Distorted Beginnings: Chapter Six
“Let me get this straight,” Princess Mi Amore Cadenza said as she rubbed her temple with a hoof. “Your grandfather left you in charge of a semi-official organization that, and I quote, ‘doesn’t exist.’ The purpose of which is ostensibly to serve and defend crown and country. Except that you aren't sure if said organization ever really existed anywhere other than in your grandfather’s head because, other than the letter saying so and a discretionary operating budget, you have found neither any paperwork nor any personnel belonging to said organization?”
“Essentially... Yes,” Prince Blueblood nodded. “Granted, I was eight when I received the letter, and as far as I can tell the operating budget is actually part of my inheritance set up as a trust fund that my father could not access. A trust fund that I should note would revert to the Royal Treasury if something untoward should ever happen to me.”
“As opposed to reverting to your father or another member of your family,” Cadence observed, cocking a brow.
“Yes. As opposed to that,” Blueblood agreed with a slight smile.
“And, up until now, you’ve been using it to live a sort of double life, presenting yourself as an egotistical playboy while assigning yourself missions as some sort of secret agent.”
“To be fair, I think Aunty rather enjoyed my after action reports.”
“But, for all we know, Aunty may have just been indulging you in a game set up by your grandfather...”
Prince Blueblood sighed “Yes...”
“Do you actually have any personnel, other than yourself? That work directly for you rather than for your father?”
“Aunty assigned Cutting Wit and Rapier Wit to me after I gave her my first after action report. They have since helped me screen any potential new hires, whether it be for agents or my personal staff. If they report to anyone but me, it would be the Crown, not my father.”
Princess Cadence shook her head in frustration “And now there’s a national emergency and I’m now the acting Princess Regent, so you felt it necessary to bring me into the loop about your agency which may or may not actually exist.”
“Yes.” Blueblood grimaced, "I truly wish I could give you more proof then my word but Aunty does have a horrible habit of holding her cards too close to her chest sometimes..."
Princess Cadence groaned. “Well, it exists now,” she stated firmly. “I need someone to track down what Aunty may or may not have known about the current crisis and any other emergencies that we may be facing in the near future, and unlike Aunty, I don’t have the luxury of keeping things too close to my chest. Your organization needs a name so I can fit it into the command structure so that you know who else to report to if I’m not available.”
“I was thinking of calling it the Windrose Agency,” Blueblood replied. “After my grandfather’s Cutie Mark.”
*O o O o O*
With Zoey Loadstone safely returned to the point of the river where she had first abducted Crystal, and the seven ponies now on the correct side, the group had continued on their way, eager to get the adventure over with and get on with their lives. Still, other than Twilight, none of them had actually had much of any sleep since the previous night, not to mention the effects of being drugged, enchanted, nearly drowned, and running hither and yon through the forest while chasing either a giant sphinx or an even larger sea serpent.
Which is to say the party was beginning to drag due to exhaustion, and they knew it.
“We need to take a break,” Crystal pointed out.
“But we’re almost there,” Twilight countered, indicating their progress on the glowing display in front of her. “It can’t be too much farther now.”
“Yeah, let’s get this over with already!” Rainbow Dash groused crankily.
“Now hold on,” Applejack interjected. “Ah want to get this done and over with too, but Crystal’s right. We may be getting close to the castle, but it’s not going to do us any good if we’re too tired to do anything once we’re there.”
“As much as I’d rather have this whole affair behind us, I have to agree,” Rarity yawned. “I do wish we hadn’t lost our supplies though. I am not looking foreward to sleeping directly on the ground. Ugh…”
“I got this,” Crystal chimed in as her horn lit up. “One temporary camp coming up!”
Twilight watched curiously as Crystal first set up some sort of spinning circle of raw magic in middle of the road, followed by a forcefield dome around them, and then seven raised platforms of the same force. All of which connected back to the original spinning circle of magic. “Fascinating. What’s the purpose of the spinning circle?”
“Thaumic Flywheel,” Crystal answered with a yawn. “It’ll maintain the spells while I’m resting. If you and Rarity could feed some more magic into it, that’d be appreciated.” Shortly after the other two unicorns did so, Crystal made some adjustments, adding hexagonal segmentation to the dome and the platforms.
