=== BABW: A New Conflict ===
=== Chapter 31: Phase-Shift ===
[ ??? – Sea-Pony Reserve ]
==========================
The moment continued, as the three travellers continued to stare in varying degrees of disbelief at the five-strong welcome party that greeted them. What greeted them was quite the odd sight, as they continued to hover above the simulated seabed of their home in Astral Space. The creatures before Vague and the others resembled a typical Pony in their upper-body, almost indistinguishable aside from fin-like extensions along their ears and the rear of their legs. It was the lower-body that threw the three of them off. All of them appeared to have differing tails and lower-body fins of fish, though he didn’t quite recognize two of the tails at first, since they were the ‘trunks’ and tails of a ray and a skate. But the central figure, and apparent head honcho of the Reserve looked much more impressive.
“Hey Ray, I thought there was only one Pony the Princess was in contact with?” the smaller, feminine of the batoid[1]-tailed Sea-Ponies asked of the larger, masculine one.
Ray, the masculine, batoid-tailed Sea-Pony in question, waved his legs in front of himself, as he manipulated the water currents of their Astral Space to see the truth behind the trio that had landed in their home territory.
“Ah, that makes a lot of sense now. The female and the turtle-like creature are psychic offshoots of the male Pony. Impressive that someone of his age could create two robust offshoots like that, isn’t it Skate?”
The female, skate-tailed Sea-Pony nodded vigorously, her seafoam green mane undulating in the water as she did.
“Uhhh, where are we? Really? All I remember of the last few moments was swimming through this portal we had created from your mana fissure,” Vague said, as his voice returned to him, but the confusion still hadn’t left as he looked around at the semi-urban seascape.
The regal figure in the middle, with all of her metal and precious-stone regalia and extremely ornate fins began to speak; her fin-structure reminding the three travellers of an azuma nishiki goldfish, though the fins billowed much more than any real fish that Vague could remember seeing on video. “Ahem. As I stated earlier, you are in the Sea-Pony Reserve – a special refuge I created to preserve the Sea-Pony race during the Trial of Insanity. I wonder why you wouldn’t have recognized us, I mean the trial couldn’t have gone on that long…”
Vague was still confused, but the term ‘Trial of Insanity’ gave him a brief insight. “Oh, you must mean the Reign of Discord… well… it lasted about a millennium, and then it ended over a millennium ago on top of that.”
Vague was shocked when the regal, rainbow-colored Sea-Pony with the sprawling mane suddenly went various shades of red, dominated by a quite bright fire-engine red that reminded him of Red Blaze’s coat. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN A THOUSAND YEARS! I… Oh no… I got to contact Hippox as soon as possible, I never meant to separate from the world for over a thousand years!”
“Um, excuse me… um… never did get your name there,” Venomè spoke up, as the large Sea-Pony’s colors shifted between red and yellow in alarm.
Said Sea-Pony finally settled on yellowish-orange as she responded to Vague’s ‘twin’. “Oh, it is Princess Nymphemia. In any case, I need to contact your Hippox as soon as possible. Oh I’ve really messed up if your implied timeline is correct…”
The three travellers looked at each other confused again, clearly not recognizing the name. Before Ray broke the silence again.
“Princess, perhaps we should give our visitors a guided tour of the Reserve. I have a feeling the centuries of isolation here in our corner of metaphysical space has caused us to become completely disjointed from the flow of information from our homeworld; so until we can reestablish it, we should find a way to pass the time.”
Nymphemia sighed in exasperation, as her body turned a pale blue to match her mood. “I suppose you’re right. I’m sure our visitors don’t want to spend their entire time here in total confusion, do they?”
“No, do any of you?” Vague responded quickly. When he got two head-shakes of ‘no’ in response from Torra-Borous and Venomè, he turned back to Nympehia. “Then it looks like a deal, Princess.”
=== -- ===
“Wow, this place is like the city we had to navigate to arrive here,” Venomè said, as the group of eight swam through the still empty storefronts and homes that made up the bulk of the structures in the Reserve.
One of the shark-finned guards that made up the Sea-Pony five spoke up when Venomè finished. “There is a good reason for the lack of activity that is apparent to you all, but that will be something left to be spoken of later. At least if Princess Nymphemia wants to give a full tour.”
“I believe a full tour will be in order, indeed, Tigress,” Nymphemia responded, as both guard-Sea-Ponies nodded, as did Ray and Skate.
