Starcraft: Queen and Country
By Wanderer D
Chapter 024: Parallels
Equestria Several Months Ago█
The School of Friendship had held the funeral for Sweetie Belle and Gallus after a month had passed without news or headway into their location. Investigations into the unicorn that had caused the incident to happen had revealed the ugly side of the long isolation of Equestria from most other nations, and the deep roots of unfounded hatred and resentment that had fed from the most insular of fanatics to even educators and politicians.
The distractions in dealing with these homegrown terrorists had not slowed Twilight down on her own personal research, but despite months of experiments, she didn't have any proof of anything other than the fact that a bomb had gone off and taken with it three lives, two of which were very dear to her, her friends, and students.
Trixie had taken Gallus' disappearance particularly hard. Having felt personally connected to the griffon from the moment she had defended him from Grandpa Gruff, to watching him outgrow his fears, she had been devastated. Starlight Glimmer and her had even attempted time travel, but the forces activated by the Quantum Sphere disrupted time and space so severely that they risked being caught in the energies involved and destroyed.
Despite their protests, Twilight had to put her hoof down and forbid them from trying again… on their own. A series of experiments had ensued from that with all three brilliant mares trying to figure out how to cancel or channel those energies to their benefit.
Eventually they had discovered that the Quantum Sphere had not only opened a simple teleportation, but with the added, mysterious result of the bomb, it had catapulted the energy output beyond the current reality. It had pierce time, space, dimension and conceptual thought. It was simply beyond the magical potential of their incredibly powerful group of friends and acquaintances to imitate or even approach.
Sunset Shimmer and Science Twilight had been contacted to see if the technomagical approach of the human world and the magical knowledge of Equestria could pierce through this veil, but it had been fruitless. Without a starting point in their own dimension, there had been no way for them to even get past the point of theory.
Between Discord, Luna and Celestia, she had figured something could eventually reveal itself, but even Discord was at a loss. His chaotic magic could only be focused to an extent, and if the three of them had been tossed across the universes opened too many possibilities for a magical solution from him.
And he had tried to the point that Rarity had insisted he stop after Fluttershy had come crying to her, as he had run himself so haggard from the strain of attempts that he had almost faded out of their reality.
Nocreature wanted to give up. Not Discord. Not her, not the princesses…and not the Crusaders.
Apple Bloom and Scootaloo had sought out Zecora in the Everfree Forest. The shaman had used all of her might and knowledge, but the whispers of magic and the spirits she communed with had given her inconclusive results.
Time had passed and the experiments had slowly died off. Mystical artifacts proved inefficient; spells limited. Imagination slowly dried away until all most of them could do was stare listlessly at the failed attempts from before.
None of them had wanted to hold the funeral.
But they had to, because months of desperate effort had passed already, and despite their loss, life moved on.
Ocellus had steered Silverstream away from the lab with the help of Yona and Smolder to their home in the forest, where Sandbar had prepared some food. They had cut themselves for a few days, keeping the devastated hippogriff company, while also preventing her from descending into repetitive experiments.
Rarity's parents had insisted that she stop too… after chasing down Daring Do and insisting to go adventuring to find random items of power to help her, she had almost been killed during such an adventure, with only the intervention of Daring and Rainbow Dash stopping her from dying in a very messy and painful way.
The griffons had mourned in their own way the loss of Gallus. Grandpa Gruff hadn't been seen for weeks, with only Gabby being able to confirm the old bird was still alive, just terribly depressed, guilt-ridden and refusing company even more than usual.
Once the funeral happened, the wind seemed to die under the sails of those desperate to find their friends, or at least whether they even lived still. A lot of creatures simply resigned themselves and moved on, however reluctantly.
At least officially.
Twilight still found her students huddled in the library from time to time, looking over texts and experiment results, and she even joined them occasionally.
Apple Bloom and Scootaloo would sometimes come by with some research paper for her to validate, and Rarity, Fluttershy and Discord would travel to undisclosed locations for 'camping' trips that, upon their return, would drag with them an aura of displacement… as if they had been somewhere outside of the reality they were all familiar with.
