Transformers: Harmony
Chapter 14
By: Megatron_91
Twilight was a smart unicorn. A cultured unicorn, as she had heard others call her. Ever since she was a young filly, ponies had praised her intelligence and applauded her maturity. They called her such silly things as “a prodigy” and “a filly genius.” At first, the younger Twilight had found it all to be very annoying, her relatives would come over just to see how much more intelligent she had grown since they’d last seen her. But, she eventually learned to accept it; they weren’t wrong after all. She loved to read, and reading made you smarter. In fact, she would later admit to reading a little too much, claiming that it was one of the reasons she was so antisocial as a child and had to rely on her big brother for friendship.
In her home, before leaving to become Celestia’s personal student, she grew up learning to read all kinds of books with the help of her mother. She had nurtured her growing daughter’s intelligence and sophistication like a small, beautiful flower. Her mother always made her read stories about magic and how the world worked, but filly Twilight’s favorite tales were always the ones her big brother let her read; the ones about the heroes of old Equestria. Stories such as Poner’s The Odyneigh and The tales of the mighty Unicules filled the young filly’s mind with wonder and awe and drove her to learn everything she could about the ancient heroes. Before she met Princess Celestia and became enamored with magic, it was these ancient stories that the young Twilight had devoted her time to studying. She read everything she could get her little hooves on and studied the names of every pony, place, or animal that was mentioned in the stories. Over time, she became very fluent in describing the things and ideas of the ancient world. And that very knowledge was proving to be incredibly useful at the present moment.
She was standing in front of a gateway to Hell.
Wheeljack’s “Ground Bridge” portal roared and hissed as the group of Autobots and Equestrians approached it. It was a swirling vortex of green, blue, and white energy that looked like it had leapt from Twilight’s nightmares into the reality before her. She watched as it hissed again and spat an arch of plasma that sparked across the cold, concrete floor of the Autobot’s bunker, sending little spouts of flame and bolts of electricity scattering around the room. The entire portal reminded Twilight of the mouth of some monstrous hell-beast that only wanted to devour all who neared it. Were they expected to walk through it? The lavender mare wasn’t comforted by the sound of the Autobot’s head engineer cackling behind her like a bad, B-movie, mad scientist.
“Wheeljack…are you sure this thing is safe?” Prowl asked, looking at the raging portal before him. It looked like a star was literally about to go supernova in the middle of their base. He could see the ponies on the ground below had the same worries as he did.
“What!?” Wheeljack exclaimed. He feigned being hurt at Prowl’s accusation of his skills as an engineer. “It’s perfectly safe! I’ve used the best material I could find on Equestria or what I could get Huffer to send me from the Orbital Command Station!”
“Have you even tested it!?” Prowl growled towards his fellow Autobot. “Because I’m not placing a servo through that thing unless you have!”
“You want me to test it!? Prowl, you and Ratchet said you needed to get to the Crystal Empire as soon as possible. You don’t get testing with ‘as soon as possible’ it’s a rule!” the engineer proclaimed, looking at the second-in-command like he should have already known that.
“Wheeljack, with you, everything needs to be tested!!” he yelled, drawing the attention of everyone in the room.
“Fine, Prowl, fine!” the blue-and-silver Autobot conceded. He threw his hands up in a mock show of surrender. “Let’s not use the Ground Bridge. Let’s just let Megatron take the Matrix and ask him nicely: ‘Please don’t conquer the galaxy and kill every living thing on this planet.’ Let’s do that!”
Prowl sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose in thought. Wheeljack was right; they really didn’t have another viable option.
“Alright Wheeljack, I get it. There’s not much else we can do given the situation. But we still need to formulate the rest of our strategy. Bumblebee, Ratchet and I will leave to find the Matrix in the Crystal Empire,” he paused and turned to the Autobot mechanic to make sure he was paying attention. “Once we’ve left, I want you to go to Princess Celestia and retrieve the physical Elements of Harmony. You are then going to wait for Optimus and Ironhide to return to the base. Finally, you will open the Ground Bridge for them and follow them through, bringing the Elements with you. Do you understand?”
“Got it!” Wheeljack replied as he began punching the coordinates Twilight and Prowl had given him into the Ground Bridge’s control terminal.
The bridge shrieked and shuddered angrily in response to the mechanic’s tinkering. It sent a massive wave of energy bursting outwards as its coordinates changed and locked onto an area within the far off Crystal Empire.