“Hrm, though, as I look at the environs, I am struck how it feels like everything is in suspended animation; as if there was a motion picture being filmed here, but all of the actors are on break. Not like the locale where the fissure that led here ended up,” Torra started, before Vague jumped on his train of thought.
“I think I see what you mean. Old New Orleans looked more like a graveyard, like something once lived there but it long since died. This place looks like something that is still alive, but is just dormant. It weird to talk about inanimate objects being alive, but… well with all the things I and we’ve seen over the last year-plus…”
Venomè and Torra nodded as the eight of them in total continued to swim through the town.
“As a point of order, you can call this place Pacifica II,” Ray started, grabbing the attention of the three travellers. “Though the full name is the Sea-Pony Reserve, if you include the non-settled area designed to give this place more of a natural feel. The town itself, which we are near the center of now, is designated Pacifica II, after our capital before we all moved here.”
“Hrm, I still would like to know how you move an entire species off-world, and into a space that has a tenuous grip, to say the least, with one’s original reality,” Torra-borous wondered aloud, as Venomè lounged on his back, to his mild consternation.
“All of these words being uttered, many implying a pause-ation, if you will, of life. If you wouldn’t mind, I would like to show you all something a little beyond the scope of this built landscape for us all,” Nymphemia asked of the three travellers.
None of them objected, and the small school of eight detoured to a large, cold looking building near the center of town.
=== --- ===
“It seems like I have most of my answer as to the how, but I am still having trouble figuring out the why…” Torra-borous said as he and everyone else looked through the giant complex that held pods that looked like giant fish eggs.
“We’ve taken to calling these places the Stasis Rooms. Practically all Sea-Ponies are located here in a state of suspended animation, until the day I can rejoin the whole of Sea-Pony Reserve back with the rest of the homeworld.
“To take this extreme a measure… Discord must have been one bad Draconequus…” Venomè mused aloud, as she was stunned by all of the hundreds (and in total, tens of thousands) of Sea-Ponies of various colors and tail-shapes in the deepest sleep one could have without being outright dead.
“’Mortally Terrifying’ would have been a better way to put it. We tried to dislodge Discord before he could firmly establish himself on the homeworld, but…” the male guard started, as it appeared he was getting choked up.
“Um, you don’t have to continue if it’s dredging up too strong a memory…” Vague tried to offer, before the male guard-Sea-Pony waved him off.
“No, I have to come to terms with those few years eventually…” he started, as he regained most of his composure. “To continue, we banded together, all the nations of the world then, to challenge Discord; but we severely underestimated his nature. It wasn’t long before large swaths of our population turned against us, driven mad by some unforeseen force, that’d we’d later learn was Discord’s Chaos Magic. Although the madness only claimed a tenth of our population, the ensuing internecine conflict claimed another thirty percent. Another ten percent laid down their lives to protect those who avoided or were resistant to Chaos’s influence.”
“So just the beginning of the fight against Discord was bad enough to halve your population in a hoof-full of years? I don’t know if the word ‘brutal’ does justice to something like that…” Vague started, as he tried to contemplate it.
“The worse thing is - Discord’s very nature warps everything around him. Even fighting him is enough to eventually destroy your psyche. Those who were killed in fighting him or his minions were lucky, in my own opinion; a large contingent of our guards we had to eventually put to the sword, as they were driven so mad that they would have been a risk if we had put them in stasis and they came to early,” Tigress replied. “Hammerfin here had to lay low a brother and a sister due to this.”
The male Guard she was referring to looked down at the ground as he tried his best to cope with what he had to do untold years ago. Ray and Skate looked almost white with fear, as they remembered what happened when some of the manic Sea-Ponies would raid Pacifica back in those dark days.
“Like I said, ‘brutal’ doesn’t do something like this justice…” Vague repeated, as the cadre slowly reached what looked like a table.
“We tried to help as many as we could then, but, eventually some of the Sea-Ponies caught in mania warped into a monsters. Are you all familiar with the legend of the Sirens?” Nymphemia asked, as she slowly made her way to a desk lit by a magic lamp.
Vague thought for a few moments, before his brain recollected the proper knowledge and then properly translated it. “Yeah, um, a merpony-like creature who’d sign with the most beautiful and enchanting of voices, a voice so enchanting it would lead ships to their destruction in un-navigable conditions, either crashed against rocks, or torn apart by whirlpools or tornadoes. This would eventually result in the death of the crew by drowning, injury, or direct assault by the Sirens themselves.”
