//------------------------------// // Issue One- Welcome To The Jungle // Story: Cartoon Heroes // by Peridork //------------------------------// Lyra looked down from the Manehattan skyscraper that she was precariously perched on. The ground was a long way down from where she was sitting. Everypony flitted around so fast these days with the curfew that was put in place after the big explosion of the Sparkle Generator a few months back. And for good reason. The streets were less safe than usual. Things went bump in the night more often, banks got robbed, ponies got mugged, nopony had died thankfully so far- but give ponies a new thing and they’d find a way to ruin it sooner or later. Or maybe she was just rationalizing a criminal element that got empowered by that little blast of pure energy that had freed some of them from their mundane and pitiful existences. Lyra sighed and used her magic to pull down her hood on her sweatshirt and feel the wind brush her face. Her mind was clouded with darkness from what she had to do to keep this city from devolving into a chaotic mess, Discord be damned. And stakeouts were never her thing anyway- too quiet and alone with her thoughts racing a mile a minute got her too jumpy. Her headset that she had built in a flight of fancy buzzed to life and she accepted the call. Hey Lyra, I got a hit on the thug that has been making the bank heists that have been running around the news cycles. “Yeah Bon Bon?” They’re one of us. Lyra had come to dread that sentence whenever it could come up. It held a lot of meaning after the explosion. Magical leylines were a bad thing to build on and Twilight Sparkle had tried to tap into the land’s wild and untamed magic. It hadn’t turned out pretty and a whole lot of ponies were changed in the aftermath. Bon Bon and Lyra included. “So what’s the mess? You wouldn’t be calling me so urgently if there wasn’t an angle.” Lyra had known her marefriend for a while and her habit of telling critical information at really bad times was what endeared her to the unicorn. Yes, well. . .we’ve found Twilight’s assistant and he’s not in a good state if the police records and guard testimony match up. “Great. Tell you what Bon Bon. I think I might be a little bit late for the weekly meeting with Celestia about my grant money. Will you try to delay her or something for me?” You got it Lyra. Though I think she suspects something is up. Do be careful out there. I know it’s not your first fight with an opponent with powers, but that doesn’t mean I won’t worry. Lyra heard the underlying pain of her marefriend and cringed. That first week was not a good time for her. It wasn’t like she got invulnerability or something. Just heightened intelligence really. So nothing really new or special compared to living elementals and some other shit she had heard about walking around her new home city. “Well don’t you worry, Bon Bon. You know I have totally slayed some dragons in my wildest fantasies. Can’t be that hard to detain one and bring him down from an anger state. Though if he’s anything like he was when he was a fifty foot tall dragon. . . I might be a little less chivalrous.” Lyra clicked off her headset with her magic and breathed in slowly. Concentration was key for the next part. She did have a few new inventions that she hadn’t exactly told Bon Bon about. After all, Bon Bon liked to keep her green unicorn safer than Lyra would like sometimes- and running dangerous thaumatech experiments of untested weapons in her basement did not keep her safe from the wrath of Bon Bon. Breathing slowly, she brought her hooves close to her face and activated the armbands that she had hidden in her sweatshirt sleeves. She could feel her magic being stored in her hooves and shaping the metal armbands into two giant fists of steel. Lyra had tested this part out in the lab, but the size was variable, as was the shape. Giving a quick test of her new metal appendages, she marveled that the fists were lighter than they should have been- thought she chalked that up to the special alloy that she had stabilized from the schematics of a proposed magical tank. What Celestia’s advisors didn’t know, didn’t hurt Lyra. “Okay, time for test two.” Lyra stepped off the building Bon Bon hated these meetings with the Princess now. Mainly because this was the third meeting in a month that she had to stall for Lyra- and the other reason was that Celestia had too much experience reading ponies so you could never tell if she knew you were lying or not. So Bon Bon fidgeted in her chair, little sparks of light dancing on her coat waiting to be released in a flash. And Celestia was just having the calmest time of her life drinking her lemon tea and smiling. “So Bon Bon. . .tell me what you’ve found out about our little predicament called Manehattan.” Celestia opened her eyes ever so slightly and waited for the weekly information dump to occur. “Well, I haven’t found out where Twilight Sparkle is yet. She’s seemingly dropped off the grid ever since her experiment went awry. But we have heard that she's somewhere in the city. Though we don't know where or why that is exactly.” Celestia was an irresistible force sitting