//------------------------------// // A Basic Concept // Story: The Mechanics of Harmony // by Kestrel //------------------------------// MLP: FiM The Mechanics of Harmony By: Kestrel The clang of iron and steel resonated through the radio, the sound of two machines raging against each other, locked in combat. Sitting on the edge of her seat was Rainbow Dash, with her hands clenched into fists and her eyes closed, imagining the rush of being a pilot in one of the colossal machines. The concussive blows each machine dealt to the other caused the metal to dent and resonate in a way not unlike a bell, tolling for the oil of one poor robot. Each time the crowd cheered, Rainbow’s excitement only increased, tightening her fists harder and acting out the motions she heard from the announcers. “Oooohhhhh! Another big hit for Cloudsdale!” said one of the announcers with a very excited tone. “It looks like the new kids on the block are giving our veteran a run for his money. Clearly anyone’s match.” The roar of the crowd in the exhibition between the hotshot new champions from Cloudsdale Academy and one of the original fighters of the country’s newest sport from Ponyville High raged in the background, causing a muffled screech from the radio box. “Yeah! Go get ‘em!” yelled Rainbow at the top of her lungs. She had been following the Cloudsdale team since she started following the new sport. Supreme Steam, they called it. It had big awesome machines, rough and tumble action, and fighting; what more could she ever want in a sport? Rainbow Dash could hardly contain her excitement for the fight. Her hands began to lose color due to the intense pressure she put on them. She bounced in her chair repeatedly, awaiting more information. The announcer began his narration on the action once more. “The Storm Seraph takes flight once again, spreading its wings. The Storm Seraph swoops in for a quick aerial assault—” “Wham! And the Iron Horse swats the Seraph down with a wicked grappling technique!” the second announcer interjected over his companion. “Looks like all those years in wrestling are still relevant even now.” “But wait!” shouted the first announcer, cutting back in as if it were his own competition. “What are all of those feathers for? These are mechs, not birds…” Suddenly, the sound of an explosion like firecrackers sounded through the radio. Dash was at this point jittering uncontrollably in fangirl spirit. She brought her hands up to her mouth to cover a giggle. Ponyville’s fighter had fallen into a ploy that Rainbow knew only too well. “Heeheehee! So awesome!” she quietly exclaimed to herself. “I bet he never saw it coming!” She quieted back down to listen to the coverage of the fight once more. “Those feathers just erupted into little explosions! I can’t believe how good these Cloudsdale kids are! They’re only juniors, too,” said the first announcer. “But you have to look at their record from last season,” the second replied. “Nearly undefeated, with minimal errors in performance among three pilots. Not a lot of other schools or teams in general can make that claim. That’s why they’re the champions.” The harsh shriek of grinding metal blasted through the speaker. The verdict was nearly drowned out by cheering as the announcers narrated the final parts of the fight. Things were getting crazy over at Cloudsdale. The sounds from the stadium overwhelmed the frequencies and caused static on the radio. “And with a jab to the heart, Cloudsdale Academy takes the win for this fight! The Iron Horse has shut down and stopped moving. The emergency barrier is in place. Game, set, and match!” Rainbow imagined she was there as well, cheering for her favorite team’s victory. She collapsed back onto her chair, her clothes drenched and rainbow hair matted down with the nervous sweat she had accumulated from listening. As the color returned to her knuckles, she decided to take a look at some of the school fliers for the new year. The summer just flew by in a rush of sports, sports camps, and hanging out with her friends. It almost seemed like the breaks between school years were getting smaller. “Ugh… boring, boring, an angry letter from the counselor to do better this year…” Rainbow droned on lifelessly. Then she came upon something more interesting. A flier for the Supreme Steam club at Ponyville High was hosting a meet and greet to show off the current members and one of the founders of the sport: Big Macintosh. “Now, that, I can get behind!” Rainbow shouted to no one in particular. She had many times imagined herself in the cockpit of one of the mechs, fighting for respect and glory in the ring, but when she had