Chapter XII: Magic Lesson
Ow, ow, ow. Why does my head hurt so bad? And what is that terrible ammonia smell?
Twilight shot up into a sitting positionas Bulwark removed the offending package of smelling salts from her olfactory area. Twilight looked around trying to re-establish her grasp of her surroundings. She quickly realized that she was still in the park that the firefight had taken place in, but there was no combat to be seen. Next, it occurred to Twilight that while she was still lying in the snow, she was no longer on the roof top that she had passed out on. Instead she was down on the ground in the center of the park.
She looked around her and saw Captain Hunter standing above looking down at her while Bulwark was kneeling to her right. Continuing to look around her, Twilight saw Rainbow Dash hovering in the air keeping a lookout. Sunset Shimmer was walking a slow patrolling pattern around the perimeter of the park. Apple Jack was behind the spot that Twilight was sitting on. AJ had her M249 trained on the alleyway, as if to guard their location from another attack. Borscht and his remaining body guard were off some distance having a hushed conversation that Twilight was unable to make out.
“There. She seems to be back in the world of the living, Sir,” Bulwark stated turning to his commander.
“You feeling ok there Lieutenant?” the Captain asked, looking Twilight in the eyes.
Twilight did a quick once over of herself to self-diagnose any issues. Besides the lingering headache, the only other problem that she could find was an uneasy roiling in her stomach.
“Yes, Sir. A little queasy but nothing serious,” Twilight replied, shaking her arms to try and get the blood flowing to her hands again after going numb laying in the snow cover.
“Good, we need to get going before those terrorists and the rest of the red shirts can regroup,” The commander said. With a nod of approval Capt. Hunter reached a hand down to Twilight to aid her as she stood up.
Grasping it Twilight was hauled back onto her feet by the strength of Capt. Hunter. Once she was on his feet the captain turned around on his heel. With a whistle and a wave of his hand the commander of the team signaled for the team to move out. After giving the signal he set off walking back to the alleyway that had led to the initial part of the ambush.
While still walking, the captain also fished a small black and midnight blue device out of the side of his bag that he hadn’t had the time to get during the shooting. The device was a small palm sized piece of plastic and metal. The Captain raised it up and affixed the device to the special connection that was located on the left side of his combat helmet. From where it was attached it rested over his left ear. With a flick of his finger, he lowered the microphone extension that had been hidden, tucked inside the edge of the headset. With a tap to the side, the system came alive.
The much smaller earpieces, similar to the ones that Twilight had worn in the simulations, whined quietly in each team member’s ear.
“Nightmare team, comms check. Over,” came the voice, belonging to the commander, in Twilight’s ear.
A chorus of confirmations rang out from each of the operators.
Twilight felt a hearty pat on the back as Bulwark passes by her. Twilight turned to face the source of the impact.
As he continued moving on Bulwark turned around and started walking backwards slowly.
“Glad to see back on your feet darling. I would hate to see a pretty face like yours dead so soon after joining,” Bulwark said with a crooked grin and a coy wink. With that he turned back around and took off on half jog to catch back up with the captain.
Twilight looked up again to see that Rainbow Dash had ended her air patrol landing next to the captain and following after him down the alleyway. Sunset for her part had also stopped her patrol but started making her way to Twilight.
“Let’s go Sugar Cube. Time ta get a move on,” Apple Jack said to Twilight. AJ lifted her M249 off of its resting spot and turned to walk after the rest of the team.
Twilight, her mind finally coming fully back to the present, took off as well catching up to AJ. When Twilight came abreast to Apple Jack, Twilight also found Sunset matching her pace. Together the three brought up the rear of the team.
Borscht, and his remaining guard, finally took notice that Nightmare team was ready to go and ended their hushed conversation. With a huff of exertion the female bodyguard lifted her deceased counterpart over her shoulder and they both moved out of the park coming alongside Captain Hunter and the other two members of Nightmare Team that were leading from the front.
Twilight wracked her brain to try and recall what they had done to get out of the fire fight, but all she drew was a blank. Strain as she might the mental wall of fog would not clear. The most she could recollect was the detonation of a particularly large magic missile and a sudden draw on her magical reserves.After that it was just a blur as she remembered the snowy rooftop raising up to meet her face and unconscious.
What did I do? A magic missile, even a large one, should not have put me out cold like that.
