The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

Power Grid

Starlight skidded around a metal corner, hooves scrabbling for purchase on the rough floor. "Grenada!?" she squeaked, eyes wide.

Thud! She collided with Grenada's hindquarters and fell back, rubbing her bruised nose. The traces of a shield spell were still flickering in front of the older unicorn, and beyond her Starlight could see the wreckage of several flimsy wooden palettes blocking the path, along with dozens of shattered glass bottles, all of which might once have been as big as she was. The floor was covered in a spreading wave of bitter-smelling liquid.

"Stupid..." Grenada gritted her teeth, whispering under her breath. "Careful. Don't go any further or you'll cut your hooves."

"What happened?" Starlight asked, getting back up. "Is everything okay?"

"Just an accident," Grenada muttered crossly. "Some drunkard must have forgotten to read the labels on how high these can be safely stacked, so when I opened this closet, the bottom one imploded and the whole stack went sideways..." She growled out a sigh. "I don't have time to clean this up, but it's a major hazard like this. Why can't ponies just respect protocol? The rules are there for a reason!"

Starlight took a step back, wary of the spreading contents of the bottles. "What was in them? And can I help?"

"Alcohol," Grenada replied. "It's a Sosan drink that makes painful emotions hurt less, but also makes you slower, stupider and have a headache afterward. A lot of us say they need it, but as you can see, the consequences aren't worth it. It's also bad for fillies."

Starlight blanched, resolving not to find out if the stuff tasted better than it smelled. "So can I help, then?"

Grenada shook her head. "I've got this under control. Besides, there are a lot of sharp things and Braen wouldn't be happy if I let you hurt yourself. This is why I said this isn't a place for children."

Reluctantly admitting that she was right, Starlight retraced her hoofsteps to the lobby. Thoughts of dingy decor and empty alcohol bottles taunted her mind, reminding her that she had just been condemned to even more time waiting for Grenada... time that Maple could be worrying about her, or that she could be going somewhere useful, or that Jamjars could be spending getting into trouble.

She rounded the final corner and blinked. Jamjars was gone.

No, not gone, she realized a second into her initial burst of panic. Her questionably-friendly friend had moved from the entry where Starlight had left her and was now standing on the table where Starlight had waited, having kicked off the empty bottles, balancing on her hind legs against the wall. Her mouth, horn and forehooves were busying themselves detaching and rolling up the poster of the nuzzling twins Starlight had noticed earlier.

Starlight stood and watched, wondering how long it would take Jamjars to notice her. The filly continued her task, prying the last bit of the poster free and stuffing the tube-like roll awkwardly into her mane for safekeeping. That it actually fit spoke volumes for Jamjars' mane size, though Starlight wasn't as astonished as she felt she should be.

At last, Jamjars turned around, blinking in surprise as she saw Starlight. "Oh! You're still here!"

"Really?" Starlight asked, pointing a hoof. "You're stealing posters from the Spirit of Sosa? What are you even going to do with that?"

Jamjars blinked. "The Spirit of Sosa? Well, they steal from ponies too, right?"

Starlight blinked back, wondering if she really should have told the filly where they were.

"Eh. Either way." Jamjars tossed her mane, the rolled-up poster inside making it bounce awkwardly. "Obviously, I'm taking this because Snow will probably be obsessed with this and I can get him to give me something I want."

"...Really?" Starlight squinted. "But you just did that by walking and giving him your spot on the cart. How much stuff does he have that you want, anyway?"

"None of your business," Jamjars huffed, turning away.

It really wasn't, Starlight decided. Mostly, she was busy being grateful that Jamjars wasn't trying to poke around further in the hideout, and that she wouldn't need to be carried back. Hopefully.

"Are..." Starlight hesitated, lifting a hoof. Maybe they wouldn't have to follow Grenada to Copsewood after all, if Jamjars would cooperate. "Are you ready to go back? We've been away for a while, and if our parents reach the tower and we're not there, they're going to be worried whether the room's been taken or not."

"No way! Screw them." Jamjars confidently smirked. "Besides, we get to go to Copsewood if we stick with her, right? I told you, I'm sick of being cooped up. Mom can catch me when she feels like being a good parent. Until then, we're doing stuff our way."

"What!? Our way?" Starlight took a step back. "Jamjars, I hate being alone. I want to go..." She trailed off. "Wait a minute, how did you...?"

