It was the biggest shock of his new life, earlier in the week, when he had walked into the corridor that led to what he had been told were Myrtle Warren’s toilets. Instead of a “Closed for Repairs” sign on the toilets’ door, as he had been told to expect, he had discovered his Chamber of Secrets had been turned into a tourist attraction! With sign-up sheets posted. The sign affixed to the wall beside the door explained the schedule for student tours, which he had made sure to note. He was fortunate that more students were taken with the . . . Equestrians . . . than with the novelty of the Chamber of Secrets. Thus, his name had been at the top of the list. The first tour would be that Friday afternoon.
For the past three days since that discovery on Tuesday, he could think of nothing else as he waited, hidden. How had they found it? How had they accessed it? And it was only last year that they did it, too! It must have been the doings of those Equestrians.
Why hadn’t that oaf Malfoy informed him of this terrible deed? What his older-self had seen in the incompetent idiot was beyond him.
It was clear the oversight had been on purpose. Bad Faith was living up to his name. He obviously had no idea what the diary was, what that meant, and what it could do. He probably thought it was a pale imitation of a wizarding portrait. Voldemort would apprise him of his error at a later date. With a suitable punishment. Perhaps, forcing him to use his son for curse target-practice for a few hours every day until the boy cowered in fear at the very sight of his father?
Yes. That might be adequate. The screaming would be soothing to his pride, at least.
But for now, it changed his plans completely. He couldn’t savour the terror and despair of his enemies, and the muggle-borns, as he threw Hogwarts into disarray for the rest of the year, distracting them while he gained strength. He would have to search out another hidden spot to complete the final transformation and his triumphant return.
Perhaps the Forbidden Forest? That had its own problems regarding safety, though. The last thing he needed was a Centaur or other animal stumbling upon him before the ritual was completed. An attack when he was vulnerable would be disastrous. Anywhere in the castle proper was right out, the new detection spells they had been told about would pick that up immediately. Not to mention their usage of the Room of Requirement for Astronomy classes and indoor recreation the rest of the time!
With its near-constant use, he couldn’t even check to see if his horcrux was there. The lack of any rumours about a room of lost things gave him hope it hadn’t been found.
The warm-water swimming pool was nice, though.
He needed a location that wasn’t under direct surveillance, and couldn’t be quickly accessed by his enemies if they discovered what he was doing.
He needed a way to get Fumbledork out of the castle, too. His plan of slowly escalating the situation until the headmaster was removed for incompetence just became incredibly difficult, if not impossible.
Especially with those bloody Equestrians everywhere! He had spotted no fewer than a dozen adult spies. At least half of them were their equivalent of aurors, just from the way they moved and kept watch, despite everyone else calling them “Professorial Aides.”
As it was, learning that the Dark Artefact Detection spells had been upgraded had complicated things severely. Still, nothing he hadn’t been able to trick with the right spells — a drop of blood sealed the deal. As far as the spells were concerned, he wasn’t separate from his victim, he was a part of them. As a result, while he might have a severely dark aura, bordering on black, he wasn’t “separate” from his host person anymore. He wasn’t a Dark Artefact, merely a dark aspect of the host, a smaller part, truly. Regrettably, while his soul was hidden behind strong magics, the spells leaked enough to set off the detectors under normal circumstances. However, with the blood connection, the leaks were small enough to be diluted in his victim’s soul aura, and unnoticeable unless one looked directly into the mind of the victim for signs of possession. As a result, his host had only a slight darkening of their aura, nothing that would set off the detector spells.
Fumbledork’s passive and mild mind-grazing would see nothing untoward.
Later, as he drained more and more of his victim’s life-force, that would change and he ran the risk of detection. He needed to stay low and unnoticeable. However, as long as he didn’t cast any non-school Dark spells, he could reduce his risk to the minimum. If he held back the possession, kept as much of his renewed soul in the diary behind the masking spells, he should be safe. The spells looked for a strong dark aura overshadowing a lighter aura, not a lighter aura that continuously became smaller and weaker over the months.
It was a pity to sacrifice a pure-blood . . . no, no it wasn’t. He smirked. How delicious that he would finally have a true pure-blood body! They had look down on him for being a half-blood, at first. Treated him as something barely above a mud-blood — until he had learned enough magic to show them the error of their ways! He’d get his revenge on them, oh, yes, he would. He’d have to start over, again, but that was merely an inconvenience. Soon enough, he would be back in power, and ready to take over wizarding England, just as he had been when he had encountered the impossible.
Defeated by a baby, they said.
A baby? Defeat him? Impossible!
But that’s what everyone claimed.
He would find the truth.
