Chapter 10: Meanwhile...
“Say that again?” demanded the big man seated behind the desk. “You didn’t just say what I think you said.”
“I’m sorry sir,” apologized the military man, bracing himself to attention as he stood in front of the individual who was arguably the most powerful man in the world. “But the report we have from the intelligence officer in place confirms that Brightly’s mayor is capable of magic.”
“It’s all Obama’s fault,” declared the President. “If he hadn’t left our military so empty of equipment we wouldn’t be in this fix.”
“Uh, yes sir,” replied the soldier. His rank was colonel, but in reality he was little more than a messenger right now. “Was there anything else, Sir?”
“No. Wait. Yes,” the President ordered, vacillating. “If this is true we don’t need a pony for magic, right? All we need is someone from that little terror town.”
“The town is Canadian, Sir,” the officer pointed out.
“Right, which means the next best thing to communist,” responded the President, becoming more animated as he spoke. “Point is, we don’t have to try to get either of those two Equestrians. Kidnapping them was a stupid plan anyway. The generals never should have tried it.”
“But sir, those were your orders,” protested the colonel, whose name tag read ‘Austin’. “You told us to get you a pony.”
“I figured you would offer them a deal to show us about magic. That’s what business people do, you know? We make deals with people,” the President said, shaking his head in a disappointed fashion. “I never told anyone to kidnap one of those horses. Is ‘kidnap’ the right word? Or is ‘rustling’ better? Anyway, the point is, we don’t need a pony anymore. All we need is someone from Brightly.”
“So, you want me to get someone from the State Department?” Colonel Austin asked, a little confused.
“I can’t trust any of those people to do anything,” growled the President. “And even though you people screwed things up last time, at least you did something when I told you to. So, I want the military to come up with a plan to bring someone from that broke little town here to America, so they can teach us how to do magic.”
“Yes sir!” snapped out Austin, glad to have the chance to get out from under the gimlet eye of his commander-in-chief. “I’ll order Captain Rios to assemble his team.”
“No,” countermanded the President. “Anyone but that loser. He couldn’t even grab an unarmed horse from a town guarded by civilians. Get someone else.”
“Understood, Sir,” the soldier replied, turning to leave as a messenger from the afore-mentioned State Department arrived.
“Sir,” said the newcomer, a small man wearing a tweed suit. “The Canadians have sent us a copy of the Brightly Autonomous Zone treaty, and they would like to know when we’re going to ratify it.”
“I never sign anything without reading it,” the President responded, indignant. “You can just tell them that they need to wait until we have a look at this thing of theirs before they make it official.”
The officer closed the door behind him, glad to be out of the Oval Office. His bosses at the Pentagon weren’t going to be happy with this new mission they were being assigned, but at least he wouldn’t be involved in it. Especially when the one man who had, and still was having, direct experience with the Equestrians wasn’t allowed to be in on the new mission.
Maybe if they couldn’t have Rios on the team for this snafu, they could have him at least brief what was sure to be a failed mission. As Austin cleared the security checkpoint he was cheered by the thought that at least there was no particular lack of blundering incompetents that could be assigned to be in charge. The real problem was finding someone both capable enough to do the job, while being loathed enough that no one would care when they failed.
“So that’s pretty much it,” Rios was saying a few hours later to his visitor. “While the CAF presence is actually pretty low, Brightly doesn’t need much, and between the terrain, personal all-weather capability and hyper-mobility I’d personally recommend against any sort of ‘snatch and grab’ operation.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” replied the handsome man in his immaculate Rangers uniform. “I’ve read the AAR you gave after you were released from custody, and I’ve never read a more obvious piece of justification for a failure in all my life. If I had my way you would have been court-martialed for negligence and dereliction of duty.”
“Yes sir!” Rios shot back, his sarcasm selector moving to full auto. “You are correct, Sir! A plan should have been in to cover alien teleportation, airborne stealth surveillance and a complete breakdown of the laws of physics as we know them, Sir! Would the Major care to enlighten a poor stupid grunt as to how he would have handled the situation, Sir?”
“Don’t get smart with me, soldier,” snarled back the officer, whose precisely positioned name tag read “Donavich” but whose Ranger dress uniform seemed to lack the usual salad bars of qualification and award badges. “You screwed up, and now it’s time for Team Mercury to fix things.”
“Who?” Rios asked, confused.
