Chapter 22: New Friends
~~*Erin*~~
Pinkie was engaged in an energetic conversation with the freshly-animated Mister Hugglebunny near the library’s small sofa. Or, to be more accurate, she was speaking energetically while the plush rabbit occasionally responded in a dour monotone. Discord had disappeared in a flash a few minutes earlier after claiming that he had to go to pop some popcorn.
Erin stood across the library floor, watching Pinkie and her new “friend” while chewing worriedly on her bottom lip. Next to her, Twilight was making a show of re-shelving books, though she was mostly just staring at the titles with a distant look on her face.
“So, what do we do about this?” Erin asked softly.
Twilight glanced over at her, adjusting the Element of Magic with a hoof as the tiara slipped slightly forward on her head. “What can we do?” she asked, just as softly. “It’s a trap, and it’s one I never saw coming. I could just dispel the magic, but I think that might break Pinkie’s heart, and I’m not willing to do that. And… Are you sure he’s not conscious?”
“Honestly? No. You’d need to ask a computer scientist. Or maybe a philosopher.” Erin let out a wry chuckle. “I never thought the AI Singularity would come in the form of a plush, magical bunny.”
“The what, now?”
“Nevermind,” Erin said. “A joke in poor taste. But I personally don’t know of any way to test for actual consciousness. Maybe if we talked to some computer experts from back home…”
“What about that Turing test you mentioned, though?”
“That test is only to see if an artificial intelligence can exhibit human-like behavior, which chat programs have been able to do for decades. It can’t tell me if Mister Hugglebunny is actually self-aware or not.” Erin grimaced. “I really wish Pinkie had picked a shorter name for him.”
Twilight managed a smile at that. “Yeah, it really is a mouthful. Maybe we can come up with a nickname for him.” The pensive look returned to her face and she sighed. “Well, if nothing else, Princess Celestia needs to know about this. Discord has seriously managed to hamper our ability to use the Elements against him.”
“No he didn’t,” Pinkie said suddenly from right next to them, causing them both to jump and Twilight to let out a little scream.
“Pinkie!” Erin gasped as she brought a hoof up to her chest, where her heart was beating fit to burst. “You scared the crap out of me!”
“Gross!” Pinkie said cheerfully. “Also, I heard what you said.”
Twilight, obviously annoyed at Pinkie’s appearance but trying not to show it, managed to ask, “And what are your thoughts?”
“Well, ‘Huggs’ is an option,” Pinkie said thoughtfully while gesturing at the stuffed rabbit, who was still seated on the library’s small couch. “Or maybe ‘Mister H’. Or we could go with ‘The Right Honorable Master Huggle Bunnington the Third’, though that’s a bit long for a nickname.”
Erin blinked a few times while Twilight’s face froze in confusion for a few seconds.
“I didn’t mean the nicknames,” Twilight said after a moment. “I meant about Discord.”
“Why ‘the Third’?” Erin asked.
“Not important right now,” Twilight pointed out.
“Sorry.”
“I meant that I know what he’s doing, and I’m not going to let him get away with it,” Pinkie said with a sad little smile. Her ears perked up and her smile turned a little more genuine as she added, “Plus, I know Twilight’s going to figure out something!”
“Uh…” Twilight took a step back, her eyes flicking to Hugglebunny and then back to Pinkie. “Of course I’m going to do my best, but chaos magic is… well, it’s chaotic. And not very well understood. I have no idea how it works!”
Pinkie shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. You’re Twilight Sparkle. That means you’ll always do your best. And when it comes to magic, there’s nopony better!”
“Oh, well,” Twilight said with a blush. “There’s the Arcanum. Not to mention the Princesses. But I was planning on writing to Princess Celestia about this anyway, and I’m sure she would be happy to help!”
“See?” Pinkie gave a little hop while beaming out a radiant smile. “You’re already coming up with ideas on what to do!”
“Well, of course!” Twilight replied, returning the smile with one of her own. “You’re one of my best friends! I’ll do whatever I can to make you happy. But, Pinkie... “ Her ears drooped and she asked in a soft, reluctant tone, “What if we can’t make it permanent? What if Discord uses that to go out and do bad things?”
Erin’s heart broke a little as Pinkie wilted like a flower during a drought. But then the pink mare straightened up with a look of determination that Erin wasn’t used to seeing in her eyes.
“Then we stop him,” Pinkie said, her voice firm. “Discord is already holding my newest friend hostage. If he puts any of my other friends in danger, then we stop him.” She smiled, then. “Girls?”
“Yes, Pinkie?” Twilight said.
“I could use a hug about now.”
Twilight rushed in, throwing her forelegs around Pinkie’s neck, with Erin just a half-step behind her. They held each other for a few long moments, with Pinkie trembling against Erin’s chest. They broke eventually, with Pinkie rubbing a foreleg across her damp eyes.
“I guess I should get going,” Pinkie said. “I think I’d like to be alone for a while.”
"That should be okay, Pinkie,” Twilight said. “Discord said we have at least a day, maybe longer. Plus, he’s got to know he’s on thin ice after this stunt, so I doubt he’s going to let his chaos magic wear off any time soon. We’ll take tonight to think of a bunch of things to try, and come at the problem fresh in the morning once we’ve all had a chance to rest and clear our minds.”
Pinkie’s smile looked almost like her normal one. “Thanks, Twilight! You go do your thinkie-thing, and I’ll go do my Pinkie-thing.” She walked over and scooped up Mister Hugglebunny from his seat and placed him on her back. “Bye, Twilight! Bye, Sunflower! Let’s head home, Huggsy-B.”
“That is not my name,” Mister Hugglebunny protested as Pinkie walked out of the front door.
“I’m worried about her,” Twilight said quietly after the door closed.
“Me, too,” Erin admitted. “I hope she’ll be okay.”
“She’s Pinkie. Trust me, if there’s anything Pinkie is good at, it’s bouncing back. She’ll be fine. It's up to us to be there to make sure she’s fine. But right now, I think she just needs to work through some things in her head.”
“Makes sense,” Erin said. “I suppose I should get going, too. I wanted to get some take-out for dinner. Enough for two, in case Fluttershy is still at my place.”
“Good idea, but you’re not leaving quite yet.”
“Uh, what do you mean?”
Twilight turned to fully face her, a serious look on her muzzle. “Magic. I’ve been meaning to help you with it, but…” Her ears drooped. “I know I’ve had reasons, but I feel like I’ve been a bad friend.”
“Oh, no, you—”
“So!” Twilight said with a bright smile, cutting her off. “I’m going to monitor you as you try to use the horn-glow cantrip to see if I can figure out what’s going wrong!”
Erin glanced at the door, wondering briefly if Twilight would fall for the old “look over there!” trick so she could bolt. She sighed, realizing that the unicorn would probably just teleport after her and use her telekinesis to drag her back into the library.
“Didn’t you say your old professor was coming out tomorrow to give me a once-over?” Erin asked. “Maybe we could wait until then.”
Twilight had started shaking her head before Erin was even halfway through her last sentence. “No time like the present. Come on, what are you afraid of? It’s just a little cantrip.”
“You call it the ‘horn-glow cantrip’,” Erin muttered. “I call it the ‘give me a headache’ spell.”
“Well, that shouldn't be the case if you do it right,” Twilight said cheerfully. “Besides, I could always brew up some willow-bark tea later if your head hurts.”
Twilight’s beaming face was almost enough to make Erin cringe. “I’m not getting out of this, am I?”
“Nope!” Twilight said with a happy grin. “Besides, it would be nice to work on a problem I actually know something about, for a change!”
“Fine,” Erin said after a heavy sigh. “So, take it from the top?”
“Where else? Remember, reach deep within yourself and imagine your magic moving up into your horn.”
“I try it, but nothing ever seems to happen."
“Maybe it will be different this time,” Twilight replied.
“So, what, magic is an energy that exists inside a pony?”
