What Now?

by Q-22

From Dust

The Canterlot Royal Gardens looked a lot like the gardens in the Dreaming City, a place which held no meaning to any of the Princesses or Guards that Ghost had tried to make conversation with. The Guardian had announced a sudden desire to go for a walk, just a quick jog to get his thoughts in order. He hadn't been lying and was indeed doing exactly what he said he'd do, running his concerns through his head over and over, as if he were reading the same book over and over to draw some new insight from it. He was so involved in his thoughts, he hardly noticed the crackling blue hoofprints he was leaving. Little fires in the grass were subsequently being put out by two accompanying guards, who did their jobs without complaint or expression.

So, he thought to himself, what was it that he thought of himself? Of everything he did? What exactly was he supposed to do in his situation? Facing genocidal wars from multiple species for a plethora of reasons, he was given a gun and prompted to start shooting. It hadn't stopped since then. He remembered Ghost saying something about that, about the shooting never stopping. That, along with a bunch of other things he remembered, stuck with him, all of it bumping around in the back of his mind like a flock of Saint's pigeons fluttering about in The City's walls.

But now, he realized, he was presented with a situation in which the shooting had stopped. Or at least seemed to have stopped. It was odd. Like a-

His simile was interrupted by Ghost flying right in front of his face, chittering urgently as he fluttered his shell bits around.

"You're about to walk off a cliff and you're setting the ground on fire." Ghost's tone was something between concerned and sarcastic, his shell tipped down in scrutiny. "I know you've got a lot going on in your head, and normally I wouldn't interrupt because you think through these things pretty quick, but your energy levels have been fluctuating lately and the spikes have been increasing."

The Guardian turned his head, looking back at the tiny patches of flame, absent of guards putting them out. He carefully peered over the balcony edge he had almost stepped over and looked the two pegasus guards, who had likely been waiting to catch him in case he fell. He opened his mouth, trying to think of something to say, but then closed it.

"Alrighty, now that I've got your attention, please sit still while I, ah...Try to figure out why you're so, erm, unstable. Physically, I mean."

Ghost hovered a little closer while The Guardian backed away from the ledge and the guards swooshed up and onto the balcony, taking position nearby while maintaining a comfortable distance. The Guardian was being treated as a "special guest" at the moment, so while he was being accompanied by guards mostly everywhere, he wasn't under special watch. As such, he was thinking of it as having a CCTV camera network watching him for general security reasons, and not like he was anyone's prisoner.

Idly, he looked down at his noticeably crackling hooves, watching as faintly blue arcs of Light flashed beneath his fur and lashed out at the ground around his hooves, leaving scorch marks on the grass. He lifted a forehoof and noted the small fire that was beneath it. Aaaand back down goes the hoofsie, he thought, snuffing the flame with a 'pwomp'. He looked from his hooves to up around his torso, noticing more of the flickering arcs washing around. It was like watching ocean waves lapping at some inconsistent shoreline, occasionally overlapping and tangling. Well. That certainly explained why he felt like he had just downed a few pints of espresso. Sort of. Ghost mentioned being physically unstable, and this certainly looked like instability. It FELT a lot different though, like nervous energy building up, making him want to fidget and tap his hooves.

The swirls and arcs of energy were getting brighter, and it wasn't entirely hard to notice the staring the guards were doing. Ghost was still fluttering around him, occasionally scanning and mostly just looking (sounding, rather) concerned. A brief pushing kind of feeling began to build up from inside his chest, er, barrel? Whatever the term was, he felt something odd, and noticed a stronger pulse in the arcs. He inhaled, felt a sneeze coming along, and Ghost noisily panicked.

"Well, this is bad. You two! Run!" the talkative little dinklebot exclaimed as he flew past them and around a column. The pegasi had dived behind a stone bench just as The Guardian's head was tilted back on the inhale. One exhale later and a shockingly energizing blast of lightning shook the castle, leaving a very shiny pile of dust where The Guardian had been sitting.

Tentatively, Ghost peered around his hiding column. "Fiddlesticks, this again."

---

"So, he was just sitting there, and blew up?" Celestia asked rhetorically, a single eyebrow raised as she spoke. Ghost made a chittering sound equal to a passive shrug. One of the castle maids had carefully swept up the silvery, glowing ashes into an ornate bucket, which was now set atop Celestia's desk in the Sun Princess's secondary office. Celestia was seated behind the aforementioned desk on a floor pillow. Two guards were stationed outside the doorway and two more inside the room by the door. Ghost was hovering just above the bucket.

"One second he was sitting about, charged with energies, the next he sneezed and blew up."

A moment of quiet passed.

"Do remember that I can resurrect him. He's fine, but, well, just a bit more atomized than usual."

Celestia, who had been organizing trade regulation paperwork before the little explosion, sipped her late-afternoon tea and leaned her head a little closer to the bucket.

"And this is, well, all of him?"

