//------------------------------//
// Jump 
// Story: Journal of a Reality Drifter 
// by Spiritus Arcane 
//------------------------------//

They say we come into the world screaming...

Terminus grabs me by the shoulder as I go for the emergency release.  I turn and backhand him.  Hitting a turian is like hitting a stop sign, but it knocks him away long enough for me to get at the handle.  Wadkit yells at us from the cockpit as the hatch springs open.  There’s no time to respond even if I was inclined to.  I grab hold of the edge of the hatch and go to throw myself out of the shuttle, but Terminus, damn him, grabs me again.  A quick stomp to his foot puts him in just enough pain for me to get loose.  This time I blast him in the face with a stun bolt.  

That familiar feeling of time slowing falls over me.  The blast washes over him, but he falls forwards instead of away, towards me.   I try to back up, to finish throwing myself out of the shuttle, but it’s too little too late, and Terminus is too close, yet too far away at the same time.   I’m screaming just as my vision goes blurry, and it keeps going even as I white out entirely.

I’ve found that to be pretty accurate most of the time, no matter which world I enter.

My name is Lydia, and this is my journey through hell.





I came to with a slight headache. It’s nothing new, as I’ve gotten used to the wonderful sensations of a jump, but this one seemed rougher than normal.  I’d obviously passed out this time, since I could tell I was on my back.  I pried open my eyes, and found myself staring up at the roof of the shuttle...well, the part of it that got dragged along with me.  It was bright, meaning I was probably outside somewhere.  I quickly brought up a systems check in my HUD and found out I’d been out for less than a minute, which means primary power was still out with hours to go on the repair time.  

Backup power cells should last til then, but it meant no Homer.  I had no one to watch my back right now, and that’s never good thing, but especially right after a jump is worse.  I sat up, intent  on seeking better shelter when I realized Terminus was laying on top of me.

Or rather...half of him was.

He’d been bisected by the jump, his front half is here, and I can only surmise that his other half is back where I’d left.  Oh, and I’m completely soaked in his liquid remains.  It’s just too horrible, even for me, and I’d once seen someone stripped to the bone by a gelatinous cube.  I flung the corpse away roughly as I rolled over onto my knees and began clawing at my helmet seals.  I managed to undo them and pull my helmet off just in time to lose my lunch.  Oh well, I hated military rations anyway.  

Of course, that’s when the screaming started.  It took me a moment to figure out it wasn’t me this time, especially as I was still in the middle of upchucking.  The second I could stop, I jammed my helmet back on and looked up.   The first thing I noticed is that I was in a city or town of some sort.  The second is there were a lot of horses running around.  A second later I was forced to change my conclusion about that.  For one thing, as a I stood up, I could see that they’re way too small to be horses, and also I noticed that it was a lot of them doing the screaming and that many of them were dressed in various forms of clothes.  Planet of the Pony People, huh?  That’s different, I thought to myself.

Of course it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that I was the cause of the screaming.  I’m standing there, in full armor, which would be intimidating on its own, and drenched in blue blood.  I’d have probably given myself nightmares a dozen decades or so ago.  I stood there mutely while the street around me emptied out as multi-colored ponies ran away in all directions, waiting for what I know will come next.

“You there, stop!”

There we go...

I turned to face a couple of po- no wait, they had wings...  A couple of pegasus ponies, wearing golden barding and crested helmets that looked almost roman-like in design, were galloping towards me.  Something about the design of their armor prickled in the back of my memory.  In fact...something about this whole place seemed familiar somehow.  Had I been to another version of this world before?  I didn’t think so, but it could be someplace so far back that I just don’t remember.  I put it out of my mind for the moment, whatever they were, or this place was, I recognized town guards when I saw them.

I kept still as the two guards trotted up, allowing my cloak to drape around my arms to conceal my hands, making sure I had a chance to catch them by surprise if things turned violent.  Considering my mood, they probably would.  One of them caught sight of what was left of Terminus and his tough guy face cracked for a second.  After that we stood there staring at each other for a second, and I caught them glancing at each other as if they weren’t exactly sure how to handle this.  I finally decided to break the ice and switched on external speakers.

“Problem, officers?” I asked, the helmet microphone giving my voice a slight staticy quality.

They shared a glance again before the one closest to me spoke up.  “We request that you accompany us to the nearest guard post.” he told me with as much an authoritative tone as he could muster.

Request...riiiight.  I assumed that was the polite way of saying ‘you’re under arrest,’ probably on suspicion of murdering someone I’d been coming to think of as an actual friend.  ...Granted, they would be right in suspecting me.  My jump had killed Terminus, and probably the rest of the team as well depending on how important the components in the part of the shuttle that got dragged along with me were.  