Once the “tour” began, he was very upset to hear the story of how the Professors had determined the location of the hidden entrance, then routed his pet, the basilisk. They had been very thorough in exploring the chamber, and nothing remained undiscovered. The entire Chamber had been meticulously examined, and cleaned. Salazar’s office had been found, and now everyone was allowed a moment to peer inside at the ancient refuge of the great wizard. The original scrolls had been removed, he could tell, and now fakes filled the diamond-shaped cubby-holes that lined one wall.
He smirked. Fortunately, he had removed and studied the truly important ancient documents fifty years ago. They were safely stored in one of his hidden safe-houses under appropriate charms. Those plebians hadn’t discovered Salazar Slytherin’s true secrets!
The ones he had left behind had been either duplicates or not worth the effort. It was interesting to see that the old fools had padded out the cubbies with far more scrolls than he had left behind.
Disappointingly, the one hidden cubby-hole he was able to access had been discovered and cleaned out, as well. He assumed the rest had been found. He was unable to check the others because the Prefect guiding the tour might notice his “unauthorized” exploring. In any event, he wouldn’t be able to search for the remaining secret places until much later. Doing so anytime soon might reveal him to the detection spells set all over the vast Chamber if he came when there weren’t any tours.
He had to admit Fumbledork had done a comprehensive job of making sure no one made an unauthorized entry.
It was disgusting.
Something so impressive and magnificent, brought down to a mere diversion. He pretended to be awed at what he saw, but inside he boiled with rage that non-Slytherins were trampling all over his heritage. Half-bloods, blood-traitors, and muggle-born, despoiling it with their uncomprehending eyes. His hand kept twitching towards his wand, but he knew he dared not do anything just yet.
He would make them pay for such disrespect! Dearly.
^·_·^
Harry had been looking forward to the weekend. Unfortunately, today, it wasn’t his herd-mates waking him up. It was Oliver Wood, the Captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Grumbling at Oliver’s enthusiasm for the sport that prompted waking up literally at the break of dawn, six in the morning on a Saturday, Harry dressed in his Quidditch robes.
Normally, this wouldn’t happen until after try-outs later this month. However, last year, the first years had been given the unprecedented option to try out. Thus, the normal second-year try-outs were unnecessary — the qualified second-years were already either on the team as players or reserves! Hence, why delay starting the practices — at least that was Oliver’s reasoning.
Yawning widely, Ron, the reserve Keeper, joined him. When he made it to the common room, it was to see his herd-mates, also yawning and rubbing the sleep from their eyes, coming down the stairs, too. After a few moments commiserating their loss of a lay-in, they started out for the pitch.
Colin suddenly came barrelling down the stairs and across the room, waving a piece of paper. It was the photograph of him and Colin, and it was moving. Colin alternated between looking at the picture and looking at Harry. Harry in the picture smiled, nodded, and waved out at them. “I heard you coming down the stairs . . . I just printed it last night!” he exclaimed proudly. “Do you think you could sign it now?”
Harry considered. “I don’t have a quill on me, at the moment. Why don’t you develop and print the rest, and then I can sign them all in one batch?”
At Colin’s indecisive look, Harry added, “Besides, I’m off to Quidditch practice, right now.”
“Oh! Oh! I’ve never seen a Quidditch game!” He barely paused before saying, “You’re the youngest Quidditch player in a hundred years, aren’t you?” He trotted alongside the group as they made their way out the portrait hole. “What’s it like?”
“No,” Harry said, “I’m not the youngest Quidditch player, that’s Ginny Weasley.” He nodded at the girl to one side behind Scootaloo. “She was on the team as a reserve last year, and she was only ten at the time.”
Colin gave the girl a wide-eyed look. “Ten?”
“Yes, she was given special permission to start Hogwarts early on account of her mastering the animagus transformation so early.”
Colin’s eyes grew wider. “Really?” he said incredulously, his voice going up a full octave.
He tagged along with them as Harry gave a brief explanation of her being “shown” how to access her animagus form by a powerful wizard, and then how she had learned to do it herself. Then the discussion turned to Quidditch, and how it had seven players. One Keeper to guard the goals, two Beaters who hit balls called bludgers at the opposing team members, three Chasers who took a ball called a quaffle and tried to score points, and a Seeker who looked for a tiny, winged, golden ball, called a snitch, that ended the game.
Colin went to sit on the stands overhead as the rest went into their Quidditch changing room.
Disappointingly, Wood spent almost a full hour explaining the plays he had designed over the summer. He had just finished when George Weasley, one of the beaters, said tiredly, “Oliver. Why couldn’t you have told us all this last night when we were awake?” He gave a big, jaw-cracking yawn.
Oliver was not amused. He grabbed his broomstick and headed outside for the field. Stiff-legged and still yawning, his team followed. The brisk morning air finally finished waking Harry up as the rest were doing their drills, and he began looking around more alertly. He saw Colin sitting in one of the highest seats in the stadium, his camera raised. The sound of the shutter clicking was clear in the still morning air.