A voice with a drawl cut through Twilight’s mental review of the past few hours.
“Ya doin’ alright there Spellblade? What happen’ to ya?” Apple Jack asked Twilight. AJ’s expression betrayed her concern for her fellow teammate.
Twilight nodded her head on response.
“I could be asking you the same question. Wolf and I took out the snipers, but you guys were still surrounded and there were the two terrorists down there. My little magic missile took out some of the red shirts, but didn’t do that much damage to their numbers. How did you drive them off?” Twilight inquired of her new friend.
“Ah don’ reckon Ah know wha’ ya mean by lil’. That blast you let off fried a few of them varmints, but the secon’ explosion knocked us all on our collective asses,” AJ replied looking a little confused.
“It’s true,” Sunset interjected, “Luckily Orion, Borscht, and myself seemed to recover faster than everyone else. We started to tout them from that point as the rest of the team came back on line and drove off the rest of the ambush. We got most of the gangsters, but some of them got away with the two terrorists.”
“After tha’ Wolf here found ya out like and extinguished lantern up on tha’ there roof,” Apple Jack finished.
It was Twilight’s turn to display her state of confusion.
“What do you mean second blast? All I remember was the simple magic missile taking out a few of those gangsters, and a sudden draw on my reserves. I’ve never felt anything like that,” Twilight replied.
“The second blast was a chain reaction of two spells drawing from the same source in a harmonic fashion and overcharging in a dramatic fashion. Also, are you seriously going to tell me you have never hit magic exhaustion before?” Sunset said as she gave Twilight a disbelieving look over the tops of her enchanted Aviators.
“Are you saying I hit spell resonance?” Twilight asked the other unicorn. “And to answer your question yes, I don’t think I have ever hit total magical exhaustion. Even when I had a flare as a young filly I never drained my reserves that bad.”
“Well, If you hit resonance without you knowing it that could put you in a mana loop and drop you quickly,” Sunset reasoned.
“Uhh, I’m sorry girls, bu’ ya wanna explain to a down home, country, earth pony what in the hell a spell resonance is?” Apple Jack finally spoke up, her confusion apparent on her face. “Ah feel a lil’ out of the loop here.”
Twilight looked over at the engineer a little sheepishly. Sunset also glanced at her fellow teammate, but she maintained her usual air of stoicism behind her reflective glasses.
“Sorry Honesty, sometimes I forget no everyone has an encyclopedic knowledge of magic like Wolf and myself,” Twilight apologized to her engineer friend before explaining more.
“Spells don’t draw mana, or power, from a unicorn at a constant rate. It comes more like a wave,” Twilight said trying to simplify a very complex ethereal concept.
“Somethn’ like a radio transmission or a microwave? Somethin’ sinusoidal like that?” Apple Jack asked in an attempt to convert a high science into the plane of engineering that she understood.
Twilight was somewhat surprised at this correlation. The connection between mana draws and the sinusoidal form of a radio wave was quite interesting. Being a magical concept, it had never occurred to twilight to compare it to a mechanical or electrical form. A raised eyebrow also showed that Sunset was equally interested in this concept.
That actually makes a lot of sense. Maybe I can set up a test to see if these waves can affect each other. That might explain the poor reception that unicorn cites deal with. Possibly if I…
Bad Twilight! Combat now, science later.
“That’s actually pretty close. Spell interference occurs when two spells draw mana or power from a unicorn at the same frequency and wavelength. This interference has two different forms. The first is spell cancelation. This is when the spells draw at half a cycle out of phase,” Twilight said condensing an entire year of Celestia’s leading edge magical class into a handful of basic sentences.
“So if’n it works out in a similar way ta the mechanical forms, then that would make ‘em cancel out. Is that right?” Apple Jack asked still trying to clarify this odd idea of magical interactions.
The team was now firmly divided between the group in the lead and the group in the rear. While the rear echelon was discussing a theory that drove high level magical manipulation; the front group was patrolling through a series of alleyways. The way seemed to be clear, but the captain didn’t trust his current surroundings. There were still too many shadows to hide unwanted eyes or undesired company.
“Spot on there Honesty,” Sunset Shimmer said with a nod to the earth pony engineer.
Twilight also nodded in confirmation of AJ’s statement.
“The second variation of spell interference is spell resonance. This is when the natural frequency of one spell’s draw is in phase with another spell’s mana draw. When this happens it can lead to a magical overcharge,” Twilight continued to explain.