“That’d be correct Mr. Vague. The reason why I state that, is because I put three young-adult Sea-Ponies in stasis, those who hadn’t been declared Sirens but still afflicted deeply with the mania influenced by Discord. The problem is…” Nymphemia started, before pointing to three empty pods over in a far corner.
“They escaped, and we haven’t been able to determine where to, aside from their no longer being anywhere in Sea-Pony Reserve,” Skate concluded for her princess.
“Ugh, yet something else we have to look for…” Venomè sighed, as she had a look of exasperation on her face that was unmistakable.
“In any case, I need to contact Hippox, to see how we can start the process of re-integrating Sea-Pony Reserve back into the homeworld,” Nymphemia began again, as she ‘sat’ at the desk.
“Uhhh… Princess Nymphemia… there are a couple of things I think you need to realize before you start anything…” Vague said, before Nymphemia could begin to use the Astral Charts at her desk to begin the rather arduous process.
“Hrm, and that would be…” Nymphemia responded in a sing-songy voice, her body and fins turning a golden yellow.
“Ok First, the world that I got to here from wasn’t the homeworld, or Equus as we call it now… it was my original homeworld, Earth,” Vague started, as Nymphemia nodded in cheerful agreement, much to his surprise. “And the second part is… I legitimately have no idea who this Hippox is you are talking about. That is not a name I have heard, ever, since I’ve been on Equus.”
The golden white colors on Nymphemia slowly bleached to a bone white. “Of course… of… course… hahaha, please excuse me for a moment…”
The regal figure quickly swam out of the Stasis Room the now seven of them were in, as she tried to figure out just what was going on.
--- === ---
“Does something smell of seawater to you, Lulu?” as Celestia sipped on a calming cup of tea, as she began to unwind as the guards transitioned the banners from Day Court to Night Court before moonrise.
“Not sure, sister…” Luna responded as she drank a mug of coffee, straightening her ephemeral mane in the mirror.
At least she was before a rainbow-colored figure appeared in her mirror.
“Ah I see… that’d probably explain the seawater smell…” Luna said matter of factly as she looked the fish-tailed Pony-like figure in the mirror before her.
“Yes… it certainly would…” Celestia said she joined her sister in front of the mirror, as the two of them stared at Nymphemia on the other side.
“Wha? Why are there two of you. I know Hippox’s mana from anywhere and anything… but I… I’m…” Nymphemia stammered as she looked at the two Alicorns that each seemed to be half of what Hippox was.
“Wait, how do you know our Mother’s name? The only creatures that know the name Hippox are our most closest confidants and our fellow Immortals,” Celestia asked curtly, feeling Nymphemia reminded her of something but not quite sure what.
Luna was a bit quicker on the draw, as a flash of memory popped in her head. “Princess Nymphemia of the Sea-Ponies – the Rainbow beneath the Waves! It’s been literally ages since anything that drew breath on this world has seen hide or scale of you or your race!”
Nymphemia began to come out of her initial shock, as she realized what must have happened. “So it came to that… I… Oh…”
Luna and Celestia were greatly concerned as Nyphemia suddenly turned dark, melancholic blue and her mane and ornate fins just seemed to droop in purest depression.
“I… I should have never left… If I… If I didn’t run away like a coward…” Nymphemia began to sob, as she looked at the two figures before her through the mirror she was using as a proxy to avoid having to manifest.
“Wait, wait… Princess Nymphemia, please don’t cry,” Celestia started as she placed a hoof on the mirror.
“I… I can feel Hippox’s presence in both of you,” Nymphemia sniffled, as her crying fit ended with the warm presence of her ‘sister’ Immortal.
“We owe our very existence to her, and the Ponies that gave all of themselves to spark our Creation. It was their collective sacrifice that finally ended the Reign of Discord,” Luna stated, as she placed a hoof on the mirror as well.
A small, but warm smile returned to the face of the Immortal of the Sea-Ponies. “Then we have much to discuss, scions of Hippox. But I am currently entertaining one of your own as a guest of mine, it would be wrong for me to keep him. Even though he’s adorable enough to…”
Luna and Celestia giggled as the watched the Sea-Pony Princess turn rose pink for a few moments, before returning to her usual rainbow-coloration.