“I see,” Twilight observed after poking the forcefield and one of the floating platforms. “With the main field made up of many smaller fields, the whole thing won’t go down right away if just one of them is broken, allowing all of us to rest at once. And segmenting the beds made them flexible enough to be comfortable! Where did you learn these spells?”
“I just figured them out while playing with the basic forcefield spells in the library,” Crystal answered with another yawn as she climbed onto one of the temporary beds. “The Thaumic Flywheel is all mine though.”
“Um… Couldn’t we have used these to cross the river?” Fluttershy asked.
Crystal’s eyes shot wide open as she realized all the trouble they could have bypassed if she had remembered about her forcefields earlier. “D’OH!”
*O o O o O*
“The solar crystals should be in my workshop,” Time Turner said as he opened the door and stepped in, with Big Mac, Bubbles, and Roseluck following close behind. “Hello, what’s this? I could have sworn I shut that off…”
“What’s wrong, Doc?” Bubbles asked as she looked around the workshop.
“That’s… What is that?” Bubbles asked as she approached a display image floating over one of the work benches.
“It looks like some sort of diorama,” Roseluck observed.
“Eyup,” Big Mac agreed.
“It’s a map display, actually,” Time Turner corrected. “Looks like… If that end is Crystal’s workshop, then this must be the Everfree Forest. Or a good bit of it anyway. Looks like six… no, seven active sources. I wonder what they’re doing?”
“What who are doing?” Roseluck asked.
“Presumably whoever Crystal Synergy gave those map crystals to,” Time Turner answered as he deactivated the hub crystal. “Anyway, the solar crystals are stored over here. Ingenious little devices, really. Crystal designed them so that they would convert moonlight into sunlight that plants can use. Never really saw a point to them until now, but they were an interesting project nonetheless. Let’s grab a bunch and then get back to the others so that they can be distributed among the farmers.”
“Do you think Crystal can make more solar crystals?” Roseluck asked in a worried tone. “Once word gets out that we can still grow food, there’s going to be a big demand for them.”
“Eyup,” Big Mac agreed empathetically.
“Not to worry,” Time Turner assured them. “I helped Crystal work out the kinks and documentation so she could file the patent. I could even make them myself if it came down to it.”
“But you’re not a unicorn, Doc,” Bubbles pointed out.
“That’s the beauty of it! Anypony can make these, if they have the right tools and know-how! Just inscribe a suitable crystal with the runes and sigils in the right pattern and then set it up where it can absorb some moonlight! Easy peasy!”
“You are a tinkerer with a doctorate, Time Turner,” Roseluck pointed out dryly. “How easy would it be for anypony else?”
“Hmm, well, I suppose it would be somewhat tricky after all,” Time turner admitted. “Still, we should get the food producing farms set up with what we have first, then see about making more so that they can be distributed as needed.”
“About how many of these here solar crystals would a farm like Sweet Apple Acres need, Doc?” Big Mac asked, worried that there might not be enough to go around.
“One per acre should do,” Time Turner commented as he opened a door in the back of his workshop. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much though. For some reason, Crystal made enough to cover every farm in Ponyville.”
Big Mac, Bubbles, and Roseluck just stared at the open door, the room beyond filled with shelves stacked with case after case of crystals.
“Which ones are the crystals we need?” Bubbles asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Time Turner stated. “They’re all more or less the same. Just grab some cases off the nearest shelves for now.”
“That… that’s a lot of crystals…” Roseluck observed.
“Eyup,” Big Mac couldn’t help but to agree.
“Yay!” Bubbles cheered as she flew in and grabbed two cases right away.
*O o O o O*
Crystal woke up from having somepony poking her side urgently. “Huh? Wazzat? Pinkie?” She shook her head to clear the grogginess out. “What’s wrong?”
“I need to use the little fillies room really badly!” Pinkie stated in a strained whisper.
Crystal blinked. “Okay, give me a moment.” Crystal separated some of the hexagons on the southern side of the forcefield, sending them outward and then expanding them so that they could be used to cut into the ground off of the side of the road. Lifting the resulting block of dirt out of the ground, she used it to make a short privacy wall between the new latrine pit and the camp. Then she set up a second geodesic forcefield connected to the original one, only with a vent space left above the pit. Finally, she topped it off with a couple of force constructs (a bench for the pit and a spinning fan for the vent) before connecting it all to the Thaumic Flywheel and feeding it more magic.