Colin waved a hand and called out shrilly, “Look this way, Harry!”
Harry waved genially. He saw Oliver glancing quizzically between Harry and Colin, and not looking very happy. Harry shot across the stadium at speed, and pulled up beside Wood at the goal posts.
“What’s going on?” said Wood, frowning. “Who’s that taking pictures?” He turned and glared at the little firstie. “He could be a Slytherin spy, trying to find out about our new training program,” he said loudly.
“Nah,” Harry said dismissively, “He’s just taking pictures for his family. So, they can see the awesomeness that is Quidditch. He’s a Gryffindor.”
Oliver grumbled, and kept casting suspicious eyes on the little wizard for the next two hours as they ran through his new plays.
Harry idly noticed that the stands were slowly accumulating students from all four houses. So much for keeping Oliver’s “new” plays a secret. Students with brightly coloured hair predominated. Several had transformed into ponies and were hovering over the stands, pacing the broomstick riders. This was likely the winged ponies’ first exposure to Quidditch.
While it was slowly gaining popularity among the pegasi in Canterlot, Cloudsdale, and Ponyville, the rest of Equestria had never had the opportunity to see a game. From the excited arm-waving of the students with more normal colours to their hair, he knew the pegasi would be occupying the stadium whenever the teams weren’t.
The reserves had completed one such run-through on a new play and the Gryffindor team was moving to group up to critique their performance. Harry saw a movement out of the corner of his eyes. When he looked, he saw seven people in green robes walk onto the field. They were carrying their broomsticks
Wood noticed almost immediately. “WHAT!” he yelled coming to halt and floating in place. “We have the field today!” He shot toward the interlopers. Harry and the rest followed a bit more slowly.
“Flint!” Wood bellowed at the Slytherin Captain, staggering a bit from jumping off his broom a bit sooner than he should have. “Clear off! We booked the field two weeks ago! For the entire day!”
Harry glanced at Wood. The entire day? He looked at the castle. Breakfast was almost over, and he was starving. He turned and looked at Wood with narrowed eyes. Had he planned to work them through breakfast and lunch?
Marcus Flint was bigger than Wood by several inches, and more heavily built. “Plenty of room for us all, Wood.” He didn’t sneer, but it looked like he wanted to.
“But I booked the field for the day!” said Wood, positively spitting with rage. “I booked it!”
Flint gave Wood a surprised look. “You did? I didn’t know that,” he said in a way that implied he did, indeed, know that. “Doesn’t matter, though,” he said airily “Professor Snape gave us a specially signed note that gives us permission to use the field to train our new Seeker.” He held up a piece of parchment.
“A new Seeker? A new Seeker?” Wood said, distracted. “Where?” he said suspiciously.
That was when they saw Draco Malfoy. He had been hiding behind the larger and older team members. An easy job, as he was only a second-year, like Harry and the Gryffindor reserve players.
“Aren’t you Lucius Malfoy’s son?” said Wood, staring at Malfoy, puzzled.
Flint, and the rest of the Slytherin team smiled more broadly. “Funny that,” he said. “He’s quite the Quidditch fan, it turns out. Look at the generous gift he’s made.”
All seven of them presented their broomsticks. Seven highly polished, brand-new handles, with fine gold lettering spelling the words Nimbus Two Thousand and One, gleamed under the Gryffindors’ noses in the early morning sun.
“The latest model, don’t you know? Only came out last month,” said Flint casually, flicking an imaginary speck of dust from the end of his own. “Quite an improvement over all other brooms, I’m told.”
“Oh, cool!” said Scootaloo, stepping closer to inspect one of the brooms. “Now we can have a real game. Last year, with these Nimbus 2000’s, it sorta felt unfair against the other school brooms.” She gestured with her broomstick.
Sweetie Belle nodded. “Yeah.” She frowned a moment, then a smile lit up her face. “I know, let’s get Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff new brooms! That way, it won’t matter which brooms you’ve got, only your skill!”
“Oooh, that’s a great idea!” Apple Bloom said enthusiastically.
“We can make the order out over breakfast, and get it in their hooves by Monday!” said Sweetie Belle happily.
The Slytherins lost their smiles, as did Wood. For different reasons.
Ron’s stomach growled loudly, echoed a moment late by Harry’s. They both blushed as the girls sniggered.
“Wait,” said Wood, “we’ve got practice! I booked the whole day!”
Harry turned and stared at Wood with narrowed eyes. “You were planning on stopping for breakfast, right?”
All he got was a blank look.
“You wanted us to practice all day without a break?” he said incredulously.