"You hate being alone, huh?" Jamjars countered with a grin. "Good thing you'll have me, then! Now how did I what? Know where we're going?"

"Uhh..." Starlight uncertainly pointed a hoof.

Jamjars winked. "Oh, I was only pretending to be unconscious. I wanted to see what you would do, or if you'd try to carry me. That would have almost been worth going back for. Besides, you were nice and fuzzy."

Starlight took a step back, squinting. "Okay, you're making me kind of uncomfortable."

"Oh no! I was?" Jamjars feigned horror. "I have to make it up to you! Here, uh, let me think..." She strummed her chin like a guitar string. "I know!" She leapt from atop her table, landing on another one and nearly knocking both over in the process. "Here, let me get another of these posters, just for you. It'll be an apology gift. This one has a mare and a stallion. That's alright, right?"

It was obvious where Jamjars was going, but the only way out Starlight could see was to physically leave, and the exit was clear on the other side of the room. "No!" Starlight stomped her hoof. "I don't want a stolen poster! I want to go-"

"What's that?" Jamjars spat out a piece of tape, one corner of the poster folding over to cover the face of the stallion. Only his muzzle remained in sight, nibbling the neck of a delirious mare. "This one isn't good enough? Sorry, but the one with the mares is mine. First-come, first-serve!"

Starlight paused, suddenly presented with a choice between yelling at Jamjars or firing back by playing her own game. The temptation was too great to resist. "Yours?" She smirked. "So you don't want it for your brother, then? You want to keep it for yourself?"

Jamjars stopped pulling down the poster to smirk. "Ooh, somepony's jealous."

"What? No! I..." Starlight gritted her teeth. "I am this close to crystalling you right now. You're lucky I'm even remotely responsible, otherwise I'd just leave and go home and you wouldn't have me to keep you from getting into trouble! Don't push me, or I will push back!"

"You want to know why I'm giving you a hard time again?" Jamjars leaned casually against the wall, showing off her balancing skills. "Because you're being a killjoy. Instead of 'Hey, let's go to Copsewood!' you're all 'Let's run back to Mom and Snow and Hayseed and a pile of noisy foals and blathering refugees and sit around and do nothing for a week because it would be soooo responsible and blech!' This is my first and last chance to do what I want in forever, and if you're not going to help me have fun, you can be my fun instead. So there." She stuck out her tongue.

"What's going on in here?" Grenada demanded, appearing at the entrance to the room with several boxes of tools floating in her aura.

Starlight breathed a sigh of relief. "She's stealing your posters," she said, indicating Jamjars.

Hastily, Jamjars slapped the corner of the poster she was working on back against the wall. It immediately folded over again.

Both of Grenada's brows rose. "You barely look old enough to have had your first crush. What are you doing with those?"

"Uhh..." Jamjars giggled, sensing she was busted. "Admiring them?"

"Really." Grenada snorted, then turned away. "Good thing Braen had a content policy for what could go in the main lobby..."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jamjars lifted her voice, glaring.

"Let me put these tools away," Grenada called back, "and we can leave for Copsewood. Less than a minute."

"Are you sure?" Starlight hesitated, suddenly hoping Grenada's mind could be changed. "Can I go back to the tower by myself, and you watch Jamjars?"

"We could do it the other way around..." Grenada grunted, struggling with an access panel twice her weight. "But you're too valuable. You need to stay with someone important at all times."

Jamjars didn't need to say anything. She just grinned victoriously.

---

In the corner of a crowded refugee center, Maple sat, holding White Chocolate in a careful embrace.

"Because I have another friend I need to help," she explained, sitting at the mare's side as Howe and Gerardo stood guard, making sure none of the foals wandered off. "I'm sorry. Seeing what it's like here, I'd like to stay with you the whole time, but..."

White Chocolate wore a look of pained optimism. "And when you're done, you'll be back? This room is just... it's so stressful..."

"Promise." Maple nodded.

"It's hard to believe I met you just last night..." White Chocolate leaned into Maple's shoulder. "I feel like you've been my friend forever, now..."

Maple shook her head. "That's how good luck works. When your life changes hard enough for the better, your old life can feel years away... even if it was just days or weeks ago. Just... hold on, and believe that meeting me won't be the last good thing to happen, okay?"