Sunset jumped in to help with the impromptu magical lesson.
“When a unicorn slips into a spell resonance the spell can hijack the mana flow and draw at a faster rate than expected. That over draw of mana can cause a spell to grow unstable and eventually break down. Usually rather spectacularly, I might add.”
The three ponies bringing up the rear had closed some of the distance that the leading officer, medical expert, and ace pilot had established. Borscht and his female lackey were now side by side with the commander. Borscht and Capt. Hunter were locked into conversation. Borscht had started to lead the group out of the alleyways and down a main street. The rest of the team was still keeping a look out for possible dangers, but now they seemed to be heading in a desired direction.
“So I’ma guess that’s what happened back there than wasn’ it?” Apple jack said with a slight nod of her head back at the way that they had come. Back to the park that now contained a new, freshly smoldering crater and a pile of dead gang members strewn about it.
“That sure seems to be the case,” Lt. Sparkle admitted with some begrudging acceptance.
Apple Jacks brow furrowed for a bit as she contemplated this information. She seemed to reach some understanding, but there was still clearly some confusion in her face. After a few more seconds of a pondering look Apple Jack finally voiced her question that she clearly hadn’t been able to answer for herself.
“Now Ah can see how that could go n’ blow to bits in yer face, but I’ve seen unicorns use multiple spells at once with no problems at ta speak of. Why was this so different?” Apple Jack finally asked.
The team had started to leave the broken down ghetto that made up the majority of the outskirts of Staliongrad. Up ahead of the team a large skyscraper could be seen blazing in a glory of lights. A name was emblazoned upon the top of the structure; Workman’s Respite. This structure towered above all the surrounding buildings, dwarfing even the tallest of other buildings by comparison.
Borscht tapped Captain Hunter on the shoulder to draw his attention. Once he had Midnight’s attention the pegasus gangster pointed out the tower. After a muttered conversation between the two, Capt Hunter started to change his heading to take a more direct path to the tower. The Lunar Guard Captain reached up to the headset that he wore that acted as the team’s communication relay. Tapping it the system came out of the standby mode that it had been in with a small burst of static in each of the Nightmare’s ears. The irritation quickly subsided as the voice of their commander cut through.
“Nightmares, be advised rally point is that tower to our one o’clock. Also I need the three of you in the back to close the gap. I don’t want you to get cut off if we get hit again. Two of you can deal with that, but I don’t want my heavy weapons separated from me if it comes to a firefight.”
It was sunset that responded first to the message, “Wilco, Orion. We’ll close the distance.”
Sunset then looked at the other two that were trailing behind with her. With a quick nod of her flaming maned head at the rest of the team up ahead she took off on a slight jog.
Twilight took the cue and started to trot along side. Surprisingly, Apple Jack was also able to keep pace, even with her extreme load that she was carrying.
As the closed the last remaining distance, Sunset revived their previous conversation.
“So to answer your question Honesty, most unicorns can avoid the majority of spell interference with practice. You learn to manually separate spell draws and manipulate their natural wavelengths so that they don’t affect each other. However, if a unicorn is careless or letting their emotions get the better of them,” Sunset cast a glance at Twilight as she said this, “they can sometimes slip.”
Twilight sheepishly looked away from the glare of her partner.
Shoot! She read me like an open book. Ok, pull yourself together. A pony died because you weren’t quick enough. Perhaps a little overreaction is not so unexpected.
“She’s right. I let some anger take over my better rational and didn’t properly separate the draw that my magic missile took and it must have hit resonance with the spell that I used to throw the sniper into the courtyard. Subsequently, it over taxed my abilities and caused my exhaustion,” Twilight explained, finally coming to terms with how she had screwed up.
The mention of anger taking over seemed to grab Sunset’s attention, but she made no mention of it.
“So I can understand that,” Sunset said, “What I don’t get is why you did what you did in the first place. You seem to excel with hand to hand combat. Against an opponent that is only equipped for long range engagements, it makes no sense to me why you would increase the separation distance.”
“She was a unicorn,” Twilight tried to explain. “When I went at her with my blade she pulled a piece of rubble to her aid in warding off my blows. So I just decided that it would be simpler to use my Valkyrie strength to just out power her.”
A puzzled expression crossed both of the other mare’s faces. Apparently, as Twilight quickly found out, for different reasons.