Even the Slytherins looked surprised at the thought.
Wood just glared back at him. “We need the practice if we want to win games,” he stated. “Especially,” he glared at the Slytherins, “if they aren’t using their regular broomsticks.”
“You did make arrangements with the elves to bring us breakfast and lunch, right?” Harry said accusingly.
Again, his answer was a blank look. He growled in the back of his throat.
He turned back to the Slytherins. “How about this, Flint,” he said, “We’re going to head in for breakfast. You have the field from now,” he glanced at his watch, “nine until noon, since we had it from six ’til now. Then you can go in for lunch and we’ll take the field from noon ’til three while you eat and recover. Then we’ll swap and you have the field from three ’til dinner. Does that sound fair?”
“Or, maybe,” Scootaloo said, “We could have a pickup game after lunch?” She looked at Flint with an encouraging and hopeful smile.
Flint looked at the others on his team, then shrugged.
Wood was looking back and forth between them. “Hey,” he said, “Wait a minute.”
Harry nodded at Flint, then started off the field. The reserves and Ron quickly followed him.
“But I booked the field for the entire day!” wailed Wood.
The twins were giving him disgusted looks. “If you think we’re going to practice all day without eating, . . .” said one.
“. . . or a break, then you’re barmy!” finished the other. They both started after Harry’s group, the three chasers followed them, leaving Wood gaping, opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water.
The Slytherins were giving the chasers leering looks as they passed each other. Harry glancing back, saw this. “I’ll be just a second,” he said out loud, and trotted back to the Slytherins, who curiously watched him approach. As soon as he got close enough, he said, in a quiet voice that they could barely hear, “You know, if you think the fillies are good looking in the Quidditch uniforms, you should see them in the changing rooms. You should get a few fillies on your reserve team.” He looked at them with raised eyebrows, “Right?”
He didn’t wait for a response, he turned and trotted back to his friends. He looked back just as he left the stadium. Wood stood abandoned on the field and was watching the Slytherins flying overhead on their brooms. Shaking his head, he slowly started for the exit and Hogwarts.
Harry shook his head, too, but for a different reason. While Oliver might think Quidditch was the be-all and end-all of the purpose of being at Hogwarts, everyone else didn’t. If the quidditch captain wasn’t careful, he’d lose the support of the reserve players and they’d quit. That would mean losing the Quidditch Cup for the year if anyone got hurt during a game and they had to play one person down. Their opponent would steamroller them into the ground before the snitch could be caught. Wood might think that a tragedy in that situation, but very few others would.
^·_·^
Unlike previous meetings, this one was “in the field” as it were. They were at the Otterburn Army Training Estate, a live-fire military training estate in northern England. The group composed of John Major, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, The Rt Hon. Hurd, the Home Secretary, The Rt Hon. Kenneth Wilfred Baker, Field Marshal Sir John Chapple, and himself, Second Lieutenant Searle.
The rest of the aides and security detail had been left in the command bunker.
The Prime Minister cast a critical eye on Searle, “I hope this trip is as important as your note said.” He took a glance around at the vacant target-practice range, and the empty fields around them. At thirty-four square miles, Otterburn was the largest such military range in the country. “It is Saturday, I had to cancel several very important meetings.”
Searle took a deep breath. “It is, sir, it is. Almost as important as the last time I told you of an important meeting.”
That got him a raised eyebrow. Their last such meeting had been the introduction to the cross-dimensional Equestrians — or maybe cross-space, they didn’t know which, yet — requesting an Embassy London.
Castor reached into his pocket and took a small cigarette case out. He opened and removed a small replica of the standard SA80 A2 rifle used by the military, then replaced the case in his pocket. He pressed a small button on the replica. The rest blinked as the tiny replica turned into a full-scale assault rifle with a large scope on top and a very short, barely visible, ammunition magazine. Most magazines were much larger, stretching the length of a person’s forearm.
He looked up at the others. “Princess Twilight was very happy to show me this. She said that this rifle would keep Equestria safe from its enemies for a very long time. She credited several of our ex-military Special Technology people with the ideas, and several Scottish graduates with the design and execution,” he said solemnly. “They’ve already adapted these techniques to the new rifles their Guard uses.”
He gave them a bleak look. “It is the single most terrifying weapon I have ever seen. The normal ‘es a eighty a two’ has a magazine of thirty rounds, and a maximum rate of fire of a magazine a second. Normal, in-the-field, rate of fire is limited to how fast a soldier can exchange magazines. This rifle has no such restriction.” He raised an eyebrow at the Prime Minister, and hefted the rifle. “May I demonstrate?”
The others exchanged looks and put on their ear-protectors.