“Me,” replied the officer, with a sneer. “You and your team were allowed to play fast and loose with the rules one too many times, and it finally caught up to you. Time for real soldiers to handle things.”
“I suppose your unit motto is ‘Gotta catch’em all’?” Rios asked, mouth running on autopilot.
“We just might at that,” the officer replied with a barely concealed sneer, as he opened the door of the small conference room at the USAMRIID base that Rios had called home ever since his return. “We certainly can’t do any worse than you did.”
“What an asshole,” Rios muttered, just managing to restrain his comment until after the officer had left.
“Asshole,” audibly murmured a nurse who entered the room a beat afterwards.
“I see you met my visitor,” Rios commented, with a rueful chuckle. “Who the hell was that idiot anyway.”
“That was Major Ebon Donavich,” supplied the army nurse, whose name flash read “Smythe”. “He’s ambitious, pig-headed and connected from here to Fort Bragg. Likes the callsign ‘Mercury’ because he thinks he deserves a place on Mount Olympus or something.”
“I take it you don’t agree,” Rios guessed, as the nurse gestured him out of the room and back toward his sleeping quarters.
“We’ve got another name for him,” Smythe replied, walking alongside Rios. “Sonofabitch.”
“Ha!” Rios burst out, his bark of laughter drawing looks from the dwindling number of staff on hand as day shifted to evening.
“If he wasn’t so connected he’d have been brought up on Article 120 charges long ago,” Smythe growled, as the pair turned a corner toward the Sleep Studies lab. “But apparently he’s got enough contacts in the Old Boy network to make the allegations go away.”
“You?” asked Rios, as the pair entered a small room outfitted with a bed and enough monitoring equipment to make your average science fiction fan squeal in glee.
“No, but I’ve lost a few members of my staff over the years because him,” the nurse stated, face set in a frown. “You know the drill. Shirt off, lay down and I’ll wire you up.”
“Sorry if I brought back bad memories,” apologized Rios, as he began to undo his uniform. “Do we really have to keep doing this? I’ve met with Princess Luna twice in my dreams and you guys never picked up anything odd.”
“Officially, no,” Smythe agreed, but Rios saw a twinkle of mischief flare to life in the nurse’s brown eyes. “Unofficially, me and the tech weenies noticed a marked tumescence on both occasions that you reported speaking with Princess Luna.”
“Tu—what?” queried Rios, confusion writ large on his face before it was obscured by the removal of his undershirt.
“Hard, soldier,” Smythe explained, as the mischief spread from her eyes to her mouth. “You got hard. That must be one sexy alien princess.”
“But… but… she’s a horse! I mean pony!” exclaimed Rios, blushing. “I mean… even if I wanted to do anything, which I don’t, we’re physically incompatible.”
“Talk to a Scottish sheepherder about physical incompatibility someday,” the nurse laughed, pushing Rios back onto his bed and beginning the process of slapping numerous electrodes to his body. Rios continued to sputter for a few moments before Smythe decided to have a bit of mercy on her charge.
“Hey, If there’s anything we do know about attraction it’s that looks are only one part of it,” Smythe said, as she began sticking electrodes around Rios’ forehead. “A lot of it has to do with personality and attitudes. Besides, she’s a princess, and from what I understand, pretty attractive by Equestrian standards. Besides, power is sexy.”
“Well as ponies go, Luna’s not bad looking, especially with that whole ‘Mistress of the Night’ vibe she’s got going,” Rios commented, trying to relax as much as he could with over a dozen electrodes stuck to his body at various locations. “But it’s not like I want to take advantage of her or anything.”
“The Russians used ‘honey traps’ all the time. Just keep asking yourself, ‘What would Captain Kirk do’?” chortled Smythe, passing Rios a cup filled with a pair of low strength sleeping tablets. “Buck up soldier, this is for science. The more we can study the Equestrians when they do their thing, the closer we get to understanding how they do it. It’s not like we want you to pump her for information or anything.”
“Just for the record, I don’t go in for that kind of bullshit,” Rios grumbled, downing the pills and trying to relax a bit. “I have no intention of seducing a foreign head of state, just to get information out of her.”
“Don’t worry, if anyone ordered you to do that I’ve got a feeling you would tell them to go pan fry a grenade,” Smythe reassured the captain. “You just keep on chatting with Luna and we’ll keep on monitoring you. We’ll keep any ‘reactions’ to just you and me.”