Oh, and in case you hadn’t figured it out, having that added the the giant landfill of my conscience had put me a in a really pissy mood, and I’d be damned (well...more damned) if I was gonna go directly to jail and maybe play twenty questions, with or without a side of torture, with some interrogator.

“...Yeah, no,” I said to them, my only warning before I struck.  Homer might have advised me to comply or retreat, but he wasn’t here, I was pissed off, and these two guardponies were stress relief and potential threats as far as I was concerned.  I rushed forward, bringing my leg up in a snap kick that rammed my foot into the bottom of the talkative one’s jaw.  I didn’t hear the sound of a breaking jawbone, but he still went down like a bowl of cooked ramen noodles.

To his credit, his partner didn’t panic, but immediately rushed me.  He slammed into me with a literal flying tackle that sent us both to the ground, where we rolled a down the street a couple of times before I managed to toss him off.  Those wings at his sides were proven to not be for show, as he used them to quickly recover, landing only a couple feet away before swinging around to bring his rear hooves in line to buck me as I attempted to get back to my feet.  I threw myself backwards, landing on my back and letting loose with a couple shots from my blasters.  It’d been a couple of snap shots so my aim was bad, but I still had the satisfaction of seeing one of the bolts graze his flank, causing him to cry out in pain.

Scrambling to my feet, I charged before he could regain his senses.  I grabbed hold of his left wing with both hands and twisted my body around, swinging the pegasus around by his limb to hurl him into the side of a nearby building.  He stayed down after he hit, either unconscious or just smart enough to know when to quit.  I glanced back at the first one to make sure he was still down too, then stopped for a moment to catch my breath.  I probably shouldn’t have done that...but I always felt better after winning a fight, and I really needed to feel better, if only a little bit, right now.

Unfortunately I’d forgotten one of the multiversal rules of guards: picking a fight with them is like picking a fight with bees.  You mess with one, you end up dealing with the hive.  The auditory sensors in my helmet heard them first, and I turned to see at least a whole patrol’s worth of armored ponies headed towards me.  Great...  They probably wouldn’t be too thrilled to see that I’d just mopped the streets with their two buddies here.  My inner warrior told me I could probably take them.  The smart part of my brain drop kicked that idea by adding that, yeah I might be able to handle them, but what about the next wave, or the one after that?  Another multiversal guard rule: the more of them you beat up, the more they escalate things.  With that in mind, I decided to get while the getting was still good and started running in the opposite direction.

I’d barely gotten ten yards before a sparkling bolt of energy zipped past my head.  Oh great, they had mages.  And those pegasi weren’t likely to stay on the ground if that armor wasn’t too heavy, and if the designers had any sense, it wouldn’t be.  Obviously just running wouldn’t work, I was gonna have to get creative.

I slid to a halt and spun to face them before letting loose a short barrage of blaster bolts.  I wasn’t really aiming to hit anything this time, just to make them scatter, which, showing they had at least a decent level of self-preservation, they did, either by diving out of the way or taking to the air if they had wings.

Having stalled their group charge for a moment, I immediately dashed down a side street or alley as fast as I could.  I took the first right I came to, and followed that up by then taking the next left, then diving behind a bunch of trash barrels just as I started to hear the sounds of flapping wings getting very close.

I called up the omni-tool interface over my left gauntlet and manually activated the invisibility spell matrix.  I felt a small tingling sensation as I completely faded from sight.   Sitting tight for a moment, and hoping they wouldn’t have anyone capable of seeing through invisibility, I waited.  It wasn’t too long before I saw several equine shapes pass overhead, and shortly after that, once again heard the clip-clop of approaching hooves.

Two pony guards appeared at the mouth of the alley.  One was one of the white coated, blue crested and tailed pegasi I’d already gotten acquainted with, the other was a dark grey coated with white crest and tail, and had a spiral horn growing out the middle of his forehead.  A unicorn.  Huh, well that explained who the mages were.  Unfortunately, the unicorn was just as armored as the pegasus, maybe even a little more so.  I sighed mentally.  Magic users who wore armor were always a pain, as they don’t have the squishy wizard factor that can allow one to take them out of the equation easily sometimes.

Still, they apparently didn’t have any way of seeing me at the time, because they glanced down the alley for a moment then trotted on.  Waiting a few minutes to make sure it was really clear, I quietly extracted myself from amidst the trash cans and made my way to an exit away from the direction the guards had gone.  Trusting that the invisibility worked fine against ponies, I looked out onto the street, watching to see what the ordinary pony did when they weren’t running from blood covered armored warriors that appeared from out of nowhere.