He took the forward position and aimed at the targets down-range from them by a hundred meters. He took a deep breath, settled the rifle against his shoulder, slowly exhaled, and gently pulled the trigger. The rifle was set to full-automatic, and with such a tiny ammunition magazine it only should fire five shots — maybe.
At least, that’s what the others must think, he knew. How wrong they were.
He held the trigger down. The rifle fired a steady stream of bullets.
Sir John raised both his eyebrows. He knew the sound of that rifle on full-automatic, and this was not the same. It should have stopped after a second. It was more like a machine-gun.
At the two-minute mark, Castor stopped. There wasn’t much left of his chosen target. His voice shook a bit. “A thousand rounds a minute. Unlimited. The magazine has only one round in it. When you go to chamber the first round, the . . . Special Technology . . . duplicates the original and that is what goes into the chamber. The duplicated round requires only a small amount of energy to create as it will vanish after one minute. There’s a power unit in the magazine to help.” He grabbed the barrel of the rifle, which should have been far too hot to hold, and held it out to the minister. “There is a cooling technology on the barrel and chamber to prevent excessive heating.”
The Prime Minister gingerly accepted the weapon, then gave Castor a startled look as he almost tossed the rifle over his own shoulder.
“The rifle weighs approximately three ounces,” the Second Lieutenant continued. “Special Technology is used to reduce its weight, and absorb and stabilize any rifle recoil — chamber recoil is left alone — so there’s no recoil creep, sore shoulders, or vibrations to throw off your aim. Other Special Technology makes it almost impervious to damage — it could hold a Challenger Two tank from the trigger guard, if you had a cable small enough and strong enough to fit. It’s water-proof, and permanently oiled and greased. There is also a silencer component, which I did not turn on.”
He took another shuddering breath. “The scope crosshairs show exactly where the rounds will hit, you can carve your name into a target at four hundred metres. While only a soldier trained in Special Technology can fire it. It can be personalized to the soldier so that if it falls into enemy hands, they can’t use it. Neither can it be disassembled and reverse engineered without it violently exploding.”
The other four were staring at him in shock.
“Oh, no,” he shook his head, “there’s more.” He held out his hand for the rifle.
He popped out the magazine, which was green, and plugged in another that was yellow.
“This magazine uses the same duplication technology,” he said lifting the rifle to firing position. The others hurriedly replaced their ear-protectors.
He didn’t hold the trigger for more than ten seconds, but it was long enough to obliterate, in large explosions, most of the targets down range from them. He popped out the magazine and turned to look at his superiors. “Those were 40mm grenades. The original has been shrunk, an action that is applied to the duplicate as it is generated. The shrinking is cancelled as the round leaves the barrel. The muzzle velocity is the same as the regular five-point-five-six-millimetre rounds, nine-hundred-forty meters-per-second, one thousand rounds per minute.”
They were openly gaping at him.
He pulled a red magazine out of his pocket and held it up for them to see. He did not place it in the rifle. “This magazine is loaded with a 155mm High-Energy tank round, same conditions as the other two magazines.”
He put the magazine back in his pocket as he said, “There’s a fourth magazine for fifty-calibre rounds and a fifth that is a flame-thrower.” He turned a recessed knob on the stock, then pressed it in, and was holding a tiny version of the rifle again. The knob was now the button he had pressed earlier. He put it back in his cigarette case and took out a miniature pistol, a Glock 17.
He held it up. “This does everything the ‘es a eighty a two’ does, except the accuracy is only a hundred metres, not four-hundred, and there is no scope, currently.” He put it back in the cigarette case. “The Princess promised they would have those defects fixed, shortly.”
He looked at them bleakly. “Imagine an assassin with a pistol or rifle like this. What security agent would think a charm bracelet or earring was a deadly weapon? And with the bullets, shells, and gunpowder residue disappearing after a minute when the duplication technology dissipates, what evidence would be left for investigators?”
He sighed. “Plus, there is no reason why this can’t be adapted to the other branches. Imagine an undetectable impregnable supersonic fighter jet not much bigger than a Mini Cooper, with unlimited fuel, a dozen different built-in gun magazines with unlimited ammunition, and unlimited bombs of every type. The pilot could have unlimited food and drink, too.
“Or an undetectable impregnable Navy Scimitar with unlimited range that can outmanoeuvre and outshoot a battleship and cruise at two hundred kilometres per hour. Or an undetectable, impregnable submarine that can stay underwater forever and sink anything that floats. Put a floo on the ships and the crew can spend their nights at home! Use a portkey for the airplanes, and you could change crews without the plane ever having to land.”
He shook his head.
“We need to rethink our entire approach to the military — and security. We have to keep these things out of the hands of our enemies and terrorists. We also need a way to detect them.
“Plus, convincing the Equestrians not to make any mention of this to anyone else.”