tried, she realized that the sport required a lot more planning than she was willing to commit to. It apparently took way more time to create a mech than it did to repair it after a fight, which was time that could have been better spent doing another sport like soccer or field hockey. Rainbow let out a long, drawn out yawn as she looked at the time. The clock on the wall read 10:45pm. The first day of school, and more importantly, the Mechamania club’s meet was tomorrow. She had to get some sleep if she didn’t want to spend her first afternoon off in detention for falling asleep in class. So Dash went up to her room, dressed for bed and went to one of the walls in her room. It was filled with sports posters, even ones of Mechamania teams, despite it being a very new sport. There were so many of them that there was hardly any visible paint on the wall, just posters. Dash struck a pose in front of the championship poster of the Cloudsdale Conquerors and hit the light. The first day of classes dragged on terribly for Rainbow Dash, having caught herself from outright falling asleep in her history class twice. She didn’t fare much better in her final period, math class, though she had her friends keep her what company they could. After classes finally let out, Rainbow Dash ran as fast as she could to the gymnasium, where the festivities for the Mechamania club were starting to take place, with current members giving demonstrations of how to build basic parts, showing off pictures of their mechs, and describing the science and magic behind the mechanisms. All the informational booths about the club were located at equidistant points around the gym, with a speaker at every one of them. At the center of attention, on top of the stage at the back of the room stood Big Macintosh with the supervisor of the club: Iron Will. The two giants still only barely measured up to the knee of the machine that Mac piloted. “Iron Will wants everyone’s attention now!” boomed Iron Will’s voice, with all the students defensively covering their ears. The boisterous noise reached all the way up into the high ceiling of the windows. Iron Will was actually keeping it down to avoid breaking another window. Once everyone quieted down, he began his speech. “Thank you all for coming here, Iron Will hopes you had a good summer! But even more so… Iron Will hopes you were all listening or watching the exhibition of our very own Big Mac against Cloudsdale last night!” At this, there were several cheers from the cloud, with some applause and whistling at the mention of Big Mac. “Welcome to the start of a new year, and the new season of SUPREME STEAM!” he emphasized his last word in an overblown manner, flexing with an impressive display of his muscles. “Our good old champ may have lost that game, but take a look at his record and be amazed!” he slowed his speech to emphasize once again. Not only was he the champion for the inaugural season and the third, but he was also a pioneer of the game, despite already being a founding fighter. “He built his mech and fought on his own, without a coach on the sidelines to tell him what to do, what a fighter!” As he finished, his voice crescendoed to prove his point while making more exaggerated motions with his arms. It was true, most if not nearly all of the teams in the leagues right now were comprised of two parts, equally important: A pilot and a mechanic. The pilot did the fighting and drove the mech into battle, while the mechanic was in charge of building, maintaining, and giving tactical advice during fights over a radio. What distanced Big Mac from all the other teams was that he didn’t have a team, he did all of his fighting on his own. Though given his laconic disposition, Rainbow wondered if he just went on his own to not have to talk… Big Macintosh was one of the founders of the sport, which hadn’t quite gotten to establishing a professional league yet, though Big Mac and the other founders were working on that in order to continue playing it themselves beyond high school, the only place they could at the time. Though further thought on Rainbow’s part was interrupted by Iron Will continuing again after the cheering had died down. “Now you probably won’t measure up to this kid’s strength and skill, but Iron Will challenges all of you to follow in his footsteps and make Ponyville High proud!” Iron Will concluded with a bow. Rainbow flashed a smug grin toward the rowdy teacher. He was never known for being very eloquent, but he made his classes fun. “Anything you’d like to add, Big Mac?” Iron Will asked the tall graduate. “Nope,” he replied with a single word. As the speech ended and Big