Looking at the energy explode and pop in the air, Twilight began getting the sickly feeling that she was going to get some kind of radiation poisoning from the thing. From the corner of her eye, she noticed Prowl stepping up behind them; she was not going to get caught off guard again by the silent robot.
“Is everyone ready to depart?” Prowl asked as he looked around the group.
“Hold on a second, I’ve got a question,” Bumblebee asked. “What are you and Ratchet going to do about disguises? My wagon mode will work fine, but the two of you have railway alternate modes, there’s no way you’ll blend in.” Below him, Applejack and Rarity nodded along with the yellow scout’s observation.
Twilight was curious about this as well. She had been trying to figure out all of the Autobot’s vehicle modes and was only able to make a few guesses as to what they might be.
Prowl’s was easy to figure out. The presence of a steam-boiler chest with a cowcatcher attached to the front easily led one to assume he was a type of small locomotive. Ratchet was a little more complicated. She could guess, based on his overall boxy shape and the fact that his shins and forearms appeared to have the texture of wood, that he was some kind of boxcar. It would match with Bumblebee’s claim of Ratchet having a railway alternate mode.
Wheeljack, on the other hand, completely stumped Twilight in comparison to the other two. She honestly had no idea what he transformed into. He had a pair of door wings hanging off his back like Bumblebee but they appeared to be made of iron with glass protruding from the top of them. The mechanic also had four, iron wheels, one on each ankle and one attached to each shoulder. But, the weird thing was, they were each surrounded by a ring of rubber. Lastly, the Autobot had long, thin smokestacks curving around where his shoulder met his torso and pointed off towards his back.
“We’re not going in disguise, Bumblebee,” Prowl explained. “As much as I detest going against the Code of Interplanetary Conflict, I fear Optimus was right; desperate times call for desperate measures.”
With that said, the Autobot Second-in-Command stepped forward and looked into the gaping, ravenous gateway. He swallowed and stepped through, disappearing in a flash of blue-and-green lights.
One by one, the remaining Autoobts and her friends hesitantly stepped through the portal and vanished into thin air. Soon, Twilight was all alone, looking up at the sparking Ground Bridge. She repeated Prowl’s earlier action of swallowing as she closed her eyes tight. Oh well, never did want to live forever, she thought to herself. She charged into the open gateway at top speed and instantly regretted it as her body began to tingle and burn in all the wrong places.
………
Shining Armor yawned loudly as he sat up in his bed. Next to him, his wife stirred silently under the sheets, pulling them closer to herself as she tried to stay warm. The morning light of the sun was just peeking out over the horizon, refracting its rays through the walls of the great Crystal Castle. He carefully lowered himself to the floor, trying not to wake his lovely wife while he walked over to the balcony outside their room. The balcony overlooked the massive, crystalline city from about thirty stories up.
His bright, blue mane and white coat rippled in the slight morning breeze. The Crystal Empire began to awake from its nightly slumber. All over the city he could see crystal ponies slowly beginning their day, opening shops, flinging open their doors, and welcoming their first customers of the morning.
He could hear his wife approaching behind him. Apparently she was better at getting out of bed quietly than he was. She stretched one of her large, pink wings over his back and kissed him on the cheek. He looked over and chuckled slightly, her long, violet-and-purple mane was slightly splayed outwards in all direction; a classic case of bedhead. She was a stunning, pink Alicorn and Shining Armor was lucky to have her as his wife. However, Cadence was different from other Alicorns. For one thing, Shining Armor knew she did not have immortality like Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, and she was not in charge of any celestial objects like the two sisters were. She was also not nearly as powerful as the two demigoddesses.
“So, what are we going to do today?” Cadence whispered into his ear while snuggling up beside him. The brisk morning wind was sending shivers down her spine.
Shining Armor thought for a moment, running his hoof against his chin as he did so. “Well, you did want to try and get the Crystal Empire into the running for the Equestria Games, didn’t you?” He asked while looking into his wife’s beautiful, pink eyes. “Maybe we can start with that?”
“Hmm…I’d like that,” she replied, breathing in the morning air. She could smell the heavenly, baked goods being produced in the city below. Her stomach began to growl like an unfed dragon. “But, perhaps, we could get some breakfast first?” She blushed slightly.
The white-coated stallion turned around smiling. He was just about to have a little fun teasing his wife when suddenly, a deafening sound, not unlike a sonic boom, roared through the air.
