Pressing the button on the elevator, he frowned as it wouldn’t light up. “Of course the power would be out. It’s most likely been out ever since Aperture’s shut down.” Joseph mumbled turning to the others. “Power’s out. We’ll have to come back tomorrow and try to fix it.” Joseph said as the six of them looked relieved. “What? Don’t like adventure?”
“We do, it’s just that this is a bit much. We’ve just faced down Discord and we would like to rest up for a bit. Maybe we should leave it for a few days and come back later.” Twilight said and the others nodded in agreement.
“It’ll probably take a few days to figure out anyway. Do you think you can teleport us out of the forest? I don’t want to run into any turrets again.” Joseph said with a shudder. Twilight nodded and, using her magic, teleported them out of the building and back into her tree house. Coughing, Joseph looked at Twilight and the girls. Seeing their scared looks, he turned to look behind him and as he did, he heard a robotic voice call out “Gotcha.” A hail of bullets bore down on him, and he dived out of the way, effectively breaking the turret’s line of sight. “How long were we in that place!?” Joseph asked in surprise, peeking out at the turret.
“Ooh look! A turret thingy! It only just wants to murder you.” Crikey observed in a somewhat calm manner.
“Well you’re acting all calm aren’t ya?” Joseph asked Crikey, looking at the potato disbelievingly.
“It’s not like they can kill me mate.” Crikey retorted, blowing a raspberry at the turret.
“What’s the big idea!?” Rainbow shouted as she flew towards the turret. The turret didn’t even acknowledge the Pegasus as it searched around for any humanoids in the area. “No answer huh? Well answer to this!” Rainbow shouted and bucked the turret, sending it flying. Soon as it impacted with the wall, bullets flew in every which way. Luckily Rainbow Dash had enough sense to head back to the group as the turret deactivated.
“This doesn’t seem like a normal thing does it?” Joseph asked uncertainly as he got up and cautiously looked in all the rooms of the house. Thinking that it was the only one, he went back to the group and gave them a thumbs up. “All clear.” Joseph said and sat down near one of the couches in the main library.
“Ah’d better check on mah family! Catch y’all later!” Applejack said as she ran out the door towards her farm. The others said relatively the same thing and headed to their respective homes, leaving Twilight and Rainbow alone, along with Joseph. Earlier on, Twilight sent Spike to the Cakes because they needed help with baking and customer service. Hopefully a turret wasn’t waiting there.
“If there are turrets here, then it’s safe to assume that all the other houses in Ponyville have them as well. Rainbow Dash, can you go to the other houses and check?” Twilight asked her friend, who gave a nod and zoomed out the balcony window. She saw Joseph pull out a few pieces of paper from his pocket and study them intently, so she walked up to him and looked down at them from upside down. “What are these?” She asked, looking at the drawings of some sort of device.
“It looks like the portal gun, except it’s not. See?” He pointed to the tubes sitting side by side, instead of one underneath the other. The casing looked like the portal gun’s one, except it was brown with camo patterns on it. “It says that these tubes are meant to hold some sort of gel. I can’t make out the words though …” Joseph said as his eyes squinted. Not being able to make heads or tails of it, he showed Crikey the paper. “Can you tell what the words are?”
Crikey’s eye lens moved in a circular motion, zooming in on the words. “Repulsion and propulsion. Dodolshion, ccabolshion, nigolshion, tectiglomachinasion and none of that was actually on there. Just the first two, but seriously what even are names? Plus, it sounds like a bad acid trip.” Crikey commented. Joseph’s eyes widened at the words and looked at Twilight, who was just confused.
“Let me explain. Propulsion gel is this orange goo that lets you speed along the ground as long as there’s enough of it. Repulsion gel is blue goo that just has a very bouncy effect. Like a trampoline with extremely stretchy material.” Joseph said and showed Twilight the drawing, but this time, it was the right way up. “If this is what I think it is, then it may be a possible upgrade for the portal gun!” Joseph said excitedly, Any further explanation was cut short when Rainbow Dash flashed in and skidded to a halt just in front of the bookshelves. “That was fast. Find any other turrets?”
“Yeah. They’re all OVER the place! If you walk out there, it will be a minefield.” Rainbow responded as she tried to catch her breath from all that flying. Joseph nodded at that and tried to figure out why all these turrets appeared. “Also, some of the ponies don’t seem to be acting like their usual selves.” Rainbow added as an afterthought.
“What?” Twilight questioned in surprise.
“What?” Joseph echoed. He got up and raced to one of the windows, looking towards the town. Most of the ponies looked like they were walking normally, except for a few grey ones that twitched at random moments. It looked like the same family that initiated the mobs and chased him throughout the town. He furrowed his brow and stared at them intently, hoping to see any more signs of them not being actual ponies. Seeing that they were still twitching and not being able to tell if anything else was off, he breathed out and looked at the ponies behind him.
“Did you check your house Rainbow?” Twilight asked suddenly as Rainbow looked at her quizzically.
“Course I did. There wasn’t a turret there though as I doubt clouds can hold them up so I think Cloudsdale is safe as well.” Rainbow said with a smug grin. Twilight breathed a sigh of relief and sat down on her haunches.