Mac was led to an autograph table on the stage by Iron Will, a long line formed along the gym, stretching around the basketball court’s sidelines, and normalcy returned. In the space created by the departure of the mass of students, Rainbow saw her friend Twilight Sparkle, dressed in some rather preppy clothes, despite the event being ultra-casual. But what in the world was she doing here? This didn’t seem like her kind of thing… Rainbow quickly walked over to where Twilight was standing off to the side, as if in a daze at the machinery on display. The Iron Horse had been set out for the exhibition, towering at about thirty feet tall, sporting gleaming metal and powerful limbs. With a devilish grin, Rainbow crept up behind her and shouted her loudest at the poor girl, flailing her arms to add to the effect. “Waaaaugh!” Twilight screamed as her concentration was brutally snapped by Rainbow’s exclamation, with her hair going everywhere and her books falling to the floor. “You’re going to give me a heart attack if you keep doing that, Rainbow!” Rainbow just laughed. “Bwahahahaha! You should have seen your face! It was priceless,” Rainbow snorted at her prank. “Aaaanyway, what are you doing here Twilight? Last I checked, sports didn’t interest you, and this isn’t a library.” Twilight gave Rainbow Dash a small frown as she turned back to Mac’s mech, which was on display. “You know, I do more than study all the time,” Twilight retorted quietly while crossing her arms. “I came to learn about the magic used in these things, it’s actually pretty impressive.” Rainbow comically snored at Twilight’s short explanation. “Yawn, boring. All I heard was ‘blah, blah, blah,’ and egghead stuff,” Rainbow responded, sticking her tongue out. “Fine, fine, whatever,” Twilight responded as both laughed together. “Seriously though Twi, I didn’t know you were into this stuff,” Rainbow pressed, twirling around innocently in her short skirt. Twilight turned back to Rainbow with a swish of her long, two toned hair, smoothing it back into its normal position. “Really, I’m not. I just wanted to get a good look at the stuff that makes these things work. It’s actually pretty impressive stuff.” “Well, alright Twilight. I’d say that sounds cool, but I’d be lying, I’m gonna go do something fun now,” Rainbow said with a wink and left to join the autograph line. After seeing the length of the line, Rainbow regretted not joining the line first. It was at least fifty students long, and would take way longer than Rainbow would have liked. She got out her favorite poster of Big Macintosh and his mech from her bag. The poster showed Big Mac kneeling on top of his mech’s arm in a short sleeved red shirt and distressed blue jeans. The mech in the background, the Iron Horse, was one of the first mechs ever built for the sport. It was hefty and strong, with little mobility, though Mac made it work. Dash admired Big Macintosh’s grit, and was therefore one of his fans, though not to the extent of her idols from Cloudsdale. Nearly twenty minutes later, it was finally Rainbow Dash’s turn to get an autograph. She stepped up to the table and placed her poster on the table, ready to be signed. Big Mac took up his pen and began to sign his signature on the poster when Rainbow spoke up. “So Big Mac, what’s it like being a pilot in the Iron Horse? It’s probably the coolest, most awesome thing ever, isn’t it?” Rainbow giddily asked. She had imagined being in control for so long, she hoped it was everything she had ever dreamed in it. “Eeyup,” came Big Macintosh’s one word reply as he began to hand back the poster to Dash, with his scribbled, nearly illegible name, when suddenly Iron Will came up with his own pen. “Here, let Iron Will sign that too, as his supervisor, I deserve some of the credit too!” Iron Will said with a huge grin on his face. Rainbow looked mortified as she picked up her poster and booked it off of the stand and back towards the open area of the gym. Despite being a teacher and a grownup, Iron Will went running after her, pen in hand with the intent of signing the poster. Rainbow Dash slid under an empty table whereas Iron Will simply ran right through it, knocking it to the side unceremoniously. “Come back here! My signature will increase the value of that poster by double at least!” Iron Will shouted to Rainbow Dash while still brandishing the pen high above his head like a knife. “NO! You’ll ruin it!” Rainbow exclaimed after running behind a table with a poor host between her and the overzealous teacher. As Iron Will came up to the booth, the host shrank down and cowered after seeing the demise of the last table to stand in the