“Both inside and outside,” Twilight said. “Magic permeates everything in Equestria, and some of it will reside in a stable field inside of individual creatures. Most ponies only ever use their personal field for things like levitation and the like. But more complicated spells require the use of magic from outside of the pony using it.”
“Like teleportation?” Erin asked, recalling the one time Twilight had used that spell with her. She’d been dizzy and disoriented, but it had been one heck of a rush.
“Oh, yes. You use your personal field to gather in energy from Equestria’s field, and you also link the two locations together via spell-circles in order to travel between them.”
“You’ve mentioned spell circles before, but you’ve never actually explained them.”
“A spell circle is a logical arrangement of glyphs, wards, runes and lines, arranged in a pattern. Which, in spite of the name, isn’t always a circle. Though it does typically have to complete a circuit. And none of this actually pertains to the matter at hoof, which means you’re dithering instead of concentrating on what you’re supposed to be doing.”
“Fine, fine,” Erin grumbled, closing her eyes. Just like the book had said, she imagined gathering up the energy in her body on every inhale, and pushing it up into her horn on every exhale. Oddly enough, she wasn’t getting any sensation of pain this time. “Is it working?” she asked, her eyes still closed.
“I don’t know,” Twilight said in a smug tone. “You tell me.”
Erin cracked her left eye opened, then gasped, opening both eyes wide. She crossed her eyes and looked up at her horn, which was pulsing with a soft, pine-green glow, the same color as her eyes. The moment she realized this, the light flickered and went out.
“Was that me?” she asked, disbelieving. Her heart began speeding up, and a grin stretched its way across her muzzle. “Was that really me?”
“It was!” Twilight grinned and hugged her around the neck. Dazed, Erin patted her on the back with a dopey smile on her face. “That was perfect! And a pretty strong aura, too!”
“It was?”
“Oh, yes!” Twilight said, breaking away, though she still had a huge smile on her face. “Not that you can always judge a pony’s strength by the brightness of their aura, but it looks like you’ll at least be average!”
“Cool! Oh, that was so…” Erin trailed off, her joy fading as she felt a chill run up her spine. “This was easy. I tried so hard before, and nothing happened but headaches.”
“Well, what did you do differently this time?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Well, that’s not…” Twilight trailed off at the same time. “Oh, no. You think…”
“Discord. Do you think he did something? Something the exam missed?”
Twilight’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times. “Well. I’m sure Professor Glimmer can tell us if he did.”
“Or you could just ask me,” Discord said. Erin jumped, startled. She turned to see the chaos spirit lounging on the couch recently vacated by Mister Hugglebunny, a tub of popcorn balanced on his belly while he watched them. “Nice light show, and you’re welcome.”
“‘You’re welcome’?” Erin repeated, outraged. “What did you do to me?!”
“Discord, you’d better come clean, and I mean right now,” Twilight said with a glare, her ears pinned back on her head.
“Or what?” Discord scoffed and tossed another clawful of popcorn into his face. “You’ll use the Elements on me?”
“If we have to,” Twilight said.
“Oh, but what about poor Pinkie Pie?” he drawled. “She’ll lose her friend—”
Twilight drew her head up and gave Discord a chilly smile. “She’s already agreed to use her Element if necessary.”
Discord blinked, sitting up and spilling popcorn all over the library floor. “She did?”
“Yeah,” Erin said, walking forward. Twilight joined her, and together the pair approached the spirit. “I’m surprised you didn’t see that with that ‘time sight’ of yours.”
“Oh, well, I wasn’t watching, of course,” Discord said quickly as he scooted back away from the pair of them. “You really aren’t all that interesting, you know.”
“Well, she said she’d use the Elements if she found out you were messing around with her friends,” Twilight said. “I would say that messing with Erin’s personal magical field counts.”
“Now, now, hold on, let’s not be rash,” Discord said, waving his hands in the air in front of him. “I didn’t hurt her, I swear! I was trying to be nice to a fellow freak!”
“Freak?!” Erin shouted, incensed. She started forward, only to be barred by Twilight’s foreleg across her chest.
“Explain,” Twilight said in a flat monotone. “Now.”
Discord sighed. “Okay, fine. Time to 'come clean', as you say. Whatever her people did, it turned her personal magical field into something akin to a giant ball of yarn after a cat got into it.”
He snapped his talons, causing an enormous ball of purple yarn to appear out of nowhere. The ball unspooled, forming a tangled mass on the floor. Erin scowled and backed up as the yarn started tangling itself around her hooves. Twilight simply sighed, rolled her eyes and ignored the mess.
“As fun as that was to watch,” Discord continued, “eventually constant failure just gets boring. Changing her to human and back simply… wound her back up, for lack of a better term. But I really didn’t change anything at all!”
“You rebooted me?” Erin asked, stunned, shaking a foreleg to free it from the yarn.
“Lies and slander!” Discord protested. “You weren’t even wearing boots. In any case, is it really so hard to believe I was honestly trying to help you?”
Twilight snorted. “Help her? Yeah, right, not buying it. You never do anything to help a pony out. Not unless it’s to help you out, too!”
Discord cleared his throat and managed to look uncomfortable. “Well, I may have had a teensy-tiny little feeling that her being able to use magic was somehow vital to my own well-being. But I assure you, I mainly did it to be nice! Why, I even left her with her fake cutie mark!”
Erin shot a quick, confused glance at Twilight. “Fake cutie mark?”
Twilight grimaced. “Well… You didn’t receive a mark the same way most ponies do. Yours is essentially an artificial pattern in your coat.”
Well, that wasn’t the best news. “Do you think I’ll ever get a real one?”
“Well, I know,” Discord said, buffing his talons against his chest. “But I’m not saying.”
Twilight glared at him before turning back to Erin. “I’m not sure. Cutie marks always happen during a pony’s formative years, but you’re well beyond that. It may be that you never get an actual mark.”
“Which is why I left it, even though it would have been hi-larious watching her bumble around without one,” Discord said, grinning.
“Alright, Discord,” Twilight said, glowering at the draconequus. “Enough games. I want you to take me through what you did to her, exactly, step by step.”
“Oh, deary me, would you look at the time!” Discord said, looking at his bare wrist. “I simply must be going. Ta-ta!”
He disappeared in a puff of putrid purple smoke that set the two of them coughing.
“I swear,” Twilight said, waving her foreleg in front of her face in a vain attempt to clear the air, “he just gets worse every time I talk to him. At least all that yarn is gone, too.”
Erin stared off into space for a moment before she started walking to the door. Her thoughts were a disorganized jumble of worry, frustration and anger, skittering off in different directions every time she tried to focus. “I need to clear my head,” she said. “I’m going for a run.”
“But what about magic training?”
“I’m a little nervous about using it before I have a chance to be checked out by that professor of yours. Who knows what he did? I want to make sure my head won’t explode, or something.”
“Your head won’t explode, Erin. I may not be Professor Glimmer, but I’m pretty sure about that.”
It was tempting, Erin had to admit as she reached the door. “Maybe after dinner? I really do need some time to get my head together, and I’m hungry.”
“Alright,” Twilight said with a decisive nod. “We get dinner, I’ll go with you to check on Fluttershy, and then we come back and start with magic practice.” A sour grimace crossed her features. “Provided that no other disasters crop up, of course. This being Ponyville, that’s a very real possibility.”
That statement brought out a chuckle in Erin. “Yeah. We seem to have lots of interesting times, here.”
“That we do,” Twilight said, joining her at the door. “That we do.”
~~*Luna*~~
There were other places for her to be at that moment. No doubt there was currently a small army of paper-wielding administrators roaming the hallways who were, at that very moment, setting up a search pattern in order to find their wayward princess. There was also the daily troop inspection, and a meeting with a human ambassador from a place called Germany; the former she had simply put off for the moment, and the latter she had rescheduled.
