CH 16: Mix & Match
=== BABW: A New Movement ===
=== Chapter 16: Mix & Match ===
[ March 24, ??? + 1 – Equestria-Eastern Dragon Territory Checkpoint ]
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Celestia’s Sun was barely peeking above the horizon that could be seen from the large building where Spike now found himself. After some tearful goodbyes and see-you-laters from the Conduits and Bearers, especially his semi-adoptive older sister Twilight Sparkle, the now quite tall and adolescent drake stood facing out toward the ‘exit’ of the main pathway of the checkpoint, contemplating his near future.
“It’s fitting you’re doing this reflection right on top of a carpet representing part of our border with the Dragons,” Celestia mused as she watched Spike sit down crossed-leg in the dead center of the strip of carpet that was red and gold-fringed on one side, and a swirl of cerulean and violet on the other.
“I’ve always straddled the fence between ‘Dragon in a Pony world’ and ‘Pony in a Dragon body’, and this is the first time I will be by myself in a foreign land of any kind. So it’s all feeling pretty… heavy right now,” Spike responded.
“Speaking of heavy, do you think you have enough supplies loaded into that titanium cart the human metalworkers so graciously gifted us, Auntie?” Cadence asked with a few bits of derision in her otherwise melodious speaking voice.
“Can never be too careful in the Drav Desert… you know there have been reports of another band of Diamond Dog raiders setting up shop there, right?” Luna replied, as she perceived the sudden anxiety start to creep into Spike’s psyche.
“Yes I have read the reports. That is why I hired a guide for Spike once he makes his way to the first settlement at Drual-ga-Jafid. While this is for Spike to start learning who exactly he is, and for us to finally crack open the Nomad Central Council… it won’t do us any good if Spike returns to us injured or worse,” Celestia replied, maintaining an aura of calming gravitas.
“You’re all not making this any easier Princesses…” Spike responded, masking his anxiety with deadpan churlishness.
“It’s not going to be easy… though I would suspect with the guide it won’t exactly be long either. I guess I could liken it to pulling the teeth of a child. Has to be done, and it hurts, but done right it’s over with quickly,” Celestia replied back.
Spike merely rolled his eyes at the white Princess who suddenly sounded like Twilight Velvet when he went home with Sparkle those years ago.
Just like a teenager… Even after all these years adolescent and young-adult dragons haven’t changed much… Celestia remarked internally as she resumed showing her familiar warm smile.
“In any case, that is a pretty nice cloak that Rarity made for you. Looks like it should hold up in the sand-filled desert winds too,” Cadence remarked she saw the faint glow of Celestia’s horn drag the Sun a bit more over the horizon.
“Yeah, Rarity is a miracle worker when it comes to a piece on short notice. Plus, I could swear she was a broken up about me having to leave for the time being as Twilight was,” Spike responded as he stood up and checked the harness on the supply cart he was to carry.
“Well they all care for you, even if the Bearers of Magic and Generosity are more demonstrative about it,” Luna mused aloud as she pulled the Moon under the horizon to officially end the night.
“Well, you are right. Just wish the others would show it a little more. In any case, I should be getting ready to be on my way,” Spike replied as he walked over to the Dragon manning the ‘red’ side of the checkpoint to stamp his passport.
After all the formalities were done, and the goodbyes were said, Spike set off through the other end of the checkpoint; the well-lubricated cart making nary a sound save the rubber wheels rolling across tiny rocks on the now-savannah path.
“You think Spike is going to be okay in her claws? I heard she could be a merciless tease for young drakes, and Spike has hardly learned how to properly deal with that type of attention from anyone, let alone another Dragon,” Luna asked with legitimate concern on her face.
Something Celestia quickly picked up on. “Yes, I know it is a risk with her, but in the end, I trust her to start Spike on the path of realizing the kind of Dragon he wants to be. Despite her… personality quirks… I very much trust her to do right by Spike.”
“And by extension, do right by you, Auntie?” Cadence added with a bit of a sly tone.
“Yes, I do consider this asking a favor of an old friend as well,” Celestia replied while chuckling.
“I guess there is nothing more to it than to wait for a response from our ‘vanguard’, then, is there?” Luna concluded, yawning as she was ready to hit the sack for the day.
“Nope, it’s out of our hooves now. Let us trust the Fates will be kind,” Celestia replied as the three Princesses walked back to the sky-carriage.
[ April 3, 2081 – Isegawa Clinic and Labs, St. Louis, USA ]
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A couple of weeks, give or take a day or three, had passed since the “Black Sky Event” as a lot on the ‘Net called it. That event was followed by, what seemed like reports straight out of a movie of people suddenly discovering magic in their midst, and not merely the magic of Ponies.
“I am almost shocked we haven’t seen a video of someone being seriously hurt throwing a fireball like they were in one of those old Mario Bros. games…” Golden Storm said, as he looked through a catalogue of stories related to people ‘discovering’ magic that wasn’t like the Magic the few Ponies in their midst were using.
“Not to sound too crass, but give it time. Just as people are wont to do great and wonderful things with a new technology or power; they are just as prone to do awful and stupid things with new technology or power,” Blue Vague said as he wrote something on a paper pad with a mechanical pencil in his telekinetic grip.
“So what is that you’re writing anyway, Vague?” Midori Hana asked as she peered in over Vague’s shoulder.
“Just some brainstorming ideas. Twilight suggested that we do some kind of tutorial videos in how to safely use our various styles of magic; seeing as there really isn’t any infrastructure for teaching people magic… and in some cases teaching people en masse at all outside of the Internet,” Vague responded as Hana moved on side of him to look at the pad he was writing on.
Why are you bothering teaching those people anyway… they’re just going to abuse it like they always do… Vague heard resound in his head; however, the vaguely feminine voice that spoke dissipated as soon as it ‘arrived’.
“Did anypony say something?” Blue Vague asked of the room at large, which held everyone except Rarity who was in her private room working on designs, and Applejack who was nearby outside looking at the trees around the Isegawa’s property.
Everyone else shook their heads in denial or shrugged at not knowing.
“That’s just weird…” Blue Vague muttered to himself as he continued writing.
---
Meanwhile, Applejack sat at the base at a large, old, and sickly tree as she contemplated what the Conduits had shown her about Terran-style Magic since the unsealing roughly two weeks ago.
“That mana is powerful… but from what Ah’ve read, a source of mana could be as powerful as anything, but ya need something to make it do something…” Applejack thought aloud as she thumped the sickly tree with her front hoof.
The hollow thud reminded her of breaking old, rotting stumps on the farm – a feeling she didn’t much like, even though she was used to it by now.