“Thank you!” Pinkie exclaimed just before running into the new latrine.
“Did you just modify all those spells on the fly?” Twilight asked, woken up by the activity (and her own bladder).
“That’s right useful,” Applejack commented.
“I need to go next… if you don’t mind that is…” Fluttershy requested timidly.
“A bit utilitarian, but I suppose it will do,” Rarity noted.
“It’s a bathroom,” Rainbow Dash pointed out. “It’s supposed to be utilitarian!”
“Will you all be quiet so I can get back to sleep!?” Crystal huffed grumpily. “Nevermind. I need to go too.”
“I think I can set up another latrine if you open the northern side too,” Twilight offered. “That way there will be less waiting and we can all get back to sleep sooner.”
“Sounds good,” Crystal agreed. ‘Let’s do this.”
*O o O o O*
“I’m up! I’m up! Stop poking me!” Spike complained, shaking his remaining grogginess away. “Wait… Minuette? What are you doing here?”
“We were sent from Canterlot to help Twilight with her research,” Minuette explained. “Where is she? I would have thought she’d still be here, researching what to do about Nightmare Moon.”
“Maybe she went to get Lyra?” Lemon Hearts proposed.
“Well, she obviously managed to continue her research,” Moondancer stated, examining the book that had been left open on the table. “It says that the Elements of Hamony, which were last used to banish Nightmare Moon to the moon…”
“Wait,” Minuette interrupted Moondancer, “does that make her Moon Moon?” the other mares and the small dragon in the room just stared at her for a moment. “What? It’s a joke! I was trying to lighten the tension!”
With a somewhat exasperated sigh, Moondancer continued. “Anyway, the Elements of Harmony were last known to be in the Castle of the Two Sisters, in the Everfree Forest.”
“Knowing Twilight, she probably rushed off after them,” Twinkleshine guessed.
“I hope she didn’t go alone,” Lemon Hearts stated in a worried tone. “It’s dangerous to go alone.”
“I’m pretty sure she went with the ponies she was supposed to meet with yesterday,” Spike said. “Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, and two others. Pinkie Pie and rarity’s sister, Crystal. I wish I could have gone with them, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open after staying up all night.”
“Well, you are just a baby dragon,” Twinkleshine pointed out.
“I’m eight,” Spike pointed out irritably.
“That’s still pretty young,” Twinkleshine countered. “You still need a lot of sleep at your age.”
“There’s a note,” Moondancer interjected before the argument could escalate any further. “We’re are stopping at my workshop under the Carousel Boutique, signed Crystal Synergy. And there are two post scripts: Speak Friend and Enter, and Friendship Leads the Way.”
“That’s probably important,” Minuette commented. “We should remember those, just in case.”
“I’ll just copy them real quick and leave the original note here just in case it wasn’t meant for us,” Moondancer stated as she did so. “Now let’s go find Lyra and head for the Carousel Boutique…”
*O o O o O*
“Captain-General! Sirs!” A guard called out as he rushed into the conference room where Shining Armor had been coordinating with the other military and police service leaders that were in Canterlot at this time. “Come quick! Something is happening in Ponyville!”
“What is it?” Shining Armor asked, trying to keep his tone concerned and not alarmed. Not only was his little sister currently in Ponyville, he had just sent a group of her friends there as well. He really hoped that he hadn’t sent them into danger.
“The land around Ponyville is lighting up! Really brightly, too! It looks like they are setting up some sort of lighting system, but whatever they are using is bright enough that we can see the ground from here as if they were under the sun!”
“Shall we?” Captain-General Shining Armor asked rhetorically as he stood up to follow the guard to a suitable balcony. In short order, everypony was looking down on Ponyville, watching the lit area slowly expand as light after light was set up, like little stars fallen from the sky.
“This…” General Iron Maul spoke with almost hesitant awe. “This is big! If Ponyville can still grow food…”
“More importantly,” General Valiant Heart interjected as General Maul’s voice trailed off, “if they can replicate whatever those lights are (which it looks like they can), then our projected situation is no longer nearly as dire as it we thought it was!”
“I agree,” Princess Cadence stated as she landed on the balcony, along with the two pegasi guards assigned to protect her. “Ponyville is centrally located, and close enough to Canterlot’s rail hub to be able to easily supply all of Equestria. While it would be unfair to ask them to produce food for everypony, we can make sure that they have whatever they need to make as many of those lights as they can. Captain-General, see to it that they are adequately defended, and I’ll make sure that they have whatever they need. Ponyville just became a strategic asset.”
