The teal-colored foal was climbing the stairs when his mom called from the kitchen, “How was Junior Press Club?”
He stuck his face between the banisters and called back, “It was great! I snapped a lot of good photos!”
“That’s good to hear! Dinner will be ready in a bit, you should show them to me when we eat.”
“Cool!”
He scampered up the steps, DSLR bouncing against his chest. Running into his bedroom, he shut the door behind him.
Hopping onto the chair at his desk, he ejected the SD card from the camera and stuck it in a slot on his CPU. He waited for a few minutes for the images to finish uploading onto his computer before double-clicking on an icon that read Friendly Space.
The browser opened and the Friendly Space logo appeared with some text beneath it.
Calibrating Incognito Sphere
Whatever that meant.
The browser finished loading. Going to his friends list, he scrolled until he found who he was looking for. He sent a message.
NieR GestaltToday at 9:02 PM Got something you’ll be interested in. Have time to chat?
After a few minutes, they responded.
SummersToday at 9:07 PM 👍
He hovered over the video call icon and clicked it. After a few seconds of ringing, a pink mare with an unkempt purple mane appeared on the screen.
“You look tired,” he said.
Trot Summers yawned and struggled to keep her eyes open. “Long day yesterday. I guess the others let me sleep in. How about you? Aurora told me you’re on Jr. Press Club at Maretropolis Daily now?”
He nodded. “Yep! Snagged a few pics you might be interested in. I’m sending them to you now.”
“I’m sure they’re good photos, but can it wait until—” She stopped and examined each picture carefully. “These are all real?”
“That weird demon hybrid… thing crashed through the building and made a good mess of the place. I left the flash on by mistake and it noticed me. I thought it’d attack me, but surprisingly it let me take more.”
Summers rubbed her temple as she looked over the pictures. “Weird. Normally, demon hybrids are volatile on site. And who’s this green mare she’s fighting?”
“Dunno. I know they were fighting each other, that’s for sure.”
“Do you have any idea what they were fighting about?”
“Don’t know that either, but I was in the office when I heard an explosion. I ran up to the window in time to see her emerging from the Freshly Squeezed building. There was a grey earth pony mare there as well. They tried to fight each other, but the green one had an unfair advantage since she was a unicorn. Strangely enough, she managed to get away by running into the burning building. I think she had the help of one of those wisps you told me about. Shortly after, the fire went away and that demon emerged.”
“Did you catch any photos of the mare?”
He shook his head again. “Unfortunately not. After the demon emerged I ran to go grab my camera from the Jr. Press Club, and it crashed into the building just as I got back. But lucky for you, I’m a computer wiz, and I was able to create an engine that’d be able to recreate ponies as realistically as possible. Sketch artists will be using this baby five years from now.”
Summers nodded for him to continue.
He sent the pictures.
Summer jabbed a hoof at the screen. “Why is she wearing a scarf in that last one?”
“I thought she’d look cool in it.”
Summer nodded in agreement. “Continue.”
The foal sent one more. "And this last one, she's a pirate cowboy."
“These are good,” Summers said. Then, concern seeped into her eyes. “You said the demon crashed through the office. Were you hurt by any of the debris?”
He scoffed. “You should know by now to not worry about me!”
“I know, I know, it’s just—”
“I’m okay, okay? Nopony else was hurt so far as I know. But it got back up as if nothing happened. It didn’t even look dizzy. I think it has a high pain tolerance.”
“So the unicorn blew up the building, and the demon was fighting her…” she mumbled to herself. “Do you think it was a good guy?”
“Possibly. There was no way of telling. It had no issues with destroying stuff. It knocked a giant robot through a building.”
Summers’s eyes widened. “A robot?”
“Or I think a mech of sorts. There was someone inside it. I couldn’t get a good read on who or what it was. But not long after a filly climbed out, and the robot started to act on its own.”
“It must have an AI chip installed. Did you get some pictures of the filly?”
“I did!” He sent the photos. “It looked like she was friends with the unicorn. My guess a sidekick… hey, can I—”
“You’ll get a mech suit when it’s in our budget.”
“Drat. Anyways, the robot absolutely demolished the demon. And when I say demolished, I mean turned to dust. Just as I was about to leave to send the photos, though, the demon reformed from the dust. It was kinda like a phoenix. It looked pretty pissed.”
“Language.”
He groaned. “Peeved. It looked peeved. I could hear it shouting something about the ice cream parlor being closed.”
“So what did it do after?”
“It turned to smoke. My guess is some kind of apper…apparashion…”
“Apparation ability?”
“Yeah!”
“Anything else?”
“No, that’s it.”
For a few long moments, Summer scanned the images sent to her, tapping her chin. “Okay, I’m going to tell the others to keep an eye out all over the city. Finding out who the filly is should be easy, but the unicorn might take some time. The robot doesn’t appear to be military-grade, so that will also take some work. As for the demon, we don’t know which side they’re on, so steer clear. Should you run into it again, I’ll outfit you with a tracking beacon so that one of us can come find you. Good work, Humdrum.”