For the most part they didn’t seem to be too much different than most human or humanoid societies.  There seemed to be a slight air of tension in some of them, but that was probably thanks to my rather dramatic entrance.  Spotting a small cafe, I focused the auditory receptors to listen in on a few mealtime conversations.  While most of it was mundane stuff about shopping or how their day was going and whatnot, one word did strike my attention.

Human.

Hmm...unless human was a pony word for ‘big scary monster,’ the use of it probably meant there were other humans on this world somewhere.  And since I’d already probably blown any chance of a warm welcome here, it would probably be a good idea to find a way out of the city and go find them.  In any case it’d be easier to blend in until I’d gotten a sense of how things worked in this dimension if I was among a race that walked on two legs rather than four.

Of course, that still left the issue of getting out of the city.  With everything on backup power, I probably only had a few minutes of invisibility left.  I couldn’t be that hard though.  First off, invisible or not, I wasn’t going to be stupid enough to try walking out the front gate with the city guard probably all still looking for me.  The obvious solution would be to just scale a wall.  Since I could see a cliff face or mountain to the east, I decided to head west until I came to the city’s edge.

However the walk through the city’s back alleys gave me time to think, and having time to stew in my own thoughts was never pleasant.  I was once again in a new world, starting from scratch.  No idea what might be waiting out there besides various forms of intelligent ponies.  No resources aside from what I had on me.  No refuges to go to in case of danger.  No friends to rely on.  No family...

I reached to my belt and thought photograph.  The appropriate pouch immediately popped open, and I reached inside to retrieve an old yellowed polaroid photograph.  I couldn’t see it because I was invisible, but I know what was shown in it by heart.  A young woman and an older man, an arm draped across each other’s shoulders as they smiled into the camera.  The woman was me...the me of several lifetimes ago anyway, the man my father, and the photo itself one of the few remaining tokens of my life before I became a cosmic plaything.

You see, I’m what’s been termed a Jumper, because I ‘jump’ through realities...or maybe get dragged through realities is a better term, but I have enough issues without thinking of myself as a ‘dragger’ or whatever.  ...Sounds like a racist term for a half-dragon or something.  I don’t know what caused it originally...though at this point I’ve given up even trying to find out why...and all attempts I’ve made to try and stop it have all ended...badly.  I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been doing this.  I know it’s been more than 100 years though, because around 100 years ago was when I got my armor, and I’ve kept something like a journal using its built in computers since, but there were a lot of worlds before I ended up on Mandalore...  So many I can’t remember them all most of the time, usually a good thing.  But it also means I can barely remember home, which isn’t so much.

...Sometimes I can’t even remember my last name.

I put the photo back in my belt before I feel the tears come on.  I can’t have a breakdown now.  Maybe later when I can find someplace safe to hide...

I emerged from an alley next to what was probably the city wall.  It wasn’t not as big as I thought it might’ve been, but still plenty high, just not too high for me.  I took aim at the top, and fired both grapplers from my gauntlets.  As they sank into a spot just below the top of the wall, I lost invisibility.  Apparently, making any sort of ‘attack’ cancels the spell, and this counted.  Still, I didn’t really need it right now.  The cables began to retract, quickly pulling me up the wall.   I climbed up onto the top and release the grapples, making my way to the other side to find a good spot to climb-

...Wow, that’s a long way down.

On the other side of the wall I found basically empty air.  Just my luck, the city seemed to be built into the side of the mountain...and two thirds the way up it too.  My armor had a feather fall spell I could trigger, but I didn’t think it could handle a fall of this distance.  And my jetpack had been out of fuel for a couple worlds now.  Yeah, I was going to have to find another way out of the city that didn’t involve falling to my death.  Still...something about this tickled my memory again.  A mountain city run by colorful talking ponies...I knew I’d heard of this somewhere.

I was contemplating all this when I was suddenly hit by pegazilla.

I’m exaggerating, but not by much.  Like I said, I was pondering the familiarity of all this while also wondering how to find and then fight or sneak my way through the city gates when my threat alert went off.  I barely had time to look up before something massive slammed into me, knocking me off the wall and through a window into a warehouse that had been behind me.

Remember that feather fall ability I mentioned?  Normally Homer’s the one who triggers it for me, and though I could do it manually, I didn’t have a chance to.  Inside the warehouse, I landed on some crates filled with wagon wheels of all things.  My armor stopped me from ending up with any pointy pieces of wood going through my vitals, but even with beskar plate, the impact from the fall HURT.

