Chapter 10: Parallels II
Lucien awoke when the train pulled into the station. He had a lot on his mind and began to rush back home immediately. The town was getting quiet; the sun was setting and ponies were packing their items in for the night. He passed through the marketplace just as the final few carts were closing up shop.
He had just gotten through when he heard a heavily-accented voice call out his name. "Lucien! Over here!"
He turned around to see Applejack waving from behind her half-packed apple cart. He walked over. "Hey Applejack, what's up?" He started lamely.
"'What's up?'! Ya disappear fer just about two days without sayin' anythin' and the first thing ya say when ya git back is 'what's up?'!" Her face was marred by a scowl, but it softened a bit when she saw Lucien's horrified face. "I didn't mean to affend ya or nuthin', it's just that ya had the gals and I worried sick! Ya gotta go tell the others that you're alright." She took her hat off and her ears drooped. "Pinkie's been trying to plan a 'Welcome Back' party ever since ya left, and she kept on askin' us to make time for it. Ah didn't have the heart to tell her that Ah didn't know when or if ya were coming back."
"Yikes. That was pretty emotional for someone that's only known me for about a week or so. Especially since she herself told me she doesn't trust me." He thought his response over carefully, dropped down to one knee, and started, "Well, Applejack, I'm sorry I gave you and the girls a bit of a scare. I promise that it won't happen again. Tell you what; go get Fluttershy and Rarity and meet me at Twilight's in fifteen minutes. I'm gonna go talk to Pinkie and get Dash."
She nodded. "Sounds like a plan."
She took off and Lucien immediately headed for home. To save a bit of time, he teleported the rest of the way. He materialized in the middle of his bedroom. He shrugged off his backpack and unzipped it on its way down. It fell on his bed with the sound of fabric crinkling. He rummaged around inside it for a moment and pulled out a green notebook.
He opened it up and was immediately filled with memories of what was and what has been. The pages held detailed drawings of the images from his three past visits to Limbo, and after each one was a recollection of the circumstances that fell around it. He went to the last drawing of the first set. It was a picture of him completing his apprenticeship under Draco and trading farewells with him at the train station. The last picture of the second set was naught but a blur of four different colors, red, gray, blue, and green. This one held a special place inside of him. He turned to the last page he had marked on. There was a picture of a rather large building completely engulfed in flame, and the following pages held the story behind it. He shuddered at the sight of it. "Not again..."
He turned to a blank page and conjured a pencil in his hand. There he hastily sketched out what he had seen in his vision. The time passed fast, and when he finished the spade he paused. "What does it mean? And why does it look so familiar?" He flipped back to the image of him and Draco. His eyes roamed the page, searching for something, anything, that might give him a clue as to what the spade meant.
"Hold on." His eyes caught on something. In the sketch, he and Draco were shaking hands. He squinted his eyes to look closer at the space between them. He gasped in shock as he saw that the space between them formed the outline of a spade. The notebook clattered to the floor.
"No way. That's gotta be a coincidence." He grabbed it with his magic and flipped it rapidly to the blur of colors. His eyes combed over the image, looking for the spade again. Seconds passed with no recognition. He rotated it in the air slowly, making sure to look at each and every spot for his quarry. He paused.
He turned it so that it was parallel to the ground, with the bottom left corner facing him. He peered down the length of the paper and froze when he saw that the blur of the image forms a perfect spade from that angle. How he didn't notice its odd shape when he first drew it escaped him.
"There's only one way." He moved the pages numbly, passing through all the memories without sensation. He stopped at the picture of the building and looked at the only spot he knew would house the blasted spade. His eyes moved up the page and stopped when he reached the cloud of smoke that came from the open windows. It was in the shape of an upside-down heart, and the image was completed by the odd triangular chimney that the building used to hold up.
He turned to the final page that he marked on and took a good long look at the picture he had drawn. "Whatever this means, it has influenced me or watched me in the past. The only reason I'm realizing it now is because it decided it wants to rear its ugly head. The owner of this mark is going to appear soon, I'm sure of it. I don't know what he/she/it wants with me, but I know that it won't be good."