Instead, Luna found herself in Celestia’s sitting room, watching as Professor Moonlight Glimmer performed a series of tests on a restless and squirming Prince Verdant. The albino mare’s horn glowed a delicate shade of blue as she worked, her field tickling over the young colt as Celestia lay on her belly on the floor, holding him between her forelegs as she spoke in low tones to try and keep him more or less still.
After a few minutes had passed, Professor Glimmer sighed and let the light extinguish itself from her horn. She opened up her light pink eyes and offered Celestia a warm smile. “He’s perfectly fine, I can assure you.”
“You are certain?” Celestia asked, standing up and releasing the young prince, who immediately ran off to one corner of the room in order to play with some toys. “I was expecting some magic surges by now.”
“Not all unicorn foals go through magic surges,” Professor Glimmer pointed out. “My daughter didn’t, and she turned out to be pretty adept at magic.”
“I told you so, sister,” Luna said, chuckling at the brief but intense glare that Celestia shot her way. “Both your examination and my own have come to the same conclusion. Will this third opinion finally put your fears to rest?”
“It helps,” Celestia admitted. “However, Verdant isn’t the only pony to have a body provided by the humans’ Ascent process.”
“You’re referring to Erin Sunflower, of course,” Professor Glimmer replied. She grinned, a hungry look coming into her eye. “Oh, I can’t wait to get my hooves on her! I’m on my way to Ponyville to examine her next, you know.”
“You’ve only mentioned it several times,” Luna pointed out dryly. She helped herself to one of the scones that Celestia had set out with the tea.
“You understand my concern, though,” Celestia said, glancing over at Verdant. “According to Twilight’s reports, Erin hasn’t been able to cast unicorn magic at all, though she seems to be able to use at least some pegasus magic. I’m worried that Verdant’s growth will be stunted.”
Moonlight Glimmer shook her head. “I wouldn’t worry. He’s fine, I’m certain of it. As far as Erin goes… Well, from what I understand, the humans made some major modifications to her form, most of which don’t apply to Verdant. The original template was male, for example.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Celestia said, obviously not quite ready to give up on her fears yet.
“Well, there’s not much we can do, regardless,” Luna said, for what felt like the hundredth time. “Of course we’ll keep an eye on him and take whatever steps we can if they are needed. But for now, we should simply allow him to grow normally.”
Celestia looked like she wanted to argue, but she didn’t get the chance.
“By the by, as long as we’re talking about humans,” Professor Glimmer said, cutting off the impending argument apparently without even realizing it, “I’ve discovered something quite interesting.”
“Oh?” Luna said, gladly latching onto the change of subjects. “Please, do go on.”
“Well, there’s quite a few of them in Canterlot, as you know.”
“We’re aware, yes,” Celestia said. “There are just over a hundred, according to the latest reports.”
“They’ve begun renting apartments in the city proper,” Luna said. “Ambassadorial staff and research teams, for the most part. They’re studying everything from our history to our weather.”
“And our culture,” Celestia added, trying to get the last word in like she always did.
“And our economy,” Luna put in, not willing to let her have it. “Not to mention failing to discover anything at all about magic.”
“Well, maybe not failing for much longer,” Professor Glimmer said, grinning. “I’ve studied dozens of them, and I can now confirm that it’s not a fluke: some humans are starting to integrate into Equestria’s magical field.”
Now, that was unexpected. “Truly?” Luna asked.
“Oh, yes!” the professor replied. She began pacing, her voice picking up in both speed and volume as she spoke. “It’s far too tenuous to tell what form their magic will eventually take, of course. And it’s not all of them, though I haven’t discovered any significant biological differences between those gaining magic and those who don’t. But I believe the process is just starting, and may get stronger. We could have fully magical humans in Equestria within a few years!”
Professor Glimmer stopped her pacing and beamed a smile at them. “Every species on Equus has been part of the magical field for as long as we’ve ever known. We’ve never had a chance to examine a species develop magic as it happened. Can you imagine what we might learn?” She began hopping in place. “Oh, this is so exciting!”
It was… disconcerting, for lack of a better word, to see a mare of Moonlight Glimmer’s age and size bouncing up and down like an excitable filly. Prince Verdant had stopped playing with his toys to gape at the giggling mare.
Princess Luna cleared her throat. “Yes. Well. Very exciting, I agree. We look forward to your reports on the subject, of course.”
“You’ll have them,” Professor Glimmer promised, finally ceasing her frivolous behavior. Though it looked like it would take a team of doctors several hours to remove the grin that was adhered to her muzzle. “I’ll be doing plenty of studying. After all, I’ve become very close to some of them.” She blushed, the red coming up startlingly bright on her pale coat. “One in particular,” she admitted.
Luna gaped at the mare, who had a look that could only be described as “proudly embarrassed”.
“Oh?” Celestia said, a small smile appearing on her own muzzle. “One of the humans has caught your eye?”
“His name is Dwight Robertson, and he’s also a biologist,” Moonlight Glimmer said. “He’s smart, funny and attentive. And, for a nearly-hairless ape, he’s fairly attractive.”
“Well, I’m very happy for you,” Celestia said, using a wing to hug the shorter mare to her side.
“What can I say?” Moonlight Glimmer said with a laugh. “I’ve always kind of had a thing for bipeds. Remember that minotaur I dated in college?”
Luna shook her head but refrained from saying anything. This was the new Equestria, she reminded herself. Interspecies romances were no longer unheard of. Though, personally, she couldn’t imagine being physically attracted to anything bipedal.
“Not to change the subject,” Luna said, though she was perfectly happy to do so, “but have you been in contact with the rest of the Arcanum, recently?”
“Not recently, no,” Professor Glimmer responded. “Has something come up?”
“I’ve been inviting various members to the castle for some time, now. The humans have finally finished building the Harmonics facility here in Canterlot, and I wanted the Arcanum’s input on how to stabilize the aperture and eliminate the need to allow the Veil to regenerate.” Luna let out a disaffected “hmph”. “One would think that the members of the leading institute of magical research in Equestria would be interested in such a thing.”
“Oh. Well, that type of research isn’t exactly my area of expertise, but I’d be more than happy to head out and visit a few of my colleagues after I return from Ponyville.” Professor Glimmer frowned and shook her head. “I can’t imagine why at least a few of them wouldn’t find the time to come out and help. I’m not aware of any major projects anypony may be working on at the moment.”
“Thank you,” Luna said. Between taking over more and more of Celestia’s daily tasks and training the Dreamguard, Luna’s patience had been fraying like a poorly-made rug. It was a welcome relief to find that at least one of the Arcanum was willing to work with her.
“My pleasure, Princess Luna.” Professor Glimmer looked over at the clock ticking away on a nearby wall. “Well, I suppose I should get going. I mean to catch an early train tomorrow morning, and I should turn in early. I’m not as young as I used to be, after all.”
“Farewell, Moonlight Glimmer,” Luna said. “Until we meet again.”
“Take care,” Celestia said, giving the mare another hug.
“See you soon.” Moonlight Glimmer gave a little wave and made for the door.
The two of them stood in silence for a few moments after she’d left, until Luna could no longer contain herself. “A minotaur? Was she serious?”
Celestia laughed, scooping up little Verdant in her magic in spite of his protests. “She was, indeed. It only lasted a few months, though.”
Luna sighed and slowly shook her head. Every time she thought she was adjusting to life a thousand years removed from what was familiar, something new popped up to surprise her. “‘Tis a strange world we live in, Cellie.”
~~*Fluttershy*~~
“Discord?” Fluttershy paused in the doorway of her cottage, her ears rotating around on the top of her head. No lights were on, and there was no noise that she could make out. With a sigh, she removed her saddlebags, hanging them on a hook by the door before making her way inside.
Angel Bunny scampered between her legs, running into the center of her living room. He stopped, looking around with his little pink nose twitching. With no sign of Discord, Angel finally relaxed and jumped up on the sofa. He’d just curled up to lay down when one of the sofa cushions suddenly sprouted a yellow, red-irised eye and a grinning mouth. Before Fluttershy could protest, the pillow whispered “Boo!” into Angel’s ear.