“There is a particular Earth Pony that’d take exception to that, just to warn you,” Celestia reported in a warm tone.
“Don’t worry, just a bit of levity to help improve my mood. But we do have much to discuss before long, so I will see you two later,” Nymphemia replied, before disappearing from the mirror.
“Not surprising you pull her name out of her old memory, Lulu,” Celestia said, as she looked at her slightly shorter sister.
“You spend a thousand years trapped in your own head; you have a lot of time to read, as it were…” Luna replied, as she set out to raise the moon.
--- === ---
“Now I realize why you haven’t been able to figure out who I was referring to when I kept using the name Hippox. Something you may want to bring up with your sibling Princesses,” Nymphemia started. “So the Pole Star of Ponydom has become a binary system.”
“That an interesting way to put it, Princess,” Vague responded. “So why did you poof away just then?”
“Had to have a few words with that binary system was talking to, and I still do after we conclude business here. I’m fairly sure you are ready to return to Earth,” Nymphemia mused aloud.
“Yeah, although I wouldn’t mind visiting with my friends when you reconnect with Equus,” Vague replied with a cheerful tone.
“That won’t be the hardest part. I will have to explain to my people that our sabbatical accidentally turned into millennia of self-imposed exile. With all the havoc that Discord wreaked, I’m fairly sure the oceans are completely unrecognizable to us as a whole,” Nymphemia sighed.
“Yeah, and between those three renegades you talked about and the other creatures that’d be making their way back, I’m gonna have my hooves full back on Earth,” Vague remarked, as Nymphemia warped the entire cadre next to the portal that Vague helped forge.
Skate eeped with remembrance, as she whispered something to Nymphemia, and the Princess of the Sea-Ponies agreed, with a wide smile.
“I notice your body is covered with a spell that helps you swim and breathe underwater. I got something that’ll help you a lot until you reach land again,” Skate said with a wide smile on her face as she swam all around Vague, much to the intrigue of Venomè and Torra-borous.
“What is it, pray tell?” Torra-borous asked.
Skate waved a leg in a rhythmic pattern, like a conductor at her podium, and then booped Vague square on the nose, causing his whole Astral body to flash pale blue for a moment. “And that’s it. When you get back to real space, you’ll see what I mean.”
“Um, thanks?” Vague replied sheepishly, before Venomè started pushing him toward the ovoid entrance/exit-way.
“Alright then, Vague, let’s back to Richard so we can go home…” Venomè chided, as Torra put the both of them on his back.
“And away we go…” Torra-borous said, as the three of them left Sea-Pony Reserve.
[ October 11, 2081 – Near the former site of New Orleans, USA, Earth ]
======================================================================
“That weird off-putting feeling of mana rushing into a world void of it must mean I’m home…” Vague mused as he looked around the dilapidated, submerged stadium.
As his brain began to reorient to Earth’s realspace, the two SPH divers looked on in confusion at what exactly emerged from the now dissipated fissure of mana.
“What the hell is that thing?” one of the divers asked (quite loudly) through their microphone-equipped breathing mask.
“It looks like a Unicorn, but I’ve never heard of a Unicorn with a fish tail, or a dolphin tail…” the other diver responded as they looked on at the dreadlocked, blue Unicorn(?) with great confusion.
Wait… what the hell does he mean fish or dolphin tail… Vague thought to himself as he started to swim away, before realizing that instead of a muted dog-paddle with a Water-magic jet boosting him, he was swimming with a legitimate dolphin-kick, on account of his newly acquired cetacean-like lower body. As he did, a low glow emanated from his horn, as the water began to turn into (non-toxic) ink, obscuring where Blue Vague had swam to.
Ok… now I see what that diver means… THE HELL IS THIS?! Vague shouted in his mind, as his body looked frozen in some level of surprise and shock as he found a space behind a wall to settle down.
“Where did that thing go? Where did that thaumatic outflow go? The hell just happened in the last few seconds?” Vague could hear one of the divers shouting through his microphone, as the two divers continued to patrol through the crumbling edifice for possibly another source of energy.
-----
“Hellooo thereee~” Venomè and Torra-borous heard a chipper, female voice call out, as they were both highly surprised to see a certain figure standing outside of the plunge-pool of Vague’s soulscape.
“Skate?! How did… what… the hell happened to our house?” Venomè stammered out, as confused as Vague was on the outside.
