• Published 9th Oct 2019
  • 2,065 Views, 183 Comments

The GATE - scifipony



When an inter-dimensional gate opens between Sweet Apple Acres and rural California, Twilight must act quickly before any creature gets hurt, pony or invader.

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23 - Consequences

Twelve diamond-pointed javelins blasted through the ceiling like the tines of a fork through softened butter. The guard had probably cast down just before I teleported. Attuned to any attack on the princess—princesses if they included me—why would they not have?

The air above the shield transformed instantly into a maelstrom of splinters and diamond dust. Sharp debris ricocheted and banged against walls. The glass in the windows shattered. A vase with sunflowers near the entrance to the kitchen burst, splashing water. Not all the javelins splintered, however. These struck with their remaining mass vectors down on my shield. Adding the magical feedback from shattered javelins to the total heat dissipation of the entire attack, it translated into a downward shove.

Never discount the incredible strength after a wind-up throw of a trained pegasus with a javelin. Or twelve of them.

It flattened me to the floor. Like a fly hit by a fly swatter. Mediated by unicorn magic, I found my legs folded, but that didn't stop me from smacking my chin on the floor. Blue and purple phosphenes bloomed across my vision and I saw four bipeds. Two sets of twins.

The bipeds, not magically connected to the shield, faired better. The magical apparition only swatted them on the head as it jerked downward. The younger of the pair, shoved back by the curve of the dome toward the shield's anchor point, my horn, collided with Graybeard and landed into a pile of legs and arms to my right. Graybeard moaned even as he flailed his arms to reach his dropped weapon.

I had lost Shield. The three of us lay on the floor, together, within hoof-reach. Unprotected.

I groaned as I levered myself up. Biped eyes locked on my own as we all recovered from the stunning blow. One of the javelins slid with the sound of wood on wood to fall to the wood floor. It bounced and toppled over, clattering between me and them. A second one dropped, and stuck into the dark varnished wood planking. The bipeds' eyes locked on that one as it momentarily vibrated.

I shouted, "Halt!"

I didn't think that the guard would launch a second volley, but had they not figured out that I'd teleported inside, they might. The sound of my voice sent shocks of pain between my eyes.

Before I could fully stand, Graybeard again grabbed for the weapon—instead of me, which would have been arguably more effective. As he did so, I cast Levitate.

I ripped the weapon from his hand. He had tried to grab it by the trigger, but hadn't calculated the weight of the weapon and had barely gotten it sliding.

He yelped, pulling his hand to his stomach, as I spun the barking arrow out the broken window, hitting the remaining knife blade shards of the panes. The glass and the metal device landed with the sound of a cascade of glass... and a single discharge that rang loud in the momentary silence. As I finished standing, I glided the other weapons after the first, hoping for a safer result.

Graybeard leapt at me. Now he did, though further away than before.

More liked tried to leap. The younger, on top of him, wrestled with him to keep him from his feet. They shouted and fell over each other, throwing punches, while I warped Shield to center around them. That left an apparition resembling a transparent red stepped-upon balloon, the bulge toward me, but I didn't need pretty. I collapsed it so it gave them little more than a biped-length and trotted to the rear of the room, then pushed them toward the door.

Not wanting to be swept prone along the debris strewn floor, the two stumbled to their feet, teetering at first, but kept upright, bouncing against the spell field with repeated zats and zaps as I collapsed the circumference of the spell to a pony-length.

I marched them through the door, across the veranda, and down the steps. I trotted behind, tail high, ears forward, beginning to smile.

Probably, I should have looked first.

If the bipeds hadn't yet intuited the purpose of the apparitions we'd held between us and them, they certainly did now. Ahead, the invaders waited. Some had sat or knelt, minimizing their targeting surface. The rest stood there... I had to characterize their wide eyes as shock. None had dropped their hoof-cannons. I could hear the wind... and the crunch of shoes and horseshoes in the fan of glass and wood splinters we traversed.

Eerie.

When I glanced right, I saw the distant entrance to the farm and the multicolored shields. Behind, I saw Princess Celestia towering over the rest. Oh Neigh had dropped to the ground beside her mate who had shrunk to the side of the Meadowbrook, looking at the princess.

What I'd mistaken for the sound of the wind had been the ongoing whoosh of the firestorm that raged above the Princess to a height of twenty pony-lengths. Everypony had spread away from her as the smokeless flames licked and swirled above her, forming a dust devil of orange and red.