As Captain-General Shining Armor looked down on Ponyville one last time before heading back inside to issue the appropriate orders, he wondered how his L.S.B.F.F., Twilight Sparkle, was doing.
*O o O o O*
Near the Castle of the Two sisters, deep in the Everfree Forest, Twilight Sparkle lay asleep under the protection of a geodesic forcefield, along with six other mares. Soon, their quest would be over.
One way, or the other…
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Good to see this one updated, it's an good story!
Forcefield manipulation, one 0f the most useful powers to have if you are clever. Unfortunately most superheroes aren't.
Finally I was waiting to see what happened next to Crystal and the rest of the Mane 6, also please tell me that you are really going to get Crystal and Pinkie together as a couple, they would look so CUTE together after all, I loved that side story chapter you did where Crystal kissed Pinkie while she was Drunk.
7749877
Stabilized, shapable forcefields are indeed very useful.
And Twilight Sparkle just caught on to the fact that Crystal can adjust her forcefields (more than just trying to reinforce them) after they have been set up.
Little miss "Can Copy Other Ponies Spells" is going to have a field day!
Pinkie...
Huh. A new update
you know i was just thinking about how Crystal arrived at ponyville and had the thought that
Warning potiental spoiler from discussions on spacebattle
Crystal is meant to be the heir to the crystal empire, but no one know how she managed to get to ponyville, what if due to Twilights and starlights time-traveling (as it was time travel it the effects can affect both the past,present and future) made a sort of beacon, When crystal was transported away, in an atempt to take her somewhere safe from Sombra, the transport spell got mixed with sombras spell to hide the empire and it turned into a time spell which homed in on that beacon
Diorama.
Yay an update!
7750052
Fixed, thanks!
7750154 Hope more comes soon. This is one of the best self insert stories that I have read.
Upvoted and put on my tracking list.
Its stuff like this that makes me wonder where SIs get the time and resources to do something like this. IIRC Crystal is Rarity's younger sister (yet older than Sweetie Belle), so it is not like she had very long to develop some of these shenanagins, let alone mass produce them, especially since she has apparently been writing her own branch of magic on the side. All while nobody knew a thing.
It gets a little silly after a while.
7749883
And from Pinkie's family...
Maud: You Crystal?
Crystal: Oh! Yes! Hi! You must be Mau-
Maud: *Holds up a Diamond.* If you hurt Pinkie? *Crushes diamond* You. *Blows dust away* Understand?
Crystal: ...yes...
...
..
.
Pinkie I'm a little scared of your sister...
7750472
Actually she's the same age as Rarity
should be our
7750570
No. It wasn't me.
7750472
Crystal had eight and a half years to figure things out, and the motivation to do so. And even so, there are still plenty of things that Crystal can't do yet.
Plus, she has yet to be in an actual combat situation in Equestria. Some sparring, yes, but not actual combat, and not while using spells.
This will always be the funniest quote to take out of context, to me. Forget any double entendre, this one would be just too silly to compare.
7750621
Fixed, Thanks!
That's the problem of not having her own pocket dimension with monsters she can spare with like Charm Feather. Or not going to the Everfree regularly for potions ingredients and to learn from Zecora, so she does not fight monsters once in a while.
New chapter! Sweet!
Aaand its over! Crap! Any estimate for the new chapter?
aaahhh okay I think I remembered what is going on here.
Nice chapter.
This really opens up a world of new possibilities for the world they live on... The path of normal occurrences have been altered drastically from the way they should be and in the end it is untelling what is bound to happen next! I can hardly wait to see what is next!
7752238
7752296
I try to treat the setting Crystal has found herself inserted into as a living world with a dynamic history.
7752334 That is a good way to write. I like to see how others are treating the events, its very cool how you thought of that.
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Several years later, crystal light sources would make heavenly bodies obsolete, leading to a revolution that lasts for decades.
7756200
At the very least, they will probably end up as a popular feature in greenhouses specializing in tropical or off-season plants.
Everypony is SOOO going to believe Crystal is a seer after this...
Wonder how many other Pinkie-esque "in case of emergency" caches she's produced over the years?