//------------------------------// // Chapter 31 - Adam, Luna // Story: A Journey Unthought Of: Revival of Chaos // by Hustlin Tom //------------------------------// Groaning, Adam began to come to once again. He brought his hand up to his head and tenderly touched where he had been struck, “Why does the universe, no matter which one I’m in, always want to give me a concussion?” Looking up into the starry night sky above him, he noticed a shrinking green cloudy rupture only a few feet up and away from where he was lying. A woman clothed in dark armor with a crown on her head and a sword at her side knelt into his line of vision, giving him a small smile through a spasm of pain, “Hello again.” The trek back into town wasn’t a long one, as Adam and Lyra had only been five minutes outside of Hollow Wood’s town limits. One of the townsfolk, a wonderful older woman named Bernice, had taken pity on the couple and had given them the small loft above her garage, in exchange for helping out around her property with general upkeep. She had been fantastically accommodating, providing them meals the likes of which Adam and never thought were capable of existing this side of heaven, and even provided a few hand-me-down clothes for them to wear from when her children had still lived with her. As Adam and Princess Luna approached the house, they could see many of the townsfolk were gathered around the property. As the two of them got closer, they turned to look in their direction. The people’s eyes were full of alarm, mistrust, and doubt. One of the larger men stepped in the way of Adam and Princess Luna. Everyone was on edge, and now their agitation was finding its outlet in the old stranger and the new stranger with him. “Is Bernice okay?” Adam broke the silence first, his words having the sudden impact of a cannon firing on a peaceful morning. “Ah don’t see how that’s any concern of yours, stranger,” the large bear of a man said in his low gruff voice. Some of the townspeople nodded their head once, while others mutter their agreement. “Citizens,” Princess Luna took a step forward, “What we have here is an enormous misunderstanding.” Some of the people backed away from her as they noticed the sword she carried; though she didn’t mean it, her body language and tone intimidated them. “Yer damn right it is!” a younger man called out from the crowd, “Some kinda van full of government spooks drives up, they start askin’ questions and taking things, tasin’ Ms. Bernice when all she asked was ‘why’; this sure as hell is a misunderstanding if I saw one ever!” “Luna,” Adam quietly hissed, “We should probably go.” The Princess looked at Adam with some small confusion, “There may yet be something of use that the captors left behind in the domicile. Wouldn’t it be fruitless to try and pursue them if we have no trail to follow?” “Well these people don’t exactly look like they’re going to let us through.” A woman from the crowd spoke up, “Just get outta here! We don’t want you around here anymore!” The crowd seemed to ignite with that declaration, and they slowly began to walk toward Adam and the Princess with a shared cold, angry expression on their faces. “Hold onto me,” Princess Luna commanded Adam, who took her left hand in his. There was a flash of dark blue light, and the two of them landed in the loft above Bernice’s garage. Even though the glass of the nearby windows muffled the noises coming from outside, the townsfolk were clearly alarmed by the two stranger’s unexpected, dramatic departure. “Help me look,” Adam blurted as he hurriedly began looking all around the small space, “There has to be something around here telling us where they’ve gone.” The Princess closed her eyes for a few moments in concentration before she opened them again in slight surprise, “The two of you kept regularly enchanted objects with you?” Adam looked over his shoulder in surprise, “Yeah. How’d you know?” “I’m sensing past repetitive magical echoes in locations throughout this room.” “Well, there was Lyra’s lyre, an invisibility cloak Twilight Sparkle had made for me, and a stone tablet that could communicate back to Equestria.” Princess Luna’s eyes widened, “It is imperative that we recover that tablet: if Canterlot can be alerted to the situation, perhaps that will offer Equestria some piece of mind that Celestia’s alive, and buy us time to find her.” Adam stood up, and he grimaced slightly, “Don’t get your hopes up: we never got it to work. I guess it wasn’t as perfect a communication system as the Doctor made it out to be.” Princess Luna’s face hardened and she clenched her hands with a small growl, “Every new solution that comes our way multiplies the number of our current problems! Stars above.” She huffed to herself before tossing her hair back away from her face with a wave of her hand, “We know for certain that