possibly be as great as your leading me to believe, Derpy, whatever this thing is, it has to be the most amazing thing ever!" "I don't even know what it is!" "Why are you so excited about it then?" "Because whatever it is, it works!" "Well let's see it then!" Dexter demanded, as he rounded the corner. His eyes widened as he caught sight of the magic amplifier. It was a device he was quite familiar with — something he had spent a year working on with Derpy. No matter what they had tried before, the output was always smaller than the input, rendering the whole thing a useless piece of junk. Now, though, even without a pony wearing it, the device was glowing intensely from vents along the sides of its saddle-like center manifold. Peripheral devices plugged into it chirped away, churning data. The numbers on the nearby monitoring panels were difficult to believe, but the ambient magic was so intense that you could feel a tingle in your skin just standing near it. Once he got within five feet of the thing, he experienced the distinct taste of metal. Seated in the center of the manifold was a new device he was unfamiliar with. A cage made from a fine wire mesh protruded from an old project box. Insulated coils of copper surrounded the base, and the mesh itself was constantly shifting in color, emitting many different hues of light from every side of its surface. A quiet ticking sound could be heard from inside it. Smiling brightly, Derpy said to Dexter, "The thing inside that mesh shield is outputting 50 milisols! Do you think the cage will hold together?" "Did you say... fifty..." "Milisols! You heard right!" "That's insane! You could level a city with that kind of power! Is it even safe to have this thing turned on?" "I'm mostly sure it's perfectly safe!" "My word... If only we had a few of these to go up against those griffons!" "Griffons?" "Griffons? I... Oh, my big stupid mouth again." "What about griffons?" "Well, we might be having a bit of a skirmish with them soon..." "How soon?" "Errr.... Later today?" "A war is starting today and you weren't going to tell me!?" "Well... It's just... Nobody was supposed to find out!" "Why not?" "They might freak out!" "Well, yeah, there's going to be a war. Of course they'd be freaked out!" "It's not a big deal..." "Not a big deal?! Have you ever seen a war?" Derpy asked, moving across the room and looking at some reams of data. "Well... No. Nopony has, not for thousands of years." "I've seen one! Trust me, they are very, very, bad." "How did you see a war?!" "The Doctor showed me one!" "That's imposs—" Dexter groaned. Even his very limited knowledge of that eccentric pony was enough to remind him that 'impossible' and 'the Doctor' were contradictory terms. "Why would the griffons attack us, though? Aren't they afraid of the Elements of Harmony?" Derpy asked, with her hoof against her chin. Dexter coughed. "The Elements of Harmony? Those are just a myth." You're a bad liar, Dexter. The Doctor show— he told me all about the Elements of Harmony." "Does that blasted Doctor know everything?" "Kind of..." Derpy replied, blushing. "Ugh. Well, somehow they found these things called 'Elements.'" "The griffons have Elements?! Oh no! This is bad. This is very bad. How could you know something like this and not tell me?!" "What do you know about Elements?" "I know enough. We have to do something!" "What are we supposed to do?" "You just said it would be helpful to have some of these amplifiers to go up against the griffons. Well, I've got one!" "I meant... after careful testing is completed and safety precautions are taken and—" "We don't have time for that. Come on, I'll need your help retrofitting this into the transducer." "The transducer hasn't been properly tested either!" "What could possibly be a better test than a real-world practical application?" "That's not really the right—" "Hold this in place while I weld the joint," Derpy demanded, picking up some angle steel in her teeth and propping it in place on the middle top of the transducer. Dexter complied, magically suspending the bit of metal and following Derpy with his eyes as she crossed the room, "But I really think you should—" "Look Dexter," Derpy replied, donning her welding mask, "We've done the math, we know it will work, stop worrying so much! Sometimes you've got to run before you can walk." Dexter clenched his eyes and looked away quickly as Derpy started the plasma torch. "A little warning before you turn that thing on next time, I could go blind!" Derpy yelled through the thick metal headgear, "Oh, you know what you're doing! Besides, we're in a hurry, no time to find your mask!" "You're a crazy pony and I