White Chocolate smiled. "I'll try."

"And we will be back," Maple assured. "I wish we could afford to wait here for Starlight and Jamjars, but my friend is in trouble and we have to help her now. Starlight is strong, though. I'm sure she can help you if you need it." Her voice softened. "And you'll look out for her too, for me, right?"

"Of course." Another smile.

"Also..." Maple leaned closer. "Trust me. It helps more to dream about what could go right than to worry about what could go wrong. I've done a lot of both in my life."

"...I'll try," White Chocolate repeated, strained but trying.

Maple lowered her head, giving White Chocolate's belly the slightest of nuzzles. "You hear that, little one?" she whispered. "Your mother worries about you. Stay safe in there for her, okay?"

White Chocolate almost giggled.

Their conversation was cut short by an approaching worker team... led by the same mare that had helped them unload, Maple realized. "Excuse me!" the mare announced, carrying a clipboard in a pouch at her side. "Miss White Chocolate? We've cleared out a small overseer's room that should be a safer place for your foals. Can we help you move your stuff?"

Maple winked, and thought she saw a tear in White Chocolate's single eye.

---

"Well, that's taken care of," Maple said, standing in a hallway in the top floor of the warehouse, just far enough from a large, open window that she didn't feel like she was melting. "White Chocolate is comfortable enough, and will take care of Starlight when she arrives. Now what's your plan for saving Valey?"

Howe glanced back and forth, ensuring their position was sufficiently secluded. "Very well," he announced, satisfied. "The first thing you need to comprehend about Ironridge's power system is that it wasn't designed... let's be generous and say all at once. Pretty much every pony you will talk to will say that before Project Aslan, those were the good old days, but the truth is that politics have always been politics and probably always will be. They just... had different things to argue about!"

He rubbed his fetlocks together. "In the ancient days of yore, the mines in the Flame District were dug using pickaxes, primarily by unicorns. Eventually, they started inventing mana technology, and the small stuff came before the big. In fact, one of the first inventions was that you could use a crystal as a battery by burying it! So everyone used battery tools before they had a permanent infrastructure. Then came generators, because ponies wanted to recharge them without digging a hole and hoping nobody came to dig their gems back up while they were charging and steal them. They built all the generators in Sosa, because Sosa was the middle of everything in Ironridge and also needed a big power source for their boats."

Gerardo nodded appreciably, and Maple hummed. It was a slightly roundabout history lesson, but she trusted Howe knew why they should hear the whole thing.

"Eventually," Howe continued, "Sosa kept improving their generator more and more, expanding it to huge capacities and rates of efficiency! They dug deep and used only the purest crystal, so by the time the Flame District decided to employ more powerful, permanent drills, it was still a financially viable option to carry batteries up from Sosa rather than to build a new generator under the mountains that would only get dug up as they burrowed deeper for metal and ore. But!"

He swished a wing dramatically across his muzzle. "One day, they grew even more ambitious! For a while, they had been using steam from the Flame District to melt Sky District snow to use as a coolant, but that was inefficient and sort of resulted in them having coolant that was already unbearably hot. That's when they decided to construct... the Water District! With a mere two mighty dams, they could create a deep reservoir of water high above the arctic reaches of the Earth District's wind barrier, ensuring that they could pump meltwater into the top and drain water for coolant only from the very bottom, where it would be the coldest. Now, you've seen those dams, of course. They're kind of massive. And that required a lot of power to make."

Gerardo tapped a talon. "So they expanded the Sosan generator into a permanent infrastructure to facilitate the building of the dams?"

"Precisely!" Howe whooped. "Of course, it took a lot of pony power, too. Years to complete. Probably an even more ambitious project than the airships, only they actually succeeded. But they did, and then they had their powerful coolant system ready to go online... along with power routing installed halfway from Sosa to the Flame District already. So do you think they built new generators, or merely imported their mana from Sosa's already-perfected design?"

Worried, Maple cut in. "You're not going to suggest we sabotage a power line to the entire upper districts, are you? Because I have an uncomfortable feeling that's where this is going..."