"I think so. I've checked a few times to be sure, so if it isn't, well...You've got the whole 'Sun Princess' motif going, so I'm assuming you'd be able to incinerate him rather quickly should he be missing anything too important."

Celestia squinted, both brows raised. "Well, if it comes to that...Are you waiting to bring him back for any reason in specific?" The entirety of the resurrection business had Celestia altogether uncomfortable. The only form of total resurrection she had ever heard of was both necromantic and rather unseemly, but both Guardian and Ghost seemed completely nonchalant about it. She knew the rules were different where they were from, so she was assuming that their version of a resurrection was much different from the one she was imagining.

"What? Oh, yes, actually. I have a few questions I'd like to ask. I'm afraid my Guardian will explode again after a certain amount of time, and-"

And so began a very long and very complicated series of questions, comparisons, mathematical conversions, and brief philosophical discussions. Ghost had been wondering why The Guardian's body seemed incapable of properly storing and re-purposing his rapidly accumulating stores of Light. In order to keep his fleshy friend powered and revivable, Ghost had been slipshoddily converting the preexisting 'magic' all around them into both stable and unstable charges of Light. He had figured out how to do this not too long ago, back when the first weeks of the Dreaming City's time-loop curse was in effect. The energy conversion had been from extra Light funneled into physical charges, however, and not from a vast ocean of this new energy into, well, the physical body of his Guardian. How any of this was possible in the first place drew back to the paracasual nature of Guardians and their ability to store excessive amounts of energy in their bodies. The writer would like to take this sentence to apologize for the virulent use of the word "energy" and its various forms in this paragraph.

Anyway, it boiled down to this: Ghost believed that when they were dumped into this reality, the Universe went "Bah, screw it, just shove his soul into one of those ponies and be done with it" and The Guardian was subsequently framed with a body that could not handle the sheer amount of awesome that came with being a Guardian. He was, by several Logics, pretty freaking powerful, and would thus need a body that would be able to store and release that power without much disaster. A pony body wouldn't cut it, and, after a little exposition, Ghost and Celestia agreed that an Alicorn body would only cause trouble. That thought reminded the two that there wasn't a way to alter his consistent physical form yet, and a discussion about transmutation was swiftly booted up.

To cut the summary short, Celestia noted the Elements of Harmony being used to turn Discord to stone, and an idea was born.

---

"So the plan is to wait until I blow up again, then blast the urn my ashes are in with a friendship laser in order to try giving me a new, fully operational body that wont explode?" asked The Guardian, his tone hard to read. Ghost bobbed, likely in affirmation. He had just been revived a few minutes ago, minutes that Ghost had spent filling him in on what he missed. Part of that was keeping him in a more explosive-resistant environment until the Elements were assembled and used by their Bearers. Guardian nodded, frowning in consideration. "Alright, sure, lets do it. Not the weirdest thing we've ever done."

Author's Note:

More to come soon! Maybe.

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

And no, I'm not explaining all the little Destiny details sprinkled into this. I'm too tired for such refined, principled, drawn-out writing.

So does this mean we'll need to know about Destiny in order to understand this story?

[Fancy Fox]

huh, I was fully expecting an alicorn body but now i'm interested to see where this goes

[Q-22]

10002990
I dunno, maybe. I've been trying to keep the blatantly Destiny things on the low, but there'll be names and events mentioned briefly that might not make sense the first time they're mentioned. Exposition is a lovely tool, but too much of it does get tiresome.

[Gargon94]

I love how nonchalant the Guardian is about exploding apart by a sneeze.

[Spark Plug]

Sounds like you had fun with this chapter, I know I had fun reading it!

[Razjel]

Each chapter gets more and more fun! Can't wait to see what friendship orbital cannon will do to our favourite Guardian. From what I was able to gather, this here is a Void Hunter? Unless I'm mistaken, then please correct me

[shance]

Why is becoming an alicorn a bad thing?

[Sarikano]

Hmm, if not pony... Maybe a kirin? With a Nirik of light form :p

[CGen]

Actually, I thought he already was an alicorn, going by the weird looks he got in a previous chapter

[Q-22]

10004309
Nah, just a really tall unicorn with a big horn. I toyed with the idea of having him be an alicorn, tossed some hints in, but but eventually decided it should stay a red herring and nothing more.

[Q-22]

10003933
Public hysterics, mostly. Wouldn't be a bad choice for practical reasons, but it'd likely have consequences later on that no one wants to deal with.

[Q-22]

10003867
I haven't gotten directly into what class/subclass he is yet, but no, he's not purely a voidy boi hunter. There'll be some more on that later on.

[CGen]

10005051
Well, they probably have some stereotypes about unicorns with big horns, so the stares would be perfectly understandable.

[Union Actual]

I don't like that 'maybe' comment mister, you pick that up right this instance and yeet it out a window.

[deadmemes]

Is there gonna be a Dawning special chapter or something?

[CrossoverFanficReader]

Guardian nodded, frowning in consideration. "Alright, sure, lets do it. Not the weirdest thing we've ever done."

This is true.