The Journeymare Project: Turbo Pegasus

by MadHighlander

8: The Second Construct

Rainbow descended back onto the map, holding the totem in her hoof. Looking around, she saw Twilight still waiting, but Other Dash had gone.

“Rainbow One had to go re-sort that schedule,” explained Twilight when Rainbow asked. “What about the totem? Did you get it?”

“I think so.” Rainbow held out the witchwood totem. “Is this one?”

“It looks more or less like illustrations I’ve seen. But I’ve never seen an actual witchwood totem, so I couldn’t say for sure. You’ll find out pretty quick once you get to the Castle, anyway.”

“Great. Well, I may as well go for a trial run.” Rainbow deposited the totem in her saddlebag, and activated the map control.

“Rainbow, wait. There’s one more thing you should know before you go.”

“What’s that?”

“I did some more research while you were gone. I think the explosion wasn’t the only alteration made to history that day.”

“What? What else changed?”

Twilight picked up a sheaf of paper from the floor next to her throne. “This is all the information I could find on the Castle of the Two Sisters disaster. This here-” Twilight showed Rainbow a drawing of a four-pointed, glowing object –“was witnessed by several astronomers observing the event, speeding away into the sky. It very closely resembles the alien ship that appeared over Canterlot ten years ago.”

“Yeah, the historical record mentioned lights in the sky.”

“Well, I think this might be either something else the construct arranged, or maybe even the construct itself. You need to figure out which and stop it.”

“Right, got it. Thanks. Shouldn’t be an issue. If this works, you’ll either never see me again or forget you ever saw me. Either way, goodbye.”

“Good luck, Rainbow.” Twilight waved as Rainbow returned to the past.

---

The first thing Rainbow did when she arrived in the storeroom was activate the scanner spellstone.

“Warning. Large mobile nonliving mass approaching. Composition: 98% granite, 1% Cloverite, trace amounts of other minerals.”

This one isn’t made of odd matter? Crap, I was hoping I could use the Aetherwort trick again. I’ll have to think of something else on the fly.

The large construct rounded the corner and locked eyes with her. Up close, she could see the resemblance to the object that Twilight had shown her a picture of. So it’s the construct. I need to figure out how to stop it. The construct, as it had before, told Rainbow that she was too late, and left. So is it just boasting, or – wait! I know! I bet it’s already rigged the shield crystal to explode.

Lifting off, Rainbow listened for the scanner spell warning her about the sleep spell. No warning came. Great. Does that mean I did it, or…

“Sleeping spell successfully nullified.”

Okay, great. Let’s go. She flew down the rows of shelves until she reached a heavy-looking wooden door. Pulling on it produced no result. Did this one try to lock me in, too? Too bad, because now I have the anti-door. She activated the skeleton key spellstone, and the door swung wide with a loud ka-chunk, admitting her into a small chamber with several chairs and a long wooden counter. Behind the counter lay an elderly unicorn stallion, fast asleep and snoring loudly.

Rainbow passed the room and entered the hallway. I have no idea where the armory is. That, though, is what the scanner is for. Another pulse of information entered her mind, revealing a massive, mazelike warren of corridors. Armory, armory, armory… The image in her mind highlighted a large room just above her head.

No delays. She pushed open the window and flew outside. Good thing there’s no danger of being spotted here. Flying up to the next floor, she crawled back inside. Opposite of her stood the door to the armory, flanked by a pair of snoring guards. Using the skeleton key spell, she pushed the door open and walked into a long room full of racks of spears, crossbows, swords, and armor. More importantly, at the far end of the room was a marble pedestal, on which rested a purple velvet cushion supporting a brightly glowing white crystal.

There! Rainbow flew over to the crystal and picked it up. There was a mass of auto-spell stones connected by bits of string adhered to the side of it. Four were labelled ‘Cl’, one – hanging loose – was labelled ‘Ch’, and the last, in the center, was labelled ‘Co’. I don’t know what these do, but they’re probably bad. She grasped the center stone and tugged.

Nothing happened.

For Celestia’s sake. Rainbow tugged on the stone. Still no result. I’ll scan them, maybe if I know what the stones do…

The Ch stone pulsed with light.

Nope. Nope, no time for that. Maybe... She reached into her saddlebag and retrieved the wingblade. Forcing the blade under one of the four Cl stones, she pushed down on it, separating the stone from the crystal with a loud crack. Rainbow flinched, but the sound was just the stone’s magic breaking, rather than the crystal exploding. The hanging stone pulsed again.

Great, let’s speed this up. Using the wingblade as a lever, she popped two more of the exterior stones free. As the center stone fell from the crystal – for it wasn’t adhered by anything more than the strings tying it to the exterior stones – the hanging stone pulsed more brightly, sending a spark down the string to the center stone, which exploded in a cylinder of prismatic light, lancing out away from the crystal.

A cylinder of stone blasted out from the ceiling where the light struck, but the crystal was untouched. Whew. Let’s get this thing off there. Rainbow freed the last stone from the crystal and put both the device and the wingblade safely away in her saddlebags.