^·_·^
Major Tom studied the chart carefully. It listed the various times that their four “experimental” portkeys had activated as their Bristol Bloodhound had shot into space and past the moon. The first had been at thirteen thousand kilometres, the maximum distance a portkey on Earth had ever been used. The second portkey had successfully activated at a distance of two hundred thousand kilometres — halfway to the moon. The third portkey had been set for the Moon’s orbit, four hundred thousand kilometres, another success. Twelve days later, the fourth portkey had safely arrived from fifty-six million kilometres, the distance at which Mars is closest to Earth.
He was still waiting for the fifth portkey. It was not due for another fifty-five days, when the rocket reached four hundred and two million kilometres. That was the maximum range between Earth and Mars. If the sixth portkey worked, as he hoped, four months and twenty-two days from now, it would pass Jupiter’s orbit, leaving almost the entire asteroid ring between Earth and Mars open to exploration and exploitation.
The problem was time. How long did such a portkey take? The usage on Earth was well-known, a few seconds, at most. Portkeying to the shuttle, still parked in orbit, was easy. At perigee it was barely more than the distance from London to Frankfurt, Germany, or Galway, Ireland.
The second and third portkeys delivered definite numbers, to the hundredth of a second: Nine and eleven seconds. Almost exactly. The fourth had arrived twenty-five-point-three seconds after activation. If his calculations were right, that meant the fifth portkey should take between thirty-point-nine-four and thirty-point-nine-five seconds.
So, the farther you went, the faster the trip.
Now, then, the only other variable was if you could survive the trip. Portkeys were well-known to get more dangerous as their distance increased.
^-~-^
Voldemort is viewing the world from inside the diary, yes? Or at least, that's how he slipped himself into his host?
nice work.
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I am now curious as who his host is? Since Ginny entered the school last year, there is no opportunity for Lucius to play innocent and slip the diary into her 1st year supplies.
I just made a connection why you put Major Tom in charge of space mission.
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My money was on Luna Lovegood, but with her transformation thanks to Discord I doubt it. Discord would have used the moment to troll Voldemort hard. I am sort of hoping that Voldemort does invoke Discord’s name and has a front row seat to just how powerless he is in comparison.
With the passage of time the equestrians will technically surpass the earth for centuries and will successfully combine magic and technology, Equestria will become an ultra powerful empire and it would not be strange that they begin to have a great influence in several countries. Even the equestrian culture would begin to expand to all western countries xD
So when the muggles are going to start banning magitech slugthrowers? Brits already have restrictive gun laws for normal weapons, and now those horse apples. At that time their main battle rifle for military use is a piece of garbage.
okay someone needs to confront twilight about ethics, this is getting past the point of 'can we make this' and more to the degree of 'should we' pretty sure the rifles existence is a war crime.
so did equestria just give the UK a legit unlimited ammo cheat code and explosive round cheat? lol. Also i wonder how Luna [pony[ would react to video games when it starts being introduced
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OH God...
Yeah that “rifle” would be goddamn terrifying. The Brits should probably beg Equestria to keep that shit out of Earth’s general access, perhaps even their own. Who’s to say some “loyal” magical soldier won’t get disgruntled one day. Honestly even Equestria itself should rethink releasing that thing to their military. How much more likely is it that one of their own bad apples, pony or not, could gain access to use or fabricate that design. Better to keep that kind of weapon out of their knowledge even in concept. Anyway, excellent chapter!
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Huh. I never realized that song had a music video.
Thanks. :)
That last section is a good demonstration of why the Statute of Secrecy exists. Or at least, one of the reasons.
Apply the same magic to a nuke, of which Britain has a modest number, and wiping out humanity becomes easy to anyone who gets their hands on it.
I wonder what would happen if you turned a house-trunk into a portkey
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You mean other than that shitty new one they rereleased the song with?
Or am I thinking about a different song about a dude going to space?
nope nope nope NOPE SOMONE STOP TWILIGHT NOW what the hell is she thinking THAT GUN NEEDS TO BE DESTROYED NO OBLITERATED
HOLY!!!
That gun is a monster!!!
The British just made the ponies the most terrifying threat in the multiverse!!!
And with that anti reversed engineering magic, and being tuned to the owner, there is no threat the weapon would ever fall out of pony hands.
Not unless they want it to!!!
How the hell will Earth deal with a weapon like this.
While the British would accept the ponies are prey creatures, and thereby unlikely to reduce to violence unless provoked, they only feel that way because they have worked so closely with them.
The rest of humanity would freak, and may very well try to nuke the ponies, as what they believe to be a primitive strike.
This weapon will contradict the ponies entire peaceful campaign.
PLEASE GO SOMEWHERE WITH THIS!!!