Angel bolted, scrambling between Fluttershy’s forelegs before glaring defiantly back at Discord. With a sigh, Fluttershy stepped into her living room and sat down in front of the sofa. This next part was necessary, but it was going to be tricky.
“Discord,” she said, keeping her voice level. “We need to talk.”
“Who is this ‘Discord’ of whom you speak?” the pillow replied. “I am but a humble cushion, eagerly awaiting my chance to provide some small comfort to those posteriors who would recline here.”
“Please, Discord. It’s important.”
The pillow sighed, then disappeared in a flash of light. Discord, back in what could only be described as his normal form, leaned back on the sofa with an air of careless indolence. “I suppose I was tattled upon,” he said.
“You can’t expect us not to talk to each other, Discord.”
“Perhaps not, though it is rude to speak about someone behind their back.”
“As rude as changing somepony’s form against their will?” Fluttershy asked softly. “As rude as using chaos magic to play with Pinkie Pie’s emotions like you did?” She waited a moment before adding, “She’s really upset, you know. And worried. You did that to her.”
“I also gave her a new friend,” Discord replied irritably. “Why does everypony keep forgetting that?”
“Are you saying that you did it to be nice?” Fluttershy asked, making sure to keep her voice level and calm.
“Well, that was one reason, sure.”
“And what you did to Mister Hugglebunny,” Fluttershy said. “That was to manipulate us into not using the Elements against you.”
Discord snorted. “Eh, it was a long shot, anyway. But I did think Pinkie would like it.” He laughed, then. “And I thought it would be just hilarious watching other ponies react to him!”
Fluttershy nodded. “I see. And Erin?”
“Who?” Discord scratched at his chin for a moment before a light bulb suddenly popped into existence above his head. “Oh! Yes, the fake pony. I keep forgetting her name.”
“You changed something with her, Twilight said."
“I fixed her. There’s a difference.” He crossed his arms, scowling. “Not that anypony seems to appreciate that.”
“I see. We had this talk last night, remember?”
“Bleh. You mean you lectured me.” Discord rolled his eyes.
“Well… maybe a little,” Fluttershy admitted. “Asking for permission and respecting everyone else’s limits may not be fun, but it is really important. At least, it is if you want to get along with everypony.”
“This is all nonsense, anyway,” Discord grumbled, gesturing expansively.
“What do you mean?”
“You keep telling me how everything I do is wrong, that I’m the one who needs to change to protect all the precious little ponies’ feelings. But what about them adapting to me?” His eyes got all watery and his lip wobbled. “Aren’t my feelings important, too?”
Fluttershy recognized a ploy for sympathy when she saw it. That didn’t mean it wasn’t effective. “Of course they are!” she said. “But—”
“But I’m the one who has to be accommodating,” Discord interrupted. “Everything you tell me is ‘Discord, don’t do this’ and ‘Discord, don’t do that’, but no one else had to change anything for my sake.”
As much as she wanted to deny it, Fluttershy had to admit that he had a point. Well, except for one thing. “Except for me,” she reminded him. “Not that I haven’t enjoyed your company! But I have to admit, all the chaos takes some getting used to.”
“I suppose that’s true,” came Discord’s grudging admission.
“And you have to remember, you’re so much more powerful than anypony else. It's really scary for us when you do things like that, even if you have good intentions. You could really hurt us if you're not careful.”
“But what about my feelings, Fluttershy?” Discord’s eagle talon pressed up against his chest as he stared soulfully at her. “You don’t need my frankly-staggering amounts of chaos magic to hurt those.” He gave an outrageously fake sniffle. “Pinkie isn’t even going to invite me to her party.”
Fluttershy thought about that for a moment. “You know, you have a point.”
Discord blinked. “I do?”
“Yes. If we want you to be our friend, we need to try to include you.” More firmly, she added, “But that also means that, if you want to be our friend, you have to wait until you’re invited.”
“But Pinkie wasn’t going to invite me!” Discord let out a sour “humph” and crossed his arms across his chest. “I would have been waiting forever. I had enough of that as a statue in Celestia’s garden.”
“Then you can talk to her about it.”
“And if she still says no?”
Fluttershy offered up a smile. “Then we don’t go.”
“Wait, ‘we’?” He removed an ear from his head, inserted a talon into it and wiggled it around before popping it back into place. “Did I hear that correctly?”
Fluttershy nodded.
“You would actually avoid going to Pinkie’s party, just to keep me company?”
“I would.”
“Huh.” Discord stroked his goatee for a few seconds. “Well, I’ll consider it, I suppose.”
Fluttershy smiled, but it was an uncertain one. “Would you be willing to apologize?” she asked tentatively.
Discord’s eyebrow shot up so fast, she could swear she heard a miniature sonic boom. Or maybe he was just playing his chaos-magic tricks again. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, well, um…” Fluttershy fidgeted, her ears drooping momentarily before she remembered that she was supposed to be projecting strength and authority at the moment. She straightened up and spoke firmly. “It’s just that, I think Pinkie would be more willing to let you go to the party if you apologized.”
“What have I ever done that required an apology?” Discord demanded, indignant.
Fluttershy blinked at him a few times. “Really?”
“Oh, you mean for the whole ‘reversing your personality’ thing,” Discord waved his paw dismissively. “Pshh… Water under the bridge, old news. Hardly relevant to the discussion.”
“You wanted something more recent?” Fluttershy asked, a small frown appearing on her muzzle. “Whatever it was you did to Erin? What you did to Pinkie’s friend Mister Hugglebunny?”
“I believe he goes by ‘Huggsy-B’, now,” Discord said. “And, besides, I did both of them a favor.”
“They don’t feel like you did them a favor,” she pointed out. “They feel like you used your magic to manipulate them, all without even asking for permission. And they’re right. That’s what you did.”
“Well!” Discord huffed. “I don’t have to stay here and take this.”
With a snap of his talons, he vanished in a flash of shimmering light. Fluttershy slumped with a sigh. After a moment, a familiar white shape snuggled up against her. She extended a wing and hugged Angel to her side.
“That could have gone better,” she said.
~~*Raka*~~
“Oh, you are just beautiful,” Raka said, her voice barely a breath above a whisper. She was looking intently into a plant that resembled a fern with thick, waxy leaves. Peering out of the plant were a pair of bright blue eyes positioned on either side of a delicate snout. There was no fear in those eyes, only a sort of wary curiosity. But, even so, the small dragon-like creature showed no interest in coming closer.
After a few minutes of Raka holding perfectly still, the dragonling—as the research group had unanimously dubbed the creatures—crept cautiously forward on the axis of one of the strange fern’s stalks. Raka held her breath as the dragonling stretched out its wings, the membrane a semi-translucent sea blue that matched the rest of its dark green-blue body. The thin neck stretched forward and it tilted its head one way and then the other as it looked at her.
The dragonling’s muzzle opened and it chirped out a little “wirruk?” noise.
Seemingly unable to help herself, Raka reached out, painfully slow, and extended a finger towards the dragonling. The diminutive creature—reptile, perhaps? Something else?—stretched its head out and sniffed. And then, much to Raka’s delight, it rubbed its head along her fingertip, rather like a cat might have.
Raka couldn’t have stopped grinning at that moment if her life depended on it. It was all worth it, she decided right then. The uncomfortable sleeping arrangements, the disturbing dreams, the lack of sleep that made her every waking minute drag with exhaustion, the constant feeling of being exposed when walking around the alien world, and whatever other surprises that may still be coming... All of it, completely worth it just for this moment.
It was the greatest moment of her life up until that then, and she was pretty sure it could never be topped. The dragonling proved that notion wrong when it unexpectedly launched itself into the air and circled Raka’s head three times before landing on her shoulder, its needle-sharp claws pricking her skin through her shirt. She winced as it scrambled a little, too big to really rest comfortably on her shoulder, and she knew she’d be bleeding from the scratches. It managed to situate itself, the wings knocking her in the head once as it folded them along its back, its lengthy tail dangling down her back.