“Thanks, appreciate it,” Rios replied, a sudden thought sending a spike through his growing drowsiness.. “Hey, how much should I worry about that Donavich asshole?”
“You let me worry about Mercury,” ordered Smythe, as she dimmed the lights and got ready to leave the room. “All he knows how to do is fail upwards. You worry about not starting another interdimensional incident.”
“Good evening, Captain Rios,” Luna said, a seeming instant after the man had fallen asleep. “I hope this day has found you well?”
“Pretty much as well as can be expected considering I’m stuck in… uh, never mind,” Rios began, not willing to reveal that they were being monitored as much as was possible for human scientists.
“I sense you are being troubled by something, my soldier,” Luna commented, lying down beside Rios on what appeared to be a sandy beach. “Please, you can speak freely to me, with faith that I shall keep your confidences.”
“First off, Ma’am,” Rios shot back, realizing he was clad in only a pair of cargo shorts. “I’m not ‘your’ soldier. I’m an officer in the United States Army, not Equestria. If my chain of command seconds me to your orders, that’s fine, but until then I’m just Captain Rios to you.”
“My apologies, Captain Rios,” Luna said, bowing her head. “I misspoke. I had meant it as a term of endearment and not a pronouncement of any claim upon you.”
“Well, just watch it,” Rios continued, his face heating slightly. “I like you, I mean I like talking to you, but I can’t go around with people saying that I’m your anything.”
“Whyever not, Captain?” Luna asked, eyes wide, innocent and looking directly into Rios’ own. “Am I not your friend?”
“Well yeah, as much as we can be,” Rios allowed, hand scuffing at some sand. “I mean, you know I’m reporting everything we talk about, right?”
“I would be surprised if you weren’t,” Luna answered, leaning close and putting a hoof on Rios’ thigh. “You are loyal, brave and intelligent. Which is why I enjoy these conversations of ours. You are also honest, which is another quality I appreciate. So tell me, what is troubling you?”
“You know I can’t tell you everything, right?” Rios asked, putting his hand on Luna’s hoof.
“Naturally. Your nation entrusts you with secrets that I, as an outsider, should not know,” Luna answered, sneaking a look at where her hoof was trapped between Rios’ hand and thigh. “Even as I withhold some things about Equestria from you. We are not that close, as yet.”
“Princess,” Rios asked, his face only inches from Luna’s muzzle. “Are you physically attracted to me?”
“What?” Luna responded, confusion writ large on her face. “You mean… as if you were a stallion?”
“Yeah,” Rios said, plunging forward. “I mean if we found ourselves together, and we there wasn’t any reason for us not to.”
“If we were, for instance, on a beach with you sitting in but the smallest of clothing, while continued as I am,” Luna pressed, “Would I desire to have congress with you? Is that what you are asking?”
“Well, assuming everything worked uh, physically that—” Rios started to respond with, only to be cut off by the sparkling laughter of the lunar alicorn. “Hey! No laughing! I’m being serious here.”
“I’m sorry… sorry,” Luna replied, visibly suppressing her laughter into a single final snort. “It was just so unexpected, and you seemed so grimly serious about it. As if I were some sort of bastion whose walls you needed to penetrate. Is this what has you so troubled?”
“The tech weenies noticed that I sort of, ‘reacted’ to being around you,” Rios explained, “and it got me wondering if you had ‘reacted’ the same way.”
“Ah, I see,” Luna began, her eyes kind but serious. “My dear captain, there is nothing shameful in noticing the beauty of another, there is only shame in using that to be unkind to that other being.”
“That’s taking the long way around to answer my question, Ma’am,” Rios stated, with a “get on with it” look.
“Very well, direct then,” Luna said, nodding in acknowledgement. “Physically, I do not find your body attractive. You lack both hooves and tail, and your dimensions are quite frankly, other than what I am used to. However, I do greatly approve of your face and the person behind it, and unless I am greatly mistaken you have similar opinions regarding me.”
“I’d say you pretty much nailed it,” Rios replied, taking his hand off Luna’s hoof to rub his chin in thought. “I like you and all, but I was getting worried I was getting a little ‘horse happy’’ so to speak.”
“Think nothing of it, Captain,” Luna responded, before a glint of mischief lit in her eyes. “To be sure though, it has been a long time since I have taken a Royal Consort, and I am quite sure that if the spell was cast upon thee that thou would make for an attractive stallion.”
“Consort eh?” Rios countered, a smile crossing his face. “So you’re saying there’s a chance then?”