Now I need to find that construct. She emerged from the armory and flitted out into the sky. The scanner can’t spot them unless they’re right in front, so I’ll-

Her musing was interrupted by a bright light from the courtyard below. She looked down just in time to be bypassed by a large moving object. The construct! She shot skyward after it.

She grasped one of its outstretched legs and pulled down. To her surprise, it responded with a grunt, its ascent faltering as it swung wildly back toward the ground. It must have reduced its weight to fly. Aww yeah, you’re in my world now.

She flew back downwards, both forehooves outstretched. Her impact with the construct pushed it even further downward, but revealed to her that it was still as solid as it had always been. As she fell back, massaging her injured hoof, the construct descended, flipping over in midair and extending a series of spindly limbs from its underside.

Okay, that doesn’t look good. Rainbow hung back from the construct, avoiding its grasping limbs. I’m faster than it is, but it’s way more maneuverable. It’s self-levitating, so it can fly any which way it wants, whereas I’m seriously handicapped any direction but straight forward. I’ve got to-

Suddenly, the moon rose into the sky, blotting out the sun and distracting both combatants. A peal of laughter echoed from the distant great hall.

Wh- Oh right, this was when Nightmare Moon first rose. I guess the princesses must be resisting the sleeping spell somehow. I- That was when Rainbow noticed the construct on the move. “Hey!” She flew after it, landing on its back and forcing it back down towards the ground.

A magical blast tore through the roof of what Rainbow recalled was the throne room, and two distant figures flew through the gap.

Oh, no… Twilight said they flew around the castle a bit during the fight she saw. I can’t let them see me or the construct. She forced the construct further towards the ground, even as it took them closer to the battling alicorns.

Nightmare Moon unleashed a barrage of magic, blasting chunks of stone from the castle’s towers in the wake of the fleeing Celestia. One of the blasts came dangerously close to Rainbow and the construct. Dodging out of the way, Rainbow forced the construct against the support of one of the castle’s soaring bridges. Its physical strength was such that she couldn’t force it to lay flat, but its magical strength wasn’t enough to free it from her grip.

As they stood there, in a stalemate, Celestia soared past, under the bridge, and hurled a magical beam backward at her pursuer, who returned one of her own.

Wait, something’s wrong. Twilight specifically said that Celestia never fought back- Ah!

The bridge, weakened by the twin magical blasts, was collapsing. Rainbow zipped away from the construct to avoid a falling block, and the force the construct itself was applying to free itself caused it to rocket backwards right into a falling mass of stone.

Is that it? Did I get it? A rumbling deep within the mound of stone disproved that notion, as a large chunk of masonry flew upwards to meet Rainbow. Nope, dodging now. The stone missed Rainbow by a hair, and when she looked back she saw the construct rapidly rising into the sky. Oh, no you don’t, she thought as she pursued it.

Once again grasping the construct and driving it back towards the ground, she was briefly distracted by a bright light. Looking to its source, she saw the two alicorns rising over the throne room, their two beams of magic fighting for dominance. This is where Celestia used the Elements of Harmony, realised Rainbow as Nightmare Moon began losing ground.

Then Rainbow got an idea. A very dangerous idea, but an idea nonetheless.

Following her impulse, she carried the construct skyward, toward the moon. Now below her, she heard the howl of Nightmare Moon as the Elements’ beam struck her, carrying her away towards the moon.

Seemingly realizing her plan, the construct begat struggling even more fiercely, even dropping its self-levitation spell and leaving her with what felt like at least a ton of deadweight. But she persevered, drawing parallel with the path of the rapidly approaching polychromatic beam. With a mighty heave, she hurled the construct into that path and dropped clear.

Looking back, she saw the construct reactivate its levitation and madly flee from the beam, but to no avail; it was caught in the magic and spun back to the ground, landing with an audible crash.

Spreading her wings and arresting her own fall before she struck the ground, she skirted the throne room towards the construct’s landing site.

She found it there, curled up like a dead spider in the middle of a ring of shattered cobbles.

Right. Now, I wonder if this one has any spellstones I can use. She prodded at its head, and a strip of stone receded into its body, revealing another spellstone array much like Anteros’, along with a recording crystal. Much like Anteros’ spellstones, many of this construct’s were damaged. The undamaged ones, Rainbow recognised as another audio retrieval stone, a second skeleton key stone, and a new one marked ‘Sh’. That one she placed on her spellstone brace, bringing her total up to six, and she placed the two duplicates in her saddlebag alongside the second construct’s recording crystal.

As Anteros had, the second construct’s remains were engulfed by a time-spell and whisked away, leaving no trace. Seeing no reason to remain in the past, Rainbow activated the recall function and once again returned to a new present.

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

Care to tell me more about the Journeyman Project trilogy?

[MadHighlander]

7381375

Sure. I'm not sure exactly what you want to know, so I'll just cover as much as I can without spoiling plot points.