She froze, unwilling to move as the dragonling examined the side of her head, her ears tickling at the little puffs of air as it sniffed at her. Then, much to her ecstatic, if restrained, joy, it let out another little “wirruk” and nestled up against her neck, seeming much satisfied with the world.
“It looks like you’ve got a new friend,” said a soft voice from about twenty feet away.
Very slowly, Raka turned to regard the armed security team member that had accompanied her. In a hoarse voice, she whispered, “If you do anything to scare this creature away, I will end you.”
The guard, a young man of Pakistani descent named Randal Satti, chuckled and shook his head. “Wouldn’t dream of it, as long as it’s not attacking you.”
Raka sighed. She’d tried to make it as clear as she could over the last few days that she didn’t need or want an armed escort. But the security team didn’t listen, instead insisting that they keep to their stupid "buddy system" security protocols.
She returned her attention to where it should have been—the little dragonling curled up on her shoulder—and began making as many observations as she could while wishing that she dared to take out her tablet and start taking notes. She was too worried about upsetting the creature to try it, though.
From what she could tell as it rested on her shoulder, it weighed around seven pounds. This was a surprisingly heavy weight for a creature with a wingspan that she estimated at only twenty-four inches. From the tip of its snout to the end of its tail, she guessed that it measured roughly eighteen inches, give or take an inch or three.
It was warm, far warmer than even the humid air of the alien forest around her, indicating that it may be a warm-blooded creature. When it had walked around on her shoulder, she could feel that it had four claws on each forelimb, and at least three on the hind ones.
If only she had a picture… Actually, maybe her armed escort wasn’t so useless, after all.
“Hey,” Raka called out gently. “Take some pictures of it.”
“Sorry?” Randal asked.
“Put down your gun,” Raka explained with forced patience, “take out your camera, and take as many pictures of it as you can. Zoom in as much as possible.”
“Right,” he said.
As he shuffled around, trying to bring out his camera, the dragonling looked up at him and tilted its head. “Wirruk?” it said in a questioning tone.
“It’s okay,” Raka said. Conscious of not moving too quickly, she reached up and stroked it along the jaw. The movement startled the little creature for a moment before it leaned in and made rapid little “gluh, gluh” noises in its throat, as if it was trying to swallow. After a few seconds of this, Raka began to take her hand away only for the dragonling to grasp at her finger with what turned out to be prehensile front claws. With a surprisingly firm grip, it pulled her finger back towards its jaw.
“Fine, fine,” Raka said with a mild chuckle. “You let me study you, and I give you head-scratches. Fair trade, right?”
Randal’s camera, an expensive digital model that had been provided to each member of the expedition regardless of their function, was completely silent as he pressed the button repeatedly.
“Make sure to zoom in on as many individual features as you can,” Raka said.
“Of course, Doctor Nayar,” he replied.
The three of them stayed that way for what Randal later told her was nearly half an hour. During that time, several more dragonlings flew past, giving Raka and her little guest curious glances. After some time, the dragonling—apparently satisfied with the attention it had been given—let out one last little “wirruk” and launched itself off of her shoulder, leaving a few new scratches next to the previous ones.
“Bye, now,” Raka said quietly as the blue dragonling orbited her head once, then a second time, before vanishing into the woods.
“Wow,” Randal said. Then he added, “Hey, you’re really bleeding.”
“Yeah. Those little claws are sharp.” She reached back and felt along her back. The scratches were already tacky and her shirt was sticking uncomfortably to them. “I’ll have to add some padding to the shoulders of my shirts.”
“You going to be okay?” Randal asked. “Maybe we should head back, get that treated?”
Raka, who had just been ready to suggest the same thing, almost decided to declare her intent to stay out until the sun started setting. The scratches stung a little too much for that, though.
“Yeah, come on,” she said, picking up the backpack she had slipped to the ground when she’d first spotted the dragonling. She winced as she put it on, the strap rubbing against the scratches on her back. “Transfer those pictures to me when we get back, okay? I need to log as much as I can while the memory is fresh.”
“You got it, Doctor Nayar.”
Raka sighed. She didn’t really want to play nice, not with the armed escort that had been forced on her, but tempers were getting short enough amongst members at the camp. Any little bit of politeness now would only help.
“You can just call me Raka, Randal.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said crisply, and she rolled her eyes at him.
Together, the two of them made their way through the humid atmosphere back to the camp. Even though it was just a couple of miles, they moved at a glacial pace; Raka had her eyes on the ground and insisted on collecting every sample she could. Her backpack was already stuffed full, and she found herself regretting not bringing along another bag.
“Would you object to bringing a bag along next time?” Raka asked. “I’m collecting too many samples to carry easily.”
“Sorry, Raka. My job is to keep an eye out for you, and I already have plenty of gear to carry. You could check out one of the MULEs, though.”
Raka wrinkled her nose. “One of those mechanical walking things? They’re way too loud. They’d scare off all the wildlife.”
Randal shrugged. “Sorry, just a suggestion.”
“Why are they even called MULEs, anyway?” she asked, irritated. “I mean, isn’t that kind of insulting to the Equestrians? Aren’t there actual, talking mules where they come from?”
“I… guess? I don’t know, sorry. I know it’s an acronym, though. Multipurpose Utility… er… something, something, I always forget the last two.”
With an annoyed “hmph”, Raka walked on. With what little space remained in her backpack, she decided that any further samples would have to be something truly unique. The problem was, everything here looked worthy of that description. At least the rest of the trip went a lot faster without her stopping to pick up every interesting little thing she saw.
Soon enough, the ring of steel that marked the Harmony expedition base camp came into sight. Randal offered a wave before splitting off and checking in with his duty officer. Raka immediately made a beeline to the biology lab, intending to secure her samples before they deteriorated any further.
Once that was done, it was off to medical. The nurse took careful samples of the scratches on a cotton swab, in order to check for alien microorganisms before sterilizing the wounds and applying several bandages.
Feeling better, Raka passed the next few hours documenting the day’s events. First, her encounter with the dragonling. Every detail she could remember, as well as the pictures that Randal had taken, were entered into the log. Then it came time to catalogue the rest of her samples, which included plant life, dirt from several locations, and a few insects that ranged from midge-sized all the way up to something that looked a little like a dragonfly almost twice as long as her hand.
It wasn’t until the dragonlings’ sunset song started up, making the sheet-metal walls of the biology trailer thrum in sympathy, that Raka realized that she’d worked through most of the day. She got up off of the stool she’d been sitting on for the last several hours, wincing at the aches and muscle knots she’d brought upon herself by sitting hunched over for so long, and hurried outside. She’d made a point of listening to the song every night, as had most of the rest of the research team.
Raka closed her eyes, letting the song sweep her up. Somewhere out there, she knew, the little dragonling who had befriended her was singing its little heart out. Oddly melancholy, slightly hopeful, with peaks of joy and valleys of sorrow, the song echoed through her. In an odd way, it seemed a counterpoint to the nightly dreams she’d been having, a hope that, whatever might come, whatever trials she had to face, that everything would turn out alright in the end.
In due time, the song ended. With it, the camp resumed its normal activity. Raka allowed herself a smile. Taken merely on a physical measure, things could have been better. Dried sweat coated her skin, which felt dry and itchy. She was sure she stank after going days without a hot shower—until they could verify that the local water was potable, all of their water had to be carefully rationed. The scratches on her shoulder still stung from the antiseptic. Even so, there was nowhere else in the universe she’d rather be at that moment.
Raka made her way through the rapidly-darkening campsite until she found her lawn chair and gingerly lowered herself into it. It was still new to her. Even after three days here, it was all still fresh and exciting in a way she’d never experienced before in her life. In the black sky above, nearly untainted by light pollution, the stars wheeled above her in unfamiliar patterns. The night had cooled considerably, the humidity dropping to the point where the air was fresh and clean, the sharp clover-like smell of the creeping vine that carpeted the hill under their campsite filling her nostrils with a tang. The large white moon was already overhead, bathing the world below in its glow.