Then the thing that had hit me came swooping through the window after me to land in a clear space several meters away.  Like I said, he was big, way bigger than the pegasus guards I’d encountered earlier.  Not counting his helmet crest, he probably stood as tall as I was.  He was a lot more heavily armored than the other guards too, with his front half almost completely covered in dull silver plate.  His rear was less armored, allowing me to see his dark greyish-blue coat color, contrasting with his oversized wings, which were a few shades darker.  The helmet was also slightly different.  It was basically a silver version of the other ones the other guards had, topped with a whitish crest like the unicorns, but it was completely enclosed, with a faceplate that looked, well, like the face of a pony.

“I dunno what your issue is, human,” he said to me in a deep, rumbling voice as I extracted myself from the ex-crate full of broken wheels, “But you should have kept playing nice down in Ponyville with the rest of your kind.”

Ponyville...ok, that solved where to look for other humans.  Of course, it would have to wait until I managed to get out of this situation.  We began circling each other around the empty space in the middle of the warehouse.  The sound of my boots and his...horseshoes echoing loudly in the empty building.  I noticed that his shoes were much bigger than the other guards too.  And there was something distinctly...not pony about the way he moved too.  More like a big cat stalking prey than a horse.

“Don’t suppose you’d care to make this easy on both of us and just surrender?” he asked as we reached halfway through our first circle.

“Not exactly what I had in mind, no,” I responded.

I heard a heavy sigh.  “Didn’t think so.  You know, I’m supposed to be on leave, but then you had to come up here and start putting guards in the hospital and killing...whatever that thing was.”

My anger flared.  Terminus had been a friend...I think.  He wasn’t a THING.  And he’s supposed to be on his vacation!?  I should have been going to college, at home, being normal!  Not in some warehouse in pony-Minas Tirith fighting this...this...thing!

My hand flew to my belt as I thought thunderstone.  Grabbing the small rock-like object from the pouch that opened, I let out a roar and charged.  He responded in kind, but before we got halfway to each other, I dropped the thunderstone between us.  There was boom like a cannon going off, and a blinding flash.  We both went deaf for the next minute or so, but while the T visor of my helmet went opaque to protect my eyes from the flash, he didn’t have that luxury.  Blinded, he reared up in surprise, his wings flaring out as he tried to take flight.  I slammed into his middle before he could take off, pinning him to the floor on his back.  I sat on his chest my left arm pinning him down while I pulled the right back for a blow.  With a ‘snickt’ sound, the vibroblade on that gauntlet extended, and with a yell I brought it down.  He made a desperate lunge and clipped my shoulder with a forehoof, throwing off my lunge.  The blade sliced into the stone floor like a knife through butter thanks to its enchantments, but before I could pull it out to try again, he managed to get his rear hooves up and got enough leverage to throw me off.

I landed on my back a few feet away, probably adding more bruises the ones I already had from the fall.  I looked up to see him dropping towards me with both forehooves.  I rolled out of the way and came up standing, his hooves slammed into the floor and shattered it where I’d been laying a second before.  He turned to pursue and I blasted him with both gauntlets.  A pair of white-hot spots appeared on his breastplate as the shots hit home, but apparently didn’t penetrate.  Obviously this town didn’t skimp on quality armor for their guards.  Or at least for the elite ones anyway.

He fell back and I pressed the attack.  I popped out the blade on the left gauntlet, and it crackled as its electrical enchantment flared to life.  I slashed at his chest, but he slipped to the side and threw a backhanded swipe at my legs.  I jumped over it, twisting into a roundhouse kick that smashed into the side of his faceplate, sending his helmet flying.

I landed and spun around, bringing my blasters up again to give him another barrage, when I stopped in surprise.  Instead of the muzzle of a pony, I was met with a dark blue, feathered, hawk-like face.  And by hawk-like, I meant he had a freaking black beak!

Taking advantage of my surprise, he barreled into me, slamming me to the floor.  He spat out a glob of blood next to my head and muttered, “Ouch.”  Then he proceeded to try and trample me to death with his forehooves.  Pinned under him, it was all I could do to twist out of the way as he proceeded to turn the floor to gravel with each missed blow.  Finally, in desperation, I unleashed the ultimate female to male counterattack.  Translation: I kicked him in the balls.

He let out a high pitched squawk and fell to the side.  I rolled the other direction, got to my feet, and slashed down at him.  He managed to get a leg up to block, but the enchanted blade simply cut the lower part of his shoe off.  I was a bit surprised when his limb didn’t immediately start gushing blood like a severed limb usually does, and then I got another as the remaining part of the shoe clanged off the side of my helmet as he threw it at me.  I stumbled back, and saw him flexing a set of black talons where his left ‘hoof’ had been, revealing his ‘shoes’ had really been more like some type of gloves or solid gauntlets.  I also finally figured out what I was dealing with here.  Horse like rear half, but bird like front.  Yeah, I’d seen these before, but never an intelligent one.