It had been an accident that she had been able to sense that at all, having been engrossed in another experiment of her own, and that is what had given her the idea.
"Magical-aural dimensional resonance."
Applejack passed her a tissue.
"I didn't sneeze!" Twilight growled.
"Ah thought you did," the farmer countered, "Ah don't know what that was, but it didn't sound like the Equestrian Ah learned growing up."
"My dear Applejack, that leaves entire dictionaries worth of material to work with," Discord said, earning an elbow to the ribs from Rarity, while Fluttershy struggled between holding back a giggle and frowning disapprovingly.
The trio had become much closer since the accident, having been working together to find any trace of Sweetie, Gallus, and Quantum.
"In any case," Twilight said after clearing her throat to get their attention back, "I think the theory is sound and ties with the suggestions I've gotten from Sunset Shimmer and her friends." She used her magic to materialize a diagram she had been working on earlier.
"Waaaait…" Rainbow Dash gasped, staring at it. "Is that the outline of the hoofball tactics tha—"
"It's not," Twilight interrupted. "It's a visual representation of my theory. As you all know, when I asked Sunset and the others to investigate a technological means of finding our students, they were stumped by the lack of a starting point of some kind where they could dimensionally map a potential trajectory across theoretically proven levels of reality."
"Oh yeah, I remember that!" Trixie said. Then she shook her head sadly, stage-whispering to Starlight: "Poor Twilight, she's really lost it."
Starlight however shook her head, focusing on the diagram. "So… you've figured out a way to provide them with that?"
"Yes!" Twilight said, grinning. "It all came together when Discord, Rarity and Fluttershy returned from their last trip. I have been experimenting with dimensional wavelengths and realized that while we cannot pinpoint things from here… we can use our Equestrian wavelengths while dimensionally displaced to have a starting point to perform a search once we leave our universe. Wherever we go, we can use a tracing spell alongside some of Sunset's technology to start a proper search!"
"Right." Rainbow Dash cleared her throat. "What does that mean?"
"Basically we need to detect our specific type of energy from outside this universe," Starlight explained to the others. "We've been on the right track but had the wrong starting point. We start from outside with our, um, energy signature. So when we do that, we should get three results at least… one for this dimension, one for the dimension we use to perform the experiment, and finally…"
"One from where Sweetie and Gallus are!" Pinkie said excitedly.
"Yes!" Twilight said, grinning.
Present Day, Equestria█
"She's back!"
It took a moment for Twilight to get her bearings and recognize the voices around her.
Discord was giving suggestions, but apparently staying out of the way. Rarity was closest, fussing over her. Trixie, Sunset, Sci-Twi, Starlight and Starswirl were arguing closer to where the magical technology machines were located.
She couldn't see…. everything was hazy-white, and she panicked for a second, but then she remembered had expected that and knew her vision would return to normal in a few moments.
A bit further away she could hear the nervous voices of the crusaders, Spike, and her students. Full house today at the lab.
"Twilight." At the sound of Celestia's calm voice, everyone else quieted down. "Twilight, how do you feel?"
Twilight gulped, took a deep, slow breath and let it out gently. "I feel… I feel okay." She used her magic slowly, checking herself, checking the flow of energy, checking for variations that would show if anything had changed, but found none… just a slight trace of the Void, as Sweetie had called it, but again, that was to be expected.
In fact, it was wanted. She carefully cast a spell that activated the machine where Sunset and the others were, and the several measuring instruments in it recorded the all the relevant wavelengths—three-dimensional and four-dimensional, thaumic and radioactive—that she would need to reach that place again.
And she would. But she needed to rest… and to talk to the others.
She gulped, thinking back on her conversation there. On the dangers Sweetie had made her aware of, how unprepared they were for… any of it, if it ever came to their part of the universe.
Slowly her eyes cleared and she was able to make out the worried faces of the others as the whole group slowly approached.