The first installment (simply known as the Journeyman Project, or as I mentioned, 'Turbo' or 'Pegasus Prime' respectively in its later remakes) is a point-and-click style adventure game released for Mac and Windows in 1992 (and 1994, and 1997). It centered around the main character, 'Agent 5' (who was otherwise unnamed and completely silent in the first game) of the Temporal Security Annex. Agent 5 has been selected to monitor the time-travel device, codenamed 'Pegasus', for other time travellers who attempt to alter history, while the other agents who ordinarily work with him attend the welcoming ceremony for the Symbiotry of Alien Races, who had invited humanity to join them ten years previously. During Agent 5's watch, three temporal waves are detected, forcing Agent 5 to travel back in time to reverse them.

Basically it's what I have of this story but with people and technology instead of ponies and magic. As it goes on I have plans to make my work more distinct from its source material.

The three time zones in the game involve Agent Five stopping robots sent by the game's mysterious villain to use nuclear weapons to disrupt world peace talks, destroy an alien ship and a human Mars colony, and assassinate a key proponent of joining the aliens. Puzzles often involve finding items in one time zone and using them to move forward in another - for example, using an oxygen mask from the Mars colony to move through a field of sleeping gas at the nuclear launch site.

In the second game (Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time, released 1995), the Temporal Security Annex (renamed the Temporal Security Agency, for reasons known only to the dev team) has gone public as a result of Agent 5's actions in the first game. Agent 5 (now given the name Gage Blackwood) has become famous as a result for his actions, when he is visited in his home by himself, from ten years in the future. Future Gage tells his past self that they've been framed for stealing valuable artifacts from the past and seeks his younger self's help in gathering the evidence to prove his innocence, before being promptly arrested by a fellow TSA agent. Past Gage uses his future self's time travel suit (a new innovation not available in the first game) to search the locations and times he had supposedly stolen from, eventually uncovering the evidence necessary to clear his name - but not before discovering that there might be more to the saboteur's intentions than simple theft.

Gameplay-wise the second game introduced the ability to look up and down, which wasn't something you could do in the first installment, which restricted you to looking from side to side.

Also, JP2 introduced Arthur, an AI companion who is quirky, talkative, references pop culture every other sentence, and periodically breaks the fourth wall. Arthur was apparently enough of a fan favorite that he was added to the Pegasus Prime remake as an easter egg, although I myself was never able to find him. He joined Gage in both the second and third games, with mostly-optional witty commentary on almost any situation, and a 'help' button that allowed the player to ask him for help if they were stuck on a puzzle.

Finally, the third game (Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time) begins, like the first, with a temporal distortion wave that lures Gage - now played by a much better actor - back to the distant past, where they find a message from the villain of the second game. Of course, the TSA had been shut down as a result of controversy stemming from the character in question's actions, and most of the time travel devices decommissioned, forcing Gage to use an untested prototype called the Chameleon Suit, which allows its wearer to disguise themselves as someone from the past. This leads to the main new mechanic of JP3: dialogue, which can now be used alongside items in solving puzzles. (also, instead of having to use JP1 and 2's clumsy arrow-based turning controls, the cursor can now be used to pan around.)

The first half of the game, however, doesn't feature any of this, instead centering around a scavenger hunt set up by JP2's villain in which Gage is forced to comb through three ruined, legendary cities for pieces of the coordinates necessary to find the character in question, who escaped justice at the end of the previous game and is currently on the run. Most of what happens during and after the search are heavily spoilery, because it features a twist that upends the entirety of the other two games. Suffice it to say that the later half of the game is spent hunting down a series of precursor relics that existed in the ruined cities in question before they were destroyed.

There was supposed to be a fourth Journeyman Project game, to be entitled 'Journeyman Project 4: Resurrection' and slated for release in October of 2000. However, it was delayed by the studio (Presto Studios) taking time to work on 2001's Myst III: Exile, a series that they had taken over from the previous developers. And after the release of Myst III, high-ranking members of the development company - believing that the PC gaming market was failing, shifted to console development, a shift which was, unfortunately, too hard for many staff members to make. Presto decided to 'quit while [they] were ahead' and dissolved their company in August 2002.

Supposedly, a complete design document for JP4 had been created by this point and still exists in the abandoned Presto Studios vault somewhere in California, but all that is known about it is the title and that it would, quote, "illustrate one of the potentially dangerous outcomes of time travel technology".

However, some members of the old Presto team recently got back together and put Pegasus Prime on Steam Greenlight. It has since been greenlit by the community and is currently languishing in development hell while the devs update it to be compatible with Steam achievements and the Steam controller. The remnants of Presto have indicated that high sales on Steam might lead to them doing the same for JP2 and 3, and possibly even reviving the JP4 project.

As JP3 was the first video game I ever played, I am - rather understandably - excited about the prospect. The series remains one of my favorites despite the solid oak read: wooden acting skills of Gage Blackwood's original actor in JP2 and the complete removal of failure states and even score measurement in JP3.

Apologies for the length - there's a decent amount to talk about even in a condensed state.

And also apologies for the month long wait for a reply - I just sort of temporarily dropped out of the pony fandom sometime in early July and haven't really been back to FiMfic since. (I'm not the best at keeping to schedules.)