He closed the notebook and went to put it back into his backpack. After he set it down somewhere in that void his hand brushed against something cold and metallic. "Hmm? I didn't put anything like that in here . . ." His hand crinkled a piece of paper when he grabbed it and pulled it out. "No way . . ."
He gasped when he saw what he had in his hand. It was the metal that he saw in his vision. It was the color of rust, and he could sense that something about it was . . . off, for lack of a better word. He stood in shock for a few moments. His past visions had never come to pass this soon after he had them, so he wondered this was all happening so quickly.
He ripped off the rubber band and unfolded the note.
From one badass in Equestria to another. Some indestructible metal for you.
Sincerely: Seth the Chaos Mage
P.S. Don't tell the ponies!
Wat.
Wat.
Mind=BERKOW!. Full system reboot necessary.
. . .
Reboot complete.
"Holy shit. I was right, that note was on paper that didn't exist in Equestria, and that's a real rubber band! But what the hell does that even mean? 'Seth the Chaos Mage'? Seth isn't a pony name. There's another human here?
"Wat.
"Okay, focus on the facts. This 'Seth' probably isn't here anymore, or else he would have made some kind of contact with me other than this note. And he's a Chaos mage? What the hell! That's so cool! I wanna learn how to manipulate chaos! Focus, again. What's with the metal?"
He picked it up and examined it. He flicked it once or twice, then rapped it against his bedpost. It made that one noise that metal makes when you hit it on wood. Not a clang, but more of a hollow thunking noise. Satisfied with the results, he raised it up to his face once again.
"A solid bar of Adamantium. That apparently got a recolor. Well, the first problem I see here is that Adamantium doesn't really . . . hmm . . . I don't know . . . exist! Second problem is that its tinged with Chaos magic. Actually, that isn't a problem. I can probably use it to my advantage. Third problem; what the hell happened to the guy that left it here in the first place? The note said he's in Equestria, so that only leaves one possible explanation: alternate reality." He took a few breaths to calm down. "Whatever. Not my problem by this point. He's obviously returned to whatever freaked-out dimension in which Adamantium (and probably Wolverine) do exist. Like I said, not my problem."
Lucien set the metal ingot and the note back down in his backpack gingerly, as if they might spontaneously combust, which, for all he knew, they might. He zipped the bag back up and put in in the corner of his room. He needed to go visit Twilight, and he was already late.
Bronze Gear was working hard at her trade. Several sleepless nights had passed in her inflamed passion. She could stop, hell, she should stop; but she refused. The project she had been working on for the past three years was nearing completion. All the heartache, the blood, the sweat, the tears, and the overall pain, had brought her this close to finishing.
"We'll see how Princess Celestia likes this, now won't we?" She snorted once in anger, the steam from her nostrils lost in the fires of the forge. "The way you carelessly replaced me like a machine with a voided warranty. You'll see your mistake soon enough." The next few blows she struck on the plate metal rang louder, imbued with the force of her rage.
She stopped to look at a clock on the wall, illuminated by the glow of the embers in the forge. It read 2:44 in the morning. Well, at least she thought it was morning. Her perception of time had gotten really messed up since she went down to work in her windowless basement.
"Maybe I should get some sleep. Can't work like a genius when you're this tired." She took a bucket of water sitting nearby and doused the open flames. She left her work where it lay, scattered in various places throughout the room. She turned to exit and go back upstairs. A worn hoof pushed open the heavy metal door, but then paused.
She turned to look at the forge behind her. It was shrouded mostly in darkness, but she could make out her saddlebags in the corner and the glint of steel plating set up against a wall. She gave a hum of satisfaction and then walked upstairs to get some sleep.
Lucien talked things out with the girls and Spike. No harm had been done, after all, besides a bit of worry on all their accounts. Twilight was accused of being the most worried of them all, but Lucien just chalked it up to Twilight being Twilight. He had other things to worry about, anyway.
He headed home, head banging around thoughts of what he needed to get done. "First thing will be to get all the potions brewed and ready. My clients will probably be wondering what the hell happened to me." His mind went to Roseluck, and he didn't want to see his first customer disappointed.
Then his mind went to the note left for him by 'Seth.' "I still don't know what to make of it, but I'm sure something will come up where that metal will become useful. Hell, maybe I'll meet him someday." ([?])