gym teacher’s way. “Now come on, you’re one of Iron Will’s favorite students, now let me sign that poster,” he said in reply, faking his way around the table while Rainbow copied his movements to maintain the same distance around the table from him. “Heh, heh, no way old man!” said Rainbow as she made a break for the crowd. “O-old man!?” Iron Will stuttered out with a slackened jaw. “Iron Will is not old! Iron Will is in his prime!” he retorted as the chase continued around the gym. Rainbow knocked aside a few students still standing in line for Big Mac’s autograph. The displaced kids formed a small pile on the floor that Iron Will had to navigate past, thankfully not flattening them as well. Rainbow Dash was having a great time continuing the chase with one of her favorite teachers in the entire school. Rainbow kept running to her heart’s content as she evaded her poster’s demise at the point of Iron Will’s blue ballpoint pen. At the booth explaining the system of magic and technology, Twilight was taking some notes, some very detailed notes. As the host’s explanation of the magic went on, Twilight’s pen moved faster, gleaning every bit of information from the speaker, scrawling out text faster than the speaker could actually talk. Eventually, Twilight began ranting to herself while going over her notes. “Oooooh, so the particle energy field from the generator reacts with the inertial magic created by the movement of the machine and the strength of our hearts and minds! The extreme energies of the superconductive magnets accelerate the bond breaking and forming of all the little elements to boost the raw power of the magic.” Twilight mumbled under her breath. “The magic in turn reverses those reactions, which would otherwise be impossible, creating an endless loop, providing a nearly limitless supply of energy. That’s brilliant! Although, it would be better if we added in a few microchips to channel the magic into a more controlled way, enhancing the output of the machine… If we added in something I’ve made, we should see a… 43.1 percent increase in functionality of the design!” Upon hearing this, the speaker just stared at her with his mouth agape. Clearly, Twilight already had figured this stuff out and was already making everything at the table look obsolete anyway. Once she noticed the speaker staring at her in silence, she gave a small blush. “Oh, oops… Sorry. I did it again didn’t I? She stammered out. “I’ll just… go over here now,” she said with a sheepish grin and left the vicinity, only to bump into some of the kids that Dash had said she had problems with as a little girl during summer camp. “Hey, watch where you’re going, nerd!” one of the boys said. The others snickered at his remark. All three of the boys were clearly up to no good… “Oops, sorry, sorry,” Twilight vigorously apologized, not really listening to the remarks the boys were making about her. “Oh, hey, it’s Twilight Sparkle, teacher’s pet! What’s she doing here?” one of the others questioned. “The library is on the other end of the school. This place ain’t for dweebs!” Once the boys’ jeers sank in, Twilight started to feel upset and bad for herself. She knew that she wasn’t a sportswoman, but she didn’t think she deserved the harassment she was getting. Over the past few years transferring to a new school was difficult for her, and had taken her a while to settle in with new friends. She had been lonely, but she wasn’t used to this kind of pain. “What a dork! She even took notes! What a loser!” the last of the boys pointed out at the little notebook Twilight was holding in her arms. “See? She’s such a nerd!” Twilight began to leave, starting to feel horrible because of the bullying she was receiving. As she turned, one of the boys blocked her path out. She turned once more, but another blocked her once again. She was surrounded by the heckling faces of the school bullies. Twilight began to shrink into herself to try and hide from the boys, looking down. Just as she was on the verge of tears, a primal roar from the gym teacher resonated through the gym as he and Rainbow came running into the area. Rainbow was looking back at Iron Will blowing raspberries at him while running forward when she slipped on a stray piece of paper, fell, and collided with one of the bullies. “Ow! Again!?” shouted the bully who was now on the ground. As Rainbow got up, she noticed Twilight. With a foot still on one of the boys’ legs, Rainbow gave a little wave to Twilight while checking to make sure her poster wasn’t damaged. “Oh, hey Twi, what’s up?” she casually asked, not noticing the water in Twilight’s eyes, instead fawning over her awesome