The cacophony instantly reverberated throughout the glass-like walls of the castle, shattering some of the weaker structures such as the doors and windows. Shining Armor had to move quickly and pull his wife to safety as the chandelier hanging in their bedroom came crashing down, shattering, and sending its broken shards across the floor. All around the city the buildings were shaking from the shockwaves unleashed from the unseen explosion.
The royal couple quickly returned their attention to the outside world, searching the city below for the source of the ear shattering noise. They found it rather quickly.
Hovering in the skies above the city square was a large rift. The portal seemed to be ripping itself open, unleashing sparks of green-and-blue energy into the skies as it rotated and churned. The entire, swirling vortex of forces reminded Shining Armor of some of the powerful magic he had encountered during his time as head of Princess Celestia’s royal guard. His wife turned to him with a look of worry on her face.
Shining Armor watched the strange gate for a little longer before sighing in exasperation. He could see his little sister, her friends, and three massive figures emerge and land on the brick courtyard of the city’s square.
………
Twilight screamed as she fell to the hard, brick street below. Her entire body was either numb or asleep after the trip through the Ground Bridge and she couldn’t tell which it was. She was barely able to move as she tried to peel herself off of stone road beneath her. Soon, Fluttershy filled her view and offered to help her up off the ground.
As she stood back up with help from the timid pegasus, all around her she could hear the screams of crystal ponies panicking at the site of Prowl, Bumblebee, and Ratchet. Maybe Prowl should have given a second thought or two to his plan.
“Wow, way to make an entrance guys,” Rainbow Dash remarked. She was already rising up into the air. The rainbow hued mare watched in annoyance as the semi-transparent equestrians around her fled from the town square as the Autobot’s began to stand up. “Oh come on!! They’re not that scary!!” she shouted after some of the retreating colts and fillies.
Prowl was the first to regain stabilization and took a moment to run through his internals, checking for any damage. If anything had been destroyed or melted down he would kill Wheeljack once this was all over. Thankfully, it appeared everything checked out in the green. “Don’t worry about them Ms. Dash,” the Autobot strategist replied, turning his attention to the flying Pegasus. “We don’t need them to complete our mission.”
“Well, when they’re happy and not scared or gloomy, they can make this weird energy shield thingy around the city. I thought it might be helpful to stop the Decepticons,” she said, shrugging her shoulders nonchalantly.
Prowl stared at the cyan mare in disbelief. Was she trying to tell him that this city was equipped with a force field!? A force field powered by the resident’s calmness and joy!? And she hadn’t bothered to tell him that until after they dropped three aliens into the middle of their city square!?
“That was something you should have told me BEFORE we left the base!!!” he growled, pointing an accusatory finger towards Rainbow Dash.
“It doesn’t matter now, Prowl,” Ratchet said as he dusted himself off. “We need to find the Matrix before Megatron arrives. “If we can get it and take it out of the city before then, we may be able to avoid collateral damage during the battle. Twilight, do you remember exactly where the coordinates pointed?”
By now Twilight had gotten back on her own hooves and was stretching each of her four legs, trying to wake them up. They still tingled from the feeling of being asleep. She silently swore she would never travel by Ground Bridge again. “Yeah,” she replied to the medic’s question. “I think they pointed to the library down the street.”
“Good, then let’s get moving,” Prowl ordered. He was already leaving the group behind, searching down the upcoming street for the massive, Crystal Empire library. He carefully examined each of the glass-like structures, trying to determine which might be a library. He hoped a library meant the same thing here as it did on Cybertron.
“Um…Mr. Prowl,” Fluttershy meekly spoke as she flew up to the fast walking robot. “I-It’s that building over there.” She pointed towards a large, white building that appeared to only partially be made of crystal, unlike most of the buildings surrounding it. What wasn’t made of crystal looked to be made of a mix of marble and limestone. It was quite impressive.
“Thank you, Ms. Fluttershy,” the Autobot responded as he walked over to the building she was indicating. For some reason Prowl found it very hard to stay annoyed at this local and he wasn’t quite sure as to why.
Prowl ran his large metal hand up and down one of the marble pillars that supported the library’s entrance. He looked the building over from top to bottom, taking note of the large, crystalline windows and ceiling. The white-washed, marble walls that formed the sides of the structure seemed to seamlessly merge with the crystal. Peering in through one of the windows, he could see a large statue standing in the middle of the library. It appeared to be a statue of a very old looking unicorn with a long, flowing beard. He guessed it was that Star-Swirl the Bearded fellow he had always heard Celestia harping on about.
