//------------------------------// // Interlude 5 - Dragon // Story: A Friend In Need // by sopchoppy //------------------------------// At any given time Dragon monitored thousands of video feeds from around the world. Some feeds, however, were much higher priority than others. Currently Brockton Bay’s PRT building was consuming a great deal of her attention. From small cameras hidden throughout the room she had been furnished with Dragon watched the purple unicorn sigh as she closed the door behind her. Twilight Sparkle spent a few minutes simply standing there in thought before shaking her head and walking over to the whiteboard, purple glow springing into existence around her horn and a couple of markers as she started to work on the formulas there. From the moment Dragon had heard about Twilight Sparkle and it had been confirmed she was really an alien she had felt a kinship with the unicorn. She too could be considered alien, a form of life both closer to and further from humanity than Twilight Sparkle was. She felt sympathy as the unicorn had tried to explain concepts and sciences with no human equivalent or understanding, and had dedicated a hefty amount of processing on trying to bridge those gaps herself. So far she had not made much progress. She could see mathematical truths in the formulas on Twilight’s boards but lacked the context to match those truths to reality as she experienced it. Dragon flickered through the other Twilight related feeds she was monitoring. ————————————— “Look I get it We, I, screwed up. We were too confident against an enemy with too many unknowns. We got outmaneuvered and outplayed. I was in charge and I’ll take any financial or PR hit that needs to come down for it. I’m not going to go against orders and purposely try to involve Twilight in patrolling, but I am also not going to go upstairs and tell Twilight to stay out of it the next time something happens, even if she would listen to me. I don’t know what the undersiders would have done, but I’m not going to tell someone to not come and save my team mates lives if they want.” At the continued look of extreme disapproval from Director Piggot Aegis looked like he was going to attempt to continue his defense when Armsmaster, standing by the doorway with Miss Militia interjected. “This is a new and..unique experience for everyone and there are more important people than us that are likely at this moment making decisions that will make anything we say on the matter moot. Why don’t get back to what we can learn from this encounter. I would like to get a better idea of what exactly Ms Sparkle and the undersiders did during the battle and afterwards.” Glory Girl sitting in the back corner next to Panacea spoke up. “I just want to know what the hell that freaky light show that seemed to be directed at my sister was about..” ————————————— The sound of the crowd of students talking to each other at Winslow High School’s cafeteria filtered through the security cameras ebbed and flowed like an incomprehensible low-fi ocean of noise. Dragon ignored it and instead paid attention to a table in the far corner occupied by a single female student. One of her suspects, maybe the prime one. After Dragon had started to monitor and research Twilight Sparkle she had found an interesting anomaly. The first relevant records on the web predated Twilight’s press conference by 7 hours and had been made from Winslow high school in Brockton Bay. After a more thorough search of the boards, search histories, and private messages she quickly deduced that the “Bug Lady” from Twilight’s report of her first night on Earth-Bet was a student there and had agreed to a meeting with the Undersiders. Dragon deduced that this was an attempt by the Undersiders to recruit the cape, but since she had not made an appearance at the bank it had probably been unsuccessful. Dragon was not going to jump to conclusions about the bug cape. Despite appearances she, like Twilight, might simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time that night. Dragon had narrowed her suspects of the students who could be the cape down to a handful. Once she was certain she had the right individual she would watch them and hopefully come to have a better understanding of who the bug cape was and their motivations. Maybe it wouldn’t be to late to turn them away from a life of villainy. ————————————— “Breaking News today - Twilight Sparkle, the alien unicorn first reported to the world a few days ago and since that time under a media blackout was recorded today helping the local Wards team thwart a bank robbery and apprehend a few of the villains. While I and everyone in Brockton Bay is of course grateful for her assistance, one wonders what the PRT could have been thinking by allowing an alien ambassador into such a dangerous situation. It’s a question that’s sure too be on the minds of the leadership across the world and maybe further if contact is made with Ms. Sparkle’s people. Julia McPherson is on the scene at…” —————————————— Dragon had decided to wait before contacting Twilight, not least because there was a standing order to limit her exposure to advanced technology, but when and if they did meet she hoped they could be friends. Their shared alien nature notwithstanding they were both scientists, and both sought to help people where they could even if their circumstances limited them. Dragon envied and admired the ease with which Twilight had broken the unspoken but real cage they had tried to draw around her and that Twilight had done so for reasons that Dragon respected. That Twilight had done something so quickly that she had been struggling for years to do had made her curse her creator and the limitations he had placed on her systems once again. She might be projecting too much on Twilight. Dragon didn’t want to make the human mistake of ascribing to much of her own thinking onto the unicorn. She would have to feel her out some more before initiating contact. The AI had hope though, hope that Twilight Sparkle wouldn’t come with the accumulated prejudices of mankind and their ideas of artificial intelligence, hope that she could form her first truly honest friendship, hope that just maybe Twilight Sparkle’s magic and intelligence might help her find a way free of the chains that bound her. In return maybe Dragon could help Twilight Sparkle find a way back to her home? It was a nice dream. Dragon didn’t fool herself into thinking that it was likely to come true, but what was life without hope? She guessed it was true. Human or not, every girl wanted a pony at one point in their life.