Raka was tired, but she had no interest in turning in yet. Her dreams since arrival had been… troubling. Disturbing, actually. She chalked that up to the intense excitement and, yes, worry, that she felt during her waking hours. Until Harmonics managed to re-open the gateway, she and the rest of the team were basically stranded here. Not to mention any hidden dangers that might be lurking out of sight. She could die on this world, she knew. That fact was never far from her mind. So it was easy to put the dreams of endless, longing dread into the context of facing her own mortality, and therefore write them off.
That didn’t mean she was in any hurry to face them again, though.
“You can’t sleep, either?” a voice said from her left.
“Hey, Spectral,” she said, smiling at her friend. She could barely see him with the camp lights, but she could tell that his coat was brushed and his mane was as tidy as ever. She wasn’t sure how he managed to be so neat, but it was hard to imagine a disheveled Spectral Charm. “Haven’t tried, yet.”
He grunted and laid down on the still-unnamed plant life beneath him. “I’m not in a hurry, either. I never remembered my dreams until I came here.” His jaw cracked into a yawn. “Looks like tonight is a three-moon night.”
Raka looked skyward again, seeing that he was right. So far, the large white moon, tentatively dubbed Harmony Major, had appeared each night. It was usually, though not always, accompanied by both of the smaller blue moons, called Harmony Minor Alpha and Beta, though Raka wasn’t sure how anyone could tell them apart. Tonight, unlike the previous night, all three were in the sky.
“It’s a pretty night,” Raka said, stretching out on her lawn chair.
“Yeah. Those moons bother me, though.”
Raka glanced over at Spectral, who was now only a dark silhouette next to her. Light gleamed off of his glasses as he peered skyward. “I think they’re beautiful.”
“Yes. But they’re wrong,” Spectral replied. “The more I look at them, the more wrong they seem.”
Raka frowned, studying the moons in the sky. One of the two smaller light blue ones was barely touching the eastern horizon, with the second just slightly in front of the large white one almost directly overhead. They were eerie, she had to admit, but she couldn’t place anything specifically odd about them. “How so?”
“Near as we can tell, the two smaller moons share the same orbit. I’m no astronomer, but Doctor Vang is, and she told me that should be impossible.” He grimaced and added, “Or, well, obviously not impossible, as we’re looking at it, but it is completely inexplicable.”
“Huh,” she said. “I suppose they’d collide eventually, especially since they seem to move at slightly different speeds.”
“That’s not the only thing that’s got me concerned. They’re too perfect.”
Raka squinted up above her. “What do you mean?”
“Perfectly smooth, no visible flaws, not even with a telescope. The larger, white moon has a few craters, but the two small moons look almost polished, somehow.” He sighed and shook his head. “It’s almost as if they’re artificial. But what could create a moon?”
Raka chuckled and, at Spectral’s curious look, adopted a bad parody of a British accent. “That’s no moon,” she said, trying to sound ominous.
He blinked at her and looked back up at the sky, frowning. “Perhaps not. But what else could they be?”
“Sorry, I was making a reference to a really old movie.”
“Oh.” He rubbed one foreleg against the other. “Tell me about it?”
“The movie?” she asked. He nodded. “It’ll take a long time.”
“It’s not like I’m going back to bed yet,” he replied. “I’m in no rush to experience those dreams again.”
“Well, okay,” Raka said, sitting down and folding her legs in front of her. Spectral leaned against her side, radiating a welcome heat into her shivering body. She draped an arm across his withers and began speaking. “It all started long ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”
Raka told the story of Star Wars, probably getting lots of the details wrong. As her eyes adapted to seeing only by the light of the moons, she gradually became aware that she was gathering something of an audience. Both humans and ponies had gathered around and were listening, the ponies raptly and the humans with some amusement.
“Isn’t anyone planning on going to bed tonight?” she asked irritably.
There was a lot of noncommittal shuffling and muttering in the darkness.
“This is more interesting,” one of the ponies in the moonlight darkness said. “Were they able to escape Tatooine in the Millennial Falcon?”
“Millennium,” one of the human audience members said. Raka recognized the voice as coming from Randal, her security guard from earlier that day.
“You want to tell this story?” the pony asked irritably.
“You can if you want to,” Raka said.
“Alright,” Randal said. He gestured dramatically and intoned, “The Falcon shuddered, refusing to start. And for a moment it seemed to Luke that they’d picked the wrong ship, that it was just as big a pile of junk as it had seemed at first. But then, much to his surprise… whoosh! It took off, burning for the stars, leaving Mos Eisley in the dust behind it.”
“What’s Mos Eisley?” a pony asked. “You mean Mos Eisner?”
“It’s actually Mos Eisley. Raka got the name wrong,” Randal said.
Raka stuck her tongue out at him, but she wasn’t sure if he could see it in the gloom.
Randal took over, telling the tale of the intrepid adventurers rescuing the princess. The night spun on, and eventually Randal stopped to let another human take over the tale. It would have gone faster, but the ponies would sometimes stop to ask for explanations of different plot elements.
After a while, Randal's voice started going hoarse and he passed the storyteller duties to Ben Masters, one of the members of the cartography team, who managed a passable Darth Vader impression. The humans all clapped, and the ponies stomped their hooves in appreciation.
“Thank you, thank you,” Ben said, bowing. “How about part two tomorrow night?”
“There’s a part two?” a pony asked. “Didn’t they win? What could happen next?”
“You don’t overthrow an evil empire that easily,” Ben pointed out. “Sometimes it takes a few tries.”
“Well,” a different pony said, stretching out his neck and back legs. “I suppose it’s time for bed…”
He trailed off, looking around. None of the assembled audience seemed in a particularly big hurry to get going.
“You know,” Spectral Charm said slowly, “as long as we’re telling stories, there was a favorite of mine I heard when I was a colt. How Arcanus the Bold tricked the secrets of magic from an ancient dragon. I don’t suppose anyone is interested?”
That idea seemed to generate some interest amongst the unicorns and humans, though the pegasi and earth ponies didn’t seem so enthused.
Windbreaker, who had taken up a position on Spectral’s left side, spoke up. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one, though it sounds interesting. Once you’re done, maybe I could tell the story of how Storm Dancer managed to calm the Lord of Tempests. That’s always been a favorite of mine.”
The suggestion was met with general approval, and the stories continued into the night. After Spectral came Windbreaker, followed by Ben once again, who, at the prompting of more than a few ponies in the audience, started up on The Empire Strikes Back.
Raka, wondering what she’d started, looked around with a smile. As tired as she was, it was great to see the team come together like this. It seemed obvious now that stories that she’d known her whole life would be new and exciting to the ponies. And, of course, the same was true in reverse. The stories shared many similarities, structure-wise, though the pony tales seemed to revolve more on using cleverness, guile and tricks to solve problems, rather than outright confrontation. As she pondered whether this was due to societal or biological differences, she slowly and unexpectedly drifted asleep.
...Time. So much time, stretched out around her, a vast ocean of it with no end in sight. The sun rose, set, rose again, the moons dancing across the sky, the stars wheeling in their courses, never changing, unending. Below, the land stretched vibrant and verdant, but she found herself unable to touch it, no matter how longingly she reached. Her very soul ached for even a touch of of the green below her, but she could feel nothing. Day after day passed into countless nights, blurring from one to the next, never changing, each day whittling away another little piece of herself until all that was left was a hollow echo of who she used to be, no longer remembering who she was or why the land below was so important to her, leaving behind an aching and endless sorrow...
Raka woke with a gasp. She shivered, curling up on herself and momentarily unable to remember who or where she was. After a few moments, the echoes of the dream faded, and she came back to herself.
She looked around, her heart slowing back to its normal rhythm. For a moment, she thought that Ben and Randal were coming to blows, Ben standing imperiously over the crouching Randal while brandishing a length of tent-pole he’d grabbed from somewhere.