“What the hell is a Valkyrie?”
“What happened to your fully formed blade?”
Apple Jack and Sunset asked their questions, overlapping each other. It just mashed into a collection of word soup to Twilight’s ears. She was able to untangle the jumble in her head in short order.
Twilight responded to the two different questions, “Now is not the time to discuss what a Valkyrie is…”
“You’re damn right it’s not.” Sunset interrupted with a cold fury to her voice. “You weren’t supposed to just letting that detail slip loosely.”
Crap. She’s probably right.
“Right,” Twilight said sheepish once again. “As for the second question; for whatever reason, I could only summon the normal spellblade. The full form seemed to evade me. It didn’t seem to matter how much power I supplied, it just didn’t want to work.”
“Interesting. That’s something we should look into, but that will have to wait for later. There is nothing that we can do it about it here in the field.”
It didn’t take long for the three mares to reach the rest of the team. As they did, the entire group, including the two mafia members, stepped out on to the main thoroughfare through the heart of Stalliongrad.
By Twilight’s estimation, they were still at least 3 kilometers away from the high-rise that she ascertained to be their destination. This assumption came from the fact that with the sight of the building both Borscht and his female subordinate, still burdened with her deceased counterpart, were visibly relieved with the realization that they were in such close proximity to the building.
Captain Hunter, however, did not share their breach of operational security. With a series of hand gestures, he signaled to the team to form a perimeter watch as the closed in on the sky scrapper. It was clear to Twilight that he didn’t want any surprises this close to relative safety. Sure the town was technically still under Equestrian claim, but it was still ruled by the lawless.
Moving in line with a five meter spread they all took a different zone of coverage. The Captain covered the road ahead of them, Rainbow covered the front right, Bulwark did the same with the front left. Next in the line was AJ covering the rear left with Sunset behind her covering the rear right. This left Twilight as the rear security covering the team’s six o’clock region.
Slowly the team made it to the beacon of light with no incident. The extra caution may have proven unnecessary, but to Twilight it still seemed like the right play.
Approaching the front door, Borsht rapped the frame crisply. A second later a slat in the door opened up and a pair of eyes peered out.
“Ehhh…What’s the passphrase?” the voice asked from inside the door. It had some sort of drawl to it but it wasn’t the same northern accent that others of this region had.
“Let me in Turnip Truck, I have our ‘friends’ and we need to get off the streets.” Borscht said with a bit of disdain for this pony on the other side of the door.
“Well that aint the passphrase Borscht,” came the reply.
With a deft motion Borscht drew his handgun. Without even attempting to disguse his frustration and anger, he jammed it through the open slat, directly at the brow of the pony behind the door.
“I ain’t in the mood to play games Hayseed. One of our family is already dead tonight. Don’t be the reason that number goes up to two.” Borscht said in a cold tone that convinced Twilight that the mafia stallion was deadly serious.
“Ya know, on the other hand it was close enough.” Turnip Truck said with a slight quiver to his voice.
The slat slammed shut and the sound of deadbolts turning made its way through the heavy steel of the door. Soon enough the door swung open. Borscht holstered his sidearm again and ushered the team in.
“Hurry up,” he growled at the team. “The boss is upstairs and he is waiting on you.”
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I love all the spell science in this. Also will they make true magitech?
8944152
Much appreciated! My passion is in the story itself, not writing as an art form. Because of this my writing suffers. It also means that I typically don't write with a reader in mind so I don't go back and edit or proof read. I know its a problem, but because this is a hobby and not a main endeavor, the problem probably will most likely persist.
The only edit I will contest here is the Sirs vs Gentlemen. For the US military multiple male officers are addressed as Gentlemen so that is how I will be using it here.
8944545
It is a distinct possibility, I don't have any plans for it at the moment, but my detailed planning is only a chapter or two ahead of what is already written at any given time.
8944225
Thanks again for pointing all of this out.
8946109
I noticed this this too going back and I fixed it for the entire story.
Damn...
8945496
Stories depend on 'The willing suspension of disbelief'
Typos distract from that
You can get a proofreader here.
https://www.fimfiction.net/group/27/]The Proofreader Group
when can we expect the next chapter?
9099915
Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. I've been busy with work and had a bit of writer's block. Also due to personal reasons I haven't been using my free time to write but to use it elsewhere. I do plan to have the next chapter out by the end of the month