I remembered Starlight's retelling of her nightmare the night after she had inadvisedly switched the princess' cutie marks. I could clearly see the whites of Celestia's eyes. They weren't black. I saw no pointed dragon teeth. This wasn't the nightmare mania taken over. Not the Daybreaker described to me, which could have just been Starlight's deductive mind generating a nightmare persona for Celestia.

I judged there was some princessly history I was not yet privy to...

Starlight popped into existence beside me, frost steaming from her withers.

"Time to g-go!" she chimed-in in that falsely bright and cheerful nervous way she did when she got very worried.

"No!" I said before she could teleport me away.

"Shield?" she asked.

"No.

"No?"

"Tell Celestia to release Oh Neigh and Broader."

She pursed her lips, but vanished with a pop and a spray of sparkles.

When I looked back at the bipeds, one let his hoof-canon drop from his hands. It was a start, anyway. As I came as close as I would to the group, I shoved the shield spell forward and dispelled it. The two stallions staggered forward, arms windmilling, only to knock over three of their fellows who jumped to try to catch them.

Two further hoof-cannons and a barking arrow rattled as they hit the ground.

I was close enough to the giants that I had to look up into their faces as they dealt with the returned two, though the younger still positioned himself to pin the struggling patriarch to the ground. They yammered amongst themselves, with the younger pointing toward the house and probably describing the javelins, two of which stuck out of the roof.

The volume of their talk increased when a shout from Oh Neigh made them look. She was pushing the Meadowbrook, running toward them. Her mate winced at every rock that rattled the pony cart.

Graybeard took advantage of the distraction. I saw in my peripheral vision that he'd grabbed a knife from a boot. He lunged at me.

He didn't get far.

The younger tackled him. He went down, belly first, with a loud woof.

I cast Force as Starlight once again popped in beside me. In a second, the blade glowed bright red.

"Yow!" he cried, flinging it away.

As Starlight stood there, her eyes keen on the bipeds before her, her hide steaming from her third teleport in a row, I cast Levitate on the incapacitated truck nearby since it offered the bipeds cover and obscured my complete view of them. The thing weighed celestial-tons, but I had no need to be careful with it or to worry if I might damage or drop it.

I did grunt as I lifted up one side of it. The thing bounced on its springy suspension. As I bounced it, gaining momentum, one door swung open, then slammed. It slid about three pony-lengths, then rolled over. I capitalized on that and let it roll over five times before it stopped beside a fence.

Starlight, more practical than I was, swept away the seven dropped weapons, including the knife and what I'd thrown out the windows, into the orchard.

I guess I should acknowledge that she didn't just fling the bipeds into another dimension the way she had with Discord.

She matured every day.

It took Oh Neigh a few minutes to calm every creature. At one point, she fiercely hugged Graybeard, perhaps her grandpa, as she spoke urgently to him. He kept stealing glares at me, and at some point I understood that I would have to discover what hate filled his eyes.

Nevertheless, what Oh Neigh said, and some that Broader added, worked the final bit of magic. Very cautiously, keeping their weapons and hands in view, the remaining bipeds placed their hoof-cannons and barking arrows on the ground.

Keen-eyed Rainbow Dash shouted above, "Clear it!"

In moments, the pegasi started kicking the clouds out of the sky. While I hadn't ordered it, the pegasi royal guard, brass armor gleaming in the noontime sun, and the rest of the pegasi of Ponyville beside them swooped down and settled in a circle surrounding our guests.

Many biped mouths dropped open.

"No," I told Starlight when she made to gather up the surrendered weapons, probably to teleport them away. "These are their belongings."

Methodically, and slowly, I took each weapon, spun revolving parts, pulled magazines, ejected the contents of slide clips, emptying the ammunition on the ground. Then, with Starlight's help, we checked each pocket, holster, belt, boot, and hat to assure nothing sharp or dangerous or which we had no clue to what it did remained in their possession. I did let Starlight sequester the ammunition, of course.

And so the hard part began: Showing our "guests" that we meant no harm, and learning whether their biped nation posed a threat to Equestria. All that had to start with learning the language.

I pointed to myself and said, "Pony," then at Starlight and said, "Pony."

I got blanks stares. After our fierce struggles, there were obviously cultural issues to deal with.