As he opened the door to his house, his mind settled on the vision he received, and, more specifically, the weapons. "I may be spending some time in the forge today after all . . ." He trailed as he looked at the inviting-looking door that lead downstairs to the basement. "Besides, the orders for those potions won't fill themselves."
Lucien walked over to the door and went inside. He descended swiftly, taking two steps at a time. It was this part that he always loved. That anxious, happy feeling he would always get when he approached his equipment. He would experience it when he thought about the endless possibilities, the different experiments, and the fact that just about anything was within his reach. That was the thrill that had kept him going in his "profession."
He jumped the final few stairs and landed on the stone floors with the echoing slap of his shoes. The room was dark, but that was fixed when he channeled out a bit of magic to power up the light crystals he had placed on the walls throughout the place. It was just his version of electric lighting.
The forge was unlit, and just viewing it made him shiver with the cold it was giving off. The potion brewing stands along the walls had their outlets filled with empty bottles. They wouldn't stay that way for long.
He ascended two floors quickly, and grabbed his backpack and, after a moment's hesitation, the Adamantium sitting on his bed. He sprinted back down the stairs, skipping over most of them in his haste. The fires of passion were burning bright within him, and he couldn't wait to get started.
"Wait a sec, why does this look so familiar?" He was standing at the entrance to his basement, looking at the glowing forge in front of him. He looked down and saw the shadow that the light crystals were casting. It was (obviously) his silhouette.
Lucien had his backpack off and notebook in hand before you could say "Mississippi." He turned the pages hastily, while still taking care not to rip any of them. He stopped when he hit the page with a sketch of him facing his forge. He lifted it up to eye-level and took a good long look. "Yep . . . identical." He really wasn't surprised.
He looked a clock on the wall to catch the time. It read 2:44.
He looked back at the notebook he held, then peeled back the page carefully. It was the drawings of the weapons. He smiled deviously, and rubbed two mental hands together in a menacing fashion. "So these shall be mine, and I know just how to make them."
He walked over to the lit forge, baking in the heat for a moment before setting down his notebook on an anvil next to him. Then, he laid out everything he would need to craft these wonderful, destructive, items. His dagger was first, that would supply the base metal for the sword. It would give shape, and, more importantly, magic. He knew that it wouldn't be enough metal to adequately make the whole blade, so he poked through his backpack and found another chunk that Draco left him.
The runes on it would cover for the shape-shifting, and the ability for it to balance the two other weapons. Next item on the list was the strange blue metal he picked up from the dragon's cave. His hands seemed to stick to it while he pulled it out. And, the strange part was that he almost didn't want to let it go. The metal gave off such a comforting vibe of harmony that soothed him. So, naturally, he dropped it like it was on fire. He had experience with things like that, and he knew that things that promised happiness or well-being weren't always as innocent as they seemed.
The next thing he laid down was the bar of Adamantium. He decided then and there that he could call it Chaos Adamantium because of its alignment to the chaotic side of things. He could feel that the need to break free and wreak havoc was barely being contained by the ingot. It agitated him, and put some crazy images in his mind. Most of them involving himself breaking something. It would be an understatement to say that he backed away from that thing as fast as possible.
The last metal he took out was the Arcadium. It would allow the two opposing forces to be bonded together successfully, for he knew that the reaction would take a lot of energy, more than he had in his tank at any given time. If anything, this held the greatest importance. Without the hard mana stored inside of it, the binding wouldn't be possible.
Lucien stood back and looked over his ingredients. "This will take a lot of time, and a lot of effort. And of course the small side effect of it being soul-bound. So, while I'll never lose it, I'll never be able to really get rid of it without, lets say, pitching it off a cliff into Mount Doom . . . Meh, I can deal with it."
He gathered his stuff together and went to work.
Bronze Gear awoke from her rest with a start. She wasn't able to truly fall asleep, as her mind was never able to stop thinking about her invention. Any short dreams she had were always interrupted by thoughts concerning what she was doing while awake, and they would always end with an image of a paint-splattered spade. She hadn't the slightest clue as to what it meant, but, hey, since when anyone able to make absolute sense of a dream.