poster which had just been made cooler with a signature. “I-I-I… I was just leaving,” she replied, choked up. “Hmph… Dweeb’s friend came to her rescue. She’s so weak, she can’t even stand up for herself,” huffed one of the bullies. Rainbow heard it and immediately reacted, facing back toward the boy and letting him have it. “Hey! Give her some space, she doesn’t need you all to pick on her just because she makes you look like idiots. But wait, you don’t need her help to prove that,” she retorted to the boys. Iron Will was catching up, pen still in hand with the same goofy grin he had been sporting for the past five minutes. “Hey! Lemme sign that poster!” he continued with his playful attitude toward Rainbow. As soon as the bullies saw him coming, they immediately started to leave, opting not to be caught in the act by a faculty member. “See ya, losers,” the leader said to the girls as they left, chuckling to themselves out through the door. Iron Will finally caught up and saw Twilight’s state along with Rainbow’s angry huff toward the open doors of the gym. Knowing something was wrong, Iron Will decided to intervene. “What’s wrong, Twilight?” he asked her. Rainbow spoke up for her instead. “A couple of idiots were making Twilight feel bad about herself just because she’s not an athlete,” Rainbow said with an annoyed sigh. “It’s fine, Rainbow,” said Twilight. “They’re right, I’m no athlete, and I’m too weak to stand up for myself sometimes. If it was for something else that I was skilled with, I would have stood up for myself, but they were right…” “Nonsense!” interjected Iron Will. “You don’t have to be a ripped jock like this handsome piece of work to be an athlete, it takes brains too!” Iron Will blurted out as he flexed and then pointed to his head. “Why, take a look at this entire exhibition here! Do you think a bunch of idiots could have made these hulks of metal? No is the answer! You could make the best mechanic Iron Will has ever seen! Iron Will knows you’re one of our brightest students here. Twilight rubbed her eyes and wiped the tears from them. She felt a bit better after her teacher’s brief pick-me-up speech. “Heh, thanks…” Twilight sighed to the others. “I guess you’re right, I can do anything I put my mind to! And let’s face it, I’ve got a pretty good mind,” she said with a sheepish grin. “That’s the spirit, Twilight!” boomed Iron Will. “Now, I’ve got me a great idea. Why don’t you and Rainbow here form your own team and join the club? You’d make a great addition to the family!” Upon hearing this prospect, Rainbow’s ears perked up and she got up in Twilight’s face. “C’mon! Please, please, please!” I promise I’ll be your best friend forever if you do this with me!” Rainbow exclaimed to Twilight. “Well, if you’re that intent on doing this, I could use your help to show those guys a thing or two,” Twilight said. “Sweet! This is gonna be awesome! Here’s to Team Rainboom!” Rainbow Dash stuck out her fist, and Twilight shook it politely. Upon receiving the handshake, Rainbow gave Twilight a dumbstruck look. After glancing around the room to see if anyone was watching, Rainbow quietly whispered to Twilight. “Uh, Twi, I’m trying to help make you cooler, this isn’t helping.” “Oh, right…” Twilight grinned. She retracted her fist and gave Rainbow’s a weak bump. Iron Will grinned at the newest acquisition to the club. With his hands on his hips, he gave himself a mental pat on the back. He had just netted two more initiates for his club family. “Alright girls, I want to see you guys for club orientation in a week, we’ll show you the basics to constructing a mech to fight with,” he told them. “Don’t worry Mr. Iron Will, I’ve already got the know-how to do this, leave the construction to me. I’ll make the best mech you’ve ever seen,” Twilight said with a wink. “Alright then, see you all here in a week, I don’t expect you to have your mech built yet, but you could come and glean some ideas from some of the other teams here.” “Thank you, sir, will do.” “Then see you here next week!” Iron Will finished and walked off, satisfied with his work. Twilight turned to Rainbow, who was grinning ear to ear. She gave Twilight a big hug. “Now I can finally join the rest of us already in the club!” Rainbow cried excitedly to her friend. “Yeah, this’ll be fun!” Twilight replied. “I’ll see how close to done I can get with the mech before next week. See you then.” Twilight walked off, out of the gym and left Rainbow quietly screaming on the inside, fit to burst with glee. She was finally on her way to greatness, just like her idols, the Cloudsdale Conquerors. This was already shaping up to be an awesome year.