“This tree is practically dead while it stands. Makes me shudder thinkin’ about it…” Applejack said as she placed both of her hooves against the base of the tree.
She concentrated as she peered into the unseen, to find what looked like a light, a dim, flickering light, but a shining light nonetheless.
“So this tree is still alive… barely, and much of it’s tissue is dead and rottin’, but there is still something tickin’ inside,” Applejack continued as she now paced around it.
“Ah could just charge it with mah Life Magic, but…” Applejack started, as she looked around at all the other trees around here that were dead or near-death. “Ah’ll wear myself out easy trying to repair the trees around tha property.”
Applejack walked back to the tree she was sitting at before, crossing her legs like a human would their arms, as she closed her eyes to think some more.
“There has to be some way to use the Magic Hana and the other use to help these trees…” Applejack mumbled as she continued her thought train. “But how?”
---
“This looks like a bit much Rarity. I mean… this is just a teaching video, I think low key is a better track to take,” Vague looked as he tilted his head around, trying to visibly show his confusion at the design that Rarity showed him for a costume to be worn while discussing Water Magic.
“Oh… I knew it. But I just can’t help myself sometimes…” Rarity pouted as she put the design in a folder marked ‘Stage Play Costumes’.
That was probably a better place for it anyway. She’d make me look like a Ponified Aquaman with that getup… Blue Vague reasoned internally as he watched Rarity sit back down to her drawing table to come up with something a little more appropriate for the occasion.
---
“Let’s see… fertilizer is just various compounds, most of which are solids, and nitrogen, and it’s mixed with aerated, stable soil to create a fertile growin’ area - so all of that would be Earth Magic. Then you use the water to both hydrate the cells of the tissue and to transport the various compounds pre and post-metabolisim, so that’s Water Magic. The Sun is the energy source that the leaves use to create its internal sugars, but the Earth’s sun is plenty strong by itself, so I don’t need magic for that…” Applejack began to think, as she went through all the highlights of her education both in general and as a farmer.
“But trying to do all of that would be a plum mess with just simple Terran Magic. Plus these trees are so sick as it is, they would take forever to recover without… wait a minute…” She continued to think before stricken with some inspiration.
“A catalyst… but for the magic. Life Magic can jump-start the cells natural processes, but these trees are so big Ah’d need a ton of it per tree. But if Ah let Terran Magic make up the bulk, then Ah just need a little bit of Life Magic to catalyze the spell…” Applejack reasoned as she thought back to using Life Magic to mend broken apple tree branches. “At least Ah hope Ah only need a lil’ bit.”
Applejack began to concentrate, as she began to gather loose mana and aspect it to Water and Earth.
Ah didn’t think it’d be this easy to turn mana a certain color before now… But that’s only the start; the hard part is mixin it all up…
---
That’s weird… I feel a strong pulse of Terran Magic somewhere… but it doesn’t quite feel like anything any of the Conduits have used before… Twilight thought, as she looked around, trying to get a sense of what could be outputting that force.
“You look like you just lost something, Twi. What’s up?” Red Blaze asked as she returned from rejecting another design by Rarity for her Fire Magic video.
“Not quite lost, more like found something but I don’t really know what it is. Try scrying for a source of Terran Magic and you’ll see what I mean…” Twilight replied as she began to get up and pace around.
Blaze sat there on the spot and tried what Twilight asked, finding she could feel a flow of Terran Mana that was coalescing somewhere outside of the dorm, but not too far away from the lab.
“Say… wasn’t Applejack outside doing something around the trees by the property line?” Blaze asked as she rose from her seat; horn still alight in her sunrise-red-orange aura.
Twilight face-hoofed as she had forgotten that fast that Applejack was outside and probably would be experimenting with something, given how interested she was looking at the near-dead trees around the Isegawa’s property. “I guess we could go see what she’s up to, doubt she’s doing anything terribly private.”
Red Blaze nodded as the two of them began toward the doors leading outside.
They were met by one startled-looking Applejack who appeared to be panting in one part mild exhaustion and one part great surprise.
“Applejack, are you alright? You look like you just saw a ghost… or something like it,” Twilight asked as she helped the farmpony get back to a normal breath pattern so she could speak.
“Try bringin’ dead trees back to life, Twi! Come see!” Applejack said excitedly as she shoved Twilight out the door and flat on her face on the doormat just outside of the frame.
“Oh sorry… little excited here…” Applejack smiled as she giggled a bit at Twilight’s perturbed face as she righted herself. “Hey Vague, Hana! Can you come out here with us?”
A couple of okays and a brief walk later, the five Ponies were standing in front of quite the surprising sight to the electric blue and grass green pair.
“These trees look like someone just took them out of an Agri-Dome and planted them here…” Blue Vague mused aloud as he torqued his neck to the left, trying to figure out if there was something he wasn’t quite picking up.
“Yeah but no way anyone could have moved in trees like that, and you or Twilight would have picked up something like that being teleported… I guess…” Hana added, as her head was torqued to the right, trying to figure out what happened in that short amount of time.
“No, can’t feel anything having happened except someone casting… something… but that only someone, or somepony, would have been…” Twilight started.
“Me!” Applejack finished, beaming with pride by the now revived tree, which was already producing leaf buds.
“Right…” Vague started as he looked incredulously at the orange farmpony. “Not that I don’t believe that Earth Ponies can’t cast magic; but I thought Life Magic was more slow acting at this scale…”
“Ya right, it does act slow if it was just Life Magic but…” Applejack started.
“Strong traces of Earth and Water Magic, combined with just a hint of Life Magic… but that’s at the edges… it feels completely different in the middle…” Twilight finished as she finished a cursory scan of the mana lingering in the area of the revived trees.
“Yeah, that’s what Ah noticed to… my body had those ancient letters, or whatever, in green and blue all over… but when the spell, Ah guess, clicked… well they all turned the same color…” Applejack started, as she closed her eyes.
Vague and Hana could both feel Water and Earth mana starting to form around Applejack, but that wasn’t the end of it.
“That is how it started, right? Ah took mana, turned it into Water and Earth mana; and then Ah used my own Life Magic and…” Applejack continued, as her body began to glow a soft green like her eyes. The electric blue and the grass green runes that formed on her coat began to ripple in the presence of the Life Magic, and slowly shifted shape, and more importantly changed color – all becoming a rich, dark forest-green[1].
“Oh my goodness… that’s amazing Applejack…” Twilight spoke in hushed awe, as she could feel the three distinct Magicks fused into one singular wavelength, as it were.