Something like this can't be a throw away line or even a subplot. It shifts the dynamic far too much to be ignored as an interesting tid bit!!!
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At all. Until now, I only knew it from a Kazaa-era MP3.
(I've never really put in the effort to stay culturally connected. It took me forever to learn that it was the song equivalent of a fanfic of a David Bowie song.)
It's ridiculous just how OP you made ponies.
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my friend ponies are op
he just put their shenanigans together with the wizards innovative but wasted spells
any gun fanatic trembling on a puddle of their own shame
“t-twilight sempaaaahhi y-yamete kudasai”
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10636118
Truthfully its the muggles technology and the wizards spells their using. If the muggles and wizards worked together they'd have had this kinda equipment before the equestrians showed up. But alas the wizards obliviated all muggles/nomags who discovered the Wizarding world. Can you imagine if voldermort and his death eaters tried to do their little cleansing with a fully aware and cooperating muggle/magic community he and his crew would've been annihilated... since voldermort couldn't die they'd seal him in cement and dump him in the ocean or shot him into the sun.
10636031
10635977
10636092
If the FIDELIUS CHARM can conceal any secret and not just a physical location, the Prime Minister could ask the Princesses to hide this knowledge inside multiple Fideliuses*, creating a mental blindspot so people can't even consider the possibility of applying duplication spells and space-expansion charms on firearms and weapons.
*The magic-enhanced weapons are based off several concepts, so it may take a half-dozen Fidelius Charms to completely erase the idea from mankind's minds.
Idea inspired by "Harry Potter and the Power of Paranoia" by Arekay.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8257400/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Power-of-Paranoia
P.S.
Equestrian really should put a Fidelius Charm on the TREE OF HARMONY, it's their greatest asset.
10635998
that thing is scary as F like you say and it would not surprise me if little miss Starlight Glimmer made it
10635874
Odd, I was thinking of a different Major Tom in space.
10635998
The thing is, a normal gun was just as terrifying when it was first invented. Especially automatics. But then when everyone gets them and countermeasures are developed, they become less OP. How about magical armor that transfigures or vanishes the bullet?
Oh, come the fk on! Weapons with that much destructive potential? Britain is basically begging other countries to come spy on them to try and figure out their secrets. And the worst part is, they either will succeed, and then blame Britain for keeping the knowledge of magic secret from other governments, or they will fail, which will prompt more, uh, drastic measures.
10635977
Agreed
10635977
Not to mention the damn flamethrower ammo. Flamethrowers are damn horrible, no one with any shred of morality will ever consider using one.
While it's cool to read about ponies improving stuff, it's not cool at all to see ponies give tremendous military power to a country known for its oppressive imperialism. As a matter of fact, the story literally never addresses that, seemingly simply erasing every bad part about Britain and the entire current status quo.
There's a lot of wasted potential in there, as controversial as that potential may be to a lot of people.
Perhaps this is my love of overkill speaking, but I was laughing during the rifle part. That thing is excessive in all the right ways imo.
holy crap the implication in this chapter are down right scary if you stop to think about all of this.
this is a amazing chapter.
.... Well that gun is terrifying beyond all reason.
I wanted them to fire the tank rounds though. 155mm Howitzer rounds going down range!
10635831
Who's his host? Or has the author not revealed their identity yet? I can't remember.
10635977
So should the use of machine guns, miniguns, flamethrowers, nukes, etc. . . . but as far as I know, they aren't classified as such.
10636476
A. The spells for detecting changelings are designed to detect Changelings USING THEIR MAGIC to hide as something else.
B. The Changelings that transition the portal are appearing as normal people -- no magic needed.
C. Therefore, the detection spells on this side of the portal don't pick them up.
D. Magic cast through a wand is wanded magic, not Changeling magic.
E. No plot hole.
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How would other countries discover this "over-powered" rifle? The only time they would discover them is if they attacked the UK and the guns were used!
10636496
You think other countries don't spy on each other's militaries? Even if this super rifle was never discovered, you've set up a systemic, exponential advancement in both transportation, and military. The longer this goes on for, the more powerful Britain will become, and others will want a share of their secrets, one way or another.
10636295
Maybe on the battlefield, yeah, but against the general public? There lies the problem. Even with the mentioned anti-theft and anti-disassembly features, if a soldier snaps, defects, or turns out to be a spy with one of those things you've got an unmatched problem. And I doubt those things can be tuned down for civilian distribution given that most of the danger is from the magazines not the gun.
Rifle too OP, nerf it
10636571
To be fair though the likelihood that whoever is holding the gun has enough magical power to even work the thing (even if somebody did end up stealing it) is actually very low when you consider how low the magical population is even the squib population is, then actually very few people in Britain or the world can even use the dang thing really they're only a large-scale threat in the hands of the equestrians
I just ran some numbers.