"Please, hold your applause 'til the end," Howe urged, bowing. "I assure you, this is not the kind of citizen-entrapping plan my brother and I came up with. Er, maybe. But anyway! Yes, you have the right of it. Since those times, the power network has been expanded from the Water District to the Flame District and from there to the Sky District, and also from Sosa to the Karma Industries tower and from there to these warehouses and also west to some other Earth District towns. Blueleaf is... a weird case. They said nope nope nope to importing Sosan batteries early on, due to the demands of lighting their... unique architecture, and built their own generator instead that isn't actually attached to the main grid. But everything else in Ironridge, all the way to the skyport in the south, is ultimately powered by Sosan-generated power."

"Really...?" Gerardo blinked. "Forgive me for jumping to conclusions, but would this not mean that flooding Sosa would destroy their generator system, thus removing power from the entire city of Ironridge?"

"Errm..." Howe fidgeted. "Well, sort of. Do keep in mind that this is an issue that became largely dead and buried since the whole airship business started. And then they built the skyport with funds from other countries, and Sosa was like, 'Yeah, go ahead, extend power from the Flame District in return for an insignificant amount of cash because we're basically dead,' and now I think it's something everyone takes for granted. Don't quote me on this, but it's very possible Herman doesn't even know this would happen were the bombs to go off!"

Gerardo frowned, ruffling his feathers and stepping further away from the window. "I presume all of Ironridge losing power at once would be problematic."

Howe shrugged. "Ask Maple, there. She's the one who's seen what it looks like."

"Oh, no..." Maple shuddered. "I don't want to think about what the caves of the underground districts would be like without any light or ventilation..."

"...That, actually, is something I was getting around to," Howe said. "You see, as they were installing the new infrastructure, they... left the old battery system in place, connected to it. For lights and things, you know. It's not like they waited for all that to be able to see down there! And what Neon and I deduced from our studies is that were anything to happen to the main supply, there would be about a... two-second gap before the batteries kicked on, and that they could power all the necessary survival systems for several days. And, of course, we'd turn the real power back on long before that."

Maple gulped. "So we would be cutting the power to half of Ironridge."

"We would," Howe admitted. "For two seconds to the places that would feel it, which should be plenty of time for Valey to free herself from her predicament, should she be warned in advance. And then we'd turn it back on. At best, it could even be a warning of what would happen if Sosa were to be annihilated!"

"How much power would we have to cut?" Maple asked. "I mean... how close could we get before turning something off?"

"Depends on how close to the Fire District you're willing to get, and how easily you can pinpoint her location," Howe replied. "And on how much time you'd want to take. The fastest, safest way for us would be to visit the main cable station in Copsewood, which is a short flight southeast of here and conveniently also a zone of present chaos! It would be very easy for us to get in, toggle the power off and back on again, and ride away like lightning in the breeze!"

"Well... I do want to save Valey as fast as possible..." Maple hung her head. "Howe, you're the expert on Ironridge's power system, here. You had better not make me regret trusting you on this."

"I assure you, Milady," Howe declared, holding a wing to his chest, "you shall not. The Howenator never abandons a job until he gets what he wants, or is fired!"

Gerardo cringed. "Perhaps not the most uplifting of analogies, but in that case, shall we away? I have no particular reservations for or against Copsewood, myself."

"Alright." Maple stepped toward the window. "Gerardo, do you think you can carry me with my ballast, or shall I leave it here? Being heavier is often useful..."

Gerardo straightened his headcrest. "Hmm. I'd say we give it a go as-is, and if I find myself struggling, we can make an emergency landing. Or even a bombing, should we find a safe place to do so. Ha-ha!"

"We're coming for you, Valey," Maple whispered as her winged companions prepared to take flight. "Please prove me right that you're on our side..."

Comments

[alamais]

it's very possible Herman doesn't even know this would happen were the bombs to go off!

...or, Ironridge losing its main power source is all a part of the plan.

[HURTBOTPEGASUS9]

https://youtu.be/nn2FB1P_Mn8

[Davidp1522]

>Trusting pancake to know when he can tell a short story over a long one.

[Quinch]

That it actually fit spoke volumes for Jamjars' mane size

What you did there. I see it.

8703869
At this point, I'm beginning to wonder how much Yakyakistan actually knows about what Herman is up to. And which one of them is actually the skeezy one.

Also, that parting interaction with White Chocolate... ouch. No pressure.

[Venlinelle]

Howe has become so suspiciously helpful that I’d be surprised if he doesn’t betray them.