Blue Vague closed his eyes, as he began to test the mana around the middle of the revived ‘grove’, and found it to be more or less the same as what was flowing over Applejack now. “That is amazing… it feels natural like my Water Magic… but it was clearly formed from a mix of other things… or rather…”
“… she found an intermediary form of Terran Magic, using Life Magic to help catalyze the reaction…” Twilight concluded, as she picked up Vague’s thought.
“Well, we can call it Plant Magic for now. Tree kinda sounds limiting, and then there is this…” Applejack started, as she pointed everyone down at the wildflowers that were starting to sprout around her, as the light-green glow around her body faded, but the runes stayed on her coat, and at their given hue.
Wildflowers that were quickly scorched by a sneezing Red Blaze.
“Blaze, what the heck?” Applejack shouted as she backpedaled out of the way of the accidental stream of fire. Vague quietly casted a small sprinkle to douse whatever flames persisted from burning the grass around the flowers.
“Sorry, allergies. Certain flowers make me sneeze fierce when they bloom. Wasn’t as bad in Equestria and I had some anti-allergy medicine. This is a… a… a…” Blaze started to say before another stream of flame shot from her mouth, and nearly singed Hana’s tail.
“You’re paying for extensions if you scorch my mane or tail, sister!” Hana stated sternly as the five walked back to the dorms.
“Sorry…” Blaze replied sheepishly; trying to keep her mana ‘count’ to a minimum to prevent any further casting.
Alright… so I guess we can find intermediate styles of Terran Magic depending on how we mix what we know exists. But something tells me that’s only a little bit of it… Twilight thought as she felt the leftover mana near where they were all standing dissipate into the environment.
-----
It was a short while later, and Blaze and Rarity were in Rarity’s room working on something other than costumes that were ultimately getting rejected.
“Seeing as this whole costume thing has been a waste of time, let’s work on something else while I lick my emotional wounds,” Rarity replied somewhat dejectedly.
“Sorry about all of that though. But still, those costumes were rather gaudy given the purpose,” Blaze responded as she patted Rarity across the back of her shoulders.
“I know, I know. In any case – how about a lighting spell for use when it’s dark out?” Rarity asked as she tried to think of something else.
“Hrm, yeah. But how do we make a safe light? I mean, the easiest thing I think you can have an accident with would be Fire Magic,” Blaze thought, as she watched the bright red runes appear on Rarity’s coat, contrasting with her periwinkle aura of Unicorn Magic.
“Oh I think I have an idea to solve that little issue!” Rarity replied with the utmost confidence.
---
“Is the whole world having some kind of competition for who can do the most ridiculous and unsafe thing with a new form of power before they end up killing themselves?” Golden Storm asked aloud of no one in particular as he, Vague, and Rainbow Dash watched some more videos of different incidents involving Terran Magic.
“Well, if there is one bright side, at least there are a few people who have a sense of magic without us having to teach them. But yeah… this can go very wrong very fast with a fireball in the wrong place,” Vague replied as he looked on with concern.
“My mom told me this one day when I accidentally burned myself on a hot stove: ‘Sometimes a foal has to touch a hot stove to know it’s hot’,” Rainbow Dash stated, reflexively holding her left front hoof limp when she did.
“Unfortunately, it’s too true. I guess some people will have to be literally or figuratively burned before they know well enough to learn and use it properly. Though the former is still going to be hard right now,” Vague reasoned as he looked around.
The three of them were broken out of their discussion by a pair of high-pitched screams.
“Did that sound like Rarity and Blaze screaming about something?” Vague asked, as he looked out at the door to the rec room.
“That it did, let’s see what Rarity did now…” Golden Storm replied as he sighed and walked out of the room, followed by Dash and Vague.
---
“Do you have a hold of it?!” Blaze complained, though her voice was muffled by her hoof rubbing the front of her snout.
“I… I think I do!” Rarity replied, as she struggled to hold the white basketball-sized sphere in her TK grip.
“Just what in the heck happened, I mean I know the idea was the compress and wrap the fireball so it would glow evenly and safely, but now it’s… it’s…”
“Basically a ball of pure light… and it doesn’t feel like Fire Magic anymore, nor does it really feel like it’s my own mana concentrated into aether[2] either,” Rarity concluded, as her head jerked a bit trying to control the sphere in her aura.
“Then why is it so wild? Luna’s Stagelight spell didn’t bound about like a basketball made out of photons…” Blaze added as she tried to look at the sphere to see what was up.
“Can’t say, just need to make this...” Rarity started before she lost her grip on the ball and it started bounding around the room again.
“Ahh! At least it’s not dense enough to damage anything, though it still-OWW-hurts when it hits us!” Blaze complained as the ball bounded off her head again.
“EEE! I know! I just want to know why it won’t slow dowwwn!” Rarity added after the ball smacked her along her flanks.
---
“Alright ladies, what seems to be the problem,” Storm asked as he looked incredulously at the door that Vague and Dash stood with him by, not knowing what was going on the other side.
“Minor problem, nothing really, just go fetch Twilight for us… and PLEASE don’t open that door,” Rarity asked as politely she could manage given the circumstances on the other side of the light metal door.
Rainbow Dash mumbled something into Golden Storm’s ear, and Storm walked to the other side of the door frame where Rainbow stood, and Dash held her hoof over the door grip. “I just wonder what the two of you could be up to where you’d need Twilight and yet we can’t open this door.”
“Don’t joke around Rainbow Dash, just go get Twilight and leave the door closed, please!” Blaze asked with a little more terseness behind her voice than the white seamstress.
“Well I don’t see what the-OWWW!” Rainbow Dash started as she slid the door open (which wasn’t locked to begin with), and was promptly smacked in the face by the ball of light as it began to ricochet all over the common area of the dormitories.
“Owww, ow ow ow! How can something with no weight hurt like that?!” Rainbow Dash shouted as she held her hoof over her nose.
“I don’t know but can someone please get that purple bookworm so we can get that thing taken care of?” Rarity asked; her patience at about its breaking point.
A few moments later, Vague was rapping at Twilight’s door. “Twi’, you’re needed outside. Something about a rogue ball of magically conjured light causing some… issues.”
“I see,” she added flatly, as she used her telekinesis to snag the ball. The sphere in her grip with noticeable-yet-lessened intensity than it was in Rarity’s grip.
“Ok Twi’, so what did our costume-and-dress-designing compatriot manage to do here?” Blaze asked, as the pain finally subsided from when the ball hit her the first time.
“This is just like earlier…” Twilight figured aloud, as she used her TK field to analyze the still jostling ball of light.