next to her in her chair. Her regalia was non existent ever since she chose to let that habit die out a hundred years back, but she still radiated power like one of Lyra’s thaumatech creations. Celestia’s horn lightly glowed as she stirred her tea cup lazily. "Well that's rather unfortunate, since having my personal student disappear without a trace has been giving the daily newspapers a field day." Bon Bon fidgeted in her seat. She hoped that Lyra was having a better time than she was. Either way, this meeting was not going to be fun. Lyra was not having a great time. Sure, the test had worked and she hadn't went splat on the pavement a good few stories below, but falling and making a huge amount of noise usually ruined the element of surprise. Even if your opponent was not seen as more as a glorified dog thanks to how Discord had messed with dragons when he was free a thousand years ago, it still had a good few points ahead of Lyra on instincts alone. Though Lyra did sometimes wake up and think of all the possibilities now gone thanks to Discord's bored destruction of dragon culture. Deciding that focusing on the sad state of dragons nowadays wasn't currently the best thing to do, Lyra stared at the dragon that had caused all the bank heists. Rather funny she hadn't put two and two since there was a nice little dragon area in Manehatten. It was probably one of the richest areas of the city, in theory, since really it was only a migration hub for dragons. Dragons were drawn to wealth. And Spike was no different- well maybe a little different now. "Hey Spike. How are you doing?" Inching up on a dragon that was now the size of a cart was rather difficult. But Bon Bon had some training with animals a while back so Lyra just figured that copying what Bon Bon would do in a situation like this would be for the best. "Good scary dragon. Now where is Twilight? I mean I'm just asking for a friend and everthing." Lyra tried to smile. Act natural, she thought she had heard that dragons could sense fear. It was either them or jackalopes- Lyra couldn't remember which. Whatever she had said incensed Spike. His form shifted into a purely electrical form and shot off into the sky. Great, Lyra mused. So the whole blast of light hadn't just affected ponies. And electricity was one of her weapons main weaknesses. Along with fire and cold- or pretty much any form of elemental attack. Maybe charging in like a white knight hadn't been the best idea. Well at least it hadn't come to the worst possible situation. She wasn't like that Saddle Rager pony that could run through a building. Or that Radiance that could make things out of pure thought. Actually maybe she kind of sucked in a way. Sure the blast hadn't disfigured her with awesome powers but a further increased intelligence and greater reflexes were rather mundane compared to the whole gamut of powers the Sparkle Generator's explosion caused. Clicking on her transceiver, Lyra explained to Bon Bon her general failure of catching Spike. "Well at least you are safe, and seriously Lyra you did okay. He was much larger than you and had you even sent a call into the Royal Guards? What would you have done if you won anyway? Drop him off at the closest police station and hope for the best?" Actually Bon Bon was right. Maybe she hadn't thought everything through. Well she was rather new at her job anyway. Some goof ups like this were to be expected. Lyra looked up at the Manehatten stars and wondered how everypony was taking the changes. She remembered the day she got her powers like it was yesterday. A mint green unicorn mare walked briskly towards the heart of Manehattan. She could feel the pulsing beat of the nearby leyline that gave the city its vibrant nightlife. Lyra grinned and began to weave through the crowded streets, each corner was a microcosm of life. She directed magic into her horn began to add her own voice into the measured drone of the mechanized city. The hazy Manehattan day was perfect for her mood. She was here for research on how influencing the leylines could give the nation of Equestria the potential for unlimited electrical power. Lyra sighed, her life as a researcher for the Crown would give her so many benefits. She began to daydream about the chances to study all the applications of her thesis- and was promptly broken out of her reverie by a voice “Lyra?” The unicorn blinked and turned to her nearby companion. Bon Bon was currently trying to get all the luggage out of the closet they had packed all of their belongings into. The yellow earth pony was failing because of Lyra’s insistence of packing everything that she might need in an emergency. Bon Bon had no idea what some of the things even were. “Yeah?” “Why’d you have to bring your favorite sweatshirt? We don’t even need to wear clothes!” Lyra shrugged. “I felt like it?” She didn’t want to tell Bon Bon that she had just levitated a pile of clothes that had been on their bed and put it inside their cavernous suitcase. That would have just made her marefriend mad. Bon Bon didn’t see how useful unicorn magic was sometimes. “Okay. At least you folded the clothes.” “Yes- yes I did.” Lyra calmly dodged a bullet