“Oh I see it worked, that’s great!” Skate said, as she shook the water out of her coat, revealing a normal-ish four-legged figure, though her tail was still the same skate’s trunk and tail.
“First of all, how did you get in here? Second of all, why do you look like that?!” Venomè asked tersely, as she was nose to nose with the now four-legged Skate.
“Hrm…” Skate started with a cute tone, not unlike her princess (but with a lot less gravitas). “Well… I just followed your trail of life mana back, and I just so happened to stumble into your Astral mindscape. Secondly, our bodies automatically shift to a Pony-like guise whenever we’re in open air, or in this case, a reasonable facsimile of it.”
Torra-borous merely nodded while Venomè retained a good chunk of consternation in her voice and face. “And you Torra, why are you so calm about this?!”
“Because Miss Skate cast a temporary transformation, based on the natural shape-shifting magic Sea-Ponies have,” Torra replied in a matter of fact tone.
“And how did you figure that?” Venomè asked, less shouty but still quite upset.
“Because Miss Skate told us as much. I had a hunch as to how it might have worked, as I quietly compared the background mana between your run of the mill Pony and the Astral Projection of the Sea-Ponies. If I could find some time to speak with your Princess, Miss Skate, I think I will be able to understand you all a lot better,” Torra concluded, as he shifted his attention back to Skate, who was mildly put off by the once-again giant turtle-like creature that occupied the plunge-pool in Vague’s soulscape.
“Let me talk to her when we get back, should be able to arrange something when she’s done reconnecting with the two (I guess) Princesses of Equus… isn’t it Equus?” Skate started, as she realized she hadn’t taken the time to actually ask Nymphemia how to refer to the ‘binary star’ that ruled over Ponydom now.
“They are just Princess of Equestria, in terms of their titles. Equestria is but one nation on Equus. Boy we all have a lot of background information to sort out…” Venomè corrected in a now exasperated tone.
“We’ll have time to do it, once we get your ‘house’ back to where it needs to be. So let’s get going~” Skate said, as she marched into the forest surrounding the waterfall… only to come out on the opposite side. “And I have no idea where I’m going…”
“Because there isn’t anywhere to go, yet…” Venomè replied with a non-plussed tone, her expression flat as she found herself already annoyed by the over-eager morphed Sea-Pony.
Venomè lit her horn, and opened a pathway to the ‘control center’ of Vague’s mind, and the three figures (after the largest had shrunk himself to an acceptable size) passed through.
--- ---
“Mind explaining why I have the lower body of a dolphin, Skate?” Vague asked of the chipper Sea-Pony, as the four figures met in the ‘control room’ of Vague’s consciousness , the annoyance of the two blue Unicorns not dampening her mood one little bit.
“First of all, that’s the lower body of an orca, proportionately scaled to match the rough circumference of your torso, also you may want to get off your back completely, because you’re lying on your dorsal fin,” Skate began to reply, taking her best matter-of-fact tone with the ‘master of the house’. “Second of all, you saw how you got out of dodge in a couple of beats, didn’t you?”
“I guess…” Vague started, as he began to move his body, gingerly swimming back along the path he used to get into the old stadium. “Truth be told… it is a lot easier to move like this.”
“It’d be even easier if you turn off whatever this breathing device is, though,” Skate said as Vague reached the outer edge of the stadium proper.
“I don’t want to take a chance in this polluted water…” Vague said, as so much mana was flowing through his body he could feel the small outflow from the equipment of the divers, and that large mass that was the TAG nearby.
“You know, speaking of taking chances… I think there is enough mana we’re churning to use the Element of Water,” Venomè said, as a wide smile spread across her face.
“You are right about that,” Vague responded, a similar smile across his face.
“You know it’s kinda creepy when they are in sync like that…” Skate said quietly to Torra-borous, as Vague was swimming at a decent clip to what used to be a small sports good store near the stadium, some of the old posters still in their plastic encasements.
“They are actually the same being, just different aspects of their personality showing through at any given time. But the fact they look like mirrors of each other means they are falling into sync, which means that Vague has some impulse-driven idea that Venomè is conjuring up…” Torra-borous figured, wondering what his master was contemplating.
--- ---
“There is a high-energy signature moving away from the old Superdome II site, Captain. And the divers are reporting some kind of half-dolphin/half-Pony… whatever having emerged from where that outflow of thaumatic radiation was located,” a lieutenant reported to the TAG’s captain, as he looked at a thaumatic-tracker’s monitor, as something with a seemingly increasing amount of Water mana moving around and around, seemingly aimlessly.