“Ha!” laughed Luna, and this time both mare and man laughed together as the tension evaporated. Afterwards Luna added on, “the point will be moot shortly as my sister’s student, Princess Twilight, intends to move the portal to Equestria above ground, as well as expanding it in size. If all goes well I will be returning home in a few days.”
“Will we still be able to meet like this after you go home?” Rios queried, as he leaned back.
“I do not know,” was Luna’s response. “The token of mine that you carry connects us, but I have never tried to dreamwalk across dimensions. We will simply have to see. So, last time we spoke you explained to me your ‘Constitution’ and how it came to be. Perhaps this night I can explain to you how Equestria sits among its neighbors such as the Crystal Empire, the city state of Griffonstone and the Dragon Lands.”
“I’d like that,” Rios answered, and listened as Luna began her explanation of Equestrian foreign policy, secretly glad all the while that he had been able to conceal his concern over whatever scheme “Mercury” was coming up with regards to Brightly and the Equestrians.
“Anyhow, so that’s why we need your help, Zecora,” Applebloom said, standing with her friends beside the zebra shaman’s bubbling cauldron.
“So, let me see if I have this right,” Zecora mused, tilting her head toward her young student. “You want a potion to enhance an alicorn’s might. But I wonder how I am supposed to avoid an outcome tragic, wrought by supercharging the Element of Magic?”
“She had the magic of all of Equestria once,” Scootaloo fired back. “There’s no way she could get messed up from her own magic.”
“Those were desperate chances, taken in the direst of circumstances,” explained Zecora. “Perhaps if you explained what Twilight was going to do, we could come up with a brew that would suit you.”
“Princess Twilight is going to make the portal to Earth a lot bigger,” began Sweetie Belle, stepping forward to join her friends, “and she wants to move the far end of it up out of the mine, where it is now.”
“That truly is a mighty deed, and so now I understand your need,” the monochromatic mare mused. “But to give Twilight a surge of power, could make her lose control and have things go sour.”
“Isn’t there any way we could help?” Applebloom asked, eyes wide and sincere. “The Princess said once she got the portal wider we could go over and visit, maybe even go to school there.”
“As usual, your motives are beyond reproach, but I think we need to try a different approach,” Zecora replied, and to the Crusaders relief, began to gather various herbs and sundries. “I believe if we can put together a potion based in laurel, we can help Princess Twilight by applying a brew to the portal.”
“Yay!” cheered all three. “Cutie Mark Crusader Portal Helpers!”
“This will take time, and we don’t want to give your guardians a fright,” cautioned the shaman, gathering up a mortar and pestle. “Let them know you are fine, and that you are going to be with me all night.”
“Thanks Zecora!” Scootaloo cried, impulsively giving the big mare a hug. “We really appreciate it.”
“I care for you too,” Zecora said, returning the hug. “But hurry, we have much to do.”
As the shadows loomed high and the moon wobbled into the sky, a hut in the Everfree buzzed with activity as Zecora and her young apprentice worked to create an alchemy that would help bend a bridge between time and space. Zecora was a mistress of her craft, and Applebloom was a talented prodigy, but neither of them noticed when Sweetie Belle accidentally passed them a couple of vials of saltpeter instead of salt and pepper...
“Sir! Sir!” shouted a suited man as he burst into the White House library. “We found—”
“Stop,” commanded the president, interrupting the man and holding up one hand to stop the aide while another gripped a smartphone. “I need to finish this tweet. ‘Canada’s selfish PM is keeping all the ponies for himself. SAD! He needs to share our visitors with the world’.”
“Sir, you told us to tell you—” the man began, again trying to deliver his message.
“That’s it. You never interrupt your president,” the older, thickly built man said, his tone harsh and admonishing. “Get out. You’re fired.”
“But sir!” wailed the man.
“Security!” bellowed the president, who appeared almost instantly on either side of the messenger. “Get this man out of here. I never want to see his face again.”
“Sir! We found them!” shouted the man, desperate to at least deliver his message. “We found the gems.”
“Hold up a second,” ordered the president, just as the Secret Service had the messenger halfway out the door. “What gems?”
“The Equestrian gems,” replied the man, trying to shake free of the men who had ahold of him but finding it useless. “Some of the businesses in the New York Diamond District got together and compared records. They figured out where three of the gems that Princess Celestia sent to Earth have gotten to.”