She swung her body out of her bed and stomped back down to the basement. She fired up her forge once again and got to work putting on the final touches. The old, worn, and stained workbench to her side was covered in blueprints for what she was making. She would lean over every once in a while to check the guidelines for the chunk of metal she was using the soldering iron on.
She pulled out a tool used specifically for etching patterns into metal, and she started marking runes across the plate she was working on. Their function was only to hold power for greater enchantments to be put on the completed device. She was confident that it would be the greatest mechanical invention since the wheel. But, this was only going to be used by her, for very specific purposes.
Her mind darkened as she wondered how it would happen. "Do I want a grand entrance, or a smaller, more covert one? Will the guards announce my presence? Surely. What's everypony going to think of my wonderful device?" Her eyes wandered for a moment, then froze on the framed picture of her and Celestia she had on her workbench. The two of them were posing in front of a statue of a stallion wearing mechanical armor that Bronze herself had designed. It was her greatest accomplishment under Celestia.
Her eyes started to water. They weren't focused on the mechanized pony in the back, but right on her former teacher's eyes. She paused in her work, unable to tear her gaze away.
The plate metal clanged to the floor, followed soon after by the metal etcher. She stood up on shaky hooves and clopped softly over to the workbench. She looked directly at the picture-Celestia. There was a moment where only the crackle of embers in the forge could be heard.
Then the room echoed with sound of Bronze's voice. "Stop staring at me! You're the one who cast me off! You're the one to blame! Not me!"
Her hoof smashed into the frame, breaking the glass and sending it skidding across the floor. The paper fluttered out of the frame and turned over mid-air before falling into the flames of the forge. Even as the fire burned holes in it, words were still visible on the back. Bronze knew them by heart now.
Bronze,
I know that your time under me had come to an end, and I know that you're scared for what comes next. But, if it isn't too much trouble, I have one final request to ask of you.
I want you to continue your research on improving Equestria's military use of mechanical armor and weaponry. It has been your passion, that much is clear; and it is obvious that your thirst for knowledge in that subject will never be satiated. So please, do not stop your work just because it was time to go.
Finish your work. Make me proud.
The sounds of sobbing could be heard, followed by the sound of fast hoofsteps. The last sound to echo through the empty room was the sound of a door slamming shut.
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2222738
You are correct. The Chinese character for Earth has two crossbars, just like this one, but the top bar is significantly shorter than the bottom.
The character in this cover art approximately means "Gentleman," or in some cases "Samurai."
2262259
Actually the character is shi （士）, meaning Warrior or Scholar.
...She's making Ironpony armor isn't she?
2262259>>2262348>>2222738
People keep commenting now on the cover art. That was something I got off google images when I created this story, and it's gonna be gone as soon as I finish making the new one. And what does it matter, what it means? Just read the freakin' story, guys!
Edit: I just realized how stupid this comment made me sound.
2262769
That's perfectly fine. Just remember that for some people that character isn't just a neat symbol, it actually means something just like the word "Scholar" would if that were your cover art.
Nothing wrong with that, of course. It just makes people wonder why.
2262769
It's interesting because your character Lucien is a mix of both.
Ooh been a while since I saw boot licking in fic on fimfiction.
woooo! that was some stuff right there.
2265729
Beg pardon?
2266252
It sure was.
aceshowbiz.com/images/still/the_a_team03.jpg
I love it when a plan comes together!
I smell melted cheeze on the horizon. It makes me hungry.
I really wanna make some art for this fic. And I never make art. I should go write now.
Man, I'm just drooling over the weapons right now though.
2269811
Ermagherd. Ert.
You should totally do it, just saying.
2272978
Gah! You replied! Now I have to get my butt into gear!
Eh, I'll PM it to you later.
2273182
Would I be wrong in saying that you, deep down, wanted me to see it? And therefore reply?
2273197
No, you wouldn't be wrong.
I'm re-reading all the chapters to get the descriptions right though. And nice hat, by the way.
*continues drawing*
You know, I'm pretty sure that you don't have any descriptions of Bronze Gear...
...and yet another advantage to 24-hour clocks.
(On a side note, even in the 12-hour AM/PM system, replace 12 AM/PM with 0 AM/PM and it suddenly becomes much more obvious which should be noon and which should be midnight.)