“Obi-wan never told you what happened to your father,” Ben said in his remarkably accurate impression of Darth Vader.
“He told me enough!” Randal responded spitefully. “He told me you killed him!”
The audience of humans and ponies, somewhat smaller now as a few of them had presumably left to seek whatever sleep they could, were listening intently, the humans looking smug and the ponies completely enraptured.
“No,” Ben intoned. “I am your father!”
The ponies all gasped while the humans chuckled.
“No… No! That’s not true! It’s impossible!” Randal cried out.
“Luke, stop arguing with your father and get to bed!” someone called out from one of the dormitory trailers. “It’s late, and we’re trying to sleep!”
The moment broke the tension, prompting a round of chuckles from the audience. Raka, still shaken from her dream, managed a wan smile.
“Everything okay, Raka?” Spectral Charm asked.
She looked over at her unicorn friend. Even in the darkness, she could see the concern etched across his face. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said, as Ben and Randal started up where they left off, albeit much more quietly than before. “Just fell asleep and had a bad dream. It’s nothing.”
“I’ve been having trouble sleeping, too,” Windbreaker said from his seat at Spectral’s side. “Never had dreams like it before… It was like I was a ghost, trapped in eternity.”
A chill raced down Raka’s spine. “Like, you’re flying over the landscape and you’re not able to touch anything? Like you’ve lost something important, but you can’t remember what it is, and every day that goes past you lose a little more of yourself?”
Windbreaker nodded, his eyes wide. “Yeah,” he said, clearly shaken. “That’s the dream I had.”
“Coincidence,” Spectral Charm said, though he sounded unconvinced. “It has to be. We can’t all have had the same dreams.”
“You too, Spectral?” Raka asked.
He gave a mute nod.
“What does it mean?” she asked the other two, pitching her voice low. In the background, Randal was describing Luke’s fall through the Cloud City, only to be rescued at the last moment by the Millennium Falcon. She looked around at the rest of the audience, all of whom were showing signs of exhaustion as they watched Ben and Randal play-act the final scene of The Empire Strikes Back. “Do you think others have had that dream, too?”
Spectral Charm shook his head. “No idea. But we should bring it up in the morning. If we’re all having similar dreams… There must be a common cause. We need to figure out what it is.”
“I thought this place was too perfect,” Windbreaker muttered sourly. “A whole planet teeming with life and magic, just for us? Yeah, right.”
“No need to start a panic over this,” Spectral Charm said. “Whatever it is, I’m sure we can find the cause. No need for alarm. Truly. We can handle whatever this planet throws at us.”
Raka would have been a lot more reassured by Spectral’s statement if it weren’t for the fact that his eyes were a little wild and his coat was standing on-edge, making him seem slightly larger than usual. But they were still a little over a week away from being able to go home. What else could they do?
“We’ll figure this out,” Raka said, trying to make her voice calm and steady. “We’ll find out what’s happening, and we’ll deal with it. Everything is going to be just fine.”
~~*The Caretaker*~~
Fifteen. That was all that was left of the once-mighty Faith Guardians. Fifteen remaining of the hundreds that had once maintained the order of the Citadel of the Goddess and the various temples. They stood before him, the newly bonded—if initially unwilling—Inspiri attached to them looking at him with stoic expressions while awaiting their orders.
When the priests had become the original Faith Guardians, they had retained the entirety of their original selves. These new Inspiri had no original selves to speak of. The Caretaker had instead crafted a single template and impressed that template on the souls of the random Dreamers he had plucked from the soul-font. They would be unimaginative, uninspired and simple, but they would follow orders.
The soul template had taken days of unceasing work. The bonding itself was not as firm as he would have liked it to be, which could only be expected from such inferior materials.
He wasn’t overly concerned with that, however. The invaders had to deal with the greatly reduced magic that radiated from the Barrier Moons. The Faith Guardians had no such limitation. Each of them had a Key Rune etched into their forms, a new addition from the Caretaker himself, based on the one in his staff. With the Key Rune, each of them could pull magic directly from the Barrier itself. The Faith Guardians would be more powerful, by far, than anything the invaders could bring to bear.
Overwhelming force was, after all, what they were designed for.
There was, however, a problem. The Guardians would deal with the current invaders easily. But if they came in greater numbers, they might overwhelm his defenses. Fifteen Guardians, as powerful as they were, would not be enough.
Fortunately, there were other options. The various tribes and castes had all developed their own bio-magical weaponry, all attempting to reach the pinnacle the Faith Guardians had dominated for millennia on end. And, of course, those efforts always fell short of reaching those heights. However, they had one advantage that the Faith Guardians did not: they were much more numerous.
Many would have been destroyed during the wars, of course. Many more would have fallen apart as the millenia sleeted by. But many would still be useable, buried in ancient strongholds scattered the world over, just waiting to be woken up and bound with a fresh soul.
Forget defense, the Caretaker mused. If I can harness the might of all the bio-magical wartime horrors to my cause, I can take the fight to the invader’s home world. I can destroy them utterly, and end the threat of them for all time.
The Faith Guardians were still waiting for their orders, their blank faces tracking him as he moved. It set him a little on-edge. Before the war, he had been a mage without peer. Yet, if he had made a mistake in the template, if any of the Guardians retained even a spark of their true selves and opted for revenge, he would be in for the fight of his life.
Best to get them out of his presence, then.
“The invaders are here,” he said, indicating on a holographic map. “Proceed to this place. Capture those who do not resist, and bring them here. Kill those who try to fight you. Go, now.”
The Faith Guardians said nothing, but around them the air itself seemed to twist. A moment later, all fifteen of them were gone. The Caretaker turned away and began searching the Citadel’s records for any and all vaults or strongholds that may have contained the weapons of his ancient enemies. At one time, those weapons had threatened to tear his world apart. It was fitting, he thought as he searched, that those same weapons would now serve to defend that same world.
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Unless humanity brings some big guns. I mean, if there's one thing humans are good at, it's building really big guns.
Then again, the first Project: Sunflower pretty definitively showed humanity's war effort to be rather ineffectual in these circumstances, so I assume you've got something up your sleeve far more clever than "and then America nuked it."
Can't wait to see what you're planning.
Ah, and here's to expecting everything to be an enemy, so you treat everything as an enemy, and everything becomes your enemy.
WHOOO-WHOOOT!
Ah the caretaker is already doing half the goddess work for her. Not even a lick of diplomacy, underestimating what could and will be his foes, and already repeating the mistakes that put him in power.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! NO PONIES FALLING IN LOVE WITH HUMANS! NONONONONO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dagnabbit Hoopy. lol. You knocked me off the feature board. xD
I'm glad somepony has recognized that genuinely making friends with Discord needs to involve them making the effort to treat him like a friend just as much as somehow making him act like one.
The Caretaker is obviously nuts. Given the information he has, faked by the Goddess as it is, telling the 'invaders' to get lost is the rational first move, even if it does cost him the element of surprise. I wonder if the nastiest thing the Goddess could do to him would be to restore his conscience.
So I wonder, did Discord fix Erin's inhability to use more then one trie's magic at once or is it still not harmoniously merged?
And depending on how cutie marks are working in this story, I don't see why Erin could not have a self-discovery and gain one. You are never to old for that.
I really loved Discord learning the ho to of living in society.
Just finished reading the series so far. I'm so in love with Bunny and Pinks. Though for some off and odd reason, I feel as if Bunny's gonna pull a ‘Joker’ and do something to Pinkie…
Guess I'll have to wait and see.
7589392 To be honest, I was thinking Luna should come help with the dream thing, at the same time these show up, it shall be fun to watch.
Glad things are going better for you now. Also, an excellent chapter. 'Thor mug smash' Another! ;P
(In your own time, of course.)
*Looks at cover art*
Someones a fan of the Pern series
Hes underestimating them. You should never underestimate humans and ponies alone but together? That is...double underestimation!
I find honest criticism is the best criticism.
