Time proceeded as normal, with more months passing by as Equestria changed as time went by. Two months after my suggestion of a new form of communication, the scientists were able to develop one, though it turned out that there was work already being done on such a thing. Four months after that, a new gun design was made, at which the princesses thought it was high time to start mass-producing them since the rest of Equestria's military had developed enough experience with the limited supply that was currently out there.
The result of the mass-production led to drastic changes to Equestria and possibly other nations. Not only were new weapons factories were spouting up at a few cities, but due to the need of metals and gems for the guns construction lead to a larger demand for the materials. This results in an increase in mining along with a raise in value for the commodities. The Equestrian military was also going through new changes in regards to their armor, to where the Royal, now Solar, and Lunar Guard's old armor would be purely ceremonial while they were receiving armor that would only be used for battle. This in turn also resulted more military production, hence increasing the need for gems and metals.
With the spending coming from the coffers of the government, this is causing a bit of a economic boom for Equestria, though the princesses made certain to regulate the booming economy. While some wealthy ponies are taking advantage of the new opportunities to start up their own companies and factories, it was possible that they could hire workers for low pay for what may be an unsafe job. Hence regulations were passed along with inspections so that the common workers would receive fair pay, health benefits provided by their employers, and the workplace conditions would be safe. Furthermore, the princesses passed regulations to prevent the factories and the mining from harming the environment. These regulations caused an increase in government staff, opening even more new jobs to the point that despite the immigration to Magus, some ponies from other nations along with other species were immigrating to Equestria to take advantage of the new labor demand. Regardless, Equestria's economy was growing, while other nations have taken to just purchase the finished weapons instead of constructing them since they were magic based. They however did increase their metal and gem mining to take advantage of the rising demand for them.
Ponyville didn't directly benefited from this situation, since the town opted out of the mining and factories, however due to the troops that I was training, it slowly held an effect along with the immigration to the town due to the popularity of Princess Twilight. For instance, the Cakes were starting to take on too many orders that they had to hire another pony to keep up with the growing demand. The new employee, a stallion named Cinnamon Sticks, who seemed like an okay guy, though he eyed me in surprised when the Cakes introduced me. Then Pinkie threw him a party for being a new employee, to which I just stuck around long enough to stuff some chocolate cake into my mouth when Cinnamon was staring at me. Which was half a cake, to Cinnamon's surprise. Hopefully that teaches him not to stare at me for being an alien pony.
Twelve more months passed by before the scientists developed mechanized vehicles that finally got me to believe that they would hold during an actual battle. Called tanks by the same pony that was naming everything else, the scientists have chosen to go with track methods for the vehicle's locomotion. Its design was certainly familiar to a few I seen in my past life, with a large tracked body with the main gun placed on top. Since it was designed for heavier weaponry, the scientists had install a dual magical cannon turret on top of the tank. While the tank looked effective, in reality it was still a prototype due to the scientists needing to work out the kinks in the design. Namely the fact that the tracks sometimes breaks apart, or the cannon occasionally explodes due to some defect. Luckily no one was hurt due to all the safety precautions the researchers take.
Moving on, nothing out of the norm happened for Ponyville. Which included the occasional monster attacks that I tend to tossed my troops at if the Elements don't arrive fast enough to stop it. I however had the troops be fully armed with the personal shield generator prototypes, since a lot of hard work would go down the drain if I lost even a single volunteer. Even with a growing town and her position as a princess, Twilight still refuses to form her own personal guard. Either she's over confident, still naive as Tartarus, or she doesn't want anyone hovering in case she finds the right pony to date. Though I'm uncertain on the last one, since I haven't heard of Twilight finally finding a romantic partner, that and Spike was still making the occasional trip to pick up more ice cream. I sometimes felt bad for the poor guy having to lug tubs of ice cream that he wouldn't be able to eat, especially that one day where Rarity was dumped by her special somepony. Sweet Luna, that mare can stuff down ice cream like there was no tomorrow.