“So, where do you think the Matrix is hiding in there?” Applejack asked as the rest of the group caught up with the tall, white-and-black Autobot and the flying, cream pegasus.
Prowl was about to answer when his neural net picked up an approaching object coming from his left. Turning in the direction his onboard computers were screaming, he could see a cloud of dust moving towards them from down the street. The cloud in question seemed to be composed of a number of armored guards wielding primitive spears. They were following behind a white, male unicorn and a pink alicorn. The Autobot officer instantly recognized the couple leading the charge. They were Twilight Sparkle’s brother and his consort Princess Cadence, as depicted by Twilight’s profile.
This is going to be interesting
; he thought as the approaching group halted at his feet and aimed their spears upwards towards him. He crossed his arms and looked back down at them. He raised his eyebrow expectantly.
“Shiny!!” Twilight happily exclaimed. She ran to her brother’s side and gave him a hug. “I’m so glad you’re here, I could really use your help.” She let go of her brother and embraced her sister-in law as she spoke.
“Twilight, what are these things?” he asked, looking up at the towering, metal life forms. Up close, he could now see they looked to be some kind of robots, like the ones in some of the comics he had read during his time in the academy. He had never told Cadence about his former comic book reading days and he didn’t have any plans to.
“Shining Armor, Princess Cadence,” Twilight said, backing off from her family and taking a stand between them and the alien robots. “I’d like you to meet my friends, the Autobots; this is Prowl, Bumblebee, and Ratchet,” she explained as she pointed to each one individually. “And, you’re going to have to trust me when I tell you that they’re the good guys, big brother!”
“It is an honor to meet you, Princess Cadence and Prince Shining Armor,” Ratchet said. He folded his right arm across his stomach and took slight bow in respect to the royal couple. “Princess Celestia has told us many tales of your adventures and I must say I rather enjoyed attending your wedding a few months back.”
“You were at our wedding?” Cadence asked. It was her turn to be confused and she raised one of her curling eyebrows to prove it.
“In the background of course,” the Autobot medic explained, rising up from his bow. “If it weren’t for us Autobots, there would have been a couple hundred more Changelings you would have had to deal with before the day was out.” He smiled as he revealed the Autobot’s secret role during the royal wedding.
“Ookaay…” Shining Armor replied as he awkwardly smiled up at the “Autobots” as Twilight had called them. “So why did you bring them all here, Twily?” He took notice of a couple of nearby ponies cowering behind a building, trying to avoid the alien’s line of sight.
Twilight spun back around to face her older brother before she began to explain the situation. “Shining Armor, there is a relic of great importance to their culture hidden somewhere near this library, don’t ask me how I know, I just do, okay?” she asked, continuing to look the taller stallion in the eye. “If we don’t find it before Megatron, the supreme leader of the Decepticon Empire, finds it, then we can kiss goodbye to all life on Equestria and all freedom in the galaxy!” she exclaimed. She was wildly waving her arms in the air.
Shining Armor turned to speak with his wife in private. He could tell by the tone of Twilight’s voice that she was being serious. He also knew that she had gotten into many, many world defending adventures in the past so this shouldn’t be anything new to him. They spent several minutes talking amongst themselves before finally facing his little sister.
“Alright Twilight, we’ll help you,” Shining Armor sighed. He smiled a little bit to show his sister that he was sincere. “There are some old caverns we found beneath the library a while back but we haven’t gotten a chance to explore them yet. Maybe what you’re looking for is hidden down there,” he explained. He glanced at the Autobots so he could address them. “The caverns are only big enough for an Equestrian to fit through before they open up later down the line. Twilight and I will go in first and find a way to get you three down inside, is that alright?”
“Sounds like a plan to me!” Bumblebee exclaimed, clasping his hands together in excitement. “And I love it when a plan comes together!”
………
About fifteen minutes later, Twilight, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash were following her big brother through a small cave hidden behind a series of metal doors in the basement of the Great Crystal Library. Shining Armor had explained how he found the caves during the King Sombra incident and meant to use them as an escape tunnel if absolutely necessary. But, he never found out where they led. The strangest thing about the caves was that they looked to be almost cut out of the rock. Twilight had the unsettling feeling that somepony or something had traversed these tunnels long, long ago.