“Like earlier how?” Blaze added, as Applejack and come back from outside and was looking at the four Ponies staring at the sphere of light, and a certain cyan Pegasus still sulking to the side, holding her nose.
I wonder what Rainbow Dash did this time… Applejack wondered silently as she walked over to hear Twilight’s apparent explanation.
“Well, I can feel traces of Rarity’s Explicit Magic and general Terran Fire Magic, but like the little stunt Applejack pulled off earlier, it’s resulted in something unique unto itself…” Twilight started.
“What little stunt, Twi’?” Golden Storm asked.
“Go look at the trees by the property line in back of the dorms, you’ll see,” Applejack responded curtly so that Twilight could finish her preliminary explanation.
Storm made a mental note of that, while Twilight resumed her explanation. “Right. So where was I… ok, the Fire Magic and Rarity’s Explicit Magic somehow fused and we ended up with… well this. I guess we could call this wavelength ‘Light Magic’. Though I don’t like using the term ‘wave-length’ when we don’t have a real spectrum…”
Twilight thought for a bit more as she let the ball dissipate on its own.
“The common element I see is that we are finding new forms of Terran Magic by using our own natural Pony Magic to an existing Terran Magic field we’ve found. I’d guess that if we keep doing this in different combinations, there’s no telling how many variants we could find,” Twilight reasoned aloud, with a smile creeping onto her face all the while.
“Yeah that makes sense, Twilight. I just hope we can do it in a way that doesn’t actually hurt or damage anyone or anything,” Vague reasoned as he looked over at Applejack checking on Dash.
“So what happened this time, Dash?” Applejack asked as she stood next to the pouting Rainbow Dash.
“Opened a door I shouldn’t have…” Dash replied with a churlish tone.
“Well you did sorta open the door when they asked you to not to…” Storm replied as he sat next to Rainbow Dash, who had her front legs crossed.
“Yeah, whatever…” Rainbow Dash replied, obviously more mentally hurt than anything else.
What is it with me and touching hot stoves…
[ April 4, 2081 – Isegawa Clinic and Labs, St. Louis, USA ]
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The day rolled over to the next, and the weather was mostly the same, about 90 and unreasonably high humidity. Normally this wouldn’t have been a problem for the Ponies at the Isegawa’s Dormitory… just that today happened to be system maintenance day, and it was the phase of the day where everything was closed down in the Dorms so the diagnostic drones could run their checks.
Which mean you had ten rather uncomfortable Ponies lounging around the still recovering trees in back of the Isegawa’s property, away from the clinic and prying eyes.
“I remember reading that the temperatures during April would be closer to the high-70s to the 80s during April, if that warm. I honestly believe those were hateful lies to make us feel even worse about things now. Though why anyone would do that, I have no idea,” Vague complained as he stared at the off-blue sky.
“No dear, that’s just reading too much into things. Besides, I think we feel bad enough now in this kind of humidity without anyone having to lie about climate records…” Rarity replied, as she fanned herself beneath her free-standing parasol, fretting about her slowly fraying mane.
“I would say that Earth’s Sun was possessed by an evil demon. But that’s just crazy; probably as crazy as humans thinking we have anything that could actually control our Sun,” Twilight responded as she downed another glass of water out of her insulated pitcher.
Fluttershy thought for a few moments as she watched Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Golden Storm batting an inflatable plastic ball back and forth in a bid to distract themselves from the heat and humidity. She fluttered over to a branch of a recovering tree, and planted herself on one when she felt she found one that was stable.
Alright, just like I went over in my head… I can do this…
She spread her wings out, letting Wind-aspected mana flow through her system, ‘dyeing’ her feathers in a luminescent pale yellow. She began to flap, causing a swift breeze to rush over the area where everyone was lounging about.
“I like the idea, ‘Shy. But I don’t think a breeze is gonna help with these conditions much…” Rainbow Dash mentioned aloud, as she, Storm, and Applejack continued with their ball game.
She’s right… so I think I need to add something to absorb the heat…
She let some Water-aspected mana mix with the Wind-mana in her system, turning a few of her feathers blue in the process. The wind then began to blow a light mist, as if someone had set up a very large cold-water humidifier nearby.
“’Shy, you’re gonna soak my, well, everything at this rate…” Rarity complained in her most friendly tone, as she looked over the rim of her sunglasses at the dear friend of hers whom was trying so very hard to help.
Fluttershy briefly flashed a face of pure indignation at Rarity, before she concentrated back on her task.
Cold, I need to make it genuinely cold. But how… Fluttershy thought, as she tried to figure out what to do. Her eyes flared open as she figured out what she believed would be the best method.
Well if water won’t cut it as a cooling agent…
She concentrated deeper as she pulled in a large amount of Wind mana, a slightly smaller amount of Water mana, and used her Weather Magic to swirl it together.
I just hope I’m not using too much…
She spread her wings out once again, letting the newfound mixture wash over her system. The air temperature around her began to drop precipitously, as bits of frost formed on the tree branch. A bit that the observant Twilight picked up on.
“Fluttershy, you don’t have to do all of this, we’ll be able to go back inside before long.
“No Twilight… I almost got this…” Fluttershy responded, not once opening her eyes as she continued to concentrate on the new batch of mana she had formed.
The butter-yellow Pegasus began to flap her wings against, this time blowing a wind that felt like the very definition of a biting and .
“Did we just suddenly gain elevation? It shouldn’t be that cold at this latitude…” Rainbow Dash wondered as she was briefly confused by the sudden drop in temperature, before she saw Fluttershy glowing a strange shade of blue close to her own.
The glow began to settle into aquamarine-blue runes covering her body, as the water in the atmosphere began to coalesce into bits of ice.
“And suddenly it dropping to about 50 Fahrenheit makes sense…” Golden Storm mused aloud as he began to feel a bit of a shiver coming on.
“Alright, Fluttershy, I think you’ve cooled it down more than enough…” Rarity replied, as she watched tiny ice-stalactites form on her parasol, the temperature continuing to drop around them all.
“Ahhh… I don’t think I know how to make it stop…” Fluttershy said, as she looked worried as the grounds were beginning to legitimately ice over.
“Hey Twi I…” Vague started to say until he suddenly fell silent.
“You what Va…” Twilight tried to ask before she was suddenly cut off as well.
The blue and violet Unicorns looked at each other as the both muttered faint prayers of thanks as both stared at rather thick and rather sharp stalagmites that suddenly erupted from the coating of ice that continued to form on the ground.
“Oh I’m so sorry, I almost… I almost…” Fluttershy began to cry as she realized that the ice was growing out of control.