with that comment. Bon Bon probably knew that she didn’t even fold them, but it was something. The unicorn knew when to pick and choose her battles with her headstrong marefriend. Turning away, Lyra brought back her mental image of the city like a symphony. Each smokestack of Sparkle Labs’ newest generator was like a single instrument playing their part in the path to progress. The Princess had read her thesis about how the mana loci might have caused Equestrian culture to flourish in those certain areas for centuries and how a large mass of mana in a large burst could cause side effects that could change a pony into something else. It was highly theoretical and it used some of Starswirl’s last ideas about the study of magic. The city moved on. Twilight Sparkle, head researcher and founder of Sparkle Labs, stared down at the core of pure mana that was going to be the fuel that created the future. The room that she was in was heavily shielded against the pure magic that was compressed down into a manageable size for fuel. Her hoof tapped on the glass and she breathed a sigh of relief. This project had taken years. “We’ve done it. When the Princess sees how well this runs- she’ll have to allow my company to build more of these and we’ll be able to give the entire nation power for nothing.” Her aura emanated from her and she picked up a nearby pot of coffee. It shook ever so slightly as her nerves began to get the best of her. She had so much riding on this. It had to go perfectly; those protesters that had told her about structural failures were wrong. The door opened and Spike brought in her daily mail from her detractors. The bag of mail was one of the constant companions that she had. It had grown more and more as the generator had drawn closer to its completion. Twilight picked up the first few letters and scanned the destinations for them. “Junk, junk, letter from Shining, permit forms for the press release. . .” Twilight’s eyes lit up as she reached the end of her first stack. “Core Enterprises? Why’s Applejack of all ponies calling for my head? I thought we had a deal!” Twilight skimmed the letter. Twilight’s eye began to twitch just as she read the final bit. -Sorry Twi, can’t help you with this. The generator’s just too unstable.- “No. No. No!” Twilight crushed her mug in her shaky magical aura. The generator was powered with her magic. It was her life she sacrificed. This was not going to stop. Celestia was waiting for her research- it was going to be perfect. Twilight stormed out of her office, oblivious to the fact that the letter had disappeared. The only thing that was left was a small tendril of dark magic that slowly and surely crept its way into the testing grounds. The city moved on. Everypony that was currently in Manehattan had currently stopped what they were doing. A protest march led by peace loving ponies and their glorious leader and her ideas of magic power held them in sway chanting protest songs and keeping the general mass of ponies away. The Wonderbolts flew above, their newest recruits finding their first real taste of action in defending the skies of Manehattan from the chance of angry protesters. And the rich and famous fashion designers and night life danced around and mingled with the lower classes and easily got the newest foods to taste in this wave of progress that the wunderkind of Sparkle Labs sang her invention into existence. And even a tech designer like Applejack was in attendance for the show. But they had their own stories- the main event and Celestia's nice tech wizard like Lyra was having the time of her life. Twilight had just given a speech over the applications of the Generator and she was her own best hype train in Lyra's eyes. Everything seemed to be going off great and nobody but the greatest of unicorns- or those vaguely trained in the art of reading the density of mana in an area would have noticed that something was going wrong on stage. Lyra felt each pulsating beat of mana as Twilight started up the Generator and the timbre and tempo of the whole thing as it was sung into existence felt off- discordant harmonics pulling the core into a meltdown scenario. To Lyra's trained eyes she could see the sky twist and boil in pain as the mana gate got slowly torn, the colored spectrum of aura pulling away from a core that was pure midnight black. Black was not a natural aura color. Before Lyra could scream out a mental warning to duck or hide behind some cover, the whole stage exploded in a royal purple hue that blocked out the sun as ponies screamed and tried to run away in fear. Lyra could see her vision start to go fuzzy as the bright unexpected mana explosion and resultant light burned her from looking. The feeling of going blind to Lyra's mind was complete agony as the whole world went dark as her eyes stopped working from the strain alone. "Bon-Bon. Where are you? I can't see. I can't see." Lyra blacked out as the sounds of a new Manhattan mixed in with the sirens that were now going off thanks to a mist that was spreading throughout the whole city and infecting the populace with changes. Manhattan was already a strange place. But the city moved on and got stranger.