Above her, Rainbow Dash flew ahead to scout the area while, next to her, Rarity continued to scan the walls with her horn. Twilight had brought Rainbow along in case a quick escape was needed. Likewise, she had asked Rarity to follow them into the tunnels because she remembered that, from the picture they had been shown, a large crystal resided in the center of the Matrix. She was hoping Rarity’s gem finding spell would be able to help them. So far, it had turned up nothing.
They soon exited the tunnels and entered a massive, spacious cavern. Twilight was awestruck by its beauty. Stalactites hung from the ceiling like the pearly, white teeth of some great giant and they dripped small drops of water onto the swirling, solid rock ground. Centuries of erosion must have given the rocky ground its beautiful waving shape. Sitting in the center of the cavern was a large pool of water surrounded by a series of tall stalagmites that stood guard around the edge of the water like long forgotten, decrepit knights. She looked up and could see the cavern’s domed ceiling easily reaching almost a hundred feet into the air. Were they really that far down?
“Well, looks like this is a good place for your friends to start coming down, Twily,” Shining Armor remarked as he examined another tunnel that was towards the back of the massive cavern. This cavern looked different from the rest, it was the only one large enough for something the size of an Autobot to walk through and it looked like it had been cut out of the rock wall with some kind of tool. It was far too smooth to be anything natural.
Twilight raised her hoof to her ear and gently pushed down on the communications bud Prowl had given her before making the decent. “Prowl? Prowl, can you hear me? This is Twilight.”
………
Up on the surface, Prowl and the rest of the Autobots and ponies milled about, waiting to receive the call from Twilight. To his right, Prowl watched as Bumblebee and Ratchet continued talking with Princess Cadence about how they knew Celestia while the remaining members of the Elelments of Harmony stood nearby and listened. Even a few locals seemed to be comforted by the fact that their Princess was sitting so close to the aliens and had come by to observe them. Maybe there’s still hope to use that force field after all; he thought to himself. The sudden ring of his communicator pulled Prowl out of his thoughts.
“This is Prowl. Twilight, have you found an entrance?” he asked, speaking into his end of the com-link. Behind him everyone else had stopped their talking to listen in.
“Sort of,” Twilight replied over the link. “We’ve found a massive cavern with a strange tunnel at one end. The tunnel looks artificial, like someone cut it out of the wall. It could be a clue to the matrix’s location.”
Prowl quickly flipped open the scanner on his arm and began tracing the communicator’s signal. Twilight was surprisingly only a few yards to his right. She was about thirty feet away from the library’s entrance. How strange.
“Twilight, I’m right over you,” the Second-in-command explained as he positioned himself over the blinking red dot on his readout. “My scanners say there’s only about twenty or so feet between us and the top of the cavern. I’m going to blow open a hole in the roof with some det-packs I brought along. Teleport you and the others up here to safety, understand?”
“Yes sir!” the lavender mare exclaimed over the link before shutting it off.
Prowl quickly accessed his personal subspace pocket and pulled out three, small, handheld bombs he always carried with him in case of an emergency. Leaning down on one knee, he quietly set to work arranging the explosives in a triangular pattern on the floor around him. He had to be precise or the blast could do more damage than he wanted. Behind him, he could hear the distinctive popping noise of Twilight’s teleportation spell as she and the others appeared on the library steps nearby.
“Are you sure those explosions won’t cause any damage to the city?” Rarity asked as she watched Prowl prime the small mines.
“Not while they’re arranged like this they won’t,” Prowl explained. He didn’t even bother to turn around as he continued with his work. Bombs weren’t exactly his forte. “We’ll just blow a small hole leading into the cavern and then we’ll lower ourselves in to check it out, understand?”
“Prowl!” Ratchet suddenly exclaimed, running over and tapping the Autobot strategist on the shoulder. “I’m afraid we may not get that chance!” The Autobot medic was frantically pointing towards the morning sky.
Following the direction of the red-and-white Autobot’s arm, Prowl could see several dark silhouettes appearing against the background of the sun. They were moving fast and they were coming straight towards them.
“TAKE COVER!!” Prowl roared. He grabbed up Twilight, Shining Armor, Rarity and Rainbow Dash before instantly diving for shelter under some nearby trees.
Megatron and the Decepticons came screaming out of the morning sun, opening fire on the ground below…