“Don’t… it was an accident, no one is hurt,” Twilight replied as she tried to calm the sensitive Pegasus down.
“Yeah, let’s just stay out of the way until the mana stops surging…” Blue Vague added as he and the others walked around to the same side of the ice patch to look at it from a hopefully safe distance.
A few moments later, all ten of the Ponies sat or stood before the ice patch behind the Isegawa’s dormitory, and the runes faded from Fluttershy’s body.
“Well clearly you had the right idea… you just kinda… went overboard,” Twilight mused as she looked at the ice that had already begun to melt back into plain water or dissipate into its constituent mana.
“Now that I have a chance to look at it, it’s weird. Some of this ice is magical ice and evaporating into mana, now that Fluttershy stopped; and the rest of the ice was actually formed from water, and is simply melting back into that in the rest of this heat,” Storm figured as he looked at an ice stalagmite that began to shrink and melt as well.
“I’d like to figure out the difference between these forms of ice, honestly. Just so long as we can do it where no one gets gored,” Vague concluded. Everyone else nodded knowingly, as they began to gather the now waterlogged blankets and parasol to take back inside. Blaze and Rarity stayed behind, though, to melt away the rest of the ice before anyone accidentally slipped.
“I wonder why she thought to use that much mana, anyway,” Blaze asked in a bit of a knowing tone, looking sternly at a certain white Unicorn.
“Yes… haha… I wonder as well…” Rarity replied with a nervous laugh, as the two of them continued to melt the physical ice around them.
-----
It was now patently obvious why it remained so humid through the day, as the Ponies of the Isegawa Dorms all hunkered down inside. The entire horizon seemed like it had turned charcoal black, as a massive line of thunderstorms were about to pass over the St. Louis metropolitan area in a short while. Well, nine of the ten were in the Dorms battening the proverbial hatches.
“They are just so… big…” Rainbow Dash said to herself in a hush tone, as she sat atop the gently sloped roof of the Dorm. “I haven’t seen any wild storm like on Equestria since I was a little filly. Never felt wind like that. Never heard rain like that…”
“Say, Dash, you still up there cloud-gazing?” Storm said through a two-way radio the Isegawa’s had rigged up on the roof for those inside the building to communicate to anyone up on the roof. “You know that storm will be on top of us any minute now?”
“Yes I know the storm is gonna be on us any minute now, I’m not blind you know…” Dash replied with a snide tone.
“There is just… just this raw energy in that storm. I know from weather class that storms are just one means for the atmosphere to dump excess energy out of itself,” Dash continued to herself. “If I could just get a piece of it I could… wait!”
Rainbow Dash was struck with inspiration, as she felt the atmosphere become more and more charged with loose ions, as the storm continued to creep toward St. Louis, and the Laboratory.
---
“Does Rainbow Dash have a habit of this?” Blue Vague asked as he hoofed over the control pad, looking for a movie to watch.
“What? Usually she’s the one directly managing the storms, instead of just observing them. Wild storms don’t occur that much by big towns or cities,” Applejack responded.
“Can’t think this is anything but unsafe, but if anyone would understand the magnitude and danger of a thunderstorm, even a controlled one, it’d be Rainbow Dash,” Midori Hana added with quite a bit of confidence.
---
“I get the feeling I’m about to do something insanely stupid, and yet, in the end, necessary,” Rainbow Dash muttered to herself as she let the mixture of Wind and Fire Magic wash over her; her feathers alternating between red and yellow now.
“Alright, this all hinges on if I think Fire Magic is related to energy and not just heat. Lightning is air ions charged to the point they jump to a spot where opposite ions gather. So if I could just mix the atmospheric conditions with the electric charge, then…” Rainbow Dash started as she started to feel sparks of something arc between tufts on her coat, as she was becoming so charged her mane, coat, and tail were all starting to separate and stand on end.
Hey this is actually starting to work like I thought it would… Rainbow Dash thought to herself as she watched tiny spark jumps from one of her hooves to another, similar to the filaments of a plasma ball.
Unfortunately, the cyan Pegasus didn’t realize she was starting to generate a positive charge.
---
“Well until Rainbow Dash is struck with some sense, can you extend the lightning rod? Even though I think the HEA would be good for it, I don’t want to go through the hassle of replacing anything in here if we can help it,” Blue Vague asked of Red Blaze who was sitting next to the climate control console.
Blaze nodded and pressed a button, and looked at the display that showed the lightning rod being raised.
---
Rainbow Dash, electrical power crackling along her mane and all, was oblivious to the rather large metal rod extending itself not one foot away from her person. Despite this, she was not only full of magically-generated electrical energy, but she was full of vigor and confidence.
And just had to let the world know it, even if no one would necessarily hear her.
“How’s this Nature! I can copy your lightning just as well as you can now. How awesome is that?!” Rainbow Dash shouted with great vigor as she floated herself roughly six-inches higher than the lightning rod.
Nature deigned to answer the brash young Pegasus the best way that it knew how… by showing her what its version of lightning looked like, up close and personal.
---
The nine Ponies inside the dorm saw a flash, heard a bang, and watched a pale-blue glowing Pegasus land with a rather resounding thud on the ground near the side of the dormitory.
“I would like to imagine that wasn’t what I thought it was, but we should check anyway, and like… right now!” Golden Storm shouted as he and Fluttershy rushed outside of the dorm. Only to return a few minutes later with a slightly cross-eyed, singed, and twitching Rainbow Dash, who looked like somepony who had just jammed a fork into an electrical socket.
“Well she’s still alive… I think…” Midori Hana said as she carefully place a hoof over Dash’s chest, wincing as some of the charge jumped into her own body like a static shock. A sense of mild relief replaced her shock as she felt the beat of Rainbow Dash’s heart was seemingly uninterrupted.
“Yeah she’s still breathing and her heart is beating, so there that’s much.”
“Dashie, can you speak to us?” Fluttershy asked, as she leaned in to the still softly glowing, her own hair starting stand on end from the electric charge remaining in her body and along the pale-blue runes of her body.
“ThatwassofunIwannadoitagainIhaven’tfeltlikethisinagesdidyouknowthattheactualboltoflightningisduetotheairbeingsuperheatedandcausingittoturnintoplasma?” Rainbow Dash stated as her eyes still didn’t quite align to a single obvious line of sight, and her speech patterns seemed to imply she had been stuck with an adrenaline needle.
“Did anyone catch what she just said? I don’t exactly speak motor-mouth,” Fluttershy asked, her ears drooping to the side of her head.
