Factory of the Magical Variety

by Conglomerate

Chapter 23: Frozen

With the meeting over, I was once again airlifted back to the edge of the forest. I could tell Twilight had more questions for me, but she couldn't really ask them in the middle of our flight.

When we landed, Twilight immediately trotted up to my tech, she didn't waste any time in questioning me.

"Why did you tell me you were an ambassador?" She asked, looking a bit miffed.

"I said you could call me one, not that I was one. I'm the most qualified to be one right now, even if I'm not properly trained." I said, explaining my mistake.

Twilight huffed a bit, but continued.

"Did you get to talk about everything you wanted to?"

...

Damn, I had forgotten about the trains.

"I did." I lied once more.

Bringing up the trains probably would've blown my cover anyway, besides, they weren't that essential yet, I still had some progress to make. I'd have to bring that up next time I spoke to the Princesses.

"Thank you Twilight, for setting up this meeting, it has been a great help. I'll be sure to let you know when I need to meet with the Princesses again." I brought up.

"Anything for a friend, but I must go for now, I still have duties to attend, and I'm sure you do as well. Goodbye." Twilight concluded, she turned to leave

Again with the 'friends', it wasn't like I didn't want to be friends with Twilight, but I didn't feel like we should be friends yet. I hadn't done anything for Twilight, I suppose I'd have to repay her later to keep this friendship going.

With that out of the way, I made my way back to the base. I had only been gone for about four or five hours, so I wasn't expecting anything big to have happened.

Fortunately, nothing happened while I was away, and I was free to work on my next project. Gathering Celestite.

Princess Celestia had said there was a crystal up in the frozen wastes that matched my description of Celestite. Though she didn't say it's rarity, I could assume it wasn't very common. I had a lead to follow now, so I'd capitalize on it right away.

I'd have to prepare a bit though, while techs were mostly immune to extreme temperatures, they had their limits. Based on the environments I've encountered, I'd say the coldest it got on this planet was somewhere around -50° C, well within the limits of most techs.

I would have to be careful though, batteries drained faster in the cold, and the firing mechanism for most guns tended to freeze if the humidity was high. I probably couldn't bring the flame thrower either, its fuel lines would freeze.

There was also the problem of the propellers freezing, while it would be fine in the air, I would have to keep them running on the ground to prevent them from freezing all together.

With all that in mind, I reoutfitted the plane, removing most of the guns, I added the one laser weapon I had. I made sure to add an extra battery, and to bring a heating coil incase anything froze. It might not even be a bad idea to have the coil running all the time to counter the power drain effect the cold had. I wasn't to sure on the exacts however, so I would have to see for myself.

The plane was finished, with the heating coil safely held in one of the collectors. I was ready to head North, this time remembering to bring a drill to mine with. I got ready to take off.

It seems my track record of being interrupted right before takeoff would get another mark, as two icons made their way onto the radar, both blue.

Killing the engines, I waited impatiently as both Zecora and Twilight entered the clearing, Twilight looked a little frantic before she spotted the plane. Quickly running over she shouted.

"Hey! You haven't seen Tecka around have you?" came from Twilight.

She didn't recognize me? Oh right, I'm controlling the plane right now, which means I'm Tecker. Hopefully the speakers could do a good job at replicating Tecker's 'voice'.

"NO. I. HAVE. NOT." I managed to accurately say.

"Well, can you give these to her? I forgot to give them to her when we said goodbye," Twilight said as she pulled out several maps from her bags. "I guess you could take them too, they were meant for both of you." She quickly tacked on.

"THANK. YOU." I said as I took them in my manipulation field, surprising Twilight quite a bit.

"You can use magic?" She nearly shouted.

Oh boy, so they called it magic. I didn't like that word too much, it was just used to define something that you don't know how it works. Like how a lot of techs say Celestite is magic, even though several scientific studies have proven it affects gravity by it's odd magnetic field caused by the interlocking molecules it's made of.

"YES." I simply responded, avoiding going on a tangent right then and there,

"Ok... Do you know where Tecka is?" Twilight asked

"NO." I responded dryly.

"Well next time you see her, could you tell her I would like to speak with her some time again?" Twilight asked, smiling a bit.

"SURE." Was all I said.

Twilight frowned a bit, but didn't say anything as both she and Zecora said their goodbyes and turned to leave.

Waiting until they both left the edge of my radar, I went back down and stashed the maps to look at later, right now I had to travel North.

I took off once again, this time towards Canterlot, I avoided it by a large margin however, I still wasn't sure about just appearing above a city.

I had no idea how long I'd be flying, but it was probably going to take a lot longer than a day, I was still in a pretty warm climate. I was in for a long flight due North.

---

After about a day of flying, I came across a large cloud, much larger than any cloud I've ever seen. The strangest part was that the sky around it was completely clear.

I decided not to go in for a closer look when I saw many flying specks around the cloud. I couldn't really tell what they were, but they were obviously alive, and there were a lot of them too. Best to stay clear of that, I continued flying.

---

The climate was starting to change, there were more coniferous trees dotting the landscape, and the grass became more sparse, a clear sign of colder temperatures. I was getting closer, there was still a large amount of life however, which meant there wouldn't be any Celestite.

Some power had drained from my batteries, and I made sure to shut off any unnecessary power consuming blocks to save as much as possible.