“Without a recon drone I can’t even begin to think what we should be doing… and I don’t want to have come out here for nothing. Leader-3 especially hates it when we come back empty-handed,” the Captain responded. “But if we can make visual, and capture that thing… it could jump-start our study of Pony physiology, so we can come up with a counter-measure for them outright.”
“I don’t know what you want to do, Captain, but you better decide now, because whatever that thing is throwing out all of this Water Mana is heading straight for us now, and the Water Mana is becoming more intense.”
--- ---
“And that’s your plan?” Torra wondered in some amount of disbelief, as Vague motored straight for the TAG.
“Knowing them they have all kinds of guns or whatever on that boat, and the militias and others have been having problems trying to swipe their gear for reverse engineering. Their guns especially have a nasty habit of self-destructing before we can think to do anything with them,” Vague said, as he continued swimming at a rapid clip toward the TAG
“So, we see if we can strip that gunboat of something, wrap it up in enough Water mana to block the signal to self-destruct hopefully. And then we see what the engineers can do when we get everyone and everything back to base,” Venomè said, as she was by Vague’s side now.
“This is exciting~!” Skate replied, as she encouraged the two Unicorns as best she knew; Torra-borous was left to shrug his flippers and wonder what had suddenly gotten into his master.
--- ---
“It’s still approaching, sir!” the lieutenant shouted, as the gunners went to man their stations.
“No shooting to kill, whatever this damn thing is we’re taking it in alive if we can manage it!” the Captain shouted back in response.
The tension hung in the air for a few moments as the thaumatic source ceased its approach, instead silently waiting as it’s mana output dropped considerably in the last few moments.
“Damn, what is that thing doing? This boat isn’t carrying any depth charges or torpedoes,” the Captain said, as he looked at the monitor of the gunners on side of the boat with their side arms pointed at the water, and the ‘internal’ gunners with their visors on the trigger-sticks, aiming the guns that lined the hull of the boat along the water-line.
The captain suddenly had a gravely queasy feeling, as a sudden eruption of magic emanated from almost directly beneath the TAG. What he saw on the monitor only increased the sudden sea sickness he felt through his entire being.
“The hell is that thing? Is that what came through that rift?!” one of the gunners shouted on a microphone, as everyone on the boat, and actually all round, could hear a mildly gurgling bellow from beneath them, as the entire area flashed hotly with pure Water Magic, something breached the surface – a kraken-like, translucent squid, seemingly several times the size of the TAG itself.
“FIRE ALL GUNS, BRING THAT THING DOWN!” the Captain shouted, as he tried his best to keep his crew from panicking, as everyone grabbed hold of whatever they could as the giant, watery tentacles began to crash and thrash the TAG around like a small child would a bath toy.
--- ---
“Vague, what in the blue hell is that thing throwing that boat around like a kid’s bath toy?” Richard asked of the blue Unicorn-turned-Uni-Orca-Pony.
“Had an idea. Wanted a piece of the boat. So that’s what I’m doing!” Vague responded haltingly.
Go! Go! Kraken Go! Skate cheered on, greatly enjoying the show.
“I’m guessing that giant squid-thing is one of yours?” Richard replied, as he could see through the binoculars that the boat and the gunners were trying to best to fell the giant squid, but having little effect… on account of the squid being made of super-condensed water.
“Yeah, something I made on the fly. Trying to use my Element, literally. Kinda hard to talk…” Vague replied, as he devoted so much of his consciousness to controlling the body and the tentacles of the conjured squid, he could barely speak in complete thoughts.
“Yeah, do I need to get out of here or anything? I do have the location of the Waypoint Stone loaded into the pad’s map,” Richard said, as he cove created by the fallen building he was hiding in protected him from the waves generated by Vague’s squid-projection.
“Almost… there… trying to pry one of these magic-firing cannons off the boat. Not enough control to grab a rifle…” Vague said, as he continued to rock the boat – literally – trying to rip one of the thaumatic cannons off the boat itself.
--- ---
“SIR! The creature trying to rip this boat apart, literally!” the lieutenant said, as he began to put on a diving suit.
“I am not abandoning this ship. Leader-3 will personally see me ended if I fled!” the captain responded. As he tried whatever he could think to get out of the water-kraken’s grip.