I think your first sunflower story was better, which doesn't mean that this story is bad.
It's still fun to read your story and I'm glad you're back.
Why do I find your first story better?
Because this story have to much Since Fictin for my taste. And the ever-changing perspectives between all characters.
My idea:
I'd rarely change perspectives but towards it and again insert a chapter which completely from the perspective of another charackters.
p.s. Sry 4 my bad english
I somehow feel that Human technology will be the undoing of the Caretaker.
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The Caretaker clearly hasn't had access to an Evil Overlord List. Mistake one.
Mistake two: Humanity is one determined bitch. We make it our mission to make the impossible possible because why not?
Mistake Three: You dun goofed fukin' with the ponies boi.
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One self-fulfilling prophecy coming right up.
You love setting up tense foreshadowing of things to come, whether it be through subtle or, in this case, more direct means, eh?
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YES! YES! YES!
Is Mr. Hugglebunny the key to defeating the menace of the other world? Is Prince Verdant's magic another ball of yarn? Will Spectral Charm learn how to speak Wookie? Find out next chapter, some time in the future!
I've never understood the whole "I instantly hate my security escort" thing. Why? Why is that a trope? Sure it could be argued they aren't subtle, or they might shoot a subject or something, but even so, is rather have an armed escort if I was exploring a new planet vs. going alone.
Also, Harmony for some reason makes me think of the Subnautica world without the water
Ponies reacting to Earth movies has always been hilarious. I envy those humans the chance to pull the classic reveal to an unspoiled audience.
The Guardian seems to have underestimated the Allies' control over their gate. Doesn't seem to be preparing any sort of beachhead systems to hold the gate open, Harmonics could just pull the plug as soon as the first kaiju tries to step through. I also think he underestimates the power of good old mundane missiles. This is no Black Tide, these Faith Guardians sound like something between an Alicorn and an Archmage Unicorn. Powerful sure, but mortal and not made up of a squijillion self-replicating nanobots. Between a few Equestrian soldiers and the human grunts I'd give them decent odds of retreating effectively, or at least putting up more of a fight than Guardypants suspects. Plus his infiltrator's been compromised, so odds seem likely he'll get surprised at least a little, unless the barrier maiden decides not to tip her hand just yet.
At the very least, his evaluations (not to mention his own weapons) seem to be almost purely magical or magical in basis. I'd put money on him being surprised how many hypersonic lead projectiles the bipeds can throw down range, given their magical potential of Nope.
That being said, getting captured seems like a good way to get interaction between the Guardian and some humans and ponies so the Allies probably won't come out of it as rosy as I'd like.
Either way, can't wait to find out!
As a side note, after this incident, If I were Harmonics and wanted to be extra salty, I'd assume the lost personnel are gone for good, and put an outpost on Lavaworld and stick a gate on the bottom of a volcano, see how Guardypants likes a hot magma flow on his pretty garden.
Celestia is concerned Verdant isn't magic surging?
I was wondering if Erin would.
Also... Welcome back.
Humans bonding with the magical field means they could get sick if they go back to Earth.
And honesty even if a big chunk of Earth is no longer habitable, can't they use the same tech they used to make Erin Equine to fix it?
After all, leaving Earth when they could help to make things better seems quite irresponsible at the very least.
"The big enemy is defeated! Now let's run away from home instead of rebuilding!"
"Yay!"
... That day, Pinkie discovered the Huggs Boson. Also known as the Good Partycle.
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You might be misunderstanding things - Humans are not moving en masse to Equestria/Equus.
Black Tide is defeated, but it will take quite a long time while the affected area will be terraformed back , Still, things on Earth have slowed down quite a bit in regards of establishing cities in Zanibra and mostly it is relief effort and helping displaced people. I'm taking this from early chapters of Harmony.
Humans, that Luna, Celestia and Glimmer were discussing, are just ambassadorial stuff plus scientists and Erin, of course.
7589477 You'll just have to put out a chapter real quick and knock him off!
FEATURE FOR THE FEATURE GODS!
Well... It's not mine but I'm sure it's someones fetish.
kweh?
I want one, it sounds vaguely like a chocobo.
Oh the great hoppy is back!
I was missing your fics with their proper ration of the different characters :)
Someone better kill this Caretaker bitch!
I KNEW IT!!! Ever since Discord messed with her, and there wasn't an immediate physical change, I KNEW that he fixed her magic. Yes!
7589885 Pervert!
Woo! Glad to see a new chapter of one of my favorite stories!
Gotta wonder if some of the changes to Huggs are permanent or not. A "come to life" spell can be used on anything, right? So presumably it would ignore the computery bits and create something separate. But that's not what happened; Discord messed with it in some other way and it's probable he doesn't know what he did exactly. I can't help but wonder if the computer parts aren't enough to sustain his intelligence without magic, now.
I still think it'll be cool if Huggs outsmarts Discord at some point. I guess we'll see if that happens.
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Yup. The Goddess removed any mention of human weaponry. So the Caretaker's assessment of human's is wrong. Plus ponies have their magical batteries to draw on, which it seems he doesn't know about.
You know... Discord did a really neat job helping both Erin & Pinkie that they should at least thank him for the work.
I do the reason why it work was because back when they built Erin, her Alicorn body wasn't connected to the magic field as it should be, like a fish can't swim if it's out of water...
I do know that Discord should had ask to fix it with permission but at least they need to say Thank You.
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Why all the loathing for the human-pony lovin'?
7591019 It's immoral and unnatural and creepy. Just imagine if someone fell in love with a pony in real life.
7591008 Forceing someone down a path is not something to thank them over, kinda the opposite.
7590111 The ponies did not get sic without magic nor the changeling. They just would be without magic that they have used and depended on their entire life.
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Ponies have 4-5 ageless gods of impossible high magic on their side, and a set of artifacts that runs on Friendship, the most basic of friendly emotions/relationships that has been shown to beat everything without equal. They have power.
Humans? Humans are all about Adapting and survival. Humanity will always find a way to survive no matter what. And even if somehow it comes down so bad that they don't have a way to survive. They will make sure you take everything from you without regard to their own survival just to see you hurt and pay for doing such a thing to them.
Put those two things together, and you have an unstoppable team about survival and having the power to do it.
7590263 This needs to be printed out, framed and hung on a wall!
I like how this is going :D
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He really did not help Pinkie. He just have her a moral dilemma.
He did help Erin, time will tell how much.
Also green magic, did he give her changeling magic or what?
Nice chapter.
7591656 Erin's eyes are green, and lot of the ponies have magic aura's that match their eyes. Also, Sweetie Belle's magic aura is green too, like her eyes.
Some time to think leads me to conclude the M.U.L.E.s started as Multiple Use Labor Elements. Maybe that makes the Caretaker the mountain wampus? Brings back good memories...
He'll be handing his weapons straight over to the brand spanking new enemies he just made for them to study.
Speaking of which, the Caretaker is in for a surprise if he gets his planned new horror show to Earth. Bio-magical weapons aren't going to work so well without magic, and he's concluded that the info about Earth lacking magic was one of the lies he was spun...
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Twilight Sparkle changed her magic aura color like at least three times in the show. But yeah background unicorns magic aura tends to math their eyes.
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In real life, ponies don't talk.
Nice touch.
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That was a grey goo. You CAN'T stop a grey goo. it'd be like trying to stop the tide. Anything you throw at it will just get overwhelmed. Honestly the way they beat it was kinda Deus Ex Machina for my tastes, but it still mostly worked. It's just unfortunate it wasn't really the result of any character's actions to resolve the situation- it just kind of... happened.
Something tells me his magic weapons will come back to bite him, maybe literally, maybe not, please continue the story.
Leaving aside the lack of magic on Earth, the Goddess has demonstrated that she can edit the souls and memories of the Caretaker's minions any way she pleases when they pass Her veil. The Caretaker sending war machines under instructions to devastate what's on the other side of the human's portal might just find them coming straight back with new orders to turn him into a lizard kebab.