“Let him go,” the president commanded the Secret Service men, who released their charge, but stood by just in case. “Where are they?”
“Two of them, a sapphire and a ruby, are owned by a private collector in Nevada,” answered the messenger, taking a deep breath of relief.
“And the third?” demanded the president, eyes narrowing intently.
“Here sir,” said the man, reaching into a pocket and freezing as a pair of SIG-Sauer P229 pistols appeared in his face.
“Slowly, sir,” cautioned one of the agents, catching a nod of permission from “Mogul,” his primary.
With extremely exaggerated care, the messenger pulled a velvet jewellery box from his coat pocket and held it out. The other agent intercepted the reaching hand of the president by simply plucking the box out of the messenger’s hand before the president could grab it, and examined the container quickly for coated toxins, needles or any other potential threats.
“Sorry sir,” apologized the agent, passing on the box only when he was reasonably sure “Mogul” wouldn’t come to any harm from it.
“About time,” grumbled the president, taking the box and opening it. The sour look on the American leader’s face changed to one of curiosity as an orange-red crystal looked back up at him from the box. “I thought you said this was a gemstone. I know gems, and this isn’t a gem. What are you trying to pull?”
“Sir, it’s a sunstone, a type of feldspar,” the man responded, hiding his disappointment that the president didn’t recognize the mineral. “Can you make think of a better stone for a Princess of the Sun to use?”
“And you say this is magical?” the president asked, plucking the stone from the box and holding it up to the light. “How do we know?”
“Other than the paper trail? Shine a laser pointer at it, Sir,” replied the messenger. “It’s incredible.”
One of the briefing tools was quickly handed to the president, who after setting the sunstone down a desk, wasted no time in sending a beam of coherent light into the mineral, which promptly responded by glowing with a heatless flickering light that illuminated the entire room. Despite the room being fully lit by overhead lights, the orange and red glow from the stone easily outshone the man made illumination by bathing the room in the colours of a campfire.
“This is just what we needed. Well done,” the president said, congratulating the messenger with a clap on the shoulder. “Get this to the boys at DARPA. Once we figure out how these work, magic will make America great again.”
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let me guess ...trump?
Well, this chapter was definitely a change of pace. And with the crusaders...it’s gonna get explosive. Lots of stuff going on, excited to see how it goes.
This made my day though you probably pissed off a third of america today. I for one loved it.
10491472
Eh, I'm Canadian. I'll get over it.
10491490
I really wish I could say something against this, but as it is, I'm laughing a little bit too hard to even put up a token effort.
O boy, criptofacist scum looking for power, spooky
10491490 Trump vs the Princesses and the Crusaders. He is so utterly curbstomped. Dis gonna be gud.
10491490
I wish I was that lucky.
Trudeau: Trump, you are an idiot. Keep your people out of Canada, or I will personally make sure the events of August 24, 1814 happen again.
Trump: What is he talking about?
Trump advisor: The Burning of Washington, sir.
10491472
As an American, and a Conservative Republician, anyone who took offense needs to grow a sense of humor
10492184
TEST Alliance, best alliance!
10491947
Some people I know who support Trump would find offense, but honestly,this is a pretty good representation of him
10492240 Yeah, it got pretty crazy. I saw a video of someone who explained everything, and it still made no sense and contradicted almost everything that happened previously, as well as making Aizen a totally moot villain.
This is why smart writers make outlines all the way to the end, so they don't lose track of stuff.
Oda did that with "One Piece", which is why it still keeps on track even after 20 years!
10492241
As it turns out quite well.
10492156
As we are in the days of Matthew 24, I am not worried about anything😁
Why do I get the feeling that DARPA is shortly going to be populated by significantly more fuzzy and quadrupedal staff members?
Although it is America, so greedy dragons would not exactly be out of the question either.
The Dump Trump is at it again, even in fiction!
10491817
"Sooo.....if you go to Washington...it's buildings clean and nice....bring a pack of matches.....AND WE'LL BURN THE WHITE HOUSE TWICE!"
10495315
Love the Arrogant Worms
10495430
With our chaotic election, this feels less like satire and more of a historical record.
well nice cheeto president expy. It gets him very accurately, unfortunately.
Whaaaat
We love Canadians down here in America. To quote the West Wing (a show that acclaimed to be one of the best depictions of the White House)
“We have contingency plans for Canadian invasion?”
10491420
If this isn’t Trump then I’m not an American.