An explosion rocked the ship from the hull as the captain was trying to think. The captain stumbled over fallen equipment, and a couple of concussed crew members, to look at a monitor to see what happened.
“We lost starboard thauma-cannon 5? Just what in the hell is this thing trying to do, literally rip us apart piece by piece?!” he shouted, as he couldn’t understand why the creature wasn’t just trying to crush the entire vessel outright.
The captain got his answer when the rocking began to cease and the general unease created by the kraken began to fade, though the warning klaxons still blared.
“Lieutenant, status report, are we still able to move?!” the captain shouted, as he could see on the monitor the ice-blue eyes of the kraken sinking back into the depths of the sea.
“Engine capacity reduced to 50% due to thaumatic interference and physical damage. Hull aside from the section around Starboard Thauma-cannon 5 is intact. The damage shouldn’t prevent us from moving but we are going to have one hell of a time trying to explain to Leader-3 what just happened,” the lieutenant responded.
“Goddamnit all. Between the damage to the boat and the loss of equipment, ugh… we’ll be lucky if Leader-3 doesn’t reassign us to living test dummy duty,” the captain responded in utter disgust.
“You don’t think he’d do something like that?” the lieutenant responded, as he began to direct the boat back to the base in Livingston.
“Honestly, I would not put it past him, despite our general lack of personnel,” the captain concluded, the dread quite evident in his voice.
--- ---
“Do you have any idea just how insane and reckless that stunt you just pulled was?!” Richard chided as he stared at the half-orca half-Unicorn floating along the surface of the Gulf, water purifying in his presence, as the ripped out thauma-cannon floated behind him, protected from the water by a bubble of Explicit Magic.
“I would wager ‘very’ and ‘suicidal’ to them both,” Vague responded as once’d-over the cannon in his telekinetic grip.
“At the same time… you did actually do what you said you would and apparently no more, since I could see that boat motoring off to wherever the SPH must be stationed around here. My guess is Livingston Domes. So we better make our way back to the Waypoint Stone and back to Safe Haven,” Richard thought aloud, as he quickly realized that dressing down Vague, if necessary, was better left to his compatriots and the Princess of the Night.
=< About a half hour later, in the Livingston Domed Community >=
“I am as close to my wit’s end with the HEA and their damned hangers-on as I can be without literally jumping up and down in a full-blown tantrum,” Nathan, as Leader-3, said in as calm a manner as he could manage, given the roiling and boiling anger that welled inside of him as he looked at the half-torn-apart TAG prototype.
“I truly apologize sir, but we had nothing to directly counter that water-borne squid, kraken, whatever that is in the video we handed over to you,” the ship’s captain said in an apologetic tone, bowing his head for good measure.
“Ugh, as much as I am looking to blame someone, this is not your fault. We were dealing with something we had no knowledge of, and you did well enough to preserve your crew and keep the boat intact. I will just have to contact our supplier and begin to develop some kind of countermeasure for their spellcraft,” Leader-3 said, as he tried to project as much calm as he could.
“Yes sir. We will not let those damn aliens get the best of us!” the captain responded, as he saluted and quickly retreated to the ‘barracks’.
Nathan nodded as he walked into a quiet, sound-proofed office, and directly messaged Ken in the Durham Domes.
“Ken, this situation with the HEA is approaching an untenable degree. I need you to dedicate as much as you can spare to our drone program. At the same time, we need better magic analysis tools. If we limit ourselves to just traditional weaponry, we will forever be trying to fight last century’s movie war,” Nathan told Ken.
“No problem, though expedited development will incur increased cost…” Ken replied, with an invisible smirk that Nathan could practically see; though the conversation was audio only.
“I’m losing my ability to care about how much money this is costing us. Just so long as we can crush the HEA and their allies, before the public gets the notion into their heads that they are actually going to oust us so soon after taking power,” Nathan responded curtly.
“Anything for such a valued customer, I will send word when I have more to show you,” Ken concluded, as the conversation ended.
“If they thought we were playing rough after our coup, those HEA vagrants don’t even know the quarter of it…” Nathan mused quietly, as he let his anger seethe beneath the surface of his normally calm face.
=< Around the same time in Safe Haven >=
“Brother, you are just a magnet for weird situations aren’t you?” Golden Storm joked as he looked at his partner-in-crime floating around a hastily made pool.