"They're alive," Twilight said. "Gallus and Sweetie… they're alive."
The cheer was almost deafening. Immediately voices rose again, discussing plans on how to reach out to them again. Making the system more efficient. Go pick them up….
"No!" Twilight blurted out before she controlled herself.
"Twilight?" Rarity asked, surprised. "What do you mean no?"
She braced herself. "There's… a lot to talk about. We can't go there, not yet. I need to talk to Sweetie again before we even consider the idea, and even if it's possible it might not be for the best."
"Twilight," Princess Celestia spoke up. "What are you not telling us?"
Twilight's thoughts were a jumble. She needed to think and organize them. "Quartz is dead."
The room became quiet.
"Gallus and Sweetie are stuck on opposite sides of a war that we can barely begin to imagine. Sweetie is…" She hesitated.
"What's wrong with Sweetie?" Rarity asked, her voice low. "Tell me, Twilight."
"Sweetie is no longer a pony… not exactly."
"Did she turn into a h—"
"No." Twilight interrupted Sunset. "There are humans there, called Terrans," she clarified, ignoring her student's confused looks. "Gallus is part of the crew of one of the Terran faction's rebellion's leader. Sweetie is now a… she called them Zerg."
"Twilight—"
"Enough." Celestia turned to face the others. "I understand we all want to know what happened to our friends. But we need to give Twilight some space and a moment to collect herself."
"I'm sorry, Rarity," Twilight said. "Give me a few minutes. I have to go write down everything Sweetie told me. But… for what it's worth, despite her changes… she's okay, she's fine. She has friends and an army behind her to support her. I believe she's as safe as anycreature can be right now where they are."
In fact, if she were attacked, it would be more likely that her enemies would be the ones in danger. She thought, keeping that to herself as Fluttershy and Discord helped Rarity over to the Crusaders to talk a little.
"Twilight?" Silverstream ventured.
"Gallus is fine too, he's a bit more mature now, that's all," she said with a gentle smile at her students, who looked very relieved indeed.
Once she was on her hooves, she looked at everycreature in the room and rolled her shoulders with a sigh. "There's too much to tell, and it was all told to me by Sweetie, so bear in mind we're hearing one side of the story here. Let me get things organized and we'll talk." She looked at Rarity, who didn't seem to happy about having to wait, but after a moment, her friend sighed and her shoulders slumped.
Rarity gave her a tired smile. "At least I know she's alive and well."
2504, Koprulu Sector, Agria's Moon█
"I don't know if she's going to make it."
Gallus and Lasarra glanced up at Nerath from their game of chess, which Gallus barely remembered how to play, but knew enough to teach the scientist the basics and soon was losing consistently against the observant—and much less impulsive—Protoss.
"That is not a very encouraging thing to say," Gallus admitted, secretly thankful for the reprieve from a series of consecutive, embarrassing losses. "Weren't you very certain she would be fine just a few minutes ago?"
That was one thing he had learned about Nerath: if things didn't work out immediately as she expected, she assumed failure.
"Why hasn't she awakened?" the Nezarim said, pacing around the lab and gazing worriedly at Sweetie, who was now floating placidly in a tank full of liquids that, according to the Protoss, would heal whatever wounds were left.
"Already the scans indicate the neural connections are working perfectly! The zerg genetics have healed so thoroughly there's not even scar tissue! Her system has accepted our adaptations! She should be up and murdering us right now!"
"And that statement worries me more than your urgency at her recovery," Lasarra quipped.
At first, the pair had been worried, but soon had grown to understand that Nerath, for all her skill, had little patience for medical recovery. Her work was usually done with machines and with Protoss that were at least compatible with her technology.
The unknown factor of how the Zerg Queen would recover, if she would really be able to use her improvements, and the weight of just how much hinged on this working at all was making her even more stressed.
"I don't like not knowing even less than you do," Gallus reminded her. "I care a lot for Sweetie Belle. But you've gone from calling absolute failure to success to failure again that I'm starting to think you should be sedated."