Portkey 1: 13,000 km / 2.0 secs = 0.02 c
Portkey 2: 200,000 km / 9.0 secs = 0.074 c
Portkey 3: 400,000 km / 11.0 secs = 0.12 c
Portkey 4: 56,000,000 km / 25.3 secs = 7.38 c
Portkey 5: 402,000,000 km / 39.5 secs = 33.92 c
Portkeys are super-luminal if they have enogh distance to ramp up speed. The curve fines out to roughly 15 seconds for a factor of ten increase in range.
4,000,000,000 km (26 AU - Distance to Neptune) 55 secs = 242 c
400,000,000,000 km (2,600 AU - Distance to near edge of Oort Cloud) 1 min 25 secs = 15,686 c
40,208,000,000,000 km (268,770 AU/4.3 Ly - Distance to Proxima Centuri) 1 minute 55 secs = 1,179,172 c
If you can enchant an entire vehicle as a portkey, instant starship. And not pokey Star Trek warp factors, we're talking a couple of minutes to jump between star systems. It's clear the power input isn't exponential with distance, possibly not even linear, so it shouldn't be impossible. The vehicle doesn't have to be all that big at those speeds. A car or space capsule sized spaceship is all that's needed, as you don't need huge amounts of supplies.
Even if it tops out at 26 AU for a single jump, an effective speed of around 200 c (allowing for 20% or 11 seconds cycle time between jumps) would be a useful interstellar drive. A week to get to Proxima Centauri is entirely reasonable.
Astronauts lived in the Apollo CM/LEM for a week, so a SpaceX Dragon 2, Starliner, Orion or Dream Chaser would still suffice with some life support upgrades. Not that any of those were around in 1992. But Hermes, the European spaceplane was, at least as a stable design, and the UK owned a 4% stake in it. What's more in 1992 it had been put on hold and was eventually abandoned. So the UK could take it off the ESa's hands and have a British company like Rolls Royce run a crash speed development project to produce something that could be used.
Which brings up the question of how the ESA has taken the new British space program. They might either abandon the Hermes as Britain has something far superior and buy access to it, or go full ahead on it and lobby the UK to provide 'special technology' drive systems.
Or if 2.6 AU (Mars furthest point) is the limit, 2 months to Proxima Centauri is still doable. Though you start to need a larger ship, like the Space Shuttle and an ISS class long duration life support system.
10636496
actually the Geneva convention famously notes flamethrowers specifically.
too be fair with the way your having the ponies discuss other races in the story them having these kinds of weapons is worrying because the show already has them very racist at the start and you've kinda cranked it up. now your giving them stupidly dangerous guns.
honestly surprised discord only took exception to the pony races left out. this gun seems like something he'd nope out of existence.
I wonder if we're going to see proper MEWs, not just heavily enchanted guns, but proper magical energy weapons... When a new weapon is invented, new armor and countermeasures are invented too... The Britons will probably invent enchanted body armor that casts vanishing charms at anything that approaches at a high enough speed, and then possibly some more active countermeasures, like a ray that removed any magical effects, rendering the guns struck with it useless... Then perhaps proper magical lasers and plasma guns would be developed as a further counter to those countermeasures.
10636840
The super-guns sound more like something you would see in Starship Troopers, Warhammer 40K, or Starcraft.
Ugh it's even more OP then most video game it's like a troll op weapon the devs made releasing all the artificial limiters.
The Dumbledore insults are childish and jarring. They're literally NEVER used in canon and make the characters seem insanely OOC.
Also agree that the gun is a bad story device, even if we ignore the fact that flamethrowers are illegal worldwide.
So now the diaries in play wonder how this Tom would take discovering his original is now a pink filly being treated as a pet?
While I applaud Harrys compromise spirit in this case he shouldn't be doing it. While Wood was out of line expecting them to practice all day without a break he did follow the rules and book the field fairly. Flint us using favoristism from a teacher to break them that should generate at the minimum a complaint to higher authority. If said authority doesn't resolve this other means including and up to Slytherin winning because the other house teams refuse to compete at all should be employed. The pitch is booked to allow everyone to get a fair chance at training with Snape just overriding it you now have a situation where at best other teams don't get the training they planned done because their kicked off the field they booked fairly and at worst you get a physical fight occuring between teams who all have a special we get the field, stuff the rules note.
10636487
Pretty sure this is their first appearance.
10637228
Um no they arent flamethrowers are perfectly legal to own and use in several states in the USA and i even happen to live in one of them
10637353
America is known to break international law on a regular basis. We don't count uncivilized barbarians.
10637800
Rude much?
10637867
Doesn't make it untrue. The fact you even claim to own a flamethrower makes me completely justified.