“Hippogriff, right?” I asked, falling back a few steps.

He just grunted an affirmative, probably still shaking off my beskar plated crotch kick.  We went back to circling each other, though his gait was slightly off without his other hoof-gauntlet.  Aside from him pissing me off at the beginning, I was actually starting to enjoy this fight.  He was good, but that was also the problem.  Sooner or later more guards would probably show up, if they weren’t already on the way.  If I wanted to get out of here, I couldn’t afford to play nice anymore.

Another thought to my belt and I pulled out a small metal wand shaped like a chinese dragon.  “Well, it’s been fun, but Ib'tuur jatne tuur ash'ad kyr'amur.(1)”

He blinked in confusion at my words.  Not surprising, I doubt anyone here had ever heard Mandalorian before.  Then his eyes went wide as I pointed the wand at him.   He’d probably figured out what it was because he was already moving by the time I got out the command word.

“Vas Flam!”  A ball of flame erupted from the mouth of the dragon at the wand’s tip.  It exploded at my opponent’s tail as he tried to make a run for it.  He was flung through the air, trailing a bit of fire from his tail, landing with a crash amongst some crates on the far side of the warehouse.  “Vas Flam!” I shouted again, sending another fireball to burst near his landing site.  Just because I respected him as an opponent didn’t mean I was gonna let him come after me.

Figuring if anyone had heard the first two blasts, a third wasn’t going to do my stealth any more harm, I used one more burst to blow a hole in one of the large doors.  I made a running jump through the now burning door, hit the ground, rolled...and came up facing probably half the city guard.

“...Oh...shab(2),” I cursed.  I turned and tried to retreat but suddenly found myself enveloped in a golden glow and yanked bodily into the midst of the assembled guards.  Two unicorns quickly rushed into position on either side of me.  Their horns lit up and I suddenly found myself inside a dome shaped force field.   I got to my feet and threw a punch at the field...hurting my hand.  ...Yeah that was dumb.  

My respect for hippogriff guy went up a couple more notches when I saw him come jumping out of the building a few seconds later, looking singed, but whole.

“Major Ironshod!” one of the other guards shouted, rushing up to him.  I finally had a name to go with the face...beak...whatever.  “Are you alright sir?”

“Fine, fine,” he said, brushing the other guard off.  “Someone go find my helmet.”  He looked over to see me confined.  “...The prisoner secure?”

“Aye sir.  Only way we could make that barrier stronger is if Captain Armor himself were here,” the other guard answered confidently.

...Oh, now I just had to wipe that smirk off his face for that.  I activated my omni-tool again and quickly scrolled through the armor functions.

Already looking at me, Ironshod saw me up to something and shouted.  “Hey, restrain them now!”

Too late.  This time there was no tingle.  Instead it was like the world got a little bit quieter.  I reached out and touched the barrier again, and this time it popped like a balloon thanks to the personal anti-magic barrier I’d just activated.  There were cries of alarm from all around, and then the unicorns near me actually turned and fled.  I blinked.  Ok, it was impressive, but really?  Maybe they didn’t have anything like anti-magic here?  ...Hmm, if that was the case I could make a fortune if I could find a mage who’d be willing to help me duplicate the spell matrix.

Before I got too far along in those thoughts though, an alarm went off in my helmet, and I glanced up to see an overload warning on my hud.  In the two seconds it took me to realize that the manna battery powering the AM field was going to blow, it did.  There was a loud pop somewhere in the backplate and suddenly I felt like I’d been tazed by an entire SWAT team.  I dropped to the ground, unable to even scream and twitching like a puppet whose strings were stuck on a jackhammer.

By the time I could see straight again, there wasn’t that much to see.  The overload had shorted out the rest of my armor’s systems, meaning I only had the view out the helmet’s T visor, and without the HUD and sensors, it wasn’t much.  Not that it mattered, the shock to my system had caused all my exertions throughout the day, both before and after the jump, to catch up with me.  I suddenly felt so tired I probably couldn’t have moved even if my nervous system hadn’t been acting like a set of christmas lights with a missing bulb.

I could see hooves starting to surround me again as my vision went blurry, and then black.

...Damn it Homer, you picked a hell of a time for a breakdown.








Mando’a translations

(1) Today is a good day for someone else to die.
(2) extreme curse