"Keep moving maggots, we just have one hour of this, so I better see none of you giving up now!" I yelled, as I ran behind all my recruits as we were making a lap around the training fields. It was eleven in the morning as my troops and I were almost done with our running exercise, with Dusty and I in the rear while Starlight and Dusk were in the front. It was another endurance exercise, with only half the recruits being use to it, while the other were recent volunteers. I already cleared a bunch of recruits half a year ago, only to have twice the amount of volunteers to show up. This was starting to create a need for a third barracks to be built, or an enlarged one to be made while I had the troops tear down the old barracks as a training exercise.
Regardless, I was a bit glad that I grew large enough that I could keep up with my troops while they were trotting. Even though the fresh recruits would want to whine about having to trot for six hours straight, I doubt they would actually do so when a young mare that is half a foot shorter than them can handle it while shouting every few moments. However, unlike the second batch of troops, my new volunteers now mostly consist of Equestrians with a few changelings. With drill instructors for the other species, it became unnecessary for other nations to send volunteers to Equestria. Thankfully, it was decided that all recruits that passed the training would be assigned to the military outposts that were developing on Selene. This helped to foster more unity between the soldiers from separate species.
"You heard the captain! Move it!" Dusty shouted, causing a few stragglers to pick up the pace. With the Aegis Guard having a few hundred soldiers and over a thousand recruits, Celestia saw fit to finally give me the rank of captain over the guard. While I still had more officer training to do, I was still the only person that knew what to expect still, even though I had been writing down all the knowledge I possessed about the military forces that aliens possessed along with standard military tactics. The princesses found it odd that I knew quite a bit about military tactics since I was a civilian, but I simply told them that sometimes dimensional agents like I were sent to worlds that was in the middle of a war. When they asked why couldn't the organizations or nations send their own forces, I simply replied that by sending agents like myself, if caught they could simply deny having any relationship with them. This of course leads to agents being fired on sight, or executed when captured, depending on who catches them.
I finally gave the troops a break when the timer I set up rang to let us know that the six hours are up, as I ordered, "Dusty, Dusk, you two take over for the rest of the day. Starlight, you're with me to take care of some business." Receiving a salute, Starlight and I set off towards Twilight's castle.
"What's the plan today, Aether?" Starlight asked from my side. Even though she now knew that she was going to be my second-in-command, we kept our relationship informal for the most part since I wasn't one for formalities.
"Just getting together with Twilight to run some more tests on the changeling's disguises," I answered back. Even though I was skeptical about the changelings ability to adopt a disguise having a use against aliens that might be able to detect them, Chrysalis and the princesses still wanted to explore that possibility. In my opinion, odds are that the changelings would only able to use it to hide as the native wildlife, since odds are they wouldn't be able to infiltrate opposing military forces since not only would they need to know the alien's language, but have an in-depth understanding of their military jargon.
Arriving at the castle, we made our way to Twilight's lab, were we spotted a few changelings that Chrysalis probably sent over since I wasn't going to risk any changelings in the Aegis Guard. "You arrived just in time!" Twilight exclaimed as she was hooking up some wires to some pony that I assumed was a disguised changeling. While Twilight had run these tests before years ago on Windbag and was unable to find anything that would help expose him, with recent technological advances and exploration into other fields of magic and science, Twilight believed that she could give a more thorough screening this time around. Even though the scientists could have collaborated with the changelings to run these tests, it was believed that Twilight's in-depth knowledge of magic and the sciences along with my own presence may give us a more thorough screening.
"Which is good, since I doubt the changelings would like being test subjects without having a more rational person around to keep the test from being too invasive," I replied as I sat down on a nearby chair. While relations with the changelings were improving as the years went by, and there was news of some changelings getting into real relationships with ponies, there was still a bit of distrust between the two species in general. Due to the Canterlot wedding, some changelings were suspicious of Twilight due how the invasion caused her a lot of issues which would led her to most likely having some kind of grudge against the species, even though I personally knew that she doesn't have one. Regardless, the suspicion exists, and hence I had to be present for these tests since I was one of the few ponies that the changelings could fully trust to not be biased towards them.