these humans are seeking magically imbued artifacts, so they would be collecting any detectable magical source they could find,” she paused, before her eyes lit up again and she whispered, “including Tia!” “So all we have to do is track them back to their front door, and they could lead us to both Lyra and Celestia,” Adam finished with a grin, before he frowned in frustration, “Except we still have no way of tracking them.” Princess Luna smirked as she began to open the door to the loft that lead down to the garage below, “On the contrary, we do! If they have gathered up all the items missing here, I can find them by sensing the gathered magic with them! Where’s the nearest train station? The chase is afoot!” The Princess took the steps two at a time and hit the landing before Adam made it to the door. Turning, she saw a strange silver colored vehicle which looked like an enclosed chariot. “Trains might not be a good idea,” Adam called down the stairs, “Besides, couldn’t we just use your-“ “Nevermind,” Princess Luna replied and smiled, “I believe this will suit our purposes ideally.” The crowd still stood outside of Bernice’s home, though now they talked among themselves in fear and wonder. “Where’d they go and how’d they do it?” “Some kind of tricky special effect, I reckon.” “That freaky woman must have been some kind of witch! I could just tell from the weird..everything she was like!” “Get over yourself; everybody knows there’s no such thing as witches that can practice real magic. It’s all smoke and mirrors, just like this was. Probably was some kind of newfangled technology they stole from the government: that’d explain the spooks comin’ in and sneakin’ around.” The crowd whirled around when they heard the peeling out of tires and a horn blasting into the night. Bernice’s 1997 Honda Accord barreled out of her garage and grumbled as it hit her gravel driveway, slowing only a little to let people jump out of the way. Turning left onto the cracked, faded asphalt, the tires screeched once again as the car sped down the road into the gathered darkness, which was only lit by the headlights and the stars above. Princess Luna whooped in pleasure as they hit the outskirts of town, “That was most enjoyable! Once I get back to Equestria, I will find a way to make a race for such things as these ‘cars’!” “I still feel kind of bad that we had to take Bernice’s car, even if you paid for it,” Adam said as he looked in the rear view mirror to see if anyone was following them, “I really do hope she turns out alright.” “By our account, the debt is paid,” the Princess idly replied as she became fascinated by a lever on the side of her seat, “Tell me, what does this lever do when pulled?” “If you pull it and lean back, it adjusts the height of your seat,” Adam said. His statement was almost immediately responded to with a small scream as the Princess’s head plummeted into the floor, her legs began to flail wildly in the space beneath the passenger’s seat, and her arms grasped for anything above her, “Adam, help! Mine hubris hath brought me low! How do I reverse this?!” Adam kept his left hand on the wheel, while offering his right to the Princess for an assist up out of her fully reclined chair. He wished he had a third hand to slap his palm to his forehead. Princess Luna leaned forward a little, and yanked on the reclining arm again. The seat’s back flew up and smacked her in her own, making her exhale a little squeak of surprise. The Princess’ long trained sense of refinement caused her to pause and pretend that the last few seconds had in fact never happened. The span of inaction was broken once again by her curiosity. “Pray tell, what does this lever do?” the Princess asked as she reached for the parking brake. “NO!” Adam yelled as his life flashed before his eyes, and he involuntarily took both hands from the steering wheel to stop the Princess. The car began to veer off the road, and the both of them began to scream. Adam rammed the brake with his right foot, leaning into the deceleration as the poor Honda finally came to a halt. The both of them gulped down several breaths of air, happy to be all together after nearly veering into a nearby rocky outcropping at seventy-five miles per hour. Adam slowly turned to face the immortal, shape-shifting demigoddess, and said in a chillingly calm voice, “The next time your suicidal tendencies tell you to grab for things you don’t understand, just ask me ‘What is it’ and ‘Is it safe to touch’ first, then I will be able to tell you it is safe. We clear?” The Princess nodded shallowly, before murmuring, “Deathly so.” Adam then put the car in reverse and backed up onto the road, “Now, which way are we headed?” “South by Southeast.” Adam’s sigh filled the car with a darkening cloud as he tried to understand the directions given him, “ ‘South-ish’ it is then.”