think I love you!" "What? I can't hear you over the torch!" "Uh.... I said... I think you're crazy!" he shouted, shaking his head no, as if he was in disagreement with himself. "And proud of it!" Derpy shut off the blowtorch and moved across the room to get more parts, giving further instructions to Dexter as she started rooting through bins, "Go ahead and cut the magic conductor three-quarters of the way to the collection chassis and splice these fittings onto the ends. That should give us plenty of room to plug the amplifier in..." "But if I cut the conductor, the directing fluid will leak out!" "Well then you'll have to get those fittings on quickly!" "Are you sure these conductors will be able to handle the output of that amplifier?" "I needed those fittings attached five seconds ago! And yes, I'm sure! I designed it with something like this in mind!" Derpy shouted, as she carried a basket of parts across the room. "I still don't think—" "That it's a good idea, I know, you told me already!" "How are you gonna fight griffons though? You don't even know any magic!" Dexter protested while skillfully altering the conductor. "I won't need to! The suit has built in neural network loop for managing magic blasts. Normally, that's a fairly weak attack, but with fifty milisols at my disposal, I should be able to reduce most any corrupted beast into a smoking crater!" "You're talking about killing things, Derpy!" "If the griffons have bound themselves to Elements, they're already dead! They have been changed, Dexter! They've been stripped of their emotions and thoughts. The Elements of Harmony may be able to change a few of them back, but those six unlucky ponies... Whoever they are... They will never be able to outperform an army of elements. If those griffons could see what they had become... what their bodies were being used for... they'd want to be destroyed. They will reduce the entire planet to a desolate wasteland! Even the doctor would agree with me, and he hates violence." "Again with the Doctor! If he's so great, why doesn't he come help us?" "He's busy! Doing something else!" "What could be so important the he can't come and help?" "You just don't understand, Dexter." At that moment, Dinky walked into the room. "What's wrong mommy? Why are you yelling?" "Oh, Dexter and mommy are just a little frustrated right now. I need to leave for a little while and do something very important, just like when the Doctor comes. Can you go stay with Sweetie-Belle? Tell Rarity I need her to watch you. It's an emergency!" "But Sweetie-Belle says her sister left for Canterlot yesterday." "Yesterday? Oh, nothing is working out for me lately..." Dexter piped up, "What about your other friends? Apple-loo and... uh... the other one." "Applebloom's sister left for Canterlot, too!" Derpy paced through the middle of the room in thought, "And the usual sitter is on vacation... Well, where is Sweetie-Belle staying?" "She said she was gonna stay at the Apple farm with Granny Smith." "The farm on the outskirts of town?" Derpy asked, looking to Dexter for advice. "Sounds like as safe a place as any," Dexter replied, "I mean, they would probably go for the cities right? Not the farmland." "If they have Elements, they won't leave anything untainted. But you're right, they would prefer the cities, at least to start. More ponies there." "I don't wanna stay with Granny Smith, she smells funny!" "It's only for a little while, Dinky," Derpy added, bending down to kiss the filly, "Mommy will come back for you soon. I promise!" "But I don't want you to go!" Dinky shouted, hugging tightly onto her mother's front leg. The mother pegasus dropped down to get face to face with her child, "Dinky, you are the most important thing in the world to me. I never, ever, want anything bad to happen to you. That's why I need to go. There are bad-guys out there, and I need to go stop them, because nopony else can." "You're the most amazing mommy in the whole world," Dinky said, pressing herself against her mother as hard as she could. "And you're the most amazing daughter in the universe," Derpy replied, wrapping her forehoof around the tiny unicorn. She gave one last peck on Dinky's forehead before sending her off. "Be good for Granny Smith, okay? Mommy loves you this much!" Derpy added, lifting her front end off the ground with a flap of her wings, spreading her front hooves as far apart as they would go. Dinky followed in suit, lifting her own body with a little spurt of magical energy and spreading her arms wide apart, before scampering off. Derpy turned around to recommence work, slightly teary-eyed, "Did you get the com-link installed yet, Dexter?" "Yeah, though