“Let me give a shot… ‘That was so fun. I want to do it again. I haven’t felt like this ages. Did you know that…’, wait hold on, ok. ‘Did you know that the actual bolt of lightning is due to the air being superheated’ I assume to plasma and glowing,” Blue Vague replied.
“Wow, that… sounded like what she said exactly,” Twilight replied as she tried to piece together how Rainbow Dash turned herself into a (thankfully still) living lightning rod.
“Hana tends to motor-mouth, in English no less, after a few too many tumblers of coffee during anime binges…” Vague replied nonchalantly.
“I do not! I am perfectly intelligible!” Hana pouted; her consternation obvious on her face.
“Yeah to anyone hopped up on amphetamines…” Storm added, having joined Vague and Hana during one of those sessions before.
“CansomeoneputsomesryuponmypancakeswhenIwakeupI’mprobablygoingtobereallyhungrywheneverIdogetupsogoodnight!” Rainbow Dash blurted out in the span of a couple of seconds, before promptly ‘crashing out’ asleep.
“And she’s out like a light. It doesn’t feel like her heart rate dipped below a normal Pony’s who’s asleep, so I don’t think she’s in any danger. Though she’s probably going to be extremely angry tomorrow,” Twilight explained, as she and Hana continued to check over the nearly electrocuted speedster.
“Why would that be?” Applejack asked with prime curiosity.
“That little stunt of hers blew a fuse in her magic channeling system; she won’t be able to take flight properly for a couple of days,” Twilight explained.
“Yep, that’d get ‘er good and riled up,” Applejack replied, nodding sagely.
“In any case we should probably let the Doctors look her over, and maybe someone from the Bureau if the storm passes by the morning. I mean it doesn’t look like she’s sustained any major damage, but we don’t have any fine instruments and neither me or Hana are trained for deep medical scanning,” Twilight figured, as put a blanket on a first-aid stretcher that was located in a first-aid closet, and she and Vague walked her under the canopied walkway to the Clinic proper.
[ April 6, 2081 – Isegawa Clinic and Labs, St. Louis, USA ]
===========================================================
The last couple of days for the Ten had passed largely without incident, after Rainbow Dash was given a clean bill of health. Her speech and her flight had slowly but surely returned to normal and she couldn’t wait to experiment more with Lightning Magic, albeit in a much more controlled and safe manner.
She wasn’t the only mare of the Ten who was ready to do some magical experimentation though.
So if I do this… and mix it like that… then I can move it like this… Pinkie Pie mused internally, as the green and red runes of Earth and Fire Magic as well as her the soft sky-blue glow of her own Life Magic showed she was hard at work at her own attempt at finding another ‘wavelength’ of Terran Magic to work with.
And her early morning casting was appearing to bear fruit…
Wait! I think I almost got it! All the scrap metal should be just about melted down… Pinkie continued as she watched the scrap metal she quietly shanghai’ed from the local junkyard melt down into a mostly incoherent mixture of metal and hard plastics.
“Wow… it looks so pretty like this…” she said softly, the orange of the melted metal contrasting with the persistent sky-blue glow of her own Life Magic and the green and red runes of the Terran Magic she was casting.
Now if I remember what the Zebras do for their Projection… I have to concentrate on the body that is outside of me… Pinkie mused, as she picked her front hooves off the ground and began to wave them around in a gentle pattern, causing the blob of molten metal to move gently in the same general direction. As she did, the green and red runes began to change shape slightly, and color, slowly morphing into a silver-ish gray.
“This is so fun! No wonder Twilight spends so much time with her magic research!” Pinkie said as she giggled, watching as the slimy molten metal began to more accurately follow the track created by her hoof-wave patterns.
“Ok then, now what shape to make it, what shape? OH I KNOW!” Pinkie exclaimed, as she turned on a miniature lantern and began to sketch out a familiar figure; boosted by her eidetic memory.
“Hana is gonna be so surprised when I show her this!” Pinkie continued on, before an important thought crossed her mind, as the sky-blue glow faded from her body, leaving only the silver-gray runes along her hooves. “Where am I going to find the right color paint?”
---
Later that morning, a small cadre of Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle, Midori Hana, and Red Blaze were all lead out to a natural clearing in the unclaimed property near the dorms by a very chipper and excited Pinkie.
“I wonder what Pinkie has to show us out here,” Twilight wondered as she looked through and around all the dead and dying trees.
“What I have to show you is… THIS!” Pinkie chirped as she signaled everyone to stop, showing them several piles of scrap metal, a large pit that appeared to be crude-yet-effectively reinforced, and something, possibly a pair of somethings, that was(were?) about two feet tall underneath a completely opaque tarp.
“Somepony has been hard at work these last couple of days, haven’t they?” Blaze asked with a bemused tone, impressed by the industriousness of the pink mare.
“Yep, when I get an idea, I go all out! Plus you all have so many of these tools lying around just not being used, I thought why not,” Pinkie replied as she moseyed over to the pit, and used a cart to dump some of the scrap metal.
“So this is what I figured out while Dashie was getting better from being a lightning rod,” Pinkie started, while Dash audibly grumbled. “If Applejack could mix Water and Earth Magic, and get something that helped plants and trees, then what would I get if I did this?”
Pinkie let Earth Magic run over one half of her body, and Fire Magic run over the other half; using the energy to melt the metal and the Earth Magic kinesis to move the metal.
“Right, so I could melt the metal, but it would be really hard to work the metal without tools. But that’s when I managed to do this!” the cotton-candy pink now-metallurgist continued.
The runes on her body turned silver as she began to work the melted metal into a defined shape. After a few moments, the Metal Magic cooled and stabilized the mass that was now shaped into a more rigid form – that of a steel-alloy exclamation point.
Which, in turn, perfectly described what Twilight was feeling at the moment.
“How… Pinkie… I don’t… what?!” the stumped librarian tried to ask, but failing largely to form a coherent question.
“Well, the whole waving my legs to make the metal move wasn’t anything I planned, it just sorta… came to me out of the blue, well more like the purple since it was early in the morning,” Pinkie replied as the silver-gray runes faded from her body for the time being.
She did it to me again… she came up with a form of Magic I can’t even begin to concretely explain… I don’t know how she does it… Twilight thought as she looked about as dejected as one mare could.
“Anyway, that was just a demonstration, here is a finished product,” Pinkie stated confidently, as she dashed over to the tarp-covered objects. And with a quick tug, she uncovered them.
Much to the delight of Midori Hana. “Oh they’re so cute~!”