Twilight glared at me for a bit before turning her attention to her lab equipment, saying, "Well, with you here now, we can finally get these tests started. Though I think I did a thorough job last time."
"She has a point, why can't we incorporate the changeling's ability to disguise themselves into our tactics?" Starlight asked.
"Cause I just rather be sure about this. I rather not spend the time and effort to train changelings if they just end up getting caught and executed, if they're not sent to some lab to be dissected," I answered, causing a couple changelings to shiver at the idea.
"You're just being a bit too paranoid, Aether," Twilight responded as she took notes on the readings.
"All it takes is one little thing, Twilight. That's all that matters," I simply replied, before I started to relax as I simply watch Twilight run through every test possible.
It took a couple hours for Twilight to run the tests on every changeling, as well as through different disguises, before she finally announced, "Well, that's that. I ran every test I could think of, and the changelings' disguise held against every single one of them."
"Are you certain about that?" I asked, cocking an eyebrow as I wonder if the Chrysalis and the princesses were right about this matter.
"Yes, their disguises are so thorough that even their thaumic radiation ma—"
"Wait, did you just said radiation?" I said, interrupting Twilight, who blinked at me in surprise.
"Yes, thaumic radiation... you do know what that is right?" Twilight replied, only to receive a shake from my head that caused Starlight to raise an eyebrow at me. "Aether, that's the radiation that is given off by all magical beings, which comes in different wavelengths and strength depending off the being in question. Li—"
"Okay, that's enough Twilight. I gotten all the information that I need to know," I responded.
"Wait, you do? What do you mean?"
"What I mean is that I now know that there is no way we can use the changeling disguises," I simply answered, causing everyone to look at me in confusion.
"What? Didn't you hear what I was saying earlier? I couldn't detect any physical or magical dif—wait..." Twilight started to say as her pupils started to widen to show that she realized something. "Since you said that aliens don't have magic... that means they might be giving off thaumic radiation... which means that they could just find any changeling, or anypony for that matter, by picking up on their thaumic radiation!"
"Indeed, and if we're being invaded by a hostile alien army, I'm pretty sure that they would have all the equipment needed to detect this thaumic radiation that we give off. Buck, this could mean that they could use it as a means to detect us in any place that lacks magic."
Sighing as her ears folded against her head, Twilight said, "All these tests, and it just take a simple thing like that to ruin such a promising prospect. It even means we can't hide once the aliens can detect our radiation... wait..." before her pupils widen suddenly along with her ears raising up. "Maybe it can be used to our advantage!"
"Huh? What do you mean?" I asked, an eyebrow cocking in curiosity at whatever Twilight was thinking of.
"We might be able to find something that could contain our radiation! Then when the aliens learned about thaumic radiation and uses it as a means to detect us, we could equip ponies with some kind of thaumic radiation containment that would allow them to sneak behind enemy lines!"
"Which could mean that for part of the war, we could sow chaos by disrupting supply lines and destroying any military fortifications they could build in any territory that they have taken control of. Good thinking Twilight!" I exclaimed.
"I'll send a letter to the scientists right away then!" Twilight declared as she teleported a quill and scroll to herself. She was about to write her letter when one of the disguised changelings interrupted her.
"Umm... Princess Twilight?" the changeling asked, causing Twilight to turn her attention to it.
"What is it? I was about to write a letter?" Twilight snapped back, only for the changeling to point a hoof to itself.
"Can you get this stuff off me first, please?" the changeling asked as she pointed to the helmet, the suction cups with wires connected to them and other stuff that the changeling still had on.
Blushing while I just chuckled at her mistake, Twilight replied, "Oh... sorry, let me take of that." Even after all these years, I still found Twilight's occasional mishap to be highly amusing. Guess some things will never change.