I'm not sure if you're going to have enough range to actually talk back to me." "The amplifier, Dexter." "Ah... right... Sometimes I wonder how I even made it through uni..." "With a lot of hard work. Don't think that nopony noticed." "Thanks, Derp." "Wait, where are the griffons even attacking?" "Luna mentioned the Bezzer station. She said they'd be establishing a defensive border near there." "That old fort to the East? But there's no city there, why would they attack there?" "I don't know, it's on the border between our nations, I thought it made sense..." "No... We don't have a big enough army to cover the entire border. They could simply fly around anything we set up!" "But why would Celestia push all the troops to that location?" "It doesn't make sense! She's leaving every city defenseless, and standing her ground in a place where the griffons would never want to go!" "Maybe she knows something we don't? I mean, why is there even a fort there? There must be something important near there!" "No," Derpy argued, "the station was built for a good reason. We had a trading settlement there, back when we still bartered with the griffon nation. But that was centuries ago. Anything there that might have been valuable is gone; even the shacks have turned to dust, only the fort and the pier are left." "So then, why? What is the defensive value of that platform?" "I don't know, but I intend to find out. Strap me in," Derpy said, climbing into the now-supercharged transducer. "Are you really sure you want that thing strapped to you? I think it's a bit radioactive!" "Lots of things are radioactive, strap me in!" Dexter complied, working quickly to get the machine online. Derpy's flight feathers, each one, a complex magic-managing circuit in its own right, were all clipped into their own minute harnesses. With each clip attached, Derpy could feel her body melding with the machine; the sensation was incredible, as if the very fiber of her being was extended through space, twisting and turning its way around the coiling guts of the transducer. Her own magic system was sending signals out to the equipment — and the machine was replying — feeding back information about the parameters of its own operation. She gazed around in wonderment, her body quivering and tingling with sensory overload. Finally, Dexter finished with the last clip. "Are you okay?" "I feel... wow... wow..." "Are you hurt?! Is something wrong?!" "No... I feel amazing..." Dexter breathed a sigh of relief. "So it's working then?" "I think it is... It feels more natural than I imagined. Like it's a part of me. I wonder if this is what it's like to be a god..." "Huh?" "The way I feel this machine... I wonder if it's the same way Celestia feels the Sun..." "Are you sure you're okay? You sound a little spacey." "I'm better than okay! Go ahead and unhook me from the chassis lift, I want to walk around." Dexter turned a winch, lowering the transducer from the steel frame supporting it. The tall platform shoes, designed to pick up on the finely articulated magical energy emitted from the hooves of Earth ponies, gave her nearly a foot of added height, and made a distinctive metallic clack as she moved about the room. Though the machine was heavy, slightly illuminated actuators along the frame helped to support the extra weight, and the amplifier glowed dully from its vents in the middle of it all, atop Derpy's back. "I'm gonna check if I can fly." She announced, as she spread her wings slightly. The synthetic wings shrouding her real ones moved in just the same way, gracefully and effortlessly. The artificial flight feathers were massive, beautiful things, meant to support a pony and the added weight of the transducer itself. She pushed open two broad doors on the side of the lab, stepped out into the cool morning air and spread her wings to their full span. The internal circuitry of the transducer altered itself according to the pilot's will, shifting control over from general operation to fine wing control. Derpy felt the transition of awareness a little jarring, but before long, she could feel the great metal wings nearly as if they were her own. She raised them to the sky and gave a light flap downward, causing the amplifier to flash a little brighter momentarily. "Oh my gosh!" she screamed, moving a few meters further into the air than she had anticipated, landing in a frenzied stumble seconds later. "Is everything alright?" "Yeah... It's just going to take a second for me to get used to this!" She yelled back, almost laughing. "What were you just telling me back in there Derpy? About how I was too cautious? Well you gotta run before you can