Suddenly an alarm rang out in the lab, and both scientists were on their consoles in a second.
"Her thought patterns are spiking!" Nerath cried out with joy. "She's waking up! We've done it!"
Gallus would have joined her excitement, but he had been observing Sweetie as she came to. And the look of abject horror, then anger that crossed her face sobered him up very quickly.
The next thing he knew, the container exploded into pieces, and Sweetie was flying at him, snarling with anger, and scythes at the ready to dismember him.
End Chapter
Bugpony mad. Excellent chapter!
Have there ever been more then three playable races in Starcraft?
The only thing I didn't like about this chapter is that there wasn't more of it.
Oh, and also the cliffhanger.
As a side note, it looks like there were some minor formatting issues.
Missing the green formatting of the rest of the date/location text.
Date/location text was placed before the scene transition symbol instead of after.
Please don't kill the poor Gryphon! He only wants his cuddle... bug? Zerg?
At least Equestria knows what happened now.
Hmm... Is she really that mad at Gallus? I would almost think it was an instinctive reaction in her half awake state, but it looked like she was having a conversation with bad news right before she woke up.
11391267
With mods yes but for the base game no there have never been more than three factions
Nothing quite like your crush leaping through solid glass to crush and or maim you. Aww.
Cuddlebug incoming! Snuggels imminent! Prepare to lose the V-Card Gallus for the Sweetie need her Mate to get her hug quote meet ♡♡♡♡♡
Prepare for Sweetyling murdering with snuggels and kisses Gallus man card
11391242
Of course, Agressiv-cuddeling imminent
(\[^///_///^]/)
11391267
Only with mods. Playing the campaign of all races with different Species and co-op is my favorit.
11391290
What did you guess will happen?
Snuggels, cuddles a hug and a kiss or Sweetie Belle aiming for Gallus and one of the Protoss female get the smoothly kissed when trying to stop the 'attacking Zerg'
11391297
Tackle hug is effectiv, add a kiss and the Ship is on its way to juice adventures!
11391406
Gallus is surrounded by two females and she isn't one of them. Time to make sure who is his alpha mare.
A Queen needs her King after all
Hypogriffon-Zerg incoming!
Gallus and Lasarra are to dumbstruck to react in time so Nerath gets to Gallus to defend him.
*SWEETYLING leaps at Gallus, she would get him claimed*
Sweetie Belle: "MINEEE!"
Nerath: "I will protect you!"
*Nerath get between Gallus and Sweetie and bravely defends him from getting smootched, getting kissed in turn...*
Lasarra: "There is a collective facepalm on the Khala to hear, i think the Nerazim just defended young Gallus from getting his first mating ritual interrupted..."
Gallus: "Getting Cave flashbacks... I think she is half lucid still, kissing Nerath without her having a mouth and all... Hey Lasarra say, why are you and Nerath turning red in skin color?"
Lasarra: "If you know what Sweetie Belle is transmitting into Nerath mind you be blushing full body as well..."
Gallus: "You think we should interrupted or...?
Lasarra: "No, Nerath had it coming and i want to collect science data from the first Protoss-Zerg make out season. Also i am mildly confused why all male Protoss high five one another in the Khala..."
*In a far of Dimension*
Cadance: "My shipping sence is tingeling...
AND - IT - IS - GLORIOUS" ♡
well... this is kind of expected considering the last time she was on an operating table, it was when the Terran's were experimenting on her, and turned her into a zerg for some as of yet to be explored reason.
Well, i guess sweety has PTSD flashbacks from being turned into a Zerg by the Terrans right now. Hopefully Gallus can snap her out of it in time to turn murder ans dismemberment into snuggles and kisses.
Nice recap of what Equestria did to get to the point of Twilight making contact. As for Sweetie… yeah, I don’t think many Zerg absorbed the essence of “morning person.” Let’s hope she collects herself before she slices off anything important.