---

After about two and a half days of flying, I was above a tundra, it was however, no wasteland, especially because it was in the middle of Summer turning Autumn. It looked like it had snowed recently, though the sunshine had melted a majority of it, allowing dying blades of grass to peak through. I wouldn't find any Celestite here, I had to keep going.

---

It was turning to night on the third day when I spotted a mountain range further North, it was obvious that most of it was made of ice. A large Aurora illuminated them, showing their transparent qualities, it would be near impossible for life to exist there, that would be my first landing spot.

An hour later, I had flown all the way to the mountain range, and was looking for a good place to land. There wasn't a lot of flat spaces suitable for landing, so I had to make do with a shallow slope along one of the mountains.

Coming in for a landing, I severely overestimated the traction I'd get on ice, and began to slide down the rest of the slope. Putting everything I had into stopping, I was able to slow the plane enough to not fall off the cliff that awaited at the end of the 'runway'. I should've fabricated some tracks.

The plane was barely hanging over the edge, I still had all three wheels on the ground, but I had to be careful not to slip further down. It was a real shame I didn't bring any anchor blocks, I could just anchor to the ice and be done with it.

I didn't have those at the moment, so I was stuck figuring out some other way to traverse the slippery slope.

Then things got worse. The Aurora above stopped emitting light, shrouding the whole area in darkness, it wasn't impossible to see, but it wasn't easy either. Looking up, the cause of the Aurora ending was obvious, large storm clouds loomed above, completely covering all the light that the Aurora produced.

It started snowing, the first few flakes landing around and on my tech, those that landed on the engines melted at the residual heat. I took the heating coil and attached it to my batteries, making sure to check the power levels, I had about a half charge left.

I began to slowly back up, the slow movements gave better traction as the plane began to edge away from the cliff. The wind picked up, and it started snowing even harder, I kept my wings in the downward position, to stop the plane from lifting off again.

Just then, lightning struck the ice above me, sending a shower of ice chunks down upon the tech, a large bout of steam rising from the struck area. The chunks weren't enough to damage my tech, but lightning was. I really needed to get down.

Another bolt struck higher up, another barrage of small ice chunks impacted my tech. A large crack sounded out, and a large chunk of ice broke off from the mountain side, it started falling down.

It wasn't going to hit my tech thankfully, but it did hit he slope behind me, blocking off my path down the mountain. That wasn't the only thing it did however, the combined weight of my tech and the force from the impact had weakened the cliff I was residing upon.

The cliff didn't crumble, but it did shear off the mountain side, somehow keeping upright as my tech was forced down with it. Wind and snow rushed by and I forced the wings back up in an attempt to take off from this impromptu sled.

The plane managed to lift off of the cliff, and was immediately struck by lightning. Power surged throughout the tech, blowing out several lightbulbs and overcharging the batteries, they would've exploded if they were at full charge. The surge of power locked the mechanisms in the wings, forcing the tech to glide slowly down into a snow drift.

With a large Phooomf, a plane shaped hole appeared in the large pile of snow, which quickly collapsed and covered itself up. Snow flooded the engines, forcing them to shut down, as the falling cliff face then hit another large outcrop of ice, causing a multitude of large ice chunks to rain down onto the snow drift, covering it in ice.

I couldn't move the tech at all, the immense weight above it and loose snow all around it anchored it into once place, there was nothing I could do. However, the heating coil did what it did best, and heated up the area around it, melting some of the snow around it.

With some of the snow gone, something was visible in one of the large ice chunks. Inside, was a blue crystal that glowed softly, and though I couldn't tell, I assumed that this ice chunk would be lighter than the rest. This was due to the large chunk of Celestite residing in said chunk, visible to me, but just out of reach.

The storm raged on, piling more and more snow and ice chunks on top of me as more lightning struck the mountains above. The heating coil gave out as the remaining charge in the batteries dissipated, leaving me stuck under several tons of ice and snow. I wouldn't be getting out of here for a while

The tech was relatively unharmed, only a bit scratched an dented from the ice chunks, it was only buried under a lot of ice and snow. There was nothing else I could do, I had to abandon it for now. I would definitely come back for it later though, when I was ready to make the journey again.

I shut the tech down, and switched control all the way back to the original tech in the forest. So much for getting Celestite, next time I was going to be more prepared.

To Be Continued...

Author's Note:

Uh oh, looks like we lost the plane for a bit, I wonder how Teck is going to get Celestite now. Also, some of you may be thinking, a 3 day flight all the way to the frozen wastes? That seems excessive, so I just wanted to let you know that tech planes are small, and probably function more like unpressurized planes, not like commercial airliners that can make the trip in a few hours. I was also going to write a reference to another story I've posted that's on Hiatus, but decided not to as I couldn't find anyplace to fit it in. You should go read it, I think it's got a lot of potential. Friendship and Giant Worms - Fimfiction

Comments

[Navuxodonosor]

Tekk is very lucky. No jokes, he find celestite from first try... he find firestone from first try...

[Status L]

Coming in for a landing, I severely overestimated the traction I'd get on ice, and began to slide down the rest of the slope. Putting everything I had into stopping, I was able to slow the plane enough to not fall off the cliff that awaited at the end of the 'runway'. I should've fabricated some tracks.

Reminds me of the time before Better Future and hovercrafts.

10832570
Well he has several hundred years of experience.