walk!" "Is that so? Well come on then, run with me!" Dexter ran alongside the pegasus, as she flapped her wings ever so gently. He used his magic to hold her stable in the air as she took her first few bunnyhops, and then as she took off into the air, two meters, ten meters, twenty meters... He let go. She masterfully manipulated the machine, flying with precisely the same grace as if she didn't have two-hundred kilograms of metal and cable strapped to her body. Seeing as though she'd always been a clumsy pony, that wasn't very much grace, but she was flying, nonetheless. "WOOHOOO!" She screamed triumphantly, coming in for a running landing next to Dexter. "That was amazing!" "You're telling me!" "Now try for the horn! Gently now, remember your strength. We don't want to go and blow up Ponyville." Derpy looked around for a potential target. The tree might have birds in it, that's no good... Um... Ah, an old shipping crate! She faced it head on and willed the transducer to shift itself into the basic magic-blasting mode. She concentrated on the target, imagining its location relative to herself. Targeting sounded easy to do in theory, but it all needed to be translated through her wings. She built the machine, she designed the circuit, she knew she could do it. She focused as hard as she could, having a silent conversation with the transducer as she aligned its intentions with her own. With an incredible amount of concentration etched across her face, and a little more eye-crossing than usual, she finally let a bolt of magic fly. It landed just feet away from the crate, blowing a chunk of grass and dirt up into the air. "Nice one for a first shot! Probably better than I could do, anyway. Go on, try again!" Derpy licked her lips in anticipation. She charged the bolt up this time, prompting the amplifier to emit a significant glow. With a bright flash, it set off towards its target, exploding the crate into thousands of burnt wood shards and splinters on impact. "Ah-hah!" "You did it!" "I did do it, didn't I?" "That was excellent, there, blow up that one!" Dexter suggested, pointing to another empty crate. Derpy focused on it, taking only a few seconds this time to line up her shot and tear the box to shreds. She spotted a couple more further out, hitting each one in less time than the last. She let loose a hearty, victorious, laugh, then turned, looking for more targets. Without even thinking about it, she hit another crate — one that happened to be full of mail. Letters and postcards went flying out of the damaged box and scattered all over the lawn. "Whoops! My bad!" "Derpy... You just blasted that box without even thinking about it!" "Jeez... rub it in..." "No, I mean, you didn't even have to think about it at all! You were able to blow it up before you even had the time to realize it'd be full of mail!" "I did, didn't I?" "You definitely did!" "So then..." "The transducer is a huge success! We did it Derpy! You did it!" Derpy flushed with excitement, prancing about in the metal suit, somehow coming off as both utterly terrifying and incomprehensibly adorable simultaneously. "Oh! Wait!" Derpy abruptly shouted, eyes crossed, "I'd better get going!" "Yes, definitely, the griffons might cross the border any second! Good luck up there, make sure that comm-link stays open and I'll keep you posted from back here!" "But the mail!" She protested, returning to Dexter. "I'll clean it up, you've got more important things to do, just go!" "Dexter..." "Yeah?" "If this war ends well, but something happens to me... I just... I want my sister to take care of Dinky." "You're sure?" "Yeah... and tell her... I'm sorry." "I will. You have my word." "But if something were to happen to me, and all hope seems to be lost... I need you to keep Dinky protected until you can get her to the Doctor. He can take her somewhere safe. Trust nopony with her, other than the Doctor and Sparkler." "How am I supposed to find him?" "Don't worry about that, he'll find you. Just promise me you'll keep her safe until then." "I'm not sure I follow, but... I promise." "Dexter... Thanks. For everything." "Anything I've ever done for you... I'd do it again in a heartbeat, just to be near you." Derpy bent down to give Dexter a peck on the cheek, causing him to blush profusely. Before he could say anything in response, Derpy had already turned around and begun her ascent. "Godspeed, you glorious pegasus." He murmured, watching her climb ever higher into the sky. He set to work picking up the mail; hundreds of letters scattered all across her lawn, blowing around, getting caught in piles of failed and obsolete inventions. "Huh... This could take a while."