Midori positively squealed as she closely inspected the two figures, one a super-deformed model of Mazinger Z; and the other being an equally super-deformed model of one of the more iconic enemy machines from his anime series, the Doublas M2.
“That’s… amazing… especially given the amount of time she had to make the models,” Blaze remarked, astounded at the level of quality that was evident in the figures.
“Hey Rainbow, I wanna try something out, can do that Lightning Magic thing you did a couple of days ago, but make it work with the Doublas?” Pinkie Pie asked, as Rainbow Dash looked over the models that were about halfway up to their necks.
“Which one is it again? I don’t remember seeing this cartoon before,” Rainbow asked, a bit confused.
While Hana turned Dash quite the nasty look, Pinkie just smiled and answered. “The green one, just see if you can make the green Doublas move with your Lightning Magic.”
Rainbow Dash thought about it for a few moments, before she started to realize what Pinkie was probably hinting at. “Ok, I think I see what you are asking about. I don’t know if I can do it without it falling over or something; I mean this is new for everyone, even you.”
“Don’t worry Dashie, we got plenty of time~!” Pinkie Pie replied, the noon sun high in the sky.
---
After a couple of hours of trial and error, and another couple of hours of resting and talking, Pinkie and Rainbow finally both felt confident enough in their control of their respective models to try out whatever it was the pink mare was planning.
“Alright Rainbow, you got the plan?” Pinkie asked, as she wore a red headband around her mane-line.
“Yeah sure, but… why do I have to be the villain robot?” Dash grumbled as she wore a half-purple/half-black cloak and a strange looking mask; half the mask’s face looking like a man, and the other half looking like a woman’s.
“Because they’re my models and I already picked Mazinger,” Pinkie replied with a smirk.
The party planner then turned around to face her audience of three before she resumed speaking. “Welcome to Pinkie Pie’s Puppet-Time Theatre. And for today’s performance, with the assistance of one Rainbow Dash, I proudly present: FIGHT TO THE FINISH! The Iron Fortress vs. the Twin-Headed Demon!”
“You know that sounds like it could have been the translated title for the original Mazinger, too…” Hana figured as Pinkie and Rainbow took their places with their respective models.
“And… go!” Pinkie shouted before clearing her throat. “The Iron Fortress – Mazinger Z is here to put a stop to your rampage, Baron Ashura!”
Leave it to Pinkie to get this far into it the first time around… Rainbow Dash thought as she mustered up as much enthusiasm as she could muster given the circumstances. “Your puny machine is no match for my Mechanical Beast, Pinkie Kabuto!”
The ‘Baron(ess)’ then used her Lightning Magic to cause the Doublas figure to fire a yellow-ish looking beam of ‘lightning’ out of each head at the Mazinger model, while Pinkie feigned getting struck by the same blast.
“Argh! You hit me, but it will take more than that to defeat me, Ashura!” Pinkie ‘Kabuto’ rejoined, as the Mazinger model raised its arm into a firing position, following the lead of its puppeteer (or at least as closely as equine anatomy would allow).
“ROCKET PUNCH!” Pinkie shouted with as much vigor as any voice actor for a giant mecha anime before her, as she used her magic to send the right forearm and fist of the Mazinger model flying toward and striking the Doublas, before slowly retrieving it and reattaching it to the body proper.
“Wow, this is… actually pretty neat given the fact neither of them have barely had time to practice or rehearse,” Red Blaze noted aloud; as she silently noted how much Hana seemed to be into the performance despite having assuredly seen the same thing animated a thousand times before.
“Mazin Go!” the green mare shouted, feeling like a 10 year old watching her father’s old anime collection again.
Seriously… how does she keep doing it? I just don’t get it… Twilight wondered, feeling a soft pang of jealousy creep into her mind.
The mock battle raged on for another ten minutes or so, before the climax appeared to be fast approaching.
“Haha, I got you right where I want you, Kabuto!” Ashura-Dash cackled, having finally gotten into the spirit of the performance.
“That’s what you think, but what about this!” Pinkie replied, as she used her model to suplex the other, leaving Doublas on the ground and hardly responsive to Rainbow Dash’s Lightning Magic-fed commands.
“Noo, Doublas, he’s fallen and can’t get up!” Dash complained, as she tried to make the mecha model stand, but was finding it far more difficult than it was before.
“And now to finish this off! BREAST FIRE!” Pinkie shouted, as her face was covered in red Fire Magic runes. The Mazinger model raised its arms, the red plates on its chest glowed a hot orange, and a wave of Fire Magic was fired at the still struggling twin-headed green model.
The Doublas model jerked as it melted halfway back into slag by the blast, forcing Ashura-Dash to concede defeat. “Nooo, my Doublas! I will return Pinkie Kabuto, and with something bigger and stronger!” Dash shouted, as she ran ‘off-stage’, only to return a few moments later.
“Well that’s it for the performance, so what did you think?” Pinkie asked, as Rainbow Dash took off the mask and the cloak.
“It was pretty good, it makes me want to go check some of the entries in the franchise now,” Red Blaze replied.
“Oh you should, you totally should! Shin Mazinger Z from the early 2010s is really good, and the animation quality has held up all these years, I think too!” Midori Hana replied; the excitement she felt during the performance had yet to abate.
“I was kinda skeptical at first, but now I see why little kids play with action figures, that really was fun to do!” Rainbow Dash replied, as placed some things back in a carrying case that Pinkie had set up on a cart.
“I guess that means we’re all done for the afternoon?” Twilight asked, as she looked around, still somewhat perturbed by her pink friend.
“Yeah, I’m kinda tired from casting all that magic; I dunno how you Unicorns do it all day. But let me load the Mazinger onto the cart and we can all head back,” Pinkie replied as she gently slid the model up a ramp onto the braked cart.
A few minutes later, after all the scrap and the forge were checked to ensure that nothing would catch fire in their absence, the five mares made their way back to the dorms - plus one metal mecha model that was in dire need of a repainting.
-----
The evening at the dormitory found the Ten doing what they did most of the time that they were there - using the available resources with the net to plan what they were going to do next time they returned Equestria-side, or practicing some more low-key applications of the Terran Magic they were uncovering.
Though Twilight, for her part, was still in a very sulk-y mood, as she laid on her bed in her combination room and study, trying to figure out what it was that her five closest friends had figured out before her.
“I really don’t get it at all. I mean, Magic is my thing, it’s literally my Element. And yet I just… feel lost with all of this,” Twilight grumbled aloud, as Vague stopped by the half-open door, hearing his part-time tutor stymied by her own frustration.
“Can I come in Twilight? You sound a tad upset,” Vague asked as he poked his head inside the door-frame.