Sweetie be upset! Muahaha! Or she is tackle hugging him.
But what a cliffhanger!
11391290 Good catch! Thanks for letting me know! Fixing now.
Twilight's interaction with the Void is worrying, given what lurks within. Hopefully nothing comes from that.
11391267
11391336
No, the Xel'Naga were planned to be the fourth race, but were scrapped because adding more races exponentially increases the difficulty of balancing everything. In addition, the original SC2 story was retconned to remove the Xel'Naga barring what we see in the story as it is now.
11391540
My running theory is that was Moebius Corps, seeing if they could turn her into a powerful Hybrid.
11392466
considering how bad they are at running tests and maintaining testing materials, this does make sense, but still having access to such a highly potent psionic species and wasting it on an experiment that is highly unlikely to work is the height of folly.
11392637
Moebius Corps is - ironically - not smart, by virtue of being completely and utterly brainwashed. Their entire goal is to create Hybrid under the will of Amon and bring about the end of the universe, ending the cycle of the Xel'Naga.
Given that Sweetie Belle is a species never before seen in the Koprulu Sector and beyond, they likely would've done tests to figure out what the hell she is and how they can use her. Given that her horn is apparently a very complex psionic conductor, they would've assumed she'd make a very powerful psionic conduit. They can't very well put Protoss into her, so instead they try to control her and Hybridize her to some degree by putting Zerg in her. Purity of Form in a powerful pony package. Given that the alternative is what they did to captured Protoss (fused together into Hybrid) I think Zergifying her is the better option.
It makes me wonder if ponies (more specifically Sweetie Belle) have Purity of Essence. Being a Zerg Hybrid I believe qualifies her for Purity of Form given it did for Kerrigan...
But yeah. Core point is that everything Moebius Corps does is under Narud's command to enact Amon's plan.
11392676
all they really needed to do was keep her sedated, and use genetic samples to grow hybrids from scratch, and they couldn't even properly do that!
11392763
It’s implied in the game that none of the Hybrid were “grown”, plus who is to say they didn’t take samples?
"They had cut themselves for a few days"
Um. I'm not sure what you meant to write there, but I'm guessing self-harm wasn't it? Or am I missing something?
"then she remembered had expected"
"then she remembered she had expected"?
"in it recorded the all the relevant wavelengths"
"in it recorded all the relevant wavelengths"?
"the Nezarim said"
"the Nerazim said"?
...Well. :D
Yeeeah, in retrospect, maybe Gallus shouldn't have been one of the first people she saw on waking up, given how she more recently saw him and her lack of knowledge of what he's been doing in the meantime. Or where she is and what's going on in general. But they didn't know just when she'd be waking up, they had other things on their minds, and, well... perhaps they didn't expect her physical recovery to be quite so immediately vigorous, either. :D
In any case, some interesting developments this chapter, and I look forward to the next one! Thank you for writing. :)
I wonder how Rarity will react... or Celestia, given that Sweetie admitted to being a thread to everything, more or less. A lot gets lost on the grapevine...
I really want to see where Twilight is going to drop in :p
Something I will find funny if she kisses him hard
This is mlp... this will end in desaster or a hilarious situation. Anything in between is usually to tame
11391540
A frightening logical conclusion. One can hope it end in no lethal and maximum snuggeling
11391556
Make love no war, so Gallus help snuggeling Sweety into peace, the end
11391714
That comment coming from someone with your avatar is priceless.
Is there by any chance a way you can tell me the story behind your avatar? It's to cute ♡
11391885
It's either ending in , or
11392466
Maybe even successful, just not farenough to.make her into a obedient slave yet.
Lucky mommy Kerrigan come in time to save the day.
11392637
Experiments have to start somewhere and Duran/Narud probably was taking every chance he could find. He was working.on his task for millenia.
Eventually a small chance of success is better than none at all.
11393147
Yep, even in the co-op missions they are still in the awakening phase after having matured.
Probably easier to connect all at one's than going it individually.
11401779
Or someone else