“That’s good news.” Twilight muttered. She looked up at Rainbow, then back to the human. “You seem to know a LOT about what happened at Aperture. Mind explaining what you know to us and the princesses?” Twilight wanted an explanation for all the crazy stuff that’s been happening for the past ten or so hours.
Joseph nodded and held his breath as he felt himself teleported to Canterlot. Letting it out, he was glad that no coughing occurred that time, although he did feel a tiny bit queasy. Looking around, he found Celestia and Luna chatting amicably but they stopped as they turned to look at them.
“Good evening, Twilight and Rainbow Dash. What brings you here?” Princess Luna asked them, pointedly ignoring Joseph.
“What am I? Chopped liver?” Joseph asked, feeling a bit hurt at Luna not acknowledging his presence.
“We are here because something seems to be happening in Ponyville. There are turrets everywhere and some of the ponies seem to not act like themselves.” Twilight answered. “Joseph wants to explain to us what he knows about Aperture.” Twilight continued and stepped back a bit, giving Joseph the spotlight.
Looking at Twilight, she gave him the go ahead to explain all that he knew about Aperture. How it was a lab where they designed technology and eventually figured out how to contain a black hole. He gestured to his gun more than once as he was explaining this but he purposefully left out GLaDOS and how she possibly factored into all this. He also explained how he thought that the ponies could actually be robots designed to look and act like ponies.
“This is disturbing to say the least. Have these ponies done anything untoward the other citizens?” Luna asked, looking Joseph directly in the eye.
“I don’t think so. Not from what I’ve seen. And as far as I can tell, the turrets don’t respond to ponies either, unless they’re attacked viciously then they start attacking until they deactivate a few seconds later. I think I forgot to mention that.” Joseph frowned as he scratched the back of his head, smiling sheepishly. “Whoops?” Joseph asked uncertainly as he watched Celestia light up her horn with bright yellow smoke. Realising her intention, he held his hands up and backed away slowly. “This is not my fault. I only did what you asked! These two can attest to that!” Joseph pleaded, pointing to Rainbow and Twilight in fear of losing his life.
Seeing the human hit the wall and slowly shimmy to the side, Celestia turned her head to look at the ponies. “Is what he’s saying true?” Celestia asked quietly, hoping that the turrets were set up by a foul demon rather than the pitiful creature before them. Both Rainbow and Twilight nodded, all three sighing in relief when they saw Celestia power down her horn.
“They’re only sentry turrets! They’re meant to protect the ponies that they’re assigned to, to stop from any possible break-ins and the like.” Joseph blabbered, listing all the good things a turret can do. Celestia, Twilight and Rainbow looked at him, wondering why he kept talking about all the good things the turrets can do. He stopped speaking though when an unexpected blue beam hit his throat, effectively shutting it off.
Looking at Princess Luna, he glared at her and tried to shout something about having a free will to speak, or something to that effect as Crikey just laughed his head off.
“Joshu has no voice! He is now effectively a mute dumb-dumb.” Crikey chittered.
“Now he shall learn that kids are meant to be seen and not heard.” Luna said smartly, looking around at the others. “What? It’s not like he was going to be quiet any time soon.” She added, having a neutral look on her face.
Having stopped trying to get his voice to work, Joseph crossed his arms and sat down on the floor in a puff. ‘A bit twitchy on the trigger finger. Now how am I meant to communicate?” Joseph thought, staring furiously at the princess that cast the spell. His face then quickly changed to a grin as he grabbed his portal gun.
“Joshu? What are you doing?” Crikey asked fearfully, stuck looking at the blue alipony.
He fired a portal under Luna’s hooves and then fired one on the ceiling. Seeing her surprised face as she fell repeatedly, made him laugh silently.
“You know she won’t like that.” Crikey warned. Joseph just shrugged and got up, walking towards Celestia. Taking a breath, he tried to articulate the words I AM SORRY to her by pointing to himself repeatedly. Seeing it wasn’t working, he fizzled out the portals, only noticing out the corner of his eye that Luna caught herself by levitating in a field of dark blue smoke. He then turned to Twilight and gestured wildly to see if she can somehow make him form words. Not understanding the gestures, Twilight shook her head.
“Sorry, I do-” She was cut off by a manic finger. She looked at the finger, then thought back to what she said and it clicked. “He said he’s sorry. Most likely sorry for all the talking and potentially endangering Ponyville.” Twilight translated and saw Joseph smile as he wiped some sweat of his forehead.
“Apology accepted.” Celestia said in reply. Seeing him point to his mouth, she figured he wanted his voice back. “Sorry. I’m not the one that cast the spell. Only my sister can cancel it out.” Celestia said with a soft chuckle, watching him stomp about in a fury.
“I don’t want to give it back. It was too hard to understand anyway.” Luna said with a smirk. Joseph’s mouth fell open at that and made a big shrug. “Why?” Luna questioned. He nodded. “I think having you go without a voice for a while can help you understand us better. Less noise to contend with.” He crossed his arms and puffed some air from his nose.
“We understand princess. I believe we have to get back to Ponyville now and help him,” Rainbow pointed at Joseph, “get adjusted to not having a voice for a while. Right Twilight?” Rainbow asked. Twilight sighed and nodded, She charged her horn and with a bye to the princess and Joseph giving some sort of amgry gesture with a finger to Luna who looked as confused as Twilight felt, magicked the group back to Ponyville.