“Yes, and I am,” Twilight responded, trying to maintain some minimum level of civility with the blameless stallion.
“Okay then, that’s a start. So what exactly has your goat by the neck, then?” Vague asked as he took a cushion off a nearby stack and sat near Twilight’s bed.
“The last week mostly… I know that we were all supposed to be learning how to use Terran Magic from you all and from what we could gleam on our own. And… honestly I feel stuck,” Twilight responded as she lay out on her back, as if she was in a super casual psychiatrist’s office.
“Care to elaborate?” Blue Vague asked in response, feeling it was best to keep the questions simple and let Twilight vent her frustrations in a safe manner.
“Fine. I’m supposed to be the Element of Magic, right? I really thought that if, given the time and the access to all of this mana, I could come up with, what, a dozen variants of Terran Magic,” Twilight started, as her tone of annoyance shifted to exasperation. “But all I can come up with are refinements to what you all have already found. It’s like I’m tuning a car instead of designing one, and that just feels frustrating.”
“Interesting you’d go for the car metaphor, there,” Vague responded with a bit of a chuckle.
“Well, I’m trying to broaden my horizons. Motor vehicles seem like a good place to start,” Twilight responded, letting a bit of a giggle slip herself.
“Alright, well I’m no psych so I can’t give you formal advice, but what I’d do is create a water ball, and use it to vent your stress,” Vague suggested, forming a roughly baseball sized ball of water from the properly-aspected mana.
“Anything that’d keep me from slipping into one of my… episodes, I guess…” Twilight replied, as she formed another ball of water that was the same size as Vague’s.
“Episodes?” Vague asked in genuine confusion.
“Ask them what happened when I thought I was going to be late with a Friendship Report back in my first year-or-so in Ponyville,” Twilight replied, as she began to magically manipulate the ball of water.
“May as well, anyway see ya after-while,” Vague responded as he went on about his way again, sliding the door closed behind him.
Twilight dimmed the lights of her room and turned down the monitor brightness on her console, as she began to stare at the ball of water she had conjured, that still glowed somewhat blue.
“Alright. Here goes. I don’t get Applejack. She is so grounded and uber-practical when it comes to how she acts, how does she even know the first thing about attracting mana she’d need to use aside from what precisely she uses?”
Twilight began to squeeze and squash the ball of water as she audibly stated her feelings over being left behind, in some sense, in magic research; a feeling she absolutely HATED.
“Rarity is the same way. I’ve never seen a Unicorn use such little magic outside of their own talent. And then she just… just waltzes in and finds a new form by total accident!
“Fluttershy, bless her kind heart, hardly even uses her Pegasi abilities to their fullest extent. And here she is completely turning outside temperature on its head.
“Rainbow Dash damn near kills herself trying to find a new form of Magic, and then is up and walking not two days later. And they call me charmed.
“Pinkie Pie… it’s always the same with Pinkie Pie. She ALWAYS finds a way to confound me. They will award me Starswirl the Bearded Memorial Prize in Magical Research if I could EVER nail down how she does what she does. I can’t even pin down exactly what she does. Why? Why is it so hard to understand that mare? I… just… don’t… understand it!”
Twilight continued to crush Water Mana into the tightly packed ball, that now began to swirl with not only Water Mana, but her own raw Explicit Magic.
“I need to understand it. I need to comprehend it. I need to be able to take it apart, put it back together, rearrange it, take it apart again, and then shuffle the pieces like cards in a deck and put it all back together again like I never touched it to begin with!” Twilight growled, as she smashed more and more magic together into the now softball sized ball of water until.
*POOF*
“Wait what? I… that was weird… I just kept channeling that Water Magic and… oh… OH!” Twilight started to think aloud before she saw her own coat. The blue runes that covered it from her Water Magic had turned a deep violet, deeper than the mulberry purple of her coat.
She then looked up and saw quite the strange sight. A floating blob of… what appeared to be thick purple smoke.
“That’s really… I don’t even know what to describe this as…” Twilight thought, as she moved the blob on the floor.
Twilight stood over it and tried to piece together what she might have done, and what it could have meant, as she poked at it with her front hoof. “Ok let’s review, I was venting my frustrations, and squeezing more Water and Explicit Magic together. And then when it seemed like I had reached the peak of my frustration, it all… went poof? Anyway, now I have this blob of shadow that looks like a gas but feels like gelatin.”
“Then again… hrm… this could be useful in more… yeah, I got a killer idea for this!” Twilight said, the dark violet runes on her body now glowing a ‘hot’ purple as she began to shape the blob; which soon resembled a cartoonish spider.
“Alright then, let’s see if you actually work the way I think you will…” Twilight said in a hush tone to herself as she began to slowly turn the room’s lights back up.
The shadow-spider quickly scuttled its way under the bed, trying desperately to get away from the now brightened light.
“Well that seems more of the reaction of a roach than a spider… but the fact it is responding to stimuli is a good thing,” Twilight reasoned aloud, as she contemplated another small experiment.
She walked over to her computer console, and began to draw a white dot on a black background in a paint application. She set the picture to fill the entire screen, which now appeared to simply be a single white dot in a black field.
Ok, if it runs away from light everywhere, what happens if I make it look like there is light in only one place? Twilight asked herself as she turned up the computer’s brightness and completely shut off the light in the room.
Eventually she saw bright pink eyes peer out from the bed, as the spider construct peered around the room. Within second it lunged at the monitor, ephemeral mandibles desperately trying to gnaw at the white dot that sat on the screen.
“Ok, that’s enough… I don’t want to explain that I damaged my monitor with you gnawing at it…” Twilight chided, as she began to cut off the flow of mana through her body; and as the runes faded back to her natural coat color, the spider disintegrated into mana again, but not before waving goodbye to Twilight.
“Ahh, it’s so adorable when it does that. I wonder what’d happen if I could get Vague and the others to teach me how to make those Astral Projections they made a couple of months ago. Although I think I don’t need one quite so big… yet,” Twilight thought, as the gears already began to turn in her head.
“Oh, I got a good idea… I can get everyone together and try and nail down the exact wavelengths of the aspected mana we’ve found so far. Pretty sure Princess Celestia or Luna could get use out of that!”
The mulberry librarian hummed a happy tune as she took out a large stack of notepads and pens, and got to work writing formulas and equations.
A true scholar’s research never ceases…
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you do know that we still use the four elements. We just call them Solid,liquid,gas, energy. Instead of earth,water,air,fire.
5171231 Ehh, I consider them different in my head. It is an elemental concept of the universe but they aren't the elemental building blocks of matter.