“Of course I am; and I managed to shanghai the three of you into this by our general association, didn’t I?” Vague responded, in an equally mirthful tone.
“I honestly thought Storm would be the first one of you two to get transformed into something weird. Mostly from him getting Twilight all hot and bothered, and her doing it after a momentary lapse in judgment,” Red Blaze figured.
“Wait, why?” Vague thought, before he put two and two together. “Wait, you two didn’t actually wager on this, did you?”
“Why wouldn’t we, seemed like a good idea at the time,” Blaze replied, as she began to visibly grouse at the smiling visage of the green Earth Pony.
“And where have you been all of this time, Miss Candace. I remember when you came with Richard back at the Isegawa’s Clinic,” Vague said as he waved at the two.
“Doing my best Twilight Sparkle impersonation, apparently. I’ve had my head buried in as much reading material about the different sapient species, major and minor, that live in your new world. I am still Richard’s main secretary after all,” Candace replied, brushing some of her auburn hair from the edge of her vision.
“I see…” Vague thought, before he suddenly felt the pressure of the magic from a pair of Alicorns now in the vicinity of his being.
To wit, said Alicorns were now in the same room as the four Ponies and the two Humans.
“Oh dear… Vague, I heard of going above and beyond the call of duty, but this is a bit much, don’t you think,” Celestia started, as she tried her best to stifle a giggle at the young stallion’s minor predicament.
--- ---
“Well guys, uh… I think I’m gonna head on back to Sea-Pony Reserve, ok, thanks bye!” Skate said, as she turned around and tried to dash for the plunge-pool, before running straight into a rather tall and rather non-plussed looking indigo Alicorn.
“Start talking, miss, otherwise I will involve Nymphemia in this, and I don’t believe you’d want that…” Luna stated curtly and with foreboding gravitas.
“IwantedtohelpVaguesoIcastaspelltogivehimthesamebodyasaSeaponytemporarilybutIthinkImadeit-toostrongsohe’sstucklikethatuntilthemanaforitrunsout!” Skate blurted out, as she was starting to panic, running in place in the presence of the Alicorn.
“Princess Luna, with all due respect, I think you might want to turn down the fear factor a bit. The poor girl is starting to freak out, as it were,” Torra-borous suggested to the Alicorn of the Moon.
“Very well…” Luna replied with a heavy sigh, as she took a deep breath, and reduced her ‘presence’ to an amount bearable to Skate.
“I’m so sorry, but I just wanted to help Vague. So I thought giving him a temporary Sea-Pony body would work. It was only supposed to last until he hit dry land again…” Skate said, this time at a rate that everyone could properly decipher.
“Seems like you did quite a number on him indeed. You failed to account for the amount of mana he already had in his body, and the fact that his ‘soul’ is a composite, so the ‘Shift Body to Match’ part of the spell made extra calculations you couldn’t account for. Thankfully none of this will result in any kind of permanent alteration to his makeup, so after an hour or so he’ll be back to normal,” Luna stated clearly and calmly, bringing some measure of calm back to the Sea-Pony.
“I will say this, though. When Nymphemia reintergrates the Preserve back to Equus, send a message through your Princess to me. There is a certain Unicorn that I think will be a great help you in the coming years,” Luna said, with a wry but warm smile.
“Okay, sure! But I really need to be getting back now, I think Vague’s head is getting crowded,” Skate replied with a smile, as she dove into the plunge-pool and headed back to Sea-Pony Reserve.
“So, you got a beat on how Skate managed to pull all of that off. She doesn’t strike as the expert spell-caster type, per se,” Venomè wondered as she sat next to Luna.
“Hard to say only having interacted with her for those brief few moments, but I have the feeling she has a lot of magical potential. Though, I’d like her to get to know Twilight, since Twilight would have a better sense for another mortal being than I,” Luna responded before disappearing.
--- ---
“Luna, I could feel that you were in my soulscape, and thanks for letting her go with just a minor scolding. I know she means well but she can be the very definition of overzealous,” Vague said, as he thanked Luna once she returned to the conscious.
“Who is she? Vaguey-kun,” Hana asked of her beau, nose to nose as she was leaning slightly over the edge of the pool.
“Ahahaha, no one in particular… just… well… it’s a weird story…” Blue Vague responded, with a bit of trepidation.
“Oh don’t worry, Ao-kun… I have all day…” Hana